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THE GREAT SELKIRK GLACIER, GLACIER HOUSE. CANADIAN PACIFIC RAILWAY

Frontispiece.

A RACE WITH THE SUN

A SIXTEEN MONTHS' TOUR FROM CHICAGO AROUND THE WORLD
THROUGH MANITOBA AND BRITISH COLUMBIA BY THE CA
NADIAN PACIFIC — OREGON AND WASHINGTON— JAPAN-
CHINA — SIAM — STRAITS SETTLEMENTS — BURMAH —
INDIA — CEYLON — EGYPT— GREECE— TURKEY— ROU-
MANIA — HUNGARY— AUSTRIA— POLAND— TRANS
CAUCASIA— THE CASPIAN SEA AND THE VOL
GA RIVER— R aSSIA— FINLAND— SWEDEN-
NORWAY — DENMARK — PRUSSIA —
PARIS — LONDON AND HOME

CARTER H. HARRISON

NEW YORK
G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS
CHICAGO:
W. E. DIBBLE & CO.
1889

COPYRIGHT BY
G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS

EccL.ss8iH

Ube lRnlcl!crbocf!cr iPtcBs
Electrotyped and Printed by
G. P. Putnam's Sons

PREFACE.

In the summer of 1887, having laid aside the cares of public
office continuously filled during fifteen and a half years, and
having met with a sad bereavement which nearly snapped heart
strings, the writer, for the purpose of bridging the chasm lying
between a laborious past and what he hoped might be a restful
future, started upon a tour of the world. For his companions he
had John W. Amberg, the son of a trusted friend, and his own
son William Preston Harrison, aged respectively seventeen and
eighteen years.
On the eve of his departure two editorial friends urged him
to write letters on his travels for their papers. Recognizing
the dangerous effects of easy idleness after a life of labor, he had
already determined to keep for his children a full and complete
traveller's book. As an experiment he commenced this in mani
fold and in form of letters. His first letters being very kindly
received, he continued them, though forced to steal the time for
writing, and oftentimes finding the thing an onerous labor. But
this labor soon became one of love. What he saw he described
honestly, and gave his thoughts freely, hoping to make his
friends at home partakers of his happiness. After returning
many friends urged him to put his letters into book form.
To do this required more labor than the original writing, for he
had, for the sake of economy of space, to cut out much, while yet
maintaining the epistolary style. He makes no pretensions to
literary merit, but asks from the public the same kindliness in
reading his letters, which he has felt in writing for them.

Eed . 881

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I.
PAGE
The Start — Winnipeg and Manitoba — The Canadian Pacific Railroad — Scenery
in the Rockies and the Selkirks, and on the Fraser River . . . . i
CHAPTER II.
Timber — Productions and Peculiarities of Oregon and Washington — Forest Fires
and Smoke — Scenery of the Columbia ..... .10
CHAPTER III.
More about Washington — Victoria and Vancouver's Island ..... 16.
CHAPTER IV.
Soil and Climate of the Northwestern Pacific Slope — Victoria and Esquimault —
Green River Hot Springs, and Trout ... . . . ig^
CHAPTER V.
A Run Back into the Selkirks on a Locomotive — Glaciers and Avalanches —
Siamese Princes — Scenery at Glacier House . . .24
CHAPTER VI.
From Vancouver to Yokohama — An Ocean Voyage Likened to the Voyage of
Life — The Risks of the Sea — Stormy Passage — A Typhoon — Plucky Japanese
Sailors — Our Mishaps and Recoveries ..... 29
CHAPTER VII.
Beautiful and Bizarre Japan — Its Cheerful Men and Modest Immodest Women —
Its Mechanics and Babies, Houses and Cities . . . 41
CHAPTER VIII.
Rivers, Farms, an4 Farmers of Japan — Further Characteristics of its People —
Its Hotels, Food, and Flowers . . . . 55,
CHAPTER rx.
Speculations upon Japan — Great Dykes and Walls — Liliputian Trees — Female
Education ...... ...... 64:

vni CONTENTS.
CHAPTER X.
PAGE
Honor to Perry — The Mikado Formerly a God ; Now a Wise Ruler — Rapid
Progress — Good Police — Good Roads — A Thought of Mother — Farm Houses, 71
CHAPTER XI.
Temples and Gods — Tokio: its Castle and Dense Population — Easy-going
Tradesmen — Beauty of the Young and Ugliness of Qld Women — Prostitution
—Fish . . . . ... ... 73
CHAPTER XH.
Beaucy of Japanese Scenery — -Terraced Farms — The Inland Sea and Nagasaki —
Missionaries — Cheerfulness of Native Workers — Sweet but Sad Thoughts on
Quitting Japan ........ 37
CHAPTER XIII.
Yang-Tse-Kiang — Chinese Farming — Fish and Modes of Catching^ Appearance
of the Country— Missionaries, Catholic and Protestant . 100
CHAPTER XIV.
Chinese Cities, Houses, Temples, and Workshops — Cat and Liog Roasts — Float
ing Population of Canton — Flower Boats — Women Boatmen — Susan in
CHAPTER XV.
Siam — Rich Soil — Vast Forests of Timber — Bangkok — ^Vultures Eating the Dead
-A Cremation — Audience with the King — Siamese Theatre 130
CHAPTER XVI.
Singapore — Botanical Garden — A Sail through the Rhio-Linga .\rchipelago — Its
Exquisite Beauty — Chicago Island — The Equator 149
CHAPTER XVII.
Burmah — Pagodas — Working Elephants — The Irrawaddy River — Pagahn with
9,999 Pagodas — Mandalay — Exquisite Edifices — The Burmese 161
CHAPTER XVIII.
The Hooghly — Calcutta — Mount Everest — .V Wonderful Railroad — A Dinner
with Lord Dufferin, and a State Ball . j-g
CHAPTER XIX.
iCalcutta to Benarus— The Holy City .md Pilgrims — Sacred Bathing ,tnd Burning
Corpses — Sarnath and Buddhism — Lucknow and Cawnpore jgo

CONTENTS. ix
CHAPTER XX.
PAGE
Lahore to Peshawur — Central Asiatics — Western Himalayas — Cashmir — A Wild
Ride  . 202
CHAPTER XXI.
India's Vast Past — A Glorious Modern Deed — Delhi and Agra — Exquisite Halls
and Tombs — The Taj — Reflections ........ 213
CHAPTER XXII.
Remarkable Mountains — A Model Native City — Monkeys and Peacocks — Old
Amber — A Ride on an Elephant — Crocodiles . .... 227
CHAPTER XXIII.
Ahmedabad — Beautiful Saracenic Remains — Wood-Carving — Purchasing Shawls —
Native Diplomacy — Bombay — Towers of Silence — Elephanta — The 15th of
February ............. 235
CHAPTER XXIV.
Across the Deccan — Karli Caves — Beautiful Women — Hyderabad — Old Golconda
— Titanic Rocks — Elephant Ride — Charming Hospitality .... 248
CHAPTER XXV.
Tuticorin — Pondicherry — Tanjore — Trichinopoly and Madura — Hindoo Temples
— A Delightful Ride — Natives and their Dress ...... 260
CHAPTER XXVI.
Ceylon — The Cocoa Palm the People's Friend — Tea, Coffee, and Cinchonas —
Charming Mountain Retreat — English Rule in India — Strictures on the
Englishman's Manners . . . , . • ^- • • • • 269
CHAPTER XXVII.
Cities beneath the Indian Ocean — The Red Sea and its Suggestions — Singular
Weather — Suez Canal . . . . . . . . . . .285
CHAPTER XXVIII.
An April Trip up the Nile — Delightful Climate — Cairo Old and New — Arabic
Tombs — Good Friday — Boolak Museum — Mother and Babe 3,000 Years Old, 289
CHAPTER XXIX.
The Nile — Old And New Egypt — Egyptian Houses — The Plodding Donkey —
Forbidden Fruits — Egyptian Farms — Headers from an Ass .... 299
CHAPTER XXX.
Dr. Schliemann — Thebes ; its Tsmples and Tombs — Beautiftil Picture-Writing —
A Native Feast  . 308

X CONTENTS.
CHAPTER XXXI.
PAGE
Grecian Sky Coloring — Feelings Awakened by Athens — Rich Art Treasures
Constantly Exhumed— The Future of Greece— Corinth — Earthquakes— A
Wonderful Sunset — Farewell, Greece . . . . • • • -317
CHAPTER XXXII.
Cosmopolitan Constantinople — Beautiful Approach — Custom-house — Solomon
and his Tribe — Dogs — St. Sophia — Bazaars — The Salaam-lick — The Timid
Sultan — Dervishes — The Eosphorus — Wonderful Panorama .... 329
CHAPTER XXXIII.
The Bosphorus — Across Bulgaria — Bucharest — Roumania : its People, Appear
ance, and Productions .... .... 347
CHAPTER XXXIV.
Scenery on Lower Danube — Buda-Pesth — Beautiful Women — Marguerite Island
— Hungarian Derby ......... 355
CHAPTER XXXV.
Vienna — Taxes — The Vice of Lottery — Austrian Derby — Tips — Ring Strasse —
Mubeums — Environs .... ... 364
CHAPTER XXXVI.
Run to Moscow — Warsaw — The Poles — Sobieski's Palace — Peasants . . . 374
CHAPTER XXXVII.
Moscow — The Russo-Greek Church — Devotion of the People — Russian Tea —
Restaurants — The Kremlin — Bells — Palaces ..... 3S2
CHAPTER XXXVIII.
Princely Kindness — Rich Prairie Lands — Veronij — Necessity for Forest Protection
— The Cossacks — Brave Children — Sunflower the Russian Nibble — Rostof on
the Don ......... . 394
CHAPTER XXXIX.
Vladikavkas — Grand Views of the Caucasus — A Glorious Trip — Flowers  Fruit 
Tiflis Pretty and Interesting .... . 403
CHAPTER XL.
The Caspian Sea — Baku and its Marvellous Oil Wells — Petroleum as a Fuel 
Balakhana — A Burning Sea — Natural Gas ..... 417
CHAPTER XLI.
The Volga River and Mighty Traffic — Astrakhan— Kazan — Nijni Novo-orod 
Rafts — The People — The Great Fair ¦ • . . . .20

CONTENTS. xi
CHAPTER XLII.
PAGE
From Nijni to Rybinsk by River ; Then by Rail to St. Petersburg — Peterhof :
its Beautiful Fountains — The Meeting of the Emperors . . . 443
CHAPTER XLIII.
St. Petersburg — Politeness smd Good Nature of the Russians — Superb Galleries —
Hermitage — Winter Palace — Winter Revelry — St. Isaac's Church — Illumina
tion at Peterhof ............ 453
CHAPTER XLIV.
Finland — An Interesting Country — The Finns — Tornea — Midnight within the
Arctic Circle — Posting — Farming — The Relations of the Russians with their
Conquered Subjects ........... 469
CHAPTER XLV.
Sail to Sweden — Princely Fellow Voyagers — Stockholm — The Swedes — Home-like
Landscapes ............. 490
CHAPTER XLVI.
Norway — Magnificent Scenery — Trustful People — Pleasing Simplicity — Pretty
Log-houses — Farming in Norway — Glaciers and Water-falls . . . 499
CHAPTER XL VII.
Christiania — Viking Ships — Thelemarken — The Fiords — Climate of Norway —
Splendid Roads — Delightful Tours — Mountain Dairies . . . 509
CHAPTER XLVIII.
Copenhagen — Thorwaldsen — Fredericksborg — Thrifty Danes — Run to Berlin —
Berlin in 1852 and Now — Reflections  521
CHAPTER XLIX.
A Lunch "en f amille " with Bismarck — Charming Hospitality — Kindliness of the
Prince — -Autographs and Photographs  534
CHAPTER L.
Hamburg — An Interesting City — Quaint Hanover — Lean-to Old Houses — Run to
Frankfort— The Rhine  546
CHAPTER LI.
Wonderful, Fascinating Paris — Improvements of the Empire — Recollections of
December, 1851 — Markets of Paris ..... . • 552-

xLi CONTENTS.
CHAPTER LIL
PAGE
London, Great and Vicious London — Its Fogs — Hospitality in 1851 and 1888
Tortworth Court and Berkeley Castle  S^i
CHAPTER LIIL
Our Home Run — Niagara — We Lose the Race with the Sun . . ¦ .56^

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

20 26
80

The Great Selkirk Glacier, Glacier House. Canadian Pacific
Railway  ... Frontispiece
Hermit Range, Rocky Mountains, with Canadian Pacific R- R. Station, 2
The Chancellor, Otter Tail Range, Rocky Mountains. Canadian
Pacific Railway  . . 4
Avalanche Shed, Selkirk Mountains. Canadian Pacific Railway 6
Glacier House and Great Glacier. Canadian Pacific Railway S
Hermit Mountain, Rogers' Pass. Canadian Pacific Railway 10
Gigantic Cedars-(53 Feet in CrECUMFERENCE), Stanley PXrk, Vancouver,
British Columbia ....
Douglass Firs,. Vancouver, British Columhia
A Part of Japanese Temple, Nikko, Japan .
Fuji-Yama, from the Tokaido
Old Stone Images, near Nikko, Japan  92
Wat-Se-Kat Pagoda, Bangkok  136
Burmese Ladies- AT" Tea and Smoking  170
Loop ON THE Darjeeling Railroad  . . 184
Corpse IN- Gangesand Cremation ON the Bank, Benares .... 196
Indian Women with Fuel made of Manure ,  204
The Taj from the River, Agua .... ... 222
Paksee Tow^r OF" Silence, Bomb.a.y . . . 242
Group- OF Hill People OF" Central India . ... 250
GopuRAS OF Hindoo- Temple, Madura . . . • . . 262
Talipot Palm in Bloom,. Ceylon  . 26S
India-Rubber Trees, Paredeniya Garden, Ceylon . . 272
Catamaran Fishing-Boat with OuTRiGGtR, Ceylon .... 274
A Bantan Tree Straddling a Road, Ceylon . . ... 276
Ramesses II., Nineteenth Dynasty, KNOWN AS Sesostris . . . 296
Section of Old Wall,, Constantinople .  344
The Kremlin, Moscow ....  390
Mount Kazbek from Station in Caucasus Mountains . . . 406
Russian " Troika "^ . . . ^  466
Stabbur and Woman Churning, HAU^pD Jaeter, in Thelemarken . 504
Flatdal, from Aasettjaekene, in the Thelemarken, Norway . .511
Hitterdal Church, Thelemarken  512:

A RACE WITH THE SUN.

CHAPTER I.

THE START— WINNIPEG AND MANITOBA— THE CANADIAN PACIFIC
RAILROAD— SCENERY IN THE ROCKIES, THE SELKIRKS
AND ON THE FRASER RIVER.
Victoria, British Columbia, August 3, 1887.
Having resolved to make a race with the sun, around the world,
it became a matter of some moment the choice of route we should
pursue. We recognized the fact that Old Sol moved on a smooth
and beaten track. For countless eons he had moved majestically
along the same even road. No ups and downs ; no stations
where he has to stop to take food or water ; comets feed his
fiery chargers ; their tails, whisking around millions of miles, fan
their foaming flanks ; worn-out worlds drop into their mouf/lj- to
feed them, without the necessity of a halt ; asteroids and bursting
meteors furnish their driver with whip-cracks with which to en
courage them to maintain their speed ; their own fiery nostrils
light them along their trackless path. Countless millions of ages
ago the mighty Eternal awoke them from their beginningless
sleep when His fiat, " Let there be light," reverberating through
out chaotic space, and rolling through its dark chasms and caves,
echoed from its frowning crags, caught and returned from limit
less heights, was obeyed, and " Light was." Their next rest will
be when comes a crash of worlds, and the same Eternal shall
shout, in wrathful thunder, " It is ended."
Ours was an unequal task. We knew we would be handicapped,
not only from day to day, but from hour to hour ; we would have
mountains to climb, valleys to span, oceans to cross, and storms
and tempests to turn us from our road. We would have to pick
our course through countless obstacles by day, and to feel our
way among countless dangers by night. Knowing our rival would
be forced to travel a thousand miles an hour within the tropics,
we determined to go far to the north, where contracted degrees
would reduce our mileage to nearly half of the tropical distance.
We therefore left Chicago for northern Manitoba. We ran
through wooded Wisconsin, rested a few hours at ambitious St.

2 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
Paul, dashed through the great grain fields of northern Minne
sota, entered the dominions of her much-jubileed Majesty, and
started on our race at high-boomed Winnipeg, on the 50th degree,
north latitude.
By the way, the " boom " at the capital of Manitoba was not,
as many have thought, a bursting " bomb." It is a well laid out
and handsome city of 23,000 souls. The boom gave it a good
start, and, like the great Chicago fire, made many a rich speculator
bite financial dust, but left improvements, which, but for the spec
ulative fever, would not have been commenced for years to come.
The city has many fine private buildings, a beautiful city hall, three
elegant fire-engine houses, several well paved streets, and a mill
which turns out 900 barrels of flour daily. The people resemble,
in dress and movements, the thriving, bustling population of our
northwestern States much more than they do the self-satisfied and
slow-looking Canucks of Ontario and eastern Canada. At night
they walked about with pleasure-seeking energy, rather' than
the listless, slow, aimless step of those we see along the railroads
which run among their brothers of the east.
Manitoba, — by the way, they lay the accent upon the " o " in
stead of on the final " a," though I suspect it to be wrong, for I
was told the compound word is " Manito " " ba " (God speaks),
from the Indian idea that the thunder is louder here than elsewhere,
— Manitoba is a grand province. From the United States bound
ary, stretching north and south about 150 miles, by 120 miles Ccist
and west, it is a splendid small-grain country. The land is not held
by great individual owners or by syndicates, but in small holdings,
rarely larger than a section, and generally only a half. The farms
are better cultivated than in Minnesota. The fields are much freer
from weeds, and the crops better than any thing we saw on our
way in the States, except in a small section near Crookston. We
were told the expectation was for an average crop of 25 bushels to
the acre. Some fields, we thought, in passing, would nearly
touch 40. At Winnipeg we boarded the Canadian Pacific.
For a considerable distance the country is perfectly fiat, with a
soil of great depth ; ditches will make it all finely arable. From
Portage La Prairie westward the surface is undulating, often high-
rolling, and for 109 miles to Virden is as beautiful prairie as one
could wish to see. North and south in this belt the same charac
teristics, we were told by a well-informed gentleman, extended
from the United States line to the northern limits of the province.
What cunning chaps the Hudson Bay Company people were !
For long years they told the world that this was a region only fit
for fur-bearing animals. But now, since the iron horse has
snatched the reins from this great cormorant, we find this mighty
northwest a country capable of supporting millions of happy
agricultural people. Rivers abound, running in deep-cut banks,
into which the lowest and flattest land can be drained. Wood is

IN MANITOBA. 3
not so far off that it cannot be had in sufficient quantities for domes
tic purposes, and coal-fields lie so close to the rivers that coal can
be transported by water if the rail fails to do the work. In the
summer season the sun pours down a flood of heat. The nights
are cool now, and we were told are always so. Years ago, when
the American cry was " 54° 40', or fight," I was a Whig, and
twitted the Democrats for coming down to 49°. I now feel like
still twitting my old Democratic brethren of the past for not
standing up for 54° 40'. I am not very acquisitive of territory
for our country, but I confess to a strong feeling that Uncle Sam
ought to own from the Superior up to Alaska and on to the Pa
cific. Let it not be understood that we would do any better fof
the people than the Dominion is doing. They are thriving, and
the Canadian Pacific Company has built a road which none of our
transcontinental railroads can surpass. It is thoroughly laid,
smooth, and finely ballasted. The depots or stations are built
with taste, and bridges are erected with great strength. In the
far west experimental farms are worked so as to give the emigrant
actual knowledge of what the soil is 'capable of producing.
After leaving Virden the country assumes less of a prairie ap
pearance and more that of a western plain, but sage-brush does
not commence for a long distance, and, in fact, is light at any
point on the road. Some 200 miles were passed by us at
night when we were generally asleep, but occasionally I would
look from my window, and was thus able to make a tolerably
accurate survey. The twilight of this latitude is so long that the
traveller is enabled to see much which in more southern climes
would be lost in darkness. We left Winnipeg at 9:40 A.M., on
the 29th. Early on the 30th we were constantly at the windows
or on the platform. Indians were occasionally seen at the sta
tions, decked in bright-colored blankets, and with faces painted
as heavily as those of watering-place belles. Their " tepees " (tents)
could be seen near by in groups of from four to ten. They all
had for sale horns of their old friend, the buffalo. Cattle ranches
are scattered over the country. Habitations, however, as we ran
westward, became scarce and ranches fewer. Many lakes were
passed covered with geese and duck. Sometimes we could see
young broods of the latter, of the size of quail, on small streams
not over twenty feet from our train. The plain was now the
" coteau de Missouri," but not arid as the same plain is on the
Northern Pacific road. The whole country is pleasantly green
with patches of " down " diversifying the landscape. Occasionally
we would see lakes with edges white with alkali running into
purple water-weed. Several of the small alkali ponds were dried
up and looked like plats of driven snow. The grass is short but
thick, and is of the prairie kind, with a variety resembling buffalo
grass intermixed. Frequently for long stretches we would pass
among bush openings, which gave a park-like appearance to the

4 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
plain. Several of the towns have from 400 to 800 inhabitants.
Two hundred and odd miles west of Winnipeg, at a village named
Moosomin, we saw a lawn-tennis party and a couple of nickel-plated
bicycles ridden by ambitious young men, this too in the territory
of Assiniboia, north of western Dakota.
All through the ride on the 30th we were in the region where
buffalo formerly abounded. Hundreds upon hundreds of their
old trails were deep furrowed into the prairie, crossing the road
from south to north. What countless thousands must, year after
year, have trodden in these furrows to have worn them so deep
into the dry hard soil. Now and then their bones would fleck
the prairie in white patches, and at the stations tons were ready
in huge piles for shipment east, to make handles for tooth-brushes
and bone-dust for soda fountains. It was sad to think of the vast
numbers of these old monarchs of the plains which had been
slaughtered in mad love for killing. The poor Indians, relics of
former ages, who are now living upon the bounty of the conquer
ing whites, do not so much arouse one's sympathies, as the wanton
destruction of the red man's friend — the bison — awakens disgust.
The Indian would not learn civilization, and refused and refuses
to obey the order to earn bread by the sweat of the face. They
had to go for civilization's sake ; but the buffalo committed no
other crime than that of being the Indian's friend, and of afford
ing an easy target for the wanton murderer. Seventeen years ago
I passed on the Union Pacific through a herd of many thousands
at Platte Station. Their beef was then plenty and cheap all
along the plains, and millions were yearly making their annual
migration. For hundreds of miles along the Canadian Pacific are
the countless trails they dug into a soil almost as hard as rock as
they marched, in single file, from pasturage to pasturage and from
water to water. Now, it is said, there are not over one or two
hundred wild buffalo in the whole land.
As we fly on westward the plain becomes browner and browner,
but rarely entirely loses its green, and everywhere there are damp
spots where it is of brightest emerald. The great plains on this
road have but little of the painful monotony which oppresses one
for such great distances on the other Pacific roads. The rolling
prairies seem to rise and fall like old ocean's swell, always the same,
but ever seeming to move and vary. One can watch the swell at
sea day after day and not grow weary. These plains affected me
much in the same way. I could traverse them again next week
with pleasure. They are always fresh to the eye. This of itself
will make this a favorite route for transcontinental tourists. In
the whole ride, too, we were only three or four times troubled by
dust, although we rode much of the time on the rear platform.
The dusty places were only of a few miles in extent.
At Medicine Hat, 600 miles west of Winnipeg, we crossed
the south fork of the Saskatchewan River. Here, and for a long

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^^^qh
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«3S1-
THE CHANCELLOR, OTTER TAIL RANGE, ROCKY MOUNTAINS. CANADIAN PACIFIC RAILWAY
BANFF AND ITS HOT SPRINGS. 5
distance, it is a navigable stream some 400 yards wide. Above
this place, 50 to 100 miles, are fine coal-fields. The coal looked
pure, and our dining-car cook assured us it was the best-cooking
coal in America. Before night we should have seen the Rockies,
but did not, because of the smoky atmosphere. Sixty miles from
their foot lies Calgary, a town of 2,000 people, the centre of the
great ranch district, where ranches with many thousands of horses
abound. The grazing country is said to be very fine, and extends
far south down into Montana. The plains here are very hand
some, and the bunch grass is prettily green. The land grows good
wheat but better grass.
At three o'clock on the morning of the 3rst we reached the
sanitarium Banff. We stopped over a day, and took two baths,
one at the hot springs, temperature from 110° to 120°, said to
have the specific virtues of the Arkansas springs, and sought
for the same class of diseases. I do not think the bath produces
the heavy sweats produced by those of Arkansas, but still I had
to lie for half an hour before I became dry enough to dress. Sev
eral hundred feet below this spring are two others, within 100
feet of each other. One is in a cave or grotto, about 25 feet in
diameter, with a natural vaulted dome, say 30 feet high, as perfect
as if cut by the hammer. It is now entered by an artificial tunnel
100 feet long, and is lighted by a small natural opening at the
apex. In the grotto is a natatorium, surrounded by pretty stalac
tites, with water five feet deep boiling up from the sandy bottom,
with a temperature of 95°. Cold water pours from a large shell-
shaped stalactite in sufficient quantity to make a cold shower.
One can thus swim around in warm water, and then cool off his
upper body, while from his waist down he is in a warm bath. A
hundred feet from this is another large pool, 20 feet across, of
about the same depth, and being in the open air the warm water
can be seen bubbling up through the sands. Both this and the
cave springs have streams flowing from them as large as a first-
class fire-engine could pump. The cave spring discharges at its
outlet without coloring the soil along the rivulet, while the other
makes a white deposit. This is from a magnesiate of lime, impreg
nated with iron and sulphur.
Banff is 2,400 feet above the sea, and is nestled down among
mountains rising over 5,000 feet above the hotel, all of them this
year with snow on their summits and far down the sides in the
deep gorges. The sanitarium and hotel of the railroad is upon
the bank of Bow River, a stream over 400 feet wide, of crystal
clearness, slightly whitened by glacier water. The river unde.r the
hotel breaks through walls of rock two or more hundred feet high,
forming a succession of cascades or rapids of 60 feet fall, in say,
140 yards. The views of snow-clad mountains, the river, the cas
cades, and whirling pool below make the situation of the hotel one
of the finest I have ever seen. Trout abound in the river of all

6 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
angling sizes. A lake-trout was brought in from Devil's Lake,
12 miles off, while we were there, weighing 43 pounds. Banff is
in the National Park of 260 square miles. With commendable
wisdom, the government is building throughout the park fine
roads laid out by skilled engineers.
At three o'clock Monday morning we took the west-going train,
and went to bed ; but the early light made us shorten our nap,
for we were in wildly grand scenery. Now we were rushing
through noble passes on the mountain sides, then under precipices
lifting thousands of feet above us. Snow-clad mountains were
ever standing like grand sentinels about our way. The engine
puffs and snorts as it pulls us up the steep grade. The snow
gorges crawl down nearer and nearer to us. The snowy peaks
seem piled one above the other far above us. The stream we
have climbed gets smaller and smaller, till at Mount Stephen we
are at the summit, 5,300 feet above the sea, while above us lift the
mighty rocky sides of the mountain, its peak almost over our
head, 8,200 feet above the rail. The Bow River here begins in a
little lake, while close by in a swamp is the fountain of the Kick
ing Horse, down whose canyons we must go for many a mile.
Here starts the former, whose waters flow far away into Hudson's
Bay. There, almost within a stone's throw, starts the other to
carry Stephen's icy waters into the Pacific. Hour after hour we
whirl along, in ever-rapid curving, down the canyon. Lofty
mountains are on either side in vast precipices. We look up upon
snow, now and then hardened into a glacier; we look down from
the rock-cut terrace, along which we bound, and see a stream
of moving foam, now in cascade, then in rapids, never still enough
to lose its snowy froth. Hour after hour we are in scenes of
grandeur and beauty. I say beauty, for the white snow, the
foaming waters, the green trees — these are beautiful, while the
mountains, with their frowning precipices, their rocky pinnacles
piercing the blue sky, are grand. For 60 miles it is the same
wonderful scenery. Our little creek has become a river, nar
row, but pouring towards the sea nearly as much water as flows
down the Ohio at ordinary summer stage.
At 9 o'clock our rushing, roaring river has emptied into the
Columbia, which has come up from the United States with its
milk-white glacier flood. It rolls in rapid current towards the
north, washing the foot of Mount Brown ^o miles away. It
will bend westward beyond the Selkirk range, at whose western
base we will cross it again, after having steamed nearly a lOO
mileg through yet grander scenery. V\^e cross the river ; we look
back and see the towering Rockies. We look forward and no
great way off lift the Selkirks. The ascent commences at once ;
first up the Beaver, which near the Columbia passes through a
gate one can scarcely believe to be of nature's fashioning. Two
vertical slate precipices, only a few feet thick, lift themselves up

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SCENERY IN THE SELKIRKS. 7
like the framework of a portcullis, through which the little river
rushes. A door 20 feet wide, set against the gateway, would stop
the whole stream. Up this river, and then up Bear Creek we climb.
The river is at first a few feet beneath us. Up we go. The river
is a TOO, then 400, then 1,000 feet below. Still up, till far be
low us — 2,000 feet — now through timber, and then over the tops
of lofty firs, we see the stream winding through marshy grass,
which one of us insists is a wheat-field. We seem to hang on the
mountain's side. Now the road runs through tunnels ; then it is
timbered out over precipices.
We are soon in the heart of the mountains ; far up their sides,
till the snow and rocks are met, are magnificent forests of pine and
fir, with stems as straight as arrows. I said we were in the moun
tains' heart. I was too quick. We soon will be, for we break
through a pass between two peaks clad in eternal snow. The
snow is nearly down to our level, which is here 4,300 feet above
the sea. See yonder white precipice ; it is the foot of a mighty
glacier, hundreds of feet thick, and pushed down in hardened
stream from the upper peak yet far above and beyond its brow.
The scenery now is grand beyond the power of language to paint.
One glacier frowns upon another. To our right we pass the sum
mit, and two miles on we reach the Glacier House, a Swiss chalet,
in front of which are pretty fountains throwing up icy jets ; and
apparently a few hundred yards away to our left, is a monster
glacier, with its foot not much above the level of the road. With
a glass we see mighty fissures cracking its surface. It bends over
the mountain like a falling curtain. We are told it is a mile and a
half wide, nine miles long, and 500 feet deep. Mount Sir Donald
is watching its slow descent. Far above the snow, his peak, shaped
like a diamond drill, pierces the blue sky 6,000 feet above us. We
have to bend our heads back to look at his pinnacle. The de
scent is now down a silvery thread, called the Illecillewaet River.
It tumbles in cascades, and as it tumbles it grows. We get down
hill by making iron loops. One could pitch a marble from the
window upon the track below, which we will reach after bending
as on the link of a chain. After a while the little silver thread has
become a foaming stream, then a rushing river, so strong that it
cuts its way between two perpendicular cliffs in a canyon appa
rently not over 25 feet wide, but several hundred feet deep.
The river springs through this like a madman in a leap then
foams along for miles below. At last, after a run of seventy odd
miles through the Selkirks, we emerge from them and cross the
Columbia, a stream greatly grown since we saw it last 100 miles
back. After a while we enter another system of mountains — the Gold
range. The scenery in these would be glorious, but we are
satiated with grandeur, and are more delighted by the beautiful
lakes, along whose margins we run, than by the heights above us.

8 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
After leaving this range, we are upon waters which empty into-
the Frazer River. Before night we pass several beautiful lakes.
One of them, the Shuswap, is of very considerable extent ; we
run along its shores for over 50 miles. Its width varies from one
to four or five miles. Peaks 2,000 to 3,000 feet high lift them
selves above its waters, now by steep ascent, then by sloping
benches. Its waters are said to be full of fish ; we frequently saw
them rising.
The next morning we were upon the Frazer. Here we had a.
different character of scenery from any before seen. The road
runs along the bank of the river, perhaps 100 feet above
the water, nearly all the time upon ledges cut into the rock or
upon the steeply descending sides of the mountains. We must
have gone through 30 tunnels, in length from a few hundred
feet to several hundred yards, all cut through solid granite. The
river runs through rocky canyons at the foot of mountains lifting-
2,500 to 4,000 feet. Many of them were of bare rock, others beau
tifully treed. Behind these immediately along the river are yet
higher peaks, more or less flecked with snow. Laughing brooks
and foaming streams are frequently crossed, coming down gorges
in bounding cascades. The Frazer is a mighty river of white
water rising 500 miles away among ranges covered with eternal
snows. It is joined where we struck it by the Thompson, itself a
noble stream. It flows in turbulent current, now several hundred
yards wide, then cutting its way through rocky doors not over
100 feet from jamb to jamb. Often for miles it rushes in fall almost
as fast as a cataract. Below each fall it whirls in angry pools ; on
nearly all the ledges jutting over these pools are frames of light
wood, on which the Indians' winter supply of salmon hangs like
red tobacco in a southern field. Indians are seen perched on
projecting ledges, scooping with a net, shaped like a tennis bat,
for finny beauties. Their fishing huts are on nearly every green
spot. Here and there is seen a Chinese washing a little gold from
the sands. High on the opposite side of the river runs the road
built 28 years ago by the government to the Carabo mines, 400
miles away. It often runs at dizzy heights and is so narrow that
the stage-coach passengers must have been in constant alarm —
that is, if they were other than gold-seekers. For these fellows
would have ridden the devil barebacked, and never felt a tremor,
if the dust was at the journey's end. For 60 odd miles we ran
in and out of rock-hewn tunnels, over trestles, along ledges cut
from the solid rock, and over terraces built from many feet below.
The rushing river was ever some 50 to 200 feet below us, while
high over our heads and frowning from the opposite side of the
canyon the steep mountains lifted themselves to a height varying
from 2,500 to perhaps 4,000 feet. They were often rocky but
tresses, their steep slopes covered with pines and firs. This canyon
is alone worth the trip, and, while it lacks the awful grandeur

THE FRAZER RIVER. 9
of the glaciered peaks of the Rockies and Selkirks, yet, being
always so close to us, is more terrible and startling.
After leaving it we ran through forests of giant cedars — cedars
two to five feet in diameter. But, sad to say, these noble trees a
good part of the time stood like blackened spectres, and often
were but lofty stumps five or six to 30 feet high. What wild
havoc the fire-fiertd has been for years, and yet is, making in the
vast forests of the Pacific slope ! The air in the Selkirks was blue
with smoke, and so it was from their base to the end of the road.
The air even here on the south side of Vancouver Island is still
hazy. From our windows we ought to be able to see Mount
Baker's snowy crest, far to the southeast, and the Olympian
mountains, only some 30 or 40 miles to the southwest. In
stead of that, high hills only ten miles away are dimly seen as
bluish masses above the horizon. Millions of trees, such as would
be the admiration of people east of the Mississippi, are now burn
ing ; millions upon millions of acres have been within the last five
years stripped of valuable forests, which east of the Rockies would
be worth many times more than all the gold produced within these
years on the whole Pacific coast, and yet many of the fires which
have destroyed such vast wealth have been started by mining
prospectors. They burn certain wealth not their own above the
ground, in the hope of finding uncertain signs of riches which may
become their own, but is now hidden beneath the surface.
And now from this beautiful land, where winter never freezes
and summer never parches ; where, though eight degrees north of
Chicago, the honeysuckle embowers the verandas and the rose
bush is a small tree in the garden ; where the cherries are nearly
as large as plums, and the red raspberry is a pulpy monster;
where the young pine makes a good fishing-pole, and the fir is
taller than the mast of the largest ship ; where cedars are mon
sters, and the balm of Gilead is like a big cotton-wood ; — from this
anomalous clime, good-morning.

CHAPTER II.
TIMBER— PRODUCTIONS AND PECULIARITIES OF OREGON AND
WASHINGTON— FOREST-FIRES AND SMOKE— SCENERY
OF THE COLUMBIA.
Green River, Hot Springs, W. T., August 14, 1887.
PUGET Sound is one of the world's marvels. It lies like a mighty
antlered formation. Its inlets and arms, running 20 to 60 miles
into the land, are never more than four or five miles broad,
and are often not over a half mile, with a depth varying from 50
feet to hundreds of fathoms. The deep water comes up close to
the shore, and oftentimes sheer up, so that the largest man-of-
war could tie to a forest tree whose roots are watered by the
ocean's brine. By the way, why is it that in the East the salt
water of the sea prevents trees from growing anywhere near the
shore, while out here the lower limbs of great trees are touched
at high tide? The sound has but few harbors, because anchorage
is rarely to be had. The longest cable will not permit an anchor
to reach bottom, and the tides will not let a ship tie to the shore.
At Tacoma the difference between low and high tide is over
20 feet. At the mouth of the Strait of Fuca it is less than
five feet ; but the tidal waves press into the narrow sound and
lift themselves up to nearly 30 feet in some of the inlets. The
meeting of the tides creates heavy, angry breakers.
Seattle and Tacoma are the great rival towns of the sound.
The discrimination against the former -by the Northern Pacific
Railroad has made the dislike of Tacoma by the average Seattlean
something absolutely interesting. She is trying to get even, how
ever, and will soon have a road built along the east shore of the
sound, to tap the Canadian Pacific near Vancouver, and will ulti
mately cross the mountains to meet the Manitoba road, which is
expected to enter Helena this year, and will then stretch out for
the sound.
The trade of this region with the East will before long become
great, and the northwest of our land will offer greater commercial
attractions than does the orange-growing southwestern California.
There " the orange and citron is fairest fruit." But here the
mighty forests, which cover the lowlands as densely as the jungles
of the tropics, and climb the mountains until the snow-line is met,
can furnish the world with timber for centuries. But, unfortu
nately, the people, while proud of their grand trees, seem to think

.^^^- -^4J''<^-

:4^a*^' .^^w^^ "-4^^

HERMIT MOUNTAIN, ROGERS' PASS. CANADIAN PACIFIC RAILWAY.

THE TIMBER SUPPLY OF PUGET SOUND. ii
them inexhaustible, and are each year burning in sheer wantonness
a half-century's supply. It is calculated that over a hundred
square miles of forest will be burnt this season.
The lumbermen, who ought to regard them as their great
wealth-producers, do not seem at all distressed at this terrible
destruction, for they say that fires do not destroy the timber, but
simply kill the trees. And that, after being killed, they remain-
sound for several years' consumption, while the loggers get the
logs out much easier after the undergrowth has been burnt.
This is a selfish feeling, especially as it is known that if a forest
be thoroughly burnt young pines and cedars do not spring up in
the future. It is the exception on this coast when young forests
follow a fire. The summers here are so dry that the delicate
seeds of the evergreen do not germinate as they would if rains
were even moderately frequent. The seeds cannot grow as they
would if protected by dense shades. The soil is burnt up. The
trees are so enormously large and their roots extend so close to
the surface, that after a fire there is nothing left but ashes from
four to six inches deep. No one who has not gone through the
forests of this coast can have any idea of the enormous amount of
timber growing upon a given surface. An old army officer told
us he had to make calculations as to the number of feet stand
ing upon some land, and fixed it at 200,000 feet of sawed
lumber per acre, and that, too, where the trees, were not large.
We have now had a good opportunity for seeing some of the
heaviest forests. We have fished along three streams, and have
found out by experience the great labor necessary to get through
the wood along water courses. The close proximity of one tree
to another, and their vast height, is simply marvellous. The
roots of one mingle with the roots of its neighbor. The trunks
stand four to six feet in diameter, and nearly 300 feet in height,
and could furnish saw-logs 180 to 230 feet long. I yesterday ran
my fishing-line around a cedar six feet from the ground, and found
it to be over 31 feet in circumference, or over ten feet in
diameter. There was another, not ten feet away, which was over
six feet in diameter. On the opposite side of the creek, on the steep
slope of a foothill, were some 20 acres of pines of vast height, all
three to five feet in diameter, and so close together that they
seemed almost a solid mass.
To reach the stream where we intended to commence fishing,
we had to cross about a quarter of a mile of bottom land, over
which a heavy wind had passed last year. The enormous trees
were thrown about in vast confusion. I walked along a huge log
to its upper end, and the weedy undergrowth appeared so solid
at the side that I supposed it was only a few inches deep. I
stepped off the log, which, as I thought, was there a foot thick, and
on the ground, when, lo ! I sank up to my shoulders in dense
growth. When fishing yesterday, our guide at a certain point

12 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
near a railroad bridge put the boys in the stream and told them to
fish down it to the hotel. He sent me a half mile above the
bridge, he going a like distance above me. I reached the bridge
when the sun was an hour high, and struck down the track for
the hotel, expecting to find Willie and John already in, for they
are fishermen who think a trout on a dish much more enjoy
able than a trout in a stream. When I got home they were not
¦ there. I supposed our guide would bring them in. Presently he
arrived without them. Dusk and then dark came on. I was
alarmed. Their whole fishing-ground from bridge to hotel, which
is on the bank of the river, was not in extent a mile. The guide
and I went up the railroad, and hallooed as loudly as possible, but
could get no answer, and yet the river was nowhere a quarter of
a mile from the track. To reach it through the woods without a
torch was nearly impossible, and to go down stream dangerous at
night. We returned and found the whole population in wild com
motion. The women spoke of bears. Some men feared that, al
though the deepest pools were not over head deep, yet they might
have been sucked by the rapid current under adrift. Others said
darkness had caught them, and they had built a fire to camp for
the night.
We got up an expedition with a single obtainable lantern, bor
rowed at the little railroad station. We walked up the track
until opposite the fishing-ground. We fired pistols. No answer.
We then fired a rifle. Its clear note cut the forest air, and was
echoed back from the foot-hills, a half-mile off. But sweeter still
than the echo came a view halloo from Willie, and then the shrill
whistle of Johnny. The woods between them and us had been
burnt this season. We struck an Indian file, two before the lan
tern and two behind. A couple of hundred yards in we got be
wildered. We retraced our steps over logs as high as one's head,
down into holes of ashes nearly up to the knee, and again reached
the road and fired our guns. We heard an answer. I then sent
the party in, while I mounted a stump to watch the lantern and
to guide them by my pistol-shots. In abbut a quarter of an hour
a volley of shots told us the lost were found. In another quarter
of an hour we saw the light coming back. John and Willie had a
tale to tell. They had not had a clear knowledge of the length
of their fishing route. They had nearly reached the hotel with
out their knowledge.' It began to grow dark, and they thought
it best to retrace their steps to the bridge. Darkness came on.
They calmly built a fire to wait till morning, or till they should
be found. Both were black from climbing burnt logs, and both
were forlorn in appearance, but happy in the possession of a new
experience. Their camp-fire was close to the bank of the rushing
stream, and its noise too great for them to hear shouts, or even a
pistol-shot at first. Had they attempted to reach the road in the
dark they would have been half stripped and badly mangled.

PECULIARITIES OF OREGON AND WASHINGTON. 13
Even with a light it took a quarter of an hour to make a fifth of
a mile.The lumber of this region is reaching an enormous product.
One mill at Tacoma cuts 200,000 feet a day. There are a few
others as large, and everywhere heavy cutting establishments.
All lumber is shipped as square timber, to be cut up near the
market. A few pieces have been shipped to South America
120 feet in length. From 40 to 80 feet is not at all uncommon.
We saw lumber going East stretching over the entire length of
two long cars. Logs are barked in the woods, then one end is
cut slightly sloping, so as to run easily over roots and skid roads.
Here wages in the woods are high, good ox teamsters com
manding over $100 per month. It is not every man who
can get out of Buck and Brindle their entire muscular abil
ity. A skilled teamster, with his thumb gouging a bull's
flank, can make the honest fellow almost crack his yoke. One
thing strikes the stranger as singular — that is, the enormous
height of the stumps. The pitch or turpentine of the trees lies
in the trunk six to ten feet above the ground. The tree is felled
above this line. This is not entirely waste, for the saw will hardly
cut the timber in the stump, and when cut it is unsalable. By
the way, we heard of one tract of 160 acres, from which it is claimed
nearly 700,000 feet of timber — board measure — was cut from each
acre, and of a single tree which cut 45,000 feet. We did not see
this, but have reason to believe the statement true.
In many respects Oregon and Washington present anomalies.
Much Indian corn is grown in different parts of Oregon, not for
maturity, but to be consumed green. The ground is ploughed,
the corn planted, and in the majority of fields is not cultivated at
all, but left to work out its growth. If the season be good the
farmer makes money selling roasting ears ; if bad, he gets some
fodder. One good rain makes a crop on the whole coast, it mat
ters not what the thing be. The rapidity of growth is almost as
marvellous as is the size attained.
We boarded the train at Dallas, on the Columbia, in upper
Oregon, in a range of more or less wooded hills. In five hours we
looked out of the window, and foupd ourselves in a land where
not a tree could be seen, — not even a bush other than sage and
some of its congeners, and here and there a prickly pear. The
air was almost crisp in its dryness. The hills in the early morning
looked as if covered with a soft velvety growth ; the glass showed
this to arise from the closely grown sage-brush. Between the
bushes was a low bunch-grass, growing out of an arid ash-colored
soil. Near the rivers the sands are absolutely movable, and are
carried in clouds by a stiff wind. Yet in this sandy desert toler
ably fair crops grow without irrigation. We saw a huge rick of
rye, unthreshed, put up for fodder, and were told it averaged two
and a half tons to the acre. About the junction of the Snake and

14 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
Columbia rivers a more uninviting country can hardly be
imagined, and yet in a little plantation of poplars set out from the
slip, in the spring of 1886, the young trees were four to eight feet
in height, and of full, bushy tops. I measured one of the shoots
of this season ; it was nearly five feet in length. We counted
twenty-eight shoots on one little tree. We dug into the dry sand,
and found moisture at seven inches. We ate watermelon from a
patch said not to have been watered this season. The melon was
quite large and well flavored, but the meat rather pithy, as is the
meat of all melons and apples raised on this coast, the result
probably of abnormally rapid growth.
Another remarkable feature of this country is the meagreness
of the wheat and rye straw when compared to the amount of
grain produced. We saw quite a large field of wheat which had
been harvested. From the light stubble we did not think over
ten bushels could have been gathered, but was assured the
whole field of over 30 acres had averaged 24. This is true, too,
of the great Walla Walla wheat country, where 40 bushels
are often threshed from straw which an Eastern man would
think could not yield one fourth of the amount. This fact
causes many superficial observers passing through the country
greatly to underrate the productiveness of the soil. A Michigan-
der whom we met swore he would not give one good farm in his
State for all Oregon and Washington Territory for agricultural
purposes. He had only seen the standing crops, and therefrom
made his estimate of values. All fruit matures rapidly, and, is
often rather tasteless. The green corn is insipid and the apples
lack flavor. The pears are quite good, and the plums and berries
delicious. I regret to say there appears to be a general lack of
energy among the people, and especially among the farmers. The
ground produces without much work. Stock live out-doors all
winter and grow fat on the grass, which nature turns into hay
without being cut. The farmers, therefore, grow careless, and
have a general look of lacking thrift.
We went to Oregon and Washington more to see the scenery
than to look at the people, or to examine into the sources of
wealth, but found every thing shrouded in smoke. At Portland
one could scarcely see across the Willamette River, and the dust
was nearly half-ankle deep. It required a compass to find in what
direction Mount Hood was standing. We left Willamette in a
smoke which actually made our eyes smart, and from the park in
Portland the spires of the churches were merely spectral outlines.
Portland is a fine and handsome city. Its business houses are
well built, and its residences comfortable-looking and embowered
in vines and shrubbery. But its glory seems to be gone. If the
rich men of the place do not soon bestir themselves, little Tacoma
and thrifty, pushing Seattle will soon catch and pass it. The
Chinese look prosperous and busy. The I'd* si; of the pepple

SCENERY OF THE COLUMBIA RIVER. 15
seem to be living on past recollections, and that, too, though,
according to population, there are few places in America where
there is so much average wealth. The people want some life beat
into them. I ask their pardon if I have reached a too rapid
opinion. I wonder if the smoke has not something to do with it.
The people are probably cured into abnormal steadiness. We
left the city well pleased with the pleasant people, but rubbing
our eyes as if we had been in a smoke-house. By the way, we
determined that Eastern packers should bring their pork here to
be cured. A house of wire gauze to keep the flies out would take
in smoke enough to cure hams and jerked beef, without any other
than that furnished by the forest fires.
We found the lower Columbia River so involved in sooty haze
that, when in the middle channel, we could barely see the two
shores. But as we approached the cascades the atmosphere grew
clearer, and after passing them we were met by a wind from up
the stream, and were soon in full enjoyment of the beauty of this
incomparable river. The high mountains towered up, and the
rocks wore that indescribable purple-brown seen nowhere else.
Landscape after landscape was presented to our view, holding
us in silent rapture. Many of them would be grand if they were
not so beautiful. One feels as he does when looking on a noble
woman with a madonna face. The majesty of her form is lost in
the angelic visage. The tints of the rocks and precipices are to
the other rocks what an Italian sky is to other blue skies. There
was just enough smoke to tone down the distant heights without
destroying a single outline. It supplied the softening effect
which the mists furnish in the Tyrol. Even Mount Hood
deigned to show us his sentinel peak, with his eternal snows and
his glaciered slopes ; he seemed a monarch, disclaiming all com
panionship. So spellbound were the passengers of our steamer
that they simply turned once to glance at Mount Adam's grand
cone, far to the north. We were satisfied ; we had seen what we
came to see, — the Columbia and Mount Hood.

CHAPTER III.
MORE ABOUT WASHINGTON— VICTORIA AND
VANCOUVER ISLAND.
Victoria, B. C, August 19, 1887.
Two weeks ago we first reached this pretty old town. We
were anxious to go to Alaska, but found the steamer would not
leave before the 8th, to return to-day. But our ship, the Batavia,
was scheduled to leave to-day for Japan. We might make Alaska
and return in time, but if fog should interfere for one day we
would get back too late. We were advised not to take the
chance. We therefore went to Washington Territory and
Oregon ; hurried through them more rapidly than we could have
wished ; got back here, and found that for some reason the Bata
via would not be here, but that the Parthia would take her place
a week later. A whole week would, therefore, be on our hands,
and we were out of those regions where we could make profitable
excursions. This morning when we went down to breakfast there sat some
friends who had gone over the Canadian Pacific with us. They
had been to Alaska, and did not have a single rainy or foggy
day. The trip before, the steamer had both rain and fog. It
ought to have been our good-fortune to have been aboard, and to
have enjoyed what we so much desired, — this fine excursion
towards Behring Strait. But, sad to admit, my star had set.
By the way, it will be little ^singular if we should sail across the
mighty Pacific on the Parthia. Fourteen years ago last May I
stood at the Cunard docks, in New York, and watched this ship
sail out with those who were dearest of all on earth to me, — my
wife and children. They had taken a position where I could see
them as long as possible. We waved our handkerchiefs until
they could no longer be seen. But still I watched until the good
ship was lost in the Narrows. I clutched a pile, which stood
above the pier, and in nervous distress tried to shake it. There
disappeared nearly all that made life dear to me. Between them
and eternity was a single plate. Would I ever see them again ?
Would they ever return to their native land? Who could
answer ? As I stood straining my red eyes — I had not shed a
tear while with my dear ones, but when they were gone I broke
down and wept, not as a woman, but as a strong man can iji-eep, tsars
which seem to be wrung from the very soul — a rough man passed
16

VANCOUVER ISLAND. 17
me. He saw my distress. Touching his hat, he said, in gentle
tones which I can never cease to thank him for : " You have
friends on the /fer^^iai, have n't you?" "Yes, my wife and all
my children." " Don't be aggrieved, sir ; they will reach t'other
side. She is a stanch ship." And the good stevedore's eyes were
moist with real sympathy. The ship was stanch ; she bore
my loved ones to " t'other side." But one of them, and the
dearest, is still on the other side. She sleeps in her far-off " God's
acre." Her spirit took its last flight in 1876 among strangers;
warm-hearted Germans shed tears on her grave, and the eternal
hills of Thuringia look down upon her German resting-place. In
1874, I went over myself on the Parthia and spent the summer
with my family, and rekindled the friendship which many years
before, as a young man, I had formed for the German people.
Now I am on my way to Germany, to bring back my wife's
remains, to lay them by the side of her little ones who sleep in
Chicago's Graceland. I go with the sun and the Parthia steps in
to take the place of the ship which was to have carried me nearly
five thousand miles on my journey. I hail her as an omen of
good yet to come. She is expected to-morrow, and we hope to
5ail on her on the 25th. We will lose a week from the time I hope
to spend in the land of the Mikado. This week cannot be made
up, for climatic reasons may force us onward toward India before
fully doing Japan.
In a former letter from here I said nothing of this pretty
place. Unlike others we have seen on the coast, it seems built to
stay. The bulk of the houses in the main town are of brick and
have a solid outlook. The streets are broad and well laid out and
paved, the road-beds being a heavy macadam of trap-rock, steam-
rolled. The worthy mayor, Mr. Fell, drove us around yesterday, point
ing out the points of interest. This island, Vancouver, is about 300
miles long by 75 to 100 miles broad in the wider parts. It is moun
tainous, and not adapted to a high cultivation, but has a soil which
will, when the great empire of the Pacific shall be in its glory,
furnish food for a large population. It is throughout well wooded,
not with the vast-sized timber of the main-land, but with trees
that would be considered fine in Michigan. It has extensive
coal-fields, and yesterday I saw the man who from poverty actually
stumbled into a huge fortune. His foot was caught in the root
of a fallen tree, causing him to fall ; looking down he saw a piece
of coal, and thus discovered the fields of Nanaimo. The lucky
man, now a millionaire, with the aid of California capital has
built a railroad from this place, some 70 odd miles long, and the
town of Nanaimo is a flourishing place of over 3,000 people. The
road is pushing still on and, I think, Ijas reached Comox, 60 miles
farther north. Ho^ few people in the eastern States or in Eng
land have any conception of this Pacific country of the northwest !

1 8 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
The cunning Hudson Bay Company gave out to the world the
impression that the country from Lake Superior to the mouth of
the Columbia and thence to the far-off north was the home of the
fur-bearing animals, and that only the trappers could gain a living
in it. This impression has taken such a deep hold, that those that
visit it are supposed to be visionary dreamers, or worse, when they
tell the world that this vast country is admirably fitted for the
home of man. A soil which produces of wheat from 30 to 45
bushels per acre; oats from 50 to 70 and potatoes from 125 to
200 bushels ; this, too, on the better lands even of this island. On
the main-land oats have threshed out, just within the United States
line, over 100 bushels, and I heard of potatoes running to 700.
Last week we stopped at the celebrated hop fields of Payallup,
in Washington Territory, and saw a field which had given 4,000
pounds per acre, and 1,600 pounds is the average yield of some
6,000 and more acres. The rich low grounds on White River, The
Pyallup, and several other streams average over 2,000 pounds per
acre. We looked at the poles upon which were vast crowns of white
hops, as yet not half grown, but as large as ripe ones grown in the
east, and I could not help feeling there was a vast amount of
personal liberty flowering about us, and that a regular and large
hop-growth in Washington Territory would help tO drive out
adulterated beer and alcoholic poison and prove the solution of
the temperance question. Pure and cheap beer will drive " rot-
gut " out of the world. The philanthropist will then cease to be
a prohibitionist, and the question will be taken out of politics.
The hop-growth of the Territory is simply in its infancy. We talked
with a man — John Meeker — who, a-foot, carried the first 20
roots into the hop region on his shoulders, when railroads were
scarcely dreamed of and the stage-coach only tried to go to the
gold diggings. Meeker's father carried in a single bag the first
crop of hops to a local market ; that was done only 20 odd
years ago. Now the yield for this year will be about 50,000
bales, each bale weighing 180 pounds or thereabout.
Next month the harvest begins, and then from the far north,
nearly as far as Alaska, and from over the mountains will come
Indians by the thousands to do the gathering and to earn from $2
to $3 a day. The squaws are the best pickers. At Seattle and
Tacoma their camps are already to be seen, and Siwash (Indian)
canoes dot the whole of Puget Sound, bearing their loads of six
to a dozen Indians, with prows turned toward the hop lands. We
certainly saw on the water or drawn upon the shore several
hundreds of the huge dug-outs, some of them nearly as big as the
war-galley of Homer's heroes. It is said to be worth a trip across
the country to see the great pic-nic of the pickers in the months of
September and October. The red pickers number several thou
sands. They pitch their " shaks," or tents, in the streets, along
the banks of the streams, and up against the railroad tracks, and
gather by day and laugh and gamble by night.

CHAPTER IV.
SOIL AND CLIMATE OF NORTHWESTERN PACIFIC SLOPE— VICTORIA
AND ESQUIMAULT— GREEN RIVER— HOT SPRINGS AND TROUT.
Victoria, B. C, August 21, 1887.
There is the home of a great future population in the north
west ; I think I can see into the future, guided by what history
tells of the dense populations of the far past, that there will some
day be a great people in the cool northwest — greater than in hot
and dry California or in the more inhospitable regions just east of
the Rockies. Here in the valleys and on the bulk of the plains is
an inexhaustible soil, which yields when irrigated, and in many
parts without irrigation, returns unknown in any other section of
the civilized world. This soil is practically inexhaustible ; the
loam of the valleys is often over 100 feet deep ; the earth of the
plains seems to be a sort of volcanic ash, rich in all the ingredients
which make the kernels of wheat and other cereals. On the
railroad embankments one frequently sees stools of oats as rich
and green as is grown on an old stable yard. At Green River hot
springs, growing on the road-bed, which resembled ashy clay,
we counted 226 berry-pods of oats on a stool from a single seed,
and 18 stalks from a timothy stool. The bank was eight
feet above the level of the land, and the soil composing the road
bed was taken from a deep cut. There are millions of acres easily
to be irrigated. The mountains will furnish wood and timber for all
times, and in their bowels are all kinds of minerals. In the vast
depths of the sounds, bays, and inlets are the resorts of the count
less finny tribes of earth's greatest ocean. Here the fish come in
from the sea in endless profusion, and all of them thoroughly
fitted for food for man.
Harbors abound, capable of holding the fleets of the world.
And all along the coast from Fuca Strait up to Alaska are fiords
of vast depth running parallel to the ocean and constantly open
ing into it by safe inlets, along which cheap steamers can go from
point to point without the danger of ever encountering a storm
which an Ohio craft may not meet. The Indian of Alaska comes
to Tacoma in his dug-out canoe with his whole family, and with
as little risk as one could run on a small river. The largest ship
can steam in these inlets and salt rivers, without ever hitting upon
an unseen danger. There are no shoals and no hidden rocks ; and
19

20 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
a vessel can lay its broadside sheer up against the shore any
where with no other danger than that of abrasion when lifted or
lowered by the tides.
The scenery of the whole northwest is of so grand a character
that every thing east of the Rockies is comparatively tame. I do
not mean to detract from the beauties of our own section. For
there is not a hill anywhere which does not furnish, to my eye, a
line of beauty. There is not a flowery prairie or a waving field of
grain which does not give delight. There is not a gurgling rivulet
which does not sing in tones far sweeter than those of the most
gifted diva. But here there is more of it all, and on so stupen
dous a scale, that ours are to them what a parlor melody is to a
grand chorus, or the eolia singing among the pine needles is to the
grand artillery of the storm.
I look out of the window every few moments from my
writing table, and the low mountains of this island present to the
eyes as fine outlines and as green and beautiful foothills as one
, can find anywhere in the Alleghanies ; and yet these mountains
are but pigmies to those one could see to the south or west of this
hotel, if the smoke would but blow away. To see the grandeur
of this region one should come before July or after September.
Smoke is apt to be the rule in July, August, and September.
Even in these months the haze rather softens the near landscape
but it hides the mighty background.
This place ought to and ultimately will be to this coast what
Newport is to the east. The rocks along the seashore resemble
those at the plutocrat's heaven in Rhode Island, only they are
more numerous, and the bays and inlets would be the delight of
the lover of the oar. Some of the latter ar.e little salt rivers along
which the rising or falling tide sends a current of two or three
miles an hour ; their shores are covered with beautiful trees, green
firs, spruces, and elders, and the red-barked arbutis bending its
gnarly branches among the green foliage, as smooth as if rubbed
down with sand paper and as red as if painted by the brush. The
wild roses grow as large as lilac bushes and often cover whole
acres. The royal navy yard of Esquimault looks as if its site had
been selected as much to please the eye as for its wonderful road
stead. This roadstead resembles a beautiful lake of a couple of
thousand acres, almost circular, surrounded by wooded hills and
rounded trapite rocks, with an inlet of only a few hundred feet,
and opening from it a few small inferior arms. It is deep enough
to receive the largest iron-clad.
We were most kindly shown all of the store-rooms, the torpedo
room.s— in fact every thing which can be possibly exhibited to a
stranger. To Mr. Fell we were indebted for this courtesy. The
dry-dock is a huge one, in which the iron-clad Caroline was lying
to be cleaned. She filled but a small portion of the huge dock. It
is built of solid masonry and shows that the home government

GIGANTIC CEDARS (53 feet in circumference) STANLEY PARK, VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA.

A REMARKABLE CLIMATE. 21
does not intend, without a struggle, to abandon British America.
The Cormorant has just come out of dock. And the sullen,
dangerous-looking iron-clad Triumph, from which floats the
admiral's pennant, lies close by. We rowed out to see this great
ship. She is now a fifth-rate, but a few years ago was considered
an invulnerable monster. She has in her waist a sort of fort in
which are 14 huge guns, which could soon destroy any of our
fortifications, and her deck has long, small, many bullet-throwing
guns to rake an enemy's deck, some of them carrying a rifle-ball
3,000 yards. We were politely received and entertained in the
ward-room by the captain and several lieutenants. This is the
head-quarters of the Pacific squadron, and the admiral, who
cruises from Alaska to Cape Horn, appreciates the variety of
climates his cruising ground affords him. He winters about the
equator and enjoys this glorious climate in the summer. Heads
of elk, mountain sheep, goats and deer surround his cabin,
and rugs of many kinds of skins, the trophies of his own hunting
excursions, prove him to be a hunter of the mountains as well as
of the seas, and that he is as ready to bring down the denizen of
the woods as his calling makes him to destroy man.
The dock here has cost over a million, and the ships and stores
of all kinds in this navy yard cost many millions. Will this ever
be ? Is man by his nature so pugnacious that these preparations
for killing must ever exist ? Here in the torpedo house was a
torpedo boat, and another in the harbor, ready to destroy the
unwary. Each fish-looking torpedo, of which there are many, cost
about $2,500. This is but one of the many establishments be
longing to England, and every nation has its own. And all for
the purpose of destroying him who we are told was made in God's
image ! What is, is right. Man was made by his Maker and not
by the devil. There is but one God, and the only devil lives in
the hearts of his creatures. He intended it, and it is right. If
man did not kill his fellow-men he would so increase and multiply
that he would after a while do as the fishes of the sea — eat each
other. So he is permitted to kill in the name of liberty and of
religion to keep him from killing for meat.
The climate of this great region is to an eastern man even more
remarkable than its productions. The thermometer rarely falls
much below the freezing-point at Victoria, or anywhere west of
the Cascade range, and while the days are warm in summer they
are never hot, and so far at night we have required at least two
blankets throughout this month. Every cottage is covered with
honeysuckle or some climbing plant, which in the Chicago parks
have to be laid and covered in winter. And the ivy seems as
flourishing as at Washington City. There it is sometimes killed
by frost. Here it never is. A gentleman told me that at Seattle
he had gathered out-door roses during every month of the year.
The strawberry blooms early in April and the wild fruit is nearly

22 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
as large as our ordinary cultivated ones. Along the coast and up
to the heights of the Cascades in Washington Territory and the
Selkirks in British Columbia the air is full of humidity, except
during the summer months. East of the Cascades it is generally
very dry. When we were on the Columbia at the mouth of Snake
River, I was amazed to find the thermometer, about 3 o'clock, over
100° in the shade. The air was so dry and free from all sul
triness, that I did not feel the heat as being oppressive.
On the treeless plains, and among the wheat fields of Walla
Walla, it rarely ever rains in summer, is never damp, yet, strange
to tell, the people suffer greatly from rheumatism. Judge Lang-
ford, whom we met at the Green River hot springs, declared he
considered his locality (Walla Walla) to be the natural home of
the dread disease. The summer dryness explains, probably, why
we saw no mosquitoes in Oregon or Washington Territory, while
all the way from the eastern entrance to the Rockies, on the
Canadian Pacific, clear down to the coast, the pests kept us fight
ing every evening, when the train would stop for a few moments.
We are now thinking of going back upon the road to spend the
time until the 25th. A gentleman who has just returned from
Harrison hot springs, about 60 miles west of Vancouver, says
the mosquito has been terrible. Even at Glacier House, in the
Selkirks, nearly 5,000 feet above the sea and right under the
huge glacier, some of our passengers were deterred from stopping
overnight, because they were so bad, and there were, as yet,
no bars in the house. And yet we fished in Washington Terri
tory along several streams, some of them but a little above the
sea level, and at hot springs, 1,400 feet up, and did not once see
enough mosquitoes to annoy us.
It will be, or ought to be, grateful information to our good
ladies who battle so hard against the little pests of the bed, and
think they are the representatives of slovenliness, to learn that,
in the Blue Mountains, east of Walla Walla, if one leans against
a fir tree for a little while he will get the brutes on him. And
this in the clear, pure air of the pine woods.
We spent two days at the hot . springs on Green River, in
Washington Territory. The water issues from a narrow fissure,
or, rather, seam, in the rock, which is a sort of trap. The seam
runs at an angle, perhaps of 25 degrees, and for several hundred
feet the hot water runs out in small streams, and near the sani
tarium is sufficiently large to furnish enough for 50 to lOO bath
tubs, and is elevated on the right bank of the rapid river suffi
ciently to give a good fall to the hotel on the opposite side on a
bottom stretch, which is covered by monster trees. These have
been killed by fire and are now by slow degrees being cleared up.
It cost $150 per acre to clean up one of these forests to fit it for
cultivation or for grass.
I said the burning of the forests absolutely burnt the soil.

NORTHERN PACIFIC SWITCHBACK. 23
This statement requires a supplemental one. The first burning
only kills the trees. It is the second burning or clearing fire
which consumes the roots and soil. The fir and pine, as well as
the cedar, send out roots immediately under the surface. These,
a year or so after being killed, burn like peat earth, and in the
clearing fire the interlaced roots, and apparently the whole loamy
soil is turned to ash. If the proprietors of these hot springs had
capital they would soon make the place a favorite resort for those
seeking health and pleasure. Hundreds of invalids now flock to
it, and, I was told by themselves, to their very great benefit.
We certainly enjoyed ourselves much, with the baths, the simple
fare, and the trout fishing in the rapid river.
The place is a few miles below the celebrated switch-back of
the Northern Pacific, which here plunges over the Cascade
Mountains by a succession of switches running zig-zag back and
forth at a dizzy height among the clouds.
Johnny called my attention, while going over this part of the
road to the dense fog, and was quite amazed when finding we
were running through a cloud, and that below it was raining.
The zig-zag system of switch-road is a temporary makeshift,
costing some $300,000 to hold the land grant, while a great
tunnel is being bored. When finished it will be the next long
est one in America. It looks startling to see our huge locomo
tive — weighing, with tender, 104 tons — puffing and blowing far
above us at the head of our train, while below another was tug
ging and pushing. In a little while this would be changed, our
own engine would be pushing us, while behind the other mon
ster would be pulling. We could but feel ; God help us if one of
the giants should lose either wind or muscle, for then we would
soon dash down into eternity.
This is a fine pass for the tourist to go over and affords a
delightful sensation. It will be lost when the safer tunnel shall
pierce the mountain, and thus save this, to me, agreeable, if dan
gerous trip. The Green River is splendid fishing ground, and
one can soon fill a basket, some of the beauties weighing several
pounds. They are caught of all lengths, from four or five inches
up to two feet. We were quite surprised to find these entirely
different from the brook trout of the east. It is rather a small,
dwarfed salmon, is flatter, and lacks the huge mouth of our
trout, and also lacks the thin, transparent cartilage, which makes
the mouth of those of a New England brook. A trout in the
east can pretty nearly swallow a fish of its own size. Not so
here. Nor have these the delicious flavor which I thought, as a
young angler, made this fish the height of good living.
To-night we shall steam over to Vancouver ; it takes eight
hours. Thence we will take a run up the road, until the arrival
of the Parthia, before we again start on our race with the sun.

CHAPTER V.
A RUN BACK. INTO THE SELKIRKS ON A LOCOMOTIVE— GLACIERS.
AND AVALANCHES— SIAMESE PRINCES— SCENERY AT
GLACIER HOUSE.
Vancouver, B. C, August 27, 1887.
My letters are manifold copies of my journal, made as I write
my ideas, which are formed hastily in harrying from place to
place. I must not be held as to the accuracy of some of my
statements, nor as to the duration of impressions made upon my
mind by what I see or hear.
In my last I stated that my star had set, and I was no longer
lucky, because I had lost my trip to Alaska. But I picked up
my star again. On the 2 1st we left Victoria for this place, to
find what the Canadian Pacific people would do with us until the
Parthia should sail, and also to try to find our letters, which we
were sure good friends at home had written us, but none of which
had been forwarded. Letters were found, and Mr. Van Home,
the soul of this great continental road, who happened to be just
arrived, gave us transportation to the heart of the Selkirks, 420
miles back, at Glacier House. We abandoned our fishing excur
sion to Harrison hot springs, and boarded the train for a longer
visit to the great glaciers. We were handsomely entertained
aboard the private car of Messrs. Edwin Walker, of Chicago, and
Easton, of La Crosse, who were returning, with their families,
from Alaska, and are all full of its glories. They made us full of
substantial good things, while proving that Seward was his coun
try's benefactor when he gave $7,000,000 for the northwest cor
ner of this continent. The mountains along the Frazer River
are now absolutely shrouded in smoke, and we all congratulated
ourselves that we had come down the great canyon over three
weeks before, when it was not so dense. We could now scarcely
see the higher part of the foothills, less than a mile away. The
upper ranges were covered and unseen. But the gorges of
the river were as grand as ever. We passed through the Gold
range and entered well into the Selkirks before the pall was
lifted. From Rivalstoke, on the Columbia, I rode on the locomotive
with jolly Billy Barnfather. May his face never be less round.
A few good Havanas made him as good a fellow as ever strode
an iron horse. A ride on a locomotive has to me always a fasci-
24

RIDE ON A LOCOMOTIVE. 25
nation. But in a grand mountain country, around countless
curves, over lofty trestles, upon the ragged edge of fearful preci
pices, and over deep gorges — such a ride is really glorious. We
had to climb up 2,700 feet in about 30 miles. Our horse, with
his tender, weighed nearly 100 tons. How he would puff and
snort, and sometimes almost plunge, to drag after him his
mighty load. One riding upon him, after a while, almost loses his
own identity, and becomes a part of the huge monster. Look
ing forward upon the rails, merely silvery lines drawn upon the
road-bed, we forget these are any thing more than marks to
guide us on our way. The locomotive bends to the right or left
like a drunken man as we rush along the curves, and one feels like
a drunken man, who can walk straight if he wishes, but finds it
pleasant to totter and zig-zag, so it be done not from necessity
but from agreeable volition. The rails are but lines to guide, not
to control. And so, on we rush, never quitting the line a hair's-
breadth. Yonder is a monster barrier of rock right in our track.
Who 's afraid ? At it we rush headlong, and bore a tunnel
through the mass. See yon foaming stream, far down in a dark
gorge. We rush across it on a trestle as light as gauze-work, and
never tremble because of its being so fragile. How we careen
and climb ! We reach a little level track. We spin along it with
a loud scream, and stop at a station as still as if we never knew a
motion. Miners and road-workers gather about our side, and,
while they admire, we are as quiet as a lamb, conscious of our
power. At last we reach the presence of eternal ice. We have
been three hours climbing a little over 40 miles. At Glacier
House we bid adieu to our friends in the private car, and, although
dead against monopoly, I cannot help feeling that it is not a bad
thing to be a railroad magnate, and rather doubt if I would burn
my palace on wheels if one should ever happen to be given me.
Alaska may be grand, but when sitting on the piazza of the
beautiful little chalet hotel, called the Glacier House, and watch
ing the sun climbing the mountains and rose-tinting the snows
which lie like a light mantle about these lofty heights, and look
ing up at the great glacier with its crevices of delicate green, and
the gray peaks of cold rock which piqfce the blue vault of heaven,
and hearing the mighty roar of the snow-white cataract, which
tumbles over 1,000 feet down the precipitous foothills a few
hundred yards before me ; when I sit in this wonderful val
ley, nested down among huge mountains on every side, no
outlet to be seen, the lower mountain slopes covered with
eternal snows, and the gray rocks above the snows, these mon
ster peaks so nearly covering me that I must bend back my head
to look at them, — then I do not envy any one seeing other sights ;
these are enough for me, and I scarcely regret that our ship had
not come.
It is a delightful thing to sit at Interlaken as the sun sinks and

26 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
paints the pure brow of the Jungfrau — Switzerland's pride and
glory. But there the Unpolluted Maiden is so far off that we
cannot become familiar with her. Here the mountains are so close,
that a bee-line drawn from where I sit would reach lofty peaks
and ragged brows in every direction, at distances varying from
two or three to perhaps six or eight miles. These mighty heights
are lifted a mile to a mile and a quarter higher than the road-bed.
The train from the east, meeting ours at Glacier House,
brought Prince Devawongse and his nephews, the little prince
lings of Siam, and their suites. After a good dinner, we were all
soon in single file, and armed with improvised alpenstocks, off for
the great glacier which hangs over the head of the valley, and
runs down it nearly or quite a mile at a slight elevation above our
hotel. The newly cut pathway through dense forests and woody
debris brought down by avalanches, and over rough bridges span
ning the foaming torrent, which issues from the glacier foot and
flows down the valley, is more picturesque than easily trodden.
The glacier, where we stood under it, was perhaps I20 feet
deep. Rushing from ice caves are several torrents which
we calculated were bearing down fifty odd thousand cubic
feet per minute, thus showing the great size of the snow or ice
field above. At one place our whole party of over 2o entered a
beautiful grotto, large enough to hold twice the number. Above
and around us were ceilings and walls of emerald green. The
Siamese kept up such a din, that we feared their voices would
cause masses of ice to tumble in upon us. In Switzerland guides
forbid loud talking in such grottos. We made them finally un
derstand this. We all cut and ate of the pure crystals, one of us
remarking they may have been formed more than a century ago.
No one has yet measured the speed of descent of this frozen
stream. The ice we were eating may have fallen as snow before
Washington cut the cherry tree, or even before Columbus made
an egg stand on end. It was very pure and cold enough to be
very old. The little fledgelings of Siamese royalty were wonder
fully delighted, and, like boys, began to cut steps into the sloping
side of the glacier to try to climb it. For this purpose one
of their party had provided himself with a hatchet at the hotel.
The task, however, was abandoned when, in a half-hour, they had
reached only a few feet.
By the way, this is a very intelligent lot of Asiatics. The
brother of the king speaks English with considerable purity, and
the young princes well. They all have charming manners, and
seem fond of fun. They are to sail on the Parthia, and we may
find them not only agreeable but valuable co-voyagers in the
event we should conclude to visit Siam. If the prince will prom
ise us a genuine elephant hunt, we will do it. Willie, who is of
an ambitious turn, talks of falling in love with a Siamese princess,
but Johnny says " no Siamese in mine."

•''^y

DOUGLASS FIRS, VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA.

A VALANCHES.

27

Two miles up the road from the Glacier Hou.se is the summit
of the road in the Selkirk range. Here, from a small snowy gorge,
run the silvery streams which carry the waters to the east and to
the west. The one to the west becomes the Illeciliwaet River,
which, until it reaches the Columbia, is always a rapid mountain
torrent, affording the sightseer constant delight by its cascades
and deep canyons. The time is not far distant when tourists will
seek this locality as they now do the old scenery of Switzerland.
When one first sees the inclosed valley about this station, he is
not as much pleased by it as he will be after several days' sojourn
among its mountain fastnesses. He has entered it through so
much grand scenery, and his eye has become so accustomed
to nature's majestic works, that he looks upon this as simply a
part of the whole. But, after sleeping a night, he looks out in
the gray morning upon the cold peaks, and then watches until
the sun begins to scatter delicate rose tints upon the snow-fields,
and after a while to lighten up the old glacier, then he sees the
surrounding objects as a unit, and takes it in as one of the rare
spots to be visited and enjoyed. Walk in any direction for miles,
and the roar of cataracts is never absent, — scarcely has the sound
of one died out before another is heard. There are a half-dozen
which give out the deep bass undertones of a great fall.
We can study in the Selkirks the workings of the avalanche
better than in any other locality I have visited. The tracks of
hundreds can be seen from the railroad. The fall of snow is
enormous. The air coming from the ocean over the Cascades and
Gold range is surcharged with moisture. Farther west it is con
densed into rain. Here it becomes snow, and the fall is very
great, some winters we were told, reaching 20, 30, or 40 feet.
It becomes piled in vast masses upon the mountain heights.
The sun in February and March pours down great heat. It is
aided by the chenook winds, and loosens the snow masses in the
upper gorges. Down the snow rushes in avalanche, reaching, it
is calculated, at times a speed of 100 miles per hour. The largest
timber is cut close to the ground or torn up by the roots. It
sweeps into the valley, piling its debris of rocks and trees to a
height of many feet. It sweeps to a considerable distance up the
slopes across the valley ; but its destruction is not confined to the
space the slide covers, for the rushing wind, pushed ahead of the
descending mass, strikes the trees on the hill opposite and mows
them down far above the foot of the avalanche.
One can see many acres covered with upturned trees, all lying
with their tops up-hill, as regularly as if they had fallen before the
axe of skilled choppers. We saw one of these places stripped by the
wind covering many acres, the upper limit on a very steep foot
hill being fully a quarter of a mile above the valley. Often the
foothills have been denuded of trees for the width of a mile — not
the effect of one snow-slide, but of those of many years. The young

28 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
trees and shrubs covering the stripped avalanche-tracks varying^
in age from one to ten or many more years. In some places the
second growth has become quite fair timber. The slide cuts a
swath through the forest as sharp and well-defined as the track of
a mower's scythe. One sees the old forests cut down to a line as
straight as if drawn to a rule. Then there may be a growth
of lo or 12 years. That has again been cut into by a later
slide, and a third growth has sprung up. This, too, has been cut,
and a still later growth has followed. We saw one place where
we counted five different cuttings, or mowings, of this sort, the
tracks covered by trees of different growths. In many places
there seem to be slides every year. In these, the very soil has
been carried away by the annually recurring avalanche. One sees
the track of a small slide not over 50 feet wide, and yet the
large trees have been cut down by it as if shaven. Sometimes
the track of the slide has been from some cause deflected at a
broad angle. In such places the trees had been thrown down to
a considerable distance below the turn by the wind, which did
not make the bend, as the snowy mass pushing behind it had
done. I said I rode much of our way back to Glacier House on
the locomotive. On the downward way I had a new experience.
I rode on the cow-catcher from the time we struck the Thompson,
through the canyons of the Frazer, and on to Vancouver. It
was a delicious ride, free from dust and cinders, almost without a
rough motion — as if I were sliding along at furious pace on a
smooth surface, without any other motive power than that of
volition. The locomotive being behind, I almost forgot his huge
size, and felt I was simply skimming the road. It was by far the
most glorious ride I have ever taken.

CHAPTER VI.
5R0M VANCOUVER TO YOKOHAMA— AN OCEAN VOYAGE LIKENED
TO THE VOYAGE OF LIFE— THE RISKS OF THE SEA— STORMY
PASSAGE— A TYPHOON— PLUCKY JAPANESE SAILORS— OUR MIS
HAPS AND RECOVERIES.
Steamship "Parthia," Pacific Ocean, Sept. ri, 1887.
This is Sunday morning, and, although yet a thousand miles
from Yokohama, I begin my ship letter for several good reasons.
In the first place the day commences beautifully ; the sea is com
paratively smooth ; the ship rolls gently as she dips into or rises
from the trough of a small swell coming up from the south, and
by poising a table upon the top of a valise, enabling it to rise and
fall with the ship's dip, I can write quite comfortably — almost the
first time it could be done for some ten days. Secondly, it being
Sunday, no one will drop in to propose " a little game of draw."
Nor will any one pop in his head to find out if we wish to take a
bet on the ship's run, or on the length of the mikado's mustache.
One of our passengers is ready for a wager on any thing, from the
weight of a Japanese mosquito's wing to the height of the geyser
the next whale will spout. Betting, repeating poetry by the yard
— doing it well, too, — and damning the fellow who named this the
Pacific Ocean has been the mania of Dr. S  for the past ten
-days. In short, I can have the day to myself.
But what shall I say? What can I write about the sea and the
passage ? Every one who has been sufficiently lacking in brains
to write travellers' letters has written of the sea — the deep, darkly
blue sea. But, after all, if the bulk of the world's' population be
idiots, why should not I join the procession? I can moralize
thus : A sea voyage is a fair epitome of the voyage of life of one
who has an abiding faith in a blessed immortality. The more
uneventful it be, the happier. Behind, all is left. On the other
side is the land of promise — the haven of rest ; a desolate waste
•covers all the space between. If there be calms, then all is
blank — nothing for the eye to rest upon ; nothing on which to
hinge a thought ; naught but stagnation and vacancy. If storms
arise and billows are piled mountain high, then there is exhilara
tion, excitement, and awe, — a species of wild pleasure. But with
this, the bravest heart, realizing its utter powerlessness to battle
against nature's forces, so lavishly demonstrated all around, can
not help feeling a somewhat painful anxiety. Quiet and a restful
29

30 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
sleep becomes an impossibility. But let there be an ordinary,
quiet sea, with its dignified ground-swell ; a breeze sufficient to
break the crest of the swell into white-caps, and to cause laugh
ing, dancing ripples between, then one can watch it hour after
hour, day after day, and, though impatient of delay, never grow
weary. The clouds pass from horizon to zenith and across the
sky in ever changing transformation, permitting the imagination
to draw pictures in infinite forms, and to weave fancies in endless
variety. The ocean's swells roll toward one, ever the same, yet
one cannot resist the impression that each succeeding roll will
differ from the one before. The eternal motion is suggestive of
life, and life with motion is never the same from one moment to
another. Life and motion make change a necessity. As one
watches wave chasing wave, an effort is required to keep the
looker-on from expecting a variation. Let him give thought free
range, and then that most beneficent of God's gifts to man- — hope
— will enable him to watch and dream, and, seeing no change, yet
ever hoping for change, he will watch and watch with constant
interest. So the pilgrim on the voyage of life, knowing his haven of rest,
his harbor of refuge, lies at the end of the unknown path he is
treading, thankful for each day's blessing, pursuing the even tenor
of his way, ever occupied enough to repel that absolute rest which
breeds rust of the brain and stagnation of the faculties, hears
sweet music in the sighing of the wind and a lullaby in the buzz
ing of the bee; drinks in sweet odors distilled by the morning
dews and exhaled by the commonest leaf ; builds castles in the
clouds, and sees fiery coursers in the cloud-shadows as they chase
each other across the meadows and fields ; believing, hoping — his is
a happy and prosperous voyage. But if his life be eventful in a
race after wealth or a chase after renown in any of the walks of
life ; if he mingles in the world's storms, where men clash against
men, and people climb over shattered fortunes or the blackened
names of others, — however surely he may climb the ladder, there is
ever a rung higher than the one he has reached ; there is ever a
rung which is beyond his grasp. However often he may win in
the race, there is ever a goal which recedes as he approaches it.
Some who go down upon the sea in ships feel a vague sort of
dread ; but very many think themselves all safe when they lie
down upon one of the great greyhounds between New York and
Liverpool. Our captain told me of a thing which illustrates the
dangers run even upon these well-managed monsters. One of the
most famous ones was several days without an observation. On
this account she was held down southward. She was thought to
be south of Ireland. Officers were watching at night for stars ;
one of them was startled by seeing through a rift in the clouds a
planet rising off the beam, whereas it should have come up over
the bow. Presently he saw, what he thought, the north star ;

THE NEW CAPTAIN. 31
took an observation, and, on calculation on the basis that this
was the pole-star, found the ship off the Scottish coast, and near
400 miles north of where they supposed her to be. The clouds
passing off proved the observation to be correct. Her course was
changed, and none but the owners and officers ever knew what a
wild race the greyhound had run. The ship's metallic frame and
works had set the compass wild.
When we returned to Vancouver from our run back into the
mountains to sail in the Parthia we found she could not be ready
before the 29th. The hotels of the town are very poor, and the
fine new house of the Canadian Pacific Railroad Company will
not be finished for some months. We therefore resolved to make
a hotel of the ship. On going to the state-room assigned us we
found it small and far aft, whereas our room on the Batavia,
being one of the best, we were entitled to one of the best on this
ship, which had been substituted for the other. We positively
refused to accept the assignment, but put our baggage in one of
the better rooms, which we were told was held for the Siamese
princes. The shore officer, who is charged with getting the ships
of this line ready for sea, was sent for. He conceded the justice
of our demand, but said he could do nothing until the new cap
tain should reach there from the east. He promised, however, if
we would rest quiet he would see that we should be thoroughly
satisfied. Under this assurance we each took a good room and
awaited events.
On the morning of the 27th we were reading on deck when we
saw a queer compound between an English farmer and a towns
man coming from the railroad station, with a sailor's gait so roll
ing that one would think he felt the pier beneath his feet flound
ering in a rough sea. He looked not to the right nor to the left,
but marched over the gang-plank and up to dashing Captain
Brough, who was standing upon the deck he had so many months
trod as its monarch, but was so soon to leave forever. The two
men shook hands. They were the old and the new captains.
The contrast between the two was amusing. Brough, with his
magnificent physique, was dressed in an elegant business suit.
He would have been theadmiratior^of women and the envy of all
dudes. His own mirror always gives him an admiring gaze. The
other looked as if he had never seen a looking-glass, and did not
care a  if he never saw one. His shoulders were of great
width, and his chest as deep as that of a Devon bull. His body
was made for a six-footer, while his legs had been sawed off for a
man of five feet. His clothes had been hastily picked up at a
slop-shop in Liverpool. His shoes had seen no blacking since he
left the deck of the Alaska, and on his well-shaped head was a
stove-pipe, built on a block which was unfashionable ten years
ago, and which had been ironed each spring for a half-dozen years.
In his hand he held a cotton umbrella. This was Captain Arnold,

2,2 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
the late first officer of the Alaska, and at one time of the
Arizona, who has the United States and several other medals
given for saving life. When he came from his cabin the day we
sailed, dressed in his new captain's uniform, buttoned up so as to
hide the shortness of his legs, he was an extremely handsome
man, and looked every inch the captain of a great steamer. To
day there is no passenger on this ship who would not feel like
taking up a cudgel for Captain Arnold.
Arnold was first officer of the Arizona when she ran her nose
into an iceberg a few years ago, losing in the contest some 25
feet of her bow. As soon as the officers could get well upon
their feet they piped up the men, and after finding them all right
set to work to make repairs. All at once the whole crew was
missing. Arnold found them in the cabin on their knees, where
a clergyman had improvised a prayer-meeting. He went in with
a stick and drove them out with an oath, telling them to get the
ship right and then they might pray to their heart's content. As
he was passing into the companion-way he met an old gentleman
coming up with his valise in one hand and an umbrella in the
other, as if seeking a hotel. A tipsy passenger who had been in
the smoking-room at his cups was coming down, and seeing the
old gentleman sang out in drunken humor : " Have a cab, sir ? "
On the 27th Captain Webber gave us the half of the smoking-
room on deck, and placed some carpenters under our control to
fit the room up according to our own fancy. We rigged up three
berths in a room 9 by 12, with two windows on each side, a long
sofa, large mirror, and, in fact, every thing to make us comfort
able for a long voyage. The partition was stained, and Japanese
ornaments were hung upon the walls. My berth was run athwart
ship, so as to leave the sofa free. The other room was fitted up
for Prince Devawongse and the little Siamese princelings.
Thus we had a room rarely given to travellers — on deck —
plenty of fresh air and fine light. We have escaped all the un
pleasant odors of the regular below-deck cabins, and already
begin, with a sigh, to compare our quarters with those we will
probably have in the five or six sea voyages we must yet take
before touching our native land. I am suspicious our fine room
has gained for us the ill-will of other passengers who were not so
fortunate. We pulled out from the pier at Vancouver on the 29th at 5.30
A.M. in the rain. The fog which had covered the locality for
weeks was lifted and gave us a fine view of the picturesque
mountains which environ the town. We reached Victoria at i,
and at 4.30 steamed away, having taken on the bulk of our pas
sengers and obtained the ship's clearance.
We steamed through the narrow strait of Fuca, having a
tolerably fair view of the high lands of the island to the north
and the snow-clad Olympians on the south, and at half past three

SEA-SICKNESS. 33
took off our hats and made our bow to the mighty Pacific
Ocean, upon whose vast bosom we now for the first time found
ourselves. Our ship at once took her course — west, 14° south
— and, what will seem strange to the uninitiated, this course
never varied, in a run of 1,000 miles, more than a point or
two, carried us up from latitude 49° 30' to 51°, within 70
miles of the Aleutian Isles, and then varying not over two
points brought us, in a further run of 3,300 miles, down to
Yokohama, in latitude 35". That is, this was the course as indi
cated by the compass. But that mysterious variation of the
needle, which no one can yet explain, indicated what was very far
from the true course. Why this is so, and why the needle points
^t all to the magnetic pole, will some time be known to man in
his wonderful march in science, unless he and his researches shall
be too soon blotted out by some mighty cataclysm of nature.
During our first and second day's run we sighted the Abyssinia
and two schooners coming down from the Aleutian Isles, possi
bly seal pirates, and had light-head winds but very rough seas.
Before the end of the third day nearly all of the 35 cabin
passengers were down with sea-sickness. The table was deserted
by all except three or four of the passengers. Johnny and
Willie were rueful and very pale about the gills. John soon
gave in, but Willie was unwilling to confess, and tried hard to
maintain the native hue of his resolution, until he heard that our
old sea-dog of a captain, who had been from boyhood upon the
seas, confessed to feeling "that worst of all diseases, nausea, or a
pain about the lower regions of the bowels," and that the afore
said captain laid the whole blame upon this "blasted peculiar
ocean." The two boys lay in their berths wishing they had never
seen salt water, and were as miserable specimens as Chicago ever
-sent abroad. One acknowledged he wished he were at home, the
other that the Pacific were as dry as Sahara's trackless desert, and
that he were on an oasis as big as Adam's fig-leaf, with no other
Jriend than one faithful dromedary. Poor boy ! He was full of
pathos and bile, and would have poured out long Spenser»in an
athemas against sea-sickness, had he not grown "inarticulate with
retching." "He felt that chilling heaviness of heart
Or rather stomach, which, alas ! attends.
Beyond the best apothecary's art,
The loss of love, the treachery of friends,
Or death of those we dote on, vi'hen a part
Of us dies with them, as each fond hope ends.
No doubt he would have been much more pathetic.
But the sea acted as a strong emetic."
After the afternoon of the second day we had constantly rough
iseas, even when the winds were light. They grew stronger day
by day, and scarcely varied from dead ahead. The swells grew
-higher and higher, and our ship, though she rode the waves like a

34 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
duck, could not help poking her nose into the monsters pouring
down upon her. The seas were generally from a decided southern
direction forcing us to take the trough.
My berth was built athwart ship, and on the fifth night, in
the midst of a decided gale, I found myself now standing on
my head and then on my feet. The seas rolled in continuously
from the south in mighty billows, and a cross-sea came in over
the bows so that the ship now rolled until she stood almost upon
her beam ends, and then plunged forward as if she intended to
run her bow clear under water. She would shake her head how
ever and send the water washing in foam clear back to the stern.
Up she would ride the coming wave, and the wave she was leaving
behind would wash over her stern and then roll back nearly
20 feet above us. The main swells, coming from the south,
washed the decks from fore to aft. One of these dashed against
our deck-house with such force that we feared we would be car
ried into the sea. Some passengers, who could not bear to stay
below — shut in by skylights all canvassed and lashed, and hatches
battened down — were constantly having to dodge behind the
house or leap upon lockers.
On Tuesday, the 6th of the month, we all went to our berths
tired and sore from the two days' thumping we had received.
Living up to my maxim, " to make the most of the present day,
and to hope for the morrow," I did hope that Wednesday, the
to-morrow, would bring us bright skies and smooth seas. Alas,
Tuesday had no morrow.
Wednesday never came.
It either got lost in the shuffle, or old Sol, seeing how we were
handicapped in our race with his imperial highness, took pity on
us, and instead of throwing Wednesday down so that it would
fall upon the deck of our ship, dropped it so carelessly that it got
tangled in the chain of the Aleutian Islands, which lies like a
necklace upon the bosom of the northern Pacific. And there it
hangs and will hang forever. A dies nan — a lost day. When
the captain took his sextant in hand and pulled the sun down
upon the horizon to read his true reckoning upon his fiery face,
he found that instead of Wednesday, the 7th of September, it
was Thursday, the 8th ; the Thursday which had no yesterday,
for its day before was dead in its watery grave, in a pool a
little way north, 4,000 fathoms deep. We had passed the i8oth
degree of longitude. We were no longer west of Greenwich, but
were east of it. We had one advantage. England can no longer
boast that it gets up in the morning before we do. We are wide
awake, and are now out of bed ten or eleven hours before John
Bull begins to rub his lazy eyes.
Sea-sickness had disappeared for a day or two. But the terrible
motion alluded to above sent some of the convalescents again to
bed. The boys were free, however, and enjoyed hugely the

WA VES OF THE PACIFIC.

35

grandeur of our surroundings. I confess to feeling some little
anxiety, especially when seeing the hatches being again battened
down. I had been in a storm, or rather strong gale, on the At
lantic ; had seen far stronger winds, and had heard them howling
far more fiercely through the rigging ; had seen the sea much
whiter with storm-foam, but had never seen such monster bil
lows ; had never seen waves lifted upon the horizon till they re
sembled mountain peaks. I had once been in a seven-days' wind
which bordered upon a gale, and had felt the ship bending and
seeming to crack beneath my feet, whereas now this ship seemed
to be as far from any such intention as she had when on a quiet
sea. Yet when I looked upon these mighty seas coming in three
huge monsters and then followed by nine attending watery war
riors, I could not help feeling an awe, which intensified the ap
preciation of the magnificent panorama, and which forced me to
feel how impotent was man, when brought into contact with
nature's titanic forces.
On all oceans, waves come in regular succession — three large
and then nine smaller ones. I had often tried to verify this when
watching them upon the Atlantic, but had never been able to see
such well-defined exhibitions as on the Pacific. The waves get far
higher in a given wind, their crests are much farther apart, they
roll in more regular columns, the hollows are better defined and
extend for longer distances. Oftentimes one could look far to the
south and then to the north, and see a hollow looking like a valley
between mountain ranges. A wind arises, which we feel is
a little affair, and yet in a very short time it will raise a heavy
swell, and the swell will live for a long time after the wind
has been lulled. The captain, who has been on ocean steamers
for 25 years, says that to him, too, these characteristics were plain
and emphatic. In his words : " It is wonderful how quick this
ocean can get mad, and on what small provocation. The man
who named it Pacific had not seen it in these high latitudes."
The rapid rising of the sea cannot be better illustrated than by
stating that one night we went to bed in almost smooth water.
The afternoon had been fine. Several of us had sat upon the
vessel's prow to watch an exquisite sunset — a long silvery band
stretched along the western horizon, *tinted here and there with
delicate orange. The entire horizon was perfectly marked.
Fleecy clouds and beautiful cumuli were spread over the sky from
zenith to horizon. The air had for the first time a balmy feeling.
Every one said : " Good weather now till we get in." I think the
doctor would have given heavy odds on the prospect. The next
morning we were up to see a beautiful sunrise. By the way, the
few sunrises and sunsets we have seen here have lacked almost
entirely any redness of hue. They generally are beautifully
silvery, with occasionally a little suspicion of orange. I sat down
to write. The wind was rising, and the ship's roll was increasing, but

36 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
my table upon a valise so nearly counterbalanced the roll, that I
was oblivious of any marked change without. Johnny was asleep
on the sofa by my side. Thump ! a big sea strikes the ship ;
water dashes upon our house, and I with difficulty escape taking a
header over my table. The captain passed our window, I cried :
" What do you think of this, captain ? " " It beats  . They
don't do this sort of thing on the Atlantic. The ocean gets mad
quicker than a cook-shop can get up a sixpenny lunch." I fear I
will have to lay my stylus aside, for things look bad without, and
yet it is not four hours since we were in a quiet sea. I will  .
It is now the afternoon of Monday. Just as I was writing the
last sentence the ship gave a fearful lurch. Johnny was shot head
foremost across the room and was met by the cushions between
his and Willie's berth. Willie was laid flat on the floor. Dr. S  ,
who was reading Byron, and I were thrown with the table and
valise on top of the wash-stand on the other side of the room. It
was some time more before we could recover from our confusion.
And then what a wreck ! The table was on the opposite top
berth, sofa cushions were on top of the doctor and myself. The
bed was in a mass amid the debris of an ex-mayor and a New
York doctor. The water had rushed through the crevices of the
door and window, and our shoes and slippers were swimming around
in a surf bath ; a delicious bouquet of French grapes pervaded the
atmosphere, caused by the smashing of some bottles of Pontet
Canet ; books and camp-stools were going forward and back,
beating the old-time breakdowns of plantation dances. Of course
writing was over.
Soon hatches were battened down and skylights were canvased
and lashed. We had fore and aft sails up to steady the ship, the
foresail was torn into ribbons and the others were " brought home."
The wind rose and rose. The sea was absolutely white, looking as
if covered with a mighty mantle of lace ; the rollers coming in
were high, but not as much so as those of the 6th, for they were
fully 25 feet, but these seemed more angry. At 3 o'clock the log
showed a strong gale to have been blowing ; at 5 the wind was
down, but seas were still high, and indeed continue so even now.
This ocean gets mad quick, but takes a long time to cool down.
The weather cools down quickly, but the water beneath keeps up
its angry heat. All night the ship, which was compelled to keep
her course in the hollow of the seas, rolled and rolled, and few
people had any sleep.
To-day all look wearied and sore from the 24 hours' thumping.
I did not stand on my head, for on finding I could not follow the
captain's joke, and tack about during the night, over a week ago
we tore down my across-ship berth and got the carpenter to fix
up the long sofa so as to give me a good berth on it. But to our
tale. The captain and passengers have been discussing the gale,
and, from the shifting of the winds as it ran, he has come to the
conclusion that we were in the rim of a typhoon.

A PLUCKY JAPANESE. 37
All the waiters, cooks, etc., are almond-eyed ; the sailors, except
two boatswains, are Japanese. And plucky fellows they are. About
dark after yesterday's storm, the line which holds taut the fore
mast's gaff broke in one of the heavy lurches of the ship. The
gaff is the heavy timber which supports the fore-and-aft sails.
This was pitching terribly, and helped to intensify the ship's roll.
The captain rushed out. " What in  is the matter with that
gaff? Send some one aloft to stay it." Presently the Jap
anese boatswain's mate, Guru Muta (I want to remember the
plucky fellow's name), went up to the masthead, ran a loose knot
around the chain which holds up the gaff, and let it slide down as
far as it would go. This was made fast below, and to some
extent steadied it. He then took aloft another line, climbed down
the chain to the end of the gaff, and securely fastened a rope to
the point, and when it was made fast and taut below slid down it
like a monkey. It was dark. The ship was heavily rolling,
having been for the time thrown into the trough sea. The gaff was
at least 50 feet above the deck, and was being jerked like a whip
staff, to the right and left — now over the sea -on one side and then
as far over the sea on the other. The officers all agreed that
sailors are rarely called upon to perform more daring feats. Two
or three of us slipped into John's hand (this is his ship name) a
dollar apiece when he came down. With a brave leader the
officers of this ship say there is no danger into which these
fellows will not go.
Sept. i^ih. — We have seen very little of life on our voyage so far.
One day, about the 1st, the sea was covered by myriads of Portu
guese men-of-war. They were very small, none of them exceeding
two inches the longest way, but, with their little sails up and in
such vast numbers, they gave the sea the appearance of being
covered with whitish blossoms. Frequently there, were eight or
ten to a square yard. Whales spouting at a distance were seen
every day, and a few schools of porpoise have rolled in long lines
off our beam. Night before last, after the storm was over, a fly
ing fish about a foot long landed on deck. His wing fins measured
over 20 inches from tip to tip. We had the winged adven
turer fried for breakfast, and found him delicious. The flesh was
very white and firm, and resembled in flavor that of the English
sole. All who tasted it pronounced it fine. We thought it quite
an event to breakfast on a fish which of its own accord had
jumped into our frying-pan. Some large birds of the gull order,
dark in color, with narrow bat-like wings measuring fully four feet
from tip to tip, have been with us for many days. Their sailing
motion is simply perfection. I have watched one of them for a
half hour without seeing a single decided flapping motion of the
wings. They bend to the right and then to the left, wheeling
several hundred yards from the ship, then dropping as far behind,
and, without any apparent exertion catch it, though it was running

38 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
fully 15 English miles per hour. Judging from the way they
sail about us, I would say they fly from 40 to 50 miles an hour,
and almost without a downward motion of the wing. Some
officers say they are albatrosses, but I have looked at one when
he was not over 30 feet away, and thought his bill too much
pigeon-shaped. We have seen a few small albatrosses, but not
close to the ship. A few sharks have been seen, and quantities of
Mother Carey's chickens.
Yesterday a Japanese man-of-war passed within a couple of
miles from us. Being saluted, she asked from what port we came,
and slowly steamed out of sight. It made us all feel we were
not entirely out of the worid. It is wonderful what small things
will interest people at sea. Long before the ship came near us
every glass aboard was out, and conjectures innumerable were
made as to what and who she was. Doctor S. said she was a
Russian bear, and advised the captain to send up American
colors, so as to keep him from hitting us with one of his iron
paws. Our one English passenger looked as if he would like to
eat a Yankee disciple of Esculapius.
When we sailed we expected to take sea baths every day during
the voyage, and adhered to the resolution for several days, but
found the water up near the Aleutians too cold for any beneficial
effect. The temperature sank down as low as 53 Fahrenheit. On
the morning of the nth it went up to 60 degrees, and on the 13th
up to 72. This rapid change was owing to our having reached
the celebrated Japan stream, which pours up from Japan along
the Aleutian chain to the shores of Alaska, and then down upon
British Columbia. The lOth was the first day one could tread
the steamer's deck in comfort without a warm overcoat. I am
now, on the 13th, sitting in my shirt sleeves, and, though all the
windows of our deck-room are open, I am in a decided perspira
tion. We are in latitude 36 degrees 57 minutes, and within
400 miles of Yokohama. We have only 35 cabin passengers
and 40 or 50 Chinese in the steerage. These last are packed
like sardines in a box. Their miserable looks during our
roughest days were really amusing. Some of them are proba
bly flush in funds, but they spend as little as possible in going
home. Their American earnings are to last them through life.
Our saloon passengers are an agreeable family, and the table
is a social gathering.
The Siamese eat by themselves : not from any disposition to
exclusiveness, but the table would not accommodate us all at
once, and they naturally preferred being together. We find them
quite good fellows. The little princes are models of boyish
politeness. They have been in Scotland a year and a half at
school, and are decidedly intelligent for their ages. Prince
Devawongse is the brother of the king, the four young princes the
King's children. The prince informed me to-day that they were all

THE SIAMESE PRINCES. 39
children of different mothers, none of them being of the chief wife
or queen. He and one of his aides sleep in the room adjoining
ours. They all, however, spend the evenings and most of the
day in his cabin when it is unpleasant to be out. Their amuse
ment when on deck consists principally in shooting at a mark
with air-guns. To the smallest, who is not over nine years old,
they are proficient marksmen. The suite pay great respect to,
but at the same time are thoroughly familiar with the prince, and
when shooting or playing with the shuffle-board delight to beat
him. We notice, however, that at night he and the children are the
principal talkers. We hear every thing said through our board
partition. While all speak considerable English, yet in their
intercourse they talk Siamese. The prince evidently finds no
difficulty in making his jokes appreciated. Like " Souter
Johnny," he " tells his queerest stories, his courtiers laugh in
ready chorus." He seems very desirous of gaining information,
and to-day told us if we should go to Siam he would do what he
could to make our time pleasant. He is a man of considerable
information, and is evidently desirous that Siam should be among
the progressive nations of the East. He is what with us would
be called undersized, but is well-knit and very graceful. In play
ing shuffle-board he shows practice in manual exercise, and with
his air-gun, at the word, comes close to the bull's-eye. Altogether
one would pronounce him a man of much intelligence and refine
ment of feeling, and a thorough gentleman in manners.
The boys are quite up to the average of boys of their age in
intellect. All step like young martinets when using the pistol,
but are thorough youngsters when at their sports. One day one
of the little fellows and I undertook a walk of two miles on the
deck. I had to acknowledge he beat me 150 yards in the course.
When I told him he could have done still better, with polite
refinement he assured me he had done his best, and that he had
the advantage in having rubber soles to his shoes, and therefore
was not entitled to the praise given him for his fine walking
qualities. They all dress in good taste and know how to deport
themselves in European costume. At home their dress is quite
different. To-day two of them, thCe smaller ones, came out in
sailor dress, the uniform of their father's yacht. They were jolly
little tars.
Oh, the Pacific ! the mighty, the changeable, and mad Pacific !
It is all again white, and a strong head-wind is raising a consider
able sea. It is now the morning of the 14th. To-night we will
sleep in Yokohama. But I fear we will get in too late to have a
fine view of Fuji, the great mountain which receives the first
obeisance from travellers coming to Japan.
Last night was hot and sultry. The doctor bet a quarter there
would be mosquitoes aboard before morning, even if we were over

40 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
200 miles from shore. The water in the bath was up to 82r
degrees this morning, and although the wind is making it difficult
for me to manage my paper, yet I find my coat disagreeable. By
the way, it will probably be of interest to know the temperature
of weather and water throughout our voyage. Commencing on
the 29th of August and coming down to the 14th of September,,
the temperature of atmosphere has been day by day as follows r
70 degrees, 63, 60, 56, 60, 56, 60, 58, 55, 53, 53, 59, 63, 76, 83, 84. The
water has been 60 degrees, 61, 58, 57, 55, 55, 55, 54, 54, 54, 54, 60,
60, 72, 78, 82. ' Although it has been generally too cold for being
on deck in comfort, yet if we had to make choice of another run,
as cold as ours has been, or as warm as it is to-day, we would cer
tainly choose the cooler. One can pile on clothes to keep warm,
but it is impossible to lay off one's meat and sit up in bones.
to keep cool.

CHAPTER VII.
beautiful and bizarre japan— ITS CHEERFUL MEN AND MOD
EST IMMODEST WOMEN— ITS MECHANICS AND BABIES,
HOUSES AND CITIES.
Yokohama, Japan, September 30, 1887.
I WOULD write of the land of the Shogun (Tycoon) that was ; of
the land of the Tenshi (Mikado) that is. I would write of it, but
what and how? Where can one find words to pen-picture a fairy
land — where colors to touch up a glowing dreamland ? How shall
I catch and hold forms evolved by a kaleidoscope constantly
revolving — forms made of myriads of pieces all differing from any
before conceived of — all colored in tints before unknown and un
expected ? One comprehends descriptions of things unseen and
unknown, through comparisons with things known. Here,
however, every thing so differs from the same thing elsewhere,
that comparisons can scarcely be made, and if attempted must
assume the form of antithesis.
Japan offers to the eye a land beautiful, soft, picturesque, and
dreamy. And yet there is rarely to be seen a curvilinear profile
among its mountains and hills. Rarely do undulations mark the
sky line. All is peaked, notched, broken, jagged, and rugged.
Plains, as such, are few and of comparatively small extent.
Mighty cones pierce the sky, and the valleys are nowhere sloping
and wavy, gentle and soft. They are all canyons, gorges, and
rough chasms. Yet, with this all true, her mountains delight and
rest the eye, and her valleys invite one to quiet rambles, and
make one long for a loving eye to look into, for a loving heart to
sympathize with. Here nature started to make a land for the lair
of hideous monsters, and ended in making a land for dancing and
laughing fairies. No ocean once rolled in vasty depths over the
land and, subsiding, left it in mountain and hilly ranges, or in
sunny plains and mellow valleys. Nature conceived the island in
one of her angriest moods, and brought it forth in agonizing
labor. She rocked and reeled, shook and shrieked in maternal
throes, and lined upon her offspring the marks of her woes —
marks intended to terrify and to breed intensest awe. But, like
all true mothers, she yearned toward the child of her sorrow, and
loved it for the suffering it had caused. She cuddled it upon
a mother's breast and warmed it by pulsations from a mother's
heart. She cicatrized its ugly scars, and painted them in colors
41

42 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
distilled from rainbow hues, and then spread over every deform
ity a mantle of flowers and bloom. She wove garlands and hung
them upon every precipice, and festooned with wreaths every
mountain crag. She broke the rushing torrents into feathery foam,
and sent them laughing, dancing, and singing on their short race
to the surging sea.
Japan is almost entirely of volcanic origin, and as far as we
have seen or heard, its every part was thrown up from the bowels
of the earth in volcanic eruption. The eruptions did not cease,
however, when the molten rocks and hissing lava were piled into
rough and craggy hills or lifted into mighty cones — one, two, and
nearly three miles high, — for then came showers of ashes of many
neutral tints, tinged with orange and vermilion, purple and choco
late-brown, and covered the craggy pinnacles with earth which is
pleasing to the eye even where no vegetation grows, making a
soil where noble forest trees, graceful shrubs clothed in bloom,
trailing and climbing vines, and flowers of many kinds and of in
numerable dyes have found a congenial home. Vegetation of
endless variety and of tropical luxuriance is spread over mountain
and valley, hill and gorge, moulding the rough and jagged peak
into rounded dome and smoothing down the frightful gorge into
•a smiling valley. Nature repented of her angry conception and,
touching her whelp with a wand more powerful than Prospero's,
reared it into a love-winning beauty.
The land abounds in gods — 8o,ooo, we are told, — hideous mon
sters begotten of men's fears, born of the quaking earth, and
breathing volcanic fires. Besides these, there are many millions
of dead fathers, now worshipped by their descendants as house
hold gods, answering to the penates of ancient Italy. To prevent
the possibility of the line of ancestral gods being broken, parents
failing of sons have always had the rights of adoption, an adopted
son becoming, by the act, imbued with the power of continuing
the line of his adopted father. It is said that though passion
ately fond of their children, a parent immediately invests the new
boy with all the sentimental characteristics of blood offspring. Had
man never reached Japan's shores, these gods would have re
mained unborn, and the land would have been the home of
laughing fauns and of dancing, gauzy sprites.
But man came, a long, long while ago, and erected himself into a
nation, when or before David harped and danced before the ark of
the Lord, and before the iron age of Rome was yet in its cradle.
For 2,500 years we know that the nation has lived. Its men
have been beasts of burden, and have done the labor else
where performed by the speechless brute and by the soulless
machine. During all these long ages they have toiled from early
dawn to latest twilight— toiled for their bare food,— clothes they
have had none and needed not, and yet to-day these men, while
cringing and fawning in their expression of politeness, are other-

THE JAPANESE WOMEN. 43
wise dignified and manly in their bearing, quick and graceful in
their movements, ambitious and greedy for knowledge, cheerful
and light in their mood. They drudge for a pittance, and spend
a part of the pittance in visiting and enjoying romantic localities,
where hills and valleys speak in poetry, and streams and brooklets
ripple in song. And man's other and sweeter self — woman — she
who has here ever been a thing to be sold for a day, a month, a
year, or for life, at her father's will, and, whether as child, hand
maid, concubine or wife, has had no will of her own — a very
slave! And yet this woman, but half covered in the field or upon
the road, and in the public bath as free from clothing as was
Maiden Eve when she blushed in bridal purity before her Adam
— this woman is smiling, sweet, coquettish, plump, and undulating,
and seems ever to be veiled by an invisible mantle of modesty.
Naked, she does not blush, for she is not so for lewd purposes, or
for the purpose of attracting a look, and is not ashamed of the
mold in which she was cast. She does not invite a gaze, and
seems not to know when one is given. Clothing she wears for
warmth and adornment, and not for concealment, and if she does
blush, it is because she has not about her the pretty things she
wears to win admiration. As wife and mother, she dotes on her
baby, and is true to the man she deems her lord, whether he be
her husband for a week, a month, or for years. Formerly she was
often sold by her father for a longer or shorter period. Now,
under a more generous law, she is free, and yet she oftimes
mortgages herself for a term of months or of years, to lighten the
burden of those who brought her into the world. Often one
gives herself for a day or a week for a price, and yet wears no
sign or look of a wanton, and, coming out of her bondage, takes
the name and place of wife, and bears the duties of mother, with
no scar upon her forehead, no blush of shame upon her cheek,
and no brazen smirk upon her lips. The bridal bath washes her
clean, and the marriage ceremony wipes out the past. The wife
is her husband's solace and sunshine. She is in many respects his
head servant, serves him at his meals, and yet her smile is his sun
shine, and her prattle his sweetest amusement.
Whence came these men and these women ? From what stock
did they spring ? Of what race are they born ? They are neither
Malay nor Mongol. They are neither Aryan nor Semitic. Far off
here, for ages cut aloof from the world, they have many of the
marks of the Caucasian race mixed with Mongolian, i«l resembling
the latter more than they do any other. But the difference is
marked, and the resemblance may be the result of an origin
arising from like causes. The Mongolian Chinaman, wherever
placed, is a plodding, burrowing, conservative animal. The
Japanese is volatile, energetic, and progressive. The one is
saturnine and slow, the other is quick and ever seeking the
joyous. How came they here ? Is there any thing reasonable in

44 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
the general idea that God started all living things in one original
pair of each? Was Adam the father of all men? I do not believe
one drop of his blood flows in the veins of the heathen, cellar-
burrowing Chinese. When nature was ready for man, did not
God have gardens of Eden wherever he willed man should be?
There is nothing unfaithful in the thought. Were not the
Japanese the offspring of the foam which dashed upon their sea
girt shore? I am no scientist, I am but a dreamer. Man was
made to laugh as well as to weep. He is foolish if he does not
laugh a great deal more than he weeps. He was made to dream
as well as to be awake. If he keeps his conscience clean, and
his liver in good condition, his dreams will be rosy, even his
wide-awake dreams. I am happy when I dream, and dream I
will! Just now I dream of Japan — wonderful, poetic, bizarre,
beautiful, grotesque, artistic, plodding, singing, weeping, laugh
ing, sighing, smiling, gentle, and loving, undescribed and in
describable Japan.
I closed my last letter on the morning of the 14th, expecting
to be in Yokohama that night. But voyagers propose, and on the
Pacific, according to my observation, do very little disposing.
Before noon we were in a strong wind, and dead ahead. We
scarcely more than overcame the strong current which was run
ning against us. We were all very much put out, but I did not
afterwards regret it. About three o'clock the clouds began to
scatter, and soon we had bright sunshine, but with a stiff wind.
Toward the south heavy clouds were hanging. These took a
form rarely seen ; a dense mass, apparently not a quarter of a
mile high, and leaden in color, moving eastward, slowly, but
evidently rolling and whirling in wild frenzy on a centre. Over
it all was a bright blue sky. It made a sort of horizon, so
distinctly outlined was its top. Eastward and westward we could
see its limits. We took it to be not over 15 or 20 miles in
extent. Luckily, it did not come nearer our ship than three or
four miles. It was a small typhoon, and passed partly over
Yokohama, and was one of the most violent of the season. The
whole storm was contained in a cloud compact, distinct, and roll
ing like a low bank of fog.
We lay off Yeddo bay until light the next day, and then
had a beautiful sail up to the city. The bay is a very beautiful
one, and was white with the sails of the early fishermen. We
counted 237 sails at one time from a single point on our deck.
Low mountains rose almost from the water on each shore, all
green and treed. To our left was the small island Vries, with
the volcano Idzu-no-Oshima, lifting from the sea 2,600 feet.
About his head was wrapped a turban of smoky mist, which
changed while we looked, into a conical cap, pointed high above.
There was no flame visible, the smoke alone showing that the
mountain was an active volcano. At times it belches forth flame

THE JINRICKISHA. 45
as well as vapor, and is said to be very grand. Villages were
planted under the hills, along the bay, and down upon the water,
and here and there picturesque houses on the brows. High in
the distance, with his perfect cone piercing the sky, mighty Fuji-
Yama kept watch and ward over the land.
Fuji is the name, the affix Yama being placed as a mark of
distinction or honor, strictly interpreted Sir Fuji — the one grand
mountain. There are many others over 10,000 feet high ; this
cone, rising almost from a plain, is claimed to have been thrown
up when Bewa Lake was sunk, since the Japanese nation has
existed, and was the act of the gods, to show that the island was
completed, and that the work was well done. Half-way down his
slope a belt of fleecy clouds hung like a graceful scarf thrown
around a fair woman's bosom.
Immediately after our ship dropped her anchor, swarms of
small, odd-looking boats, propelled by huge sculling oars and
manned by boatmen in every kind of costume, from the slender
clout-rag up to a coat of matting hung from the shoulders over
dusky forms, crowded about the ship. There was shaking of
hands among the passengers, good wishes for the future, and all
of us soon found ourselves upon Japanese — not Asiatic — terra
firma. Passing the custom-house almost pro forma we were whirl
ing along the beautiful bund for the Grand Hotel, in jinricki
shas. Parenthetically, I will say that all Asiatic cities with a
foreign quarter have along the water a sort of boulevard, planted
with trees, broad, and well paved, the promenade of the foreign
population, and called a " bund," and I will further say that
the Grand Hotel would do credit to any European city. Its
rooms are large and airy, its cuisine admirable, and its charges,
though high for Japan, would be cheap in America or England —
$3.50 a day, Japanese money, each dollar now worth 75 cents,
United States coin ; included in this is good claret.
I will now speak of the jinrickisha (man-power wagon), so that
the term and its use may be fully understood when used here
after. It is a small, two-wheeled covered cart, not unlike a trot
ting sulky, with light shafts united in front by a cross-bar. Its
body rests on two elliptical springfe, with a lifting top like the
American buggy. It is well cushioned and springy, and is drawn
by a man between the shafts, who pushes by a hand on each, and
when heavily loaded, by leaning against the bar which unites the
ends of the shafts. They are ordinarily propelled by a single
man, or where extra speed is desired or too much weight is im
posed, by a second or even a third man. The second man pulls
in front by a strap over his shoulders, ctt by his hand pulling a
single trace ; occasionally the wagon is pushed from the rear by a
third one. With a single man the usual speed is about five
miles an hour on good roads and with light weight. With two

46 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
men running tandem, I have made ten miles in an hour and 20
minutes. With two men to each wagon, our party ran from
Nikko to Utsunomiya, 23 miles, in four hours, with two
short stops. The first twelve miles, a general down grade, was
made without a single halt. When we went up to Nikko, the
grade being an ascending one, we took a little over five hours.
Each wagon had in it a man and a heavy satchel. The charge
for this run was each way $1.26 a wagon, or ninety-five cents our
money. The usual charges in cities are from eight to ten cents
a run, or ten cents per hour by day, fifteen cents per hour at night
or in a rain. This price is doubled if an extra man be taken. It
is a charming mode of travelling, especially in a city. Your
horse is told where to go, and he goes, without rein or instruction,
and with never a grumble or a kick. The rider sits up in real
otinm cum dignitate. The rider calls out " hi— i," when any other
vehicle is in his way, or a pedestrian does not give room. Every
one moves out of the way pleasantly, and with often a joke for
the man and a smile for the rider.
Politeness is the one marked virtue of this people — not a
politeness of mere etiquette, though there is a great deal of that,
and very studied and labored it is — but a politeness evidently
coming from the heart, genuine and kindly, and extended to the
laborer as well as to the gentleman. Women, children, and Hght-
loaded men step aside with cheerful alacrity to let the poor jin
rickisha man pass, which is most charming to behold. If he
happens to jostle against one he is met with a joke. Not once
have we yet seen a sullen or angry look from any one who was
requested to give way. At home we would have been cursed or
blackguarded dozens of times had we made the runs here done
through densely crowded streets. When a large party is out in
jinrickishas they follow each other in close proximity. If a
bridge, rut, or bad place is encountered, the foremost man utters
a cry, which is caught up by the next, and so on to the last, each
evidently trying to lighten the labor of the others. At night
each man carries a Japanese lantern. The effect of these in a
long train is very bright in a dark, unlighted street, or on a sub
urban road bending along a hill-side. Added to this the cries of
the men, the meeting of a hundred others, all rushing, bending,
turning, and twisting in the tortuous lanes or narrow crowded
streets, you can readily see how charming such a run must be.
The men in cities wear short, tight trunks from just above the
hip to the upper thigh. They start out with a sort of tunic or
shirt over the shoulders ; if the weather be warm they throw off
the upper covering as they run. In the country, instead of the
trunk, is simply a clout about the loins, narrow and full in front,
running between the legs in little more than a ribbon, and caught
on a band over the hip. In full garb a party will start from a
village or town. As they run, one after another the men strip off

JAPANESE HO USES. 47
their light upper garment, and are stalwart, sweating Adams,
clothed with a scanty fig-leaf. This is done, too, in the cities, by
men drawing natives, or loaded vehicles, but is to a considerable ex
tent avoided by those who run for foreigners. In Tokio and here,
those about foreign localities wear the trunks and close-fitting
shirt, always blue, resembling our undershirts. This garb is or
dered by the authorities out of respect to foreign ideas. The
natives, themselves, men or women, are not shocked by an almost
naked man, and foreigners soon grow accustomed to it.
I made my fastest run with a couple of splendid fellows when
going at night to call upon Viscount Yoshida, formerly Minister
to America. The distance was long. The men started out
clothed. When and how I did not observe, but as they ran I
found them almost stark naked, and reeking in sweat. It is
a novel sight to see a dozen wagons with their 24 men
ahead of you, with calves of great muscularity, and legs finely
formed, only a little bowed, owing to the habit of sitting on their
haunches, instead of on chairs. The streets here are in many
localities densely packed, and not over 12 feet wide. Lan
terns hang before every store. People carry gay lanterns at
night. They move about a great deal like bees about a hive.
The kuruma (rickisha) men moving in and out among these add
greatly to the picturesqueness of the scene.
There are in Yokohama over 4,000 and in Tokio 27,000 of
these wagons under license, and in all Japan about 175,000.
Thus you can understand how important a part the jinrickisha
plays, both in the economic and in the scenic make-up of this
strange island. It is not generally known that this charming
little wagon may be considered a gift directly from heaven, and
that, too, through the intervention of an American. One of our
missionaries at Nagasaki having a wholesome dislike of hard
walking, invented the thing some 26 or more years ago.
His Yankee ingenuity took hold upon Japanese fancy more
quickly than did his theology. The thing is supposed to be purely
Japanese, and has been to some extent adopted in all Eastern
lands. You have often as children played at housekeeping, or some
other mimic and lilHputian make-believe of the doings of grown
up people. The first impression made upon me of a Japanese
city was that the people were playing at running a town. In the
native quarters of Yokohama and in other towns, except in the
public-building quarters of Tokio, the streets are mere lanes
in width. There are no sidewalks. The houses are mostly of one
story, and where of two the upper story is very low, the first
about 10 feet and the other not over 8. They are almost exclu
sively of wood, and from 10 to 14 feet in width. The first floor
is flush with the street. The majority of the second stories, of
pure native style, are set back from the front from 4 to 6 feet.

48 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
The first story is all open, the second closed in by lattice work.
Glass is rarely seen. The shop is simply the front part of the lower
story. First comes a space 4 or 5 feet wide on the ground level,
then a raised platform, say from i to 2 feet in elevation, and
running back 8, 10 or more feet. On this is the work-shop or shop
for sale of goods. Behind this for living purposes is another
slightly raised portion, running back a greater or less distance to
meet the requirements, or in accordance with the means, of the
owner. There are no partitions, yet the house can in a few
moments be divided into several compartments.
The customer or visitor stops on the ground level, and leaves
his clogs, sandals, or shoes, and mounts the next platform in his
stockings or bare feet. These upper platforms are highly polished
and partly covered with mats. All of the latter are practically
three by six feet, and are the unit of measurement of floors and
walls. For example, a room is so many mats large. The polished
floors and mats are of scrupulous cleanliness. The shoe or sandal
is not permitted to tread upon them. The dealer and his
customer or visitor sit or squat upon the first platform, smoke a
pipe together, and go through their negotiations or chat. The
pipe, by the way, does not hold more than a half-thimbleful of
tobacco, and is emptied in three to five puffs. On the inner
platforms the family reside. As I said, the whole is open wide to
the street. At night wooden shutters are put up, closing the first
shop. These are sometimes in solid wooden panels, but more
frequently of light, open lattice-work. The upper platforms are
divided into smaller compartments by putting up panels like
window sashes, very light and prettily varnished. On one side of
this is pasted thin paper, light and translucent. These panels sit
or slide in grooves. Thus a house of say 12 by 25, feet may in five
minutes be made into four or five separate rooms. The shutters
and papered panels are set up during the day in recesses built for
the purpose in the outer walls of the house. Each recess has in
front a sliding door, which closes up so as to hide it. The walls
of the house are of a single thickness of board, on which light
laths of bamboo are tacked, and over this a coat of plaster is
spread. Among the better classes this plaster is of lime, with
picked oakum in lieu of hair. In the poorer houses it is of mud
and straw. The coat of plaster is so thin that the whole wall is
not much over two inches thick. Every thing about a house
is deliciously clean in appearance, but there is no protection for
the nose. The sense of smell here seems to be proof against bad
odors. All night soil is preserved and sent to the farms. Thus a
traveller too often catches odors which are not by any means
agreeable. A true traveller, however, who is resolved to learn and
enjoy, soon finds that his olfactories rapidly become obtuse. To
any who cannot school his senses and is made uncomfortable by
the custom of a people visited, my advice is to pack up traps and
go home, where he can be master of the situation.

FINE MECHANICS. 49
The streets being so narrow, the houses so small, the absence of
heavy teams and wagons, the people all engaged in what seems
such light work, or in doing heavy work in such a small way; the
masses moving back and forth, the swarm of men, women, and
children made me feel that I was among thousands of people who
were engaged in a game of make-believe playing at keeping town.
There is no rush and no hurry, except among the jinrickishas.
The merchant is as deliberate when one enters to make a purchase
as is the city official where the modern craze for civil-service
reform deceives the well-meaning mugwump. He does not seem
to care an iota whether you purchase or not. If you bow low, he
will return your salutation by bringing his brow almost to the
floor, and then wait with an appearance of patience which would
become a man who expected to rival Methuselah in longevity. If
j'ou wish to purchase a staple article, he has one price, and does
not seem to care a baubee whether you purchase or not. If you
be a curio hunter he will ask for his old bronze, lacquer, or ivory
an exorbitant price, and is not a whit offended if you offer one
third of what he asked. If you make no offer and start away he
will invite you to make a bid. He will declare that the thing cost
him so much, that it is 500 or i,ooo years old, and will end in
taking half or a third of his first demand, and will bow to the floor
in thanks for your patronage. Truthfulness is not a Japanese
virtue. His Grace Archbishop Osouf assured me that it could be
said the masses were great liars, and that politeness might be put
down as their single virtue. Well ! it is a virtue, and it tells
in every-day life, and if one cannot shut lies out by lock and bolt,
one can at least stuff cotton in the ears and avoid being too much
offended by the vice, while enjoying the cheering effect of what
-appears to be genuine politeness and good-will.
The Japanese are fine mechanics, and, though slow and delib
erate, do their work with great precision and with exquisite finish.
They do all work just oppositely to our mode. If it were possible
they would commence a house at the roof ; indeed, it may be
said this is often done. The ordinary house has corner stud-
supports ; these being erected the roof is put on, and the house is
then built under and up to it. They draw the plane toward them
instead of pushing it from them, aild make glue-joints for the
commonest purposes. They make their mortises so exact that
water cannot creep between the joints. They use the saw by
cutting toward the hand instead of from it. All saws are very
wide and have a straight handle, and yet they will rip a plank
fifteen feet long so exactly and truly that a smoothing plane will
dress it down perfectly straight. Few nails are used in the erec
tion of houses. Corner-studs are mortised in to the sills so closely
that they stand as if nailed and bolted. The plates are held with
equal tightness. The siding is then set into grooves cut in the
studdings. When an old house is torn down its material, being

5°

A RACE WITH THE SUN.

free from nails, becomes good timber for other purposes. One
constantly sees a carpenter ripping up an old sill or post for new
work. There are no saw-mills to speak of. Timber of the largest
size is ripped by huge hand-saws worked by a single man. A
contractor assured me he had seen a log five feet through thus
cut. He was a Scotchman, and therefore told me the truth. I
myself saw a log quite three feet through being cut into inch
boards.' The log was about ten feet long, and was laid on a
frame at an oblique angle. The sawyer sat under it and cut
it up before removing any of the boards. Timber is hewn in the
woods into squares or octagons. Then it dries perfectly, and is
generally cut into boards on the ground where the house is being
erected. They do nice work in wood, but are slow. Their wages
are about 45 cents a day. When I use the term dollar and cent I
speak of the Japanese dollar and cent, one fourth less, at present
value of silver, than our money. Americans here assure me they
would prefer paying our wages and getting the thing done
promptly, than to await the dilatory movements and slow prog
ress of the good and cheap native workmen.
The common stonework is very fine. There is no such thing
as a rough wall on a natural bed. All stones are cut and set in
exact joints ; not in line work, but cut to fit one upon another in
all shapes. Random rubble is, I believe, the technical name for
this style. Bridges, piers, canals and moat walls are thus built,
and many of the stones are of great size. In Tokio there are
many miles of walls, from 30 to 60 feet high, built of stones
weighing from 100 pounds up to several tons, and all with
joints so nice and true that no cement has been used, and none is
necessary. It is a wonder how these poor down-trodden people
have done such vast work with no horses and no machinery to
help them. All hauling, or nearly all, is done by men. I saw
a single man drawing or pushing a load of nearly 300 brick
to the new palace at Tokio from the dock over a mile away.
At the castle hill, which is quite 100 feet high, several men
assisted. It is a common thing to see two, three, or more men
pushing a load such as a heavy dray horse would draw in America.
Two would be at the shaft, the others push. They step to a
word all the time. The shaft man would utter something like
" seough " ; the others would catch it and reply together
" seoughah." During the day in quarters where heavy loads are
being drawn, or heavy work being done, some such cry as this is
heard in every direction, though I will say, parenthetically, that
one of the charms of these cities is the absence of loud and deaf
ening noises. All great cities of Europe and America have their
voices. One can almost imagine he recognizes a distinct, peculiar
voice in each. In the still of the night it is marked, and never
silent. A Japanese city after 12 o'clock seems to be absolutely
asleep. There is no voice. It is as silent as the country, and

CHILDREN AND BABIES. 51
if one awakes in the small hours he hears no sound. All is
hushed and quiet. • In some localities, however, there are many
trees. In these he hears the hum and song of insects ; but this is
the voice of the country, not of the city.
Every class of people seems engaged (I mean not the noble,
but the people), and all ages do their share towards the common
support, men, women, boys, and girls. Children under ten are
the merriest, laughingest, busiest little bodies imaginable. One
can almost pronounce this the paradise of the young. They are
in a profusion I never saw elsewhere. They are as thick as flies,
and flies here are as abundant as the sands on the seashore.
Children are in the shops and stores where their parents are at
work. Indeed, one would almost think that in the finer stores
little ones are kept tricked out in their nicest to make the places
attractive. In the streets they are running, skipping, and jump
ing everywhere. Babies are strapped to the backs of their
mothers, or of sisters scarcely larger than themselves. One often
sees a dozen or two boys and girls under ten at all sorts of play,
one half of them having babies on their backs. Oftentimes when
the little nurses are playing regular romps the little ones are
sound asleep, their heads hanging down and flopping from side
to side as if their little necks would break.
Here in front of the hotel, when the tide was out, I saw hun
dreds early one morning seeking mussels, mosses, and sea-weed.
Little fellows not over ten, with babies strapped to them, were
Vading about gathering shell-fish. When they would stoop on
hands and knees the baby would almost stand on its head. I can
say I have seen hundreds and have as yet heard but three babies
crying. Little ones of two and three years sometimes have dolls strapped
to them. Not once have I seen a doll in the arms. The children
are nurses to a greater extent in the country and in villages than
in the cities. For there the mothers are at work in the fields.
In the cities, where a certain amount of education is nearly
universal, children over six years old are at school. We went
to a private school at Tokio. Having left our shoes at the
entrance, we were kindly and, in fact, rather proudly received
by the teacher and his girl assistant. In one room some 30
little ones were squatted down. The teacher had upon a black
board a translation from one of our Readers. It was the story
of a little boy who did not like to go to school, but preferred to
play and ride the donkey, at least that is what our guide said it
was. Parenthetically, I will here say we have in our employ the
cashier of a wholesale tea-house. He is a Christian, was educa
ted at the mission school, speaks good English, and is intelligent.
He desired a holiday. We pay him $40 a month and his ex
penses. He is our companion as well as guide. Through his aid
we get far more information than we would from aa ordinary

52 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
guide, who can say but little more in our language than is neces
sary to make purchases, or to carry one to* places of interest.
We rarely look into a guide-book. But to return to our kinder
garten. The teacher would read a sentence, pointing to it, the
children repeating after him. He did this for a while in short
sentences, and then went over the whole. In perhaps lo or 15
minutes the little fellows all read the whole story aloud without
his assistance. They read and recite it in a sort of chant. Think
of it, my little friends, away off here in Japan, where 30 years
ago no foreigner, except, perhaps, a Chinaman, had been for 300
years, a lot of little boys and girls, each in a gown little more
than a shirt or night-robe, are learning the same lessons taught
you in the public schools.
But I suspect it will interest the youthful yet more to tell how
these little fellows learn to write. In one room was a writing-
class. They, too, were small ones — some, I thought, under six.
The order of the tenshi (mikado) is, that none younger than
that age should go to school, but their parents smuggle them in
to keep them out of mischief. They were all squatted in pairs at
a rough board, which served for a desk. Each child had a lot of
coarse paper, with a string through one end of the sheets. This
is a book. They do not write with a pen, but with a small
brush, like a water-color brush, only rather more pointed. With
this they write, not from the left to "the right and on the top of
the paper, but on the right side of the paper, from top to bot
tom. Their letters resemble the characters seen on a tea-chest.
They use some 48 Chinese characters with their own letters.
These signs express not only a whole word, but now and then
short sentences. It was funny to see a beginner making his let
ters. One little fellow covered the half of his sheet with one or
two. The page looked as if a web-footed bird or a cat had
stepped from the ink upon the copy. And one toddler had
nearly as much ink on his face and hands as upon his paper.
They do not use blotters or let the paper dry ; their writing
paper is porous, and sucks up the ink as fast as it is written.
After 10 or 12 years of age, the poorer children do their share
of work to support themselves and their families. They work in
the fields and in the shops, and help their fathers to pull and
push. One sees a 12-years-old boy at an oar, doing his full share
of the work of sculling, while his father or employer pushes the
other. Parents are devoted to their children. Obedience and
assistance are demanded of the latter to their parents. If a man
dies before his son is of age, the eldest son is exempted from mil
itary service, because he must take care of his mother and
younger brothers and sisters. In the evening one frequently
sees a mart walking with a baby in his arms. He is resting the
mother, or letting her prepare the evening meal.
In this- city there is a population of about 140,000 ; in Tokio

BLIND MASSAGE OPERATORS. 53
about 1,300,000. We have been on the go all the time, and as
yet have not seen a single beggar and but one drunken man, al
though saki, a sort of rice brandy, is very cheap. I mentioned
this fact to the archbishop. He laughed, and told me that when
a Japanese got drunk he at once went to sleep. By the way, for
the benefit of those who met the good bishop when he was in
Chicago in 1884, I will say I called upon him and had a very
pleasant evening with him and Father Magawine, who was also
in Chicago. I bore to the bishop a letter from Father Roles,
and was charmingly received and pleasantly entertained. The
Catholic Church has baptized 2,000 within the past year. There
are over 35,000 communicants in the kingdom. The bishop
feels proud of, and thankful for, the success of his 65 priests.
They are all Frenchmen, and are from the Academy of the
Sacred Heart in Paris.
I said there were no beggars. Even the blind here support
themselves. They form a guild of massage rubbers. From
dark to 12 o'clock one can hear their fifes on the streets of every
town. Knowing who the poor fellows are, their call has a very
plaintive sound. They walk the streets all alone, are never in
danger of being run over, and seem to have the good-will and
assistance of all who meet them. It matters not how hurried a
jinrickisha man be, he never runs against or jostles an " amma."
They come, when called,' into the houses, and rub down patients
for 10 cents, taking from 30 to 45 minutes to do the thing. We
have now used them several times, after a heavy day's work, and
find them fully equal to any professional massage-operator we have
tried at home. Indeed, I like them better. They are very gentle
and rapid in their movements, have soft hands and quicken the cir
culation without bruising or irritating the surface. Their sense
of touch is so keen that they seem to find the parts of the
patient's body most needing manipulation. I had a slight at
tack of sciatica. I could not speak a word of Japanese to tell
the " amma " where I wished him to do the most rubbing.
Yet he found it. The sciatic trouble passed away in a day or
two, leaving a tenderness in the small of the back. My next
" amma " found the tender spot without a word from me. The
sense of touch told them where the soreness was laid. Would
it not be a good thing to teach our blind to perform such
duties, thereby making them self-supporting and far happier?
Nothing so conduces to happiness as a feeling of independence ;
as the knowledge that we can choose our own paths and fear
lessly travel them, looking to God, and our own powers alone for
help. While, on the other hand, a sense of helplessness depresses
above all things else, and depresses all the more when the sufferer
is conscious of no bodily pain. Existence then becomes a spe
cies of continuous nightmare. Thank God ! man can, in time,
school himself even against this dread sorrow ; but, oh, the agony

54 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
of the lesson ! The blind are, of all physically well men and
women, the most helpless and the most to be pitied. God, in
his infinite goodness, generally leavens their hearts with sweet
patience, and blesses them with the best of all visual powers —
the power to see the green pastures, the flowery meads, the
undulating hills, and smiling valleys of the eternal world to
come. But these sweet pictures of hope would be none the
less charming if the poor, sightless beings were taught to earn
their daily bread. This is done in heathen Japan, and should be
a lesson to the Christian world. Of course, in America their fees
should be in keeping with the genaral prices paid. I understand
they are fairly patronized here, and earn a fair livelihood. I sup
pose it is true, for at a village I sent out for one. He came in,
but was not blind, but was a hale man, and a samuri in rank, who
had adopted the blind man's avocation, there being a lack of the
blind in that locality. The samuri were the military and half-
noble class before the tenshi (mikado) broke the power of the
shogurt (tycoon), and stripped the daimios of their feudal rank.

CHAPTER VIII.
RIVERS, FARMS AND FARMERS OF JAPAN— FURTHER CHARACTER.
ISTICS OF ITS PEOPLE— ITS HOTELS, FOOD AND FLOWERS.
Hiogo, Japan, October 14, 1887.
I STATED once before that my letters home were manifold copies
from my traveller's book of the impressions made upon me by
things along the wayside as we run rapidly through a country.
Such impressions cannot be other than crude and, to a con
siderable extent, ill digested. But all I aim at is to carry along
the reader with me, and, if possible, to enable him to see what we
see and to enjoy what we enjoy. If I make mistakes I can only
say I do not aim to, and the mistakes are probably what the
reader himself would have made had he been the traveller. In
my former letter from this strange country, in my endeavor to
enable one to take a bird's-eye view of Japan, I fear I may have
misled. I stated that it was wholly of volcanic origin, and that
there were but few plains, and those of small extent. For the
purpose intended — i. e., to make a picture — the statement was
proper. On a topographical map the islands would thus appear.
There are, however, in the far north and the far south stratified
formations and a few in the central portion, but these latter are
of metamorphic rocks, or the estuaries of great rivers. There are,
too, some plains which are of considerable extent, either along
the sea-coast or in the river valleys. Some of these are ten to fif
teen miles across near the sea, narrowing as they run back until
they are lost in the mountains. One of the striking features of the
country is the great number of rivers and their size when compared
to their length. The climate is so humid and the snow and rain
fall in the winter and spring so great, that the number and size of
the streams are wholly disproportionate to the extent of the coun
try drained, as compared with other countries one visits. Not
only is the rainfall great, buf the dews are very heavy. These
things make a constantly moist earth, and cause streams to
abound. In May and June the volume of water brought to
the sea by the rivers is very great, and occasionally causes much
destruction by inundations when some of the restraining dykes
give way. It may safely be said, I think, that nearly all the broad
river valleys were originally swamps and morasses. But huge
dykes varying from 10 to 25 feet in height, erected at enormous
55

56 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
cost of labor, confine the streams to moderate dimensions and.
give the country the bulk of its arable land, which swarms with
a dense population.
We arrived at this place late this afternoon. We have now
traversed in jinrickishas 500 miles of Japanese roads and about
100 miles by rail. The latter we passed over— in both directions
— at a speed not greater than 18 miles per hour. In other
words, we have moved slowly enough to make minute observa
tions of every thing seen.* We have been a month in" the country,
and all the time among its people. We have passed through
13 towns and cities, with populations of from 5,000 to 1,300,-
000 and through many hamlets and villages of 300 or 400 peo
ple up to 2,000 and 3,000. We have passed vast acreageffof cul
tivated fields, and seen many thousands of people engaged in
their daily avocations. We have slept in their houses and eaten
of their food. We have seen them reeking in sweat, but never
in filth. We have seen them in hilarious mirth, but never once
in violent anger. We have seen them in their nakedness, but
never once in any thing like lewdness. We have seen them in
toiling poverty, but have never seen a single look of sullenness or
of despair. We have seen them in abject poverty ; we have never
seen them begging alms, except in a few instances of total blind
ness and decrepit age. We have seen them in every way shocking
all preconceived ideas of decency and modesty, yet we have never
noticed a single look or expression which would show that any
one was aware things were being done which modesty would for
bid. We have seen children without a stitch of clothing covering
them, playing with children gotten up in their holiday finery.
We have seen a man pause from his work, with only a hand's
breadth of cloth about his loins, and talk with a neighbor in his
richest visiting clothes, and the naked man wore as lofty a mien
of dignity as his companion did in his robes. We have met
women in the highway naked down to the hips, and saw no look
that betokened a single thought of shame, and within a few hun
dred yards we would meet a beautiful, well-clothed woman whose
eyes would drop in pretty modesty because we gave her a look of
involuntary admiration. There is here no such thing as conven
tional decency or conventional modesty. With a high civiliza
tion — in many respects very high — the people still seem to be, to
a certain extent, in a state of animal nature. Is the conscience
seared, or has conscience never been awakened by a sense of sin ?
The psychologist must solve the problem and answer the query ;
I can not. I am still in a species of amazement among this incon
sistent, this great, this little, this bright, yet grovelling and, to a
western man, immoral people.
Each year, as I grow older, I find the tastes of my early years
more and more strongly returning to me. Born and bred on
a farm, I find myself more interested in agricultural pursuits and

RECEPTION AT HOTEL. 57
productions, than in the works of great' cities. I shall, in accord
ance with this disposition, devote some of my writing to what we
have seen and shall see of farming. But as we have seen this
farming not by going upon the farm, but in passing through them,
it will not be amiss first to tell how we travel from day to day.
For this purpose, imagine us four men seated in pretty little cov
ered two-wheeled spring carts, each man with a satchel between
his feet, and each cart drawn by two native, nearly naked, men.
We approach a village or town ; and having two pullers they dash
through it at a tremendous pace with a cry of warning now to a
pedestrian, then to a street vender, or to the drawer of another
cart ; every one good-naturedly gets out of the way of the for
eigner and gives hfm a look of keen curiosity, never one of dis
courtesy. The children stare at the gray-bearded man, and per
haps crack a joke at his expense. The Japanese are a closely
shaven people, and a full beard attracts attention and does not, I
suspect, win any admiration. The pretty young' girls give a look
of kindly interest to the two fair young men of the party, and
they both look conscious of deserving it. On we dash at not far
from a ten-miles-per-hour gait. Suddenly the shafts of the cart are
turned into a little court before the best hotel of the town. The
place is in an immediate stir. The landlord comes forward with a
bow, or rather a succession of bows. If we have one kuruma
(wagon) man the landlord's hands reach to his thighs as he bows.
If we have two they go below the knees, often to the ankles, as he
bends low at the hips.
The landlady is on her knees on the raised platform of the
house, and bows till her forehead nearly touches the floor. Just
behind her are two or more pleasant-looking, and sometimes very
pretty, handmaids (waiter girls), prettily dressed and with most
elaborate coiffure. They bow as does the mistress. Every strag
gler and neighbor stops to see the strangers. We get out on the
ground-floor, which is, in fact, but an extension of the street, and
paved like it ; our luggage is taken in, and we at once take off our
shoes and leave them on this floor. In our stocking feet, or half-
slippers, made of hairy deerskin, we mount the raised platform of
the house, which is, say, two and a half feet in elevation, and is
beautifully polished, as smooth as any rosewood piano. These
floors are generally black and highly lacquered. A shoe, sandal,
or clog is never allowed to scratch or mar them.
One of the waitresses at once brings a lacquered tray, on which
is a small teapot and four tiny teacups, not much larger than an
egg-holder. We each drink down a cup of tea. It is very weak;
hot water, not boiling, has been poured over the tea and is at
once poured into the cups. It has at least the merit of being hot,
and, though weak, gives forth a delicate and delicious aroma.
The whole lower floor of the hotel is open to the street, resem
bling an inhabited shed rather than a house or system of rooms,

S8 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
the kitchens fully visible, and the cooking apparatus all ex-
posed. This last is not very elaborate in small inns, consisting of
a stone- or earth-covered hearth, with small pits, over which are
two, three, or four tripods, or suspended from the ceiling are
chains, on which are hung the pots. The fire is of a few sticks of
wood, or of charcoal covered over with ashes when not used, and
quickly brought to a flame by a few small sticks or splinters;
such quickening of the fire immediately follows the arrival of a
traveller. In the larger hotels there are several oven-like stoves.
There is no chimney, the smoke going out by a funnel-like
apparatus through an aperture above.
We are then conducted up a very steep stairway of perfectly
polished boards. We pass along a sort of upper porch or long
gallery, and are shown our rooms, or, rather, room, with a sort of
partition above hanging down one or more feet. Between this
hanging partition and grooves in the floor, light, paper-covered
panels can, in a couple of minutes, be inserted, so as to divide the
one big room into two, three, or more smaller rooms, as the
exigency may demand. The floors of rooms are all covered with
white, immaculately-clean matting. There are no tables, chairs,
or beds. Two waiter-girls bring in four cushions. We are
four, our guide travelling with us as our equal. He is intelligent
and a Christian, educated by Dr. Hepburn, the Japanese scholar.
A small lacquer platter, with a little brazier, is set before us. It
contains what would seem to be a smooth mass of fine ashes.
Hidden in the ashes are a few pieces of burning charcoal for us
to light our pipes from. Then a fresh pot of tea is served. Shaw
(our guide) goes to the kitchen to show them how to boil an egg
and to fry a fish. Very soon our supper is ready, and our two
pretty waitresses bring in four trays with two covered bowls, a
couple of boiled eggs, and pieces of fish on each tray. In one
bowl is a sort of vegetable soup : it is made of tarro, mushrooms,
a piece of radish, and a half-dozen other odd ingredients, which a
Japanese can enjoy, but which an American swallows only to
ward off grim starvation. The natives cook almost exclusively by
boiling. In the other bowl is a soup, the main ingredient of which
is a half-cooked piece of fish. One girl has a large, covered, lacquer
box, holding about a peck. This is filled with hot rice. She
squats beside it, and replenishes our bowls as fast as they are
emptied. We eat our boiled eggs. Even a native Japanese cook
has not yet found how to get any odd-tasting thing inside of an
unbroken egg-shell. We eat our fish, and do justice to the rice.
Perhaps we have brought with us a loaf of bread and a can of
butter. This helps out amazingly. We politely pretend to swal
low a bo'wl of soup ; Shaw helps to get away with one or two,
besides his own. He declares it delicious. Only sovereign-reign
ing grace can wipe out the sin of such a fib. Our supper is ended.
Every thing is cleared away. If either of us has dropped a grain

BATHING UNDER DIFFICULTIES. 59
of rice on the mat one of the girls picks it up with the daintiest
of fingers.
Then comes in a man with a huge pile of " futons," a sort of
thick wadded comforter. These are doubled and spread upon the
floor, one in each compartment, formed by the separating grooves
in the floor. Sometimes they bring sheets, but very rarely. A
Japanese robe, fresh and clean, is served, however, for each guest.
We cannot sleep on wooden pillows, so a comforter is folded
across the head of the bed for a pillow. By the way, the Jap
uses a small rounded pillow of wood, about ten inches long and
five to six inches high, with a depression into which the back of
the head and the nape of the neck fits and rests. This prevents
the necessity of re-dressing the hair each day. Women now, and
men formerly did, get up a very elaborate coiffure, which lasts for
several days, if not weeks. It takes several hours to get into per
fect form the heavy tresses of the women. Travellers frequently
get into romps with the hotel girls. The care with which the
latter guard their heads is amusing.
Then the girls tell us the bath is ready. We each undress and
put on a robe. A girl to each of us shows us to the bath-rooms.
These are down-stairs, and have only an open Japanese screen to
shut off the gaze of the habitues of the house. The tub is a
round wooden vat, about four feet deep. You put your foot in
to try the temperature. You nearly shriek. The girl laughs, and
empties a pail of cold water in. You then wait for her to go out.
She does not budge. You can't, to save you, think of Japanese
enough to tell her to go. Finally, by a lot of awkward signs, you
get her beyond the screen, but not an inch farther. There she
stands and waits, as innocently as did good old Eve when Adam
poured into her willing ears his first declaration of undying affec
tion. There are things as well as times that try men's souls, and
call for heroic courage. One can scale the bristling wall, can
march into the mouth of a hot-throated cannon, can mount the
scaffold with the shining axe glistening in the sun, can tell the
girl he loves how he would win and wear her, can make a maiden
speech in the House of Representatives, but these are easy tasks
compared to that of getting into a hat bath with a pretty Japan
ese girl looking at you through a rattan screen — looking at you,
too, with as much sangfroid as if she were seeing a three-months-
old baby stripped of its little flannel shirt. Finally patience
gives out, you drop your robe and jump in. Good heavens !
the pail of cold water did cool the thing, but the furnace at
the bottom ^of the tub is still adding caloric. You feel much
as did the poor Japanese martyrs when, a few hundred years
ago, the heathen wretches boiled them into grease. You
forget the girl and every thing else, and jump out thoroughly
clothed, i. e., in scarlet skin. The pretty girl's musical
laugh rings in your ears, and her soft mellow eyes take in the

6o A RACE WITH THE SUN.
hue of your half-boiled carcass. Ah, these are things which try
men's souls!
After the bath, partitions are drawn between the several com
partments, and we lie down to sleep. The partitions are a sort of
very light sash, fitting into the grooves above and below. In lieu
of glass, these sashes are glazed with translucent, thin paper, and
are so easily adjusted that the girls make four rooms in as many
minutes. We get into a doze. Then we hear a noise as if two
or three freight trains were being switched on the floor. The
outside wooden screens which close the house are being put in
around the balcony. I said the house is open on all sides, but at
bedtime it is all shut up by means of sliding screens, which during
the day are hidden in niches in the wall. By this time we begin
to itch. They say fleas abound in Japan. I have not seen asingle
one. But, when wakeful, imagination or reality has made them
crawl about me in reckless redundancy. At last we get to sleep,
and early the next morning take our breakfast, — about the same
thing as the supper, with the addition of large bowls of tea pre
pared, under Shaw's supervision" in European style. We pay our
bill, and here comes in a singular feature in Japanese hotel science.
One night our bill will be three yen, the next night, in exactly the
same sort of house, the same accommodations will cost us six or
seven. I suppose the size of our bills vary with the elasticity
of conscience possessed by the several landlords. All, however,
are cheap compared with American charges, never as much as a
dollar and three quarters for two meals and lodging. Our jin
rickishas are ready, for we engaged them the night before. The
men who brought us return over the road, and rarely ever con
tinue with us the second day. We dash out of town to new ex
periences as we hurry along.
I said that the people in cities seem to be playing at running a
town. One feels the same way about the farmers. Every thing
is on such a small scale, and is carried on with such wonderful
niceness, that one can scarcely realize that farming here is not' for
amusement, but is the business of life, and a very earnest and hard
business at that. There are no such things as farm-houses; all
live in villages or towns. There are no such things as barns or
out-houses in which to store crops. Many farms are of one acre
in size, and very few of ten.
On one of these little holdings the farmer will have his rice field
and a dozen other crops. Every thing is grown by irrigation.
Although it rains so much, no one relies on natural waterings.
Everywhere there are irrigating ditches. The little fields are each
perfectly level. A farm of two or three acres will* have a half-
dozen levels. In the flat valleys they all appear nearly the same,
but in the upper valleys, and on rolling ground, or on the hill or
mountain sides, each field is a terrace to itself. In the latter they
are of all shapes, often only a half-dozen feet wide, zig-zag, round-

JAPANESE FARMING. 6i
ing, and in every imaginable shape to suit the configuration of the
land, so that each is perfectly level, and will hold water. The
water irrigating one field drops down to irrigate those below.
The farms all look like small market gardens near our cities.
The plow is used only in a few localities, and then not for loosen
ing the soil, but to throw up beds. We have so far not seen a half
dozen, and only near Kobe. All ground is dug and perfectly pre
pared. The spade and fork are unknown, but spade-like and fork
like hoes are wielded, as with us one uses the ordinary hoe. Not
a weed is ever seen, and not a foot of ground is wasted. Between
the rice patches the little ridges which confine the flooding waters
are planted with peas or some other crop. The land is all double
cropped. In May the wheat and barley is harvested. Immedi
ately follows rice, corn, millet, or root crops. One sees rice, sweet
potatoes, egg-plant, millet of several varieties, turnips, carrots,
tarro, beans, cotton, lilies, squash, sesamum, maize or Indian corn,
buckwheat, hemp, flax for white cordage, sugar cane, dishrag
plant, tea plant, indigo, mulberry, pear trees, and many other
varieties of food crops side by side in little tiny fields and in all
stages of maturity, and all of these on farms of from one to ten
acres. In the large low-lying river valleys the rice fields are ap
parently of considerable extent, but on close observation one sees
that even here few fields are much over one eighth of an acre in
size, but all being on a common level present the appearance of
one or a few large fields. In one locality we saw tea plantations
of several acres, the possessions of a single man, but these are ex
ceptional. We saw rice being harvested near Tokio a month ago,
and yet even in this locality, where it is warmer, the bulk of the
crop is not yet ready for the sickle. October is the regular har
vest month for this staple. It is the crop of the country. Former
ly all rents and all taxes were paid in rice. A rich man's income
was spoken of as so many sacks of rice. All lands belong to the
government. Under the new and better system of government all
rents and taxes are now paid in money. Formerly a comparatively
few Daimios held the entire country in fief, paying to the govern
ment so many sacks of rice. They let the lands to the tenants,
tithing every thing, and virtually owned the masses. The Daimios
are now a thing of the past, and tenants pay fixed rents to persons
who rent from the government tracts of greater or less size. The
farmer now, although he is bowed down in abject poverty, neither
feels like nor has the air of a slave.
Lands are fertilized to some extent by applications of solid
manures, but the great dependence is upon a liquid form. Every
thing is saved that can'be made to enrich the crop ; all night soil
is carefully preserved. Conveniences are erected along the high
ways and byways, so as to prevent any waste. Coarse grass and
refuse straw is burnt, and the ashes mixed in the vats. Deep
holes are sometimes simply dug in the ground, but more gener-

62 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
ally pits, walled with stone or wood, are sunken near every field.
Into this the manure in liquid form is deposited to ripen and per
fect itself. Men, boys, and women then carry it in pails on the
two ends of a bearing pole, to the fields, and with it water the
growing crops. When one meets one of these liquid manure car
riers on the road it is safe to hold one's nose until the windward
has been gained. Women and men on their knees weed the fields
as at home we weed a tiny flower-bed.
As one crop begins to ripen some other crop is planted be
tween the rows, so as to get a good start before the outgoing
one has been removed. Even the tea plantations, when consist
ing of small plants, have turnips, carrots, and other crops planted
between the rows as soon as the July picking is finished. The peo
ple seem to be wonderfully educated as to the rotation of the crops,
and land which has been in cultivation for many centuries yet
produces marvellously large crop returns. This year the people
will be well off. The rice crop is said to be almost unprece
dented in the yield. This is the one great food crop for the
Japanese. Rice, fish, and roots, they live on ; meat they rarely
ever taste. They eat the roots of several of the lilies which,
in America, are grown for ornamentation. The water-lily and
the lotus is cultivated to a great extent, where the lands are
low, and cannot be drained, not for the flower, but for food.
The population of Japan is about 37,000,000 and is supported on
11,258,000 acres of cultivated lands, or about 12 per cent, of the
whole area of the empire, and exported, last year, of the products
of these acres, $21,000,000 of silk, $18,000,000 of teas, and nearly
$3,500,000 of rice. The export of the last is almost, if not en
tirely, to China. Of her teas exported, nearly $18,000,000 went to
the United States.
Rice is all transplanted by hand in rows from five to ten inches
apart, and in exact checks. The people certainly deserve much
for their wonderful industry, and nature has been very lavish in
her favors. The waters have a boundless supply of fish. Fish
and rice may be said to be the food of the people, and yet the
bountiful ocean not only supplies her share of the food, but sup
plies also a large amount of the manure which enriches the soil
to produce so abundantly. Fish for this purpose are carried to
quite long distances into the interior.
The forests of the mountains, too, are very bountiful of nuts.
The chestnut is abundant and of great size. In all books I have
read of this country the area of the islands composing the em
pire has been fixed at nearly 1 70,000 square miles. In a book of
Satisfies published May, 1887, by the government, the area of
all the islands having an area of one vi — there are 1 12 of these —
is fixed at 24,794 vi. This would give an area of from 144,000
to 155,000 square miles, or in the neighborhood of 90,000,000
acres, or two and two third times the area of Illinois. About

JAPANESE FLOWERS. 63
80,000,000 of these acres are waste or forest, and do not even
graze cattle of any kind. Buddhism has discouraged the eating
of animal food. The acorns of the forest would feed millions of
hogs and yet no hogs are grown. The grasses on many of the
hills would feed millions of cattle, yet there are not 2,000,000
of horned cattle in the whole empire. The ordinary native grass
is a sort of bamboo grass, with a sharp, hard, serrated edge, and
which, it is said, cut the entrails of horses and sheep.
When one considers all of these things, — this wonderfully re
dundant population of poor and overtaxed, yet happy, bright
people, supported on 11,000,000 acres, or less than an eighth of
the area of their country, — can one wonder that a reflecting man
is in a sort of daze while here ?
There are no starvelings in Japan. The children are as fat and
jolly as curly-tailed pigs ; the young lads and girls give no evi
dence of not having enough to eat. They are all rounded in
form and lithe in action, and the men and boys are capable of
enduring active labor and fatigue as few others can. They are
possibly not as muscular as our meat-eating men, but not a day
passes that I do not see some man whose muscular development
is a source of admiration, and others whose powers of endurance
are simply marvellous. Two men on a fair road will pull a heavy
man 40 miles in eight hours. A gentleman assured me that a
single pair had drawn him 46. He weighed fully 175 pounds.
It is true the road was on a rather downward grade. The most
of these men are born upon and reared on farms. I will touch
upon one more characteristic of the farmers. I refer to his use
of flowers. Although he lives in a hovel which is house, barn,
workshop, and chicken-house all combined, yet one will find close
by the door of his dirt-floored hut marvels of flowers. Such
coxcombs, foliage plants, marguerites, asters and chrysanthe
mums are never seen in America, except when grown by a pro
fessional florist. He has no regular flower-garden, he is too poor
for that, and grain grows almost up to the threshold of his door.
But he will have a few plants stuck in odd places, always perfect
in form, large in size, and of marvellous colorings.
Here permit me to add a special line as to the chrysanthemum,
the national flower and forming the crest of the mikado. There
are many varieties. The largest they keep down to one bloom to the
stalk. I measured one six and one-quarter inches in diameter, of
perfect form, and exquisitely pure and white, this, too, though the
chrysanthemum season had not begun by nearly a month.
This was the favorite flower of my mother, and has, therefore,
attracted my attention. Others not as large as our old silver ten-
cent piece, are grown on rounded bushes of considerable size,
covering the bush almost solidly. They are now just coming
into season, and are displayed about the commonest houses.

CHAPTER IX.
SPECULATIONS UPON JAPAN— GREAT DYKES AND WALLS— LILIPU-
TIAN TREES— FEMALE EDUCATION.
Hiogo, Japan, October 15, 1887.
Thirty-FIVE years ago last April I met Bayard Taylor in
Cairo. We were both on our way to Jerusalem, he expecting to
go on to Moussoul and Ararat ; and I to cross Asia Minor to
Constantinople. He abandoned his trip and joined me. We
were nearly of the same age and conceived a liking for each
other. We spent months together in tent life in the land of the
Saracen, and crossed by land from Aleppo to Brousa. In a
caique we were rowed at night toward the Bosphorus, and saw
the morning's sun gilding the domes and minarets of Stamboul.
We anticipated some months more of pleasant journeyings to
gether in Turkey, Greece, and Albania. But on reaching, in
July, the sultan's capital, he found letters from the New York
Tribune, commanding a halt, and iiJ:rminghim that Commodore
Perry was about to be sent on an expedition to Japan, and that
the paper would endeavor to get him a position on the commo
dore's ship. We discussed the future and talked of the strange,
locked-up country he was about to visit, — a land we regarded al
most as belonging to another world, — a people we supposed to
be of different mold from that in which other men were cast.
He did join the expedition, and caught a glimpse of the shogun's
hosts. What he wrote on the subject showed that the sight of
the land and of its people had not dispelled the illusions we were
under when in the city of the Turk. Bayard Taylor has gone
from among men, but his name lives in poetry, and is enrolled
among the immortals. Here, in the land he helped to open to
the world, I do homage to his memory, and count it among my
good fortunes that I knew him and could call him friend.
A glamour surrounded the word " Japan " when my friend and
I talked of it far into the night a third of a century ago ; a
glamour still hangs over it as I sit here in tts delicious climate
and think of its long past and speculate upon its future. Taylor
and I thought of it as a land of terrors, and of its men as bar- '
barian monsters. The islands were a terra incognita, and the
American fleet was going to them bearing discoverers ; and with
true Yankee impudence, our people actually did give names which
64

JAPANESE THRIFT. 65
yet rule, under the right of discovery, to points of land and islands
which were peopled and civilized when England was inhabited by
a lot of ignorant savages, and America had been seen only by
telescopic observers on some distant planet. We thought of
America opening a savage land to European and American com
merce, so that the universal Yankee could turn a penny and make
a mighty dollar.
I sit here, however, and look back over the past. The land
is covered by a weird haze — a haze through which I see this
people existing as a people when Nebuchadnezzar was grazing
among the beasts of the field, and when " Mene, tekel, upharsin "
was blazing in frightful glow upon the Babylonian wall. I see
this people coming down through the long ages, doing mighty
works, ^ — works which will endure until the rocking earth alone
shall sink them into dusty ruin, — works not piled up in pyramidal
stone to commemorate the legends of forgotten masters, but
mingled with and made a part of the very soil to enable it to wave
in corn and blossom into flowers and to bear fruits to feed innumer
able peoples, — works to bridle rushing rivers and foaming moun
tain torrents, to restrain them, in their wild fury, from carrying
-destruction and death, and turning them into handmaids of man,
helping the dews of heaven to cause the earth to blossom as a
rose. Huge dykes run up and down great river banks, and back
and forth across innumerable valleys, confining mighty floods,
.and making them the support and helpers of the people, instead
of being their destroyer ; their broad summits turned into smooth
and level roads, and their sloping sides clothed with forest trees.
Oftentimes for miles on the crests of transverse dykes are cut deep
channels, along which flow large pellucid streams, fresh from
mountain heights, irrigating innumerable fields, and sending pure
water through stony gutters along the single streets of numberless
villages and hamlets.
I ride for miles and miles through fields of rice so rich that the
stalks bend under the heavy grain ; through fields of millet,
whose heads droop like ostrich feathers ; through fields of cotton,
white with the bursting bolls ; through fields of buckwheat, blos
soming like a flower-bed ; fields of jiurnips and other roots, of
-emerald green ; through fields of tarro, whose broad leaves flap
like elephantine ears ; of sugar-cane, so thick upon the ground
that one wonders how the roots can possibly find nutriment ;
through plantations of tea, almost black in glossy greenness. I
see that crop follows crop so quickly that the soil knows no rest,
and then I remember that this thing has been going on for cen
turies, and that to every acre of land under cultivation there are
three people and over to be supported. That these people not
only support themselves, but export $48,000,000 worth of produce
for the luxury of other lands, and that they do not import a single
jnouthful of food from those lands. Then I remember that all

66 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
the houses in the land are of wood, and are burned down on an
average of once every ten years. In other words, that there is not
and cannot be any hoarded wealth ; that the people eat, drink,
and are merry, with no thought of a remote to-morrow ; that they
eat of the produce of each day, and lay up nothing for the next.
And then I remember that this has been their habit and their nature
for ages. Then, again, I recall the fact that, up to a few years
ago, these millions had no rights which their daimio masters and
sumarai retainers were bound to respect. That the nobleman
fleshed his maiden sword upon the limbs and backs of his slaves
on the streets and highways as freely as a boy would cut off
thistle-heads with a cane. With all of this the fact, yet one sees
a hard-working poor man in his half-clothing, naked up to the
thigh, carrying his head as erect and well poised upon his shoul
ders as ever did a Roman senator ; that the children are fat,
ruddy, saucy, and jolly as ever were seen in a schoolhouse play
ground in America.
Five years ago an educated woman was a rare thing in the land,
while to-day every city has its large girl-schools, in which are hun
dreds of the rising mothers of the land getting as good an educa
tion as an average woman at home obtains. 'We were in a private
mission-school a day or two since, in which were 300 well-clothed
girls and 90 boarders. There we heard one of our own Chicago
girls, daughter of our learned bibliographer, Mr. Poole, late of the
public library, hearing a class of young ladies recite — and right
well, too — exercises in English grammar, and another class recite,
with decided intelligence, a lesson in physiology to the bright and
earnest principal, Miss Dauthaday. I recall the fact that this
wonderful progress is of the growth of five years ; that fathers
who, up to ten years ago, thought woman was intended to be
the slave, or, at best, but the agreeable upper servant, of her
father, brother, or husband, are now straining every nerve to give
their daughters a liberal education, and particularly desire them
to be able to read English literature, while even husbands are
sending their young wives to school.
Aiding in all of this is the progressive Empress, who, knowing
that things cannot be well done by halves, utters the decree
that women, to be received at court, must wear European cos
tumes. And this is not done for vanity's sake, or to encourage
some pet dressmaker, but to change woman's status absolutely,
and from the very bottom. Last year, when she and the Mikado
visited Ozaka, she let it be known that no rank could enter into
her august presence except in European dress, and, knowing
how this would entail hardship upon many, with kind generosity
sent presents of costly stuff to many ladies to enable them to be
present at her reception.
By the way, I commend the Empress for her good intentions,
but I lament that she had not called a congress of wise women

JAPANESE DRESS. 67
together to advise and invent some better costume than the
miserable, unhealthy, and not over-decent style of dress now worn
by civilized women. Our women are frightfully shocked by the
exposure permitted by the Japanese costume, but forget that they
themselves do nearly as bad. They make a well-shaped dress,
and then stuff in artificial filling when nature has been niggardly
in her gifts. Conventionalism makes the thing modest and
decent, and habit and fashion make us think it pretty. But there
is absolutely nothing in the style of the day which is artistic,
graceful, healthy, or naturally attractive. I wish I could have
had the ear of the Empress before she made her fiat. I would
have begged her to get up a new style, modified upon a Chinese
model. It is a really pretty, convenient, and sensible dress. This
costume we saw, in great beauty, on the wife of the Chinese min
ister and on ladies of her suite at a temple in Tokio, when they
came for their regular monthly devotions. Without any apparent
curiosity, we were able to watch and examine them for nearly a
half-hour. Their dress was exceedingly becoming, thoroughly
modest, and very artistic and graceful, and yet of such form that
it could be adapted to every change of temperature. Our women
are intelligent, modest, and full of aesthetic refinement, and yet
they have become so thoroughly slaves to conventional ideas that
they deform themselves and believe themselves well dressed be
cause they are in the fashion, and imagine themselves modestly
attired because custom has ratified the mode. I would like to
build a wall around China out of which no almond-eyed Celestial
could escape, but it would delight me if the costume of their
ladies could be introduced among Western nations. We would
then have our better halves dressed to please an artistic eye, with
out the present waste of female health and strength. Japan
needs, and is rapidly adopting Western ideas, but when her
women import annual pattern plates from Paris, and live up to
the changing fashions of that giddy capital, they will have lost
much of what they gain by other improvements.
One cannot realize the enormous strides in progress this peo
ple has made since Perry calmly sailed up Yeddo Bay, except by
reading the intelligent observations of European and American
writers who were here 20 or 30 years ago, and then by com
paring their descriptions of things as they then were with
what the most careless traveller can now see. The common
remark made by foreign residents here is that the Japanese are
moving forward too rapidly. When asked why, they can give no
intelligent answer. They simply think the thing cannot last.
The most intelligent lady we have met here made this remark to
me. I replied by asking my usual question : " Why ? " She
naively answered : " Five years ago we began thoroughly to in
troduce our system of female education among the people. It
was up-hill work. We were met by every kind of native opposi-

68 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
tion. Now they have not only been keeping pace with us, step
by step, but are actually outstripping us, and we cannot keep up
with them."
Is it to be wondered at, then, that a close student of human
nature finds himself constantly asking the question : " What is to
be the future of this people ? " One fact makes this question the
more pertinent, and that is that the people themselves do not
seem to be aware of the rapidity of their own advancement.
They are so greedy for knowledge, and so apt in its acquirement,
that they seem to take their progress as a thing of course — a per
fectly natural corollary of their determination to make progress.
They are not simply imitators, as are the Chinese, but they catch
Western ideas, and these ideas become their own, and not infre
quently are improved upon. Their farmers, without the knowl
edge of a single scientific fact, are yet the most scientific of agri
culturists. 'Without the knowledge of a single principle to guide
them, they dig and sow, manure and reap as if replete with all
the results of past scientific research. They seem to think that,
in every walk of life, they will imbibe knowledge and skill as a
sponge drinks up moisture. And I ask myself the question :
" Will they not ? "
In the kindred branches of agriculture — floriculture and arbori
culture — they are as skilled as in the first. One sees beautifully
developed flowers constantly, up against the mud wall of a smoky
hovel, in hamlets, and in mountain valleys ; they are frequently
seen in patches, the size of a bath-towel, stolen from the very
macadam road ; on ledges of rocks where a hatful of soil will lie,
dahlias of great variety and perfect in form, coxcombs of exquis
ite hues, of huge size, and formed like beautiful pears ; marguer
ites as large as a silver dollar, and in great masses upon the bush ;
a purple iron-weed, a sort of coreopsis nearly as large as the mar
guerite, and equally thickly covering the head ; coleas and other
foliage plants so brilliant in dyes that they appear to have been
dipped in blood and then fringed with burning sunbeams; mari
golds and other kindred flowers nearly as large as the dahlias.
These seem to be the favorites of the peasant or coolie popu
lation. The skill of these people in tree culture is even more surprising
than that shown in floriculture. The latter is not so novel to the
average American. He has seen at home the little wild rose
worked up into the huge and perfect jacqueminot. He has en
joyed the delicious odor of the peony transformed from the rank-
smelling old-fashioned plant, and is ready to comprehend any
monstrous metamorphosis among flowers. But when he sees
here an old pine tree with gnarled and bent branches, its whole
appearance the exact counterpart of the ancient monarch of the
mountain-side ; when he sees this old-looking, perfectly healthy
and thrifty fir, lOO, 200, and even 300, and 400 years old, growing

LILIPUTIAN TREES. 69
in a flower-pot two or three feet deep, he hardly knows whether
he be more interested in the skill evinced or amused by the gro-
tesqueness of the idea which suggested it. Such a tree as this
I have seen. Its whole height was not five feet, and its gnarled
branches did not cover an area of eight feet. I asked its age, and
was answered, 450 years. Near by were dozens of smaller ones,
three feet high, in pottery vases, perfect in form, some round and
bright as the denizens of the rich bottom-land. Others, queer-
looking, odd old liliputians, making one think he was viewing an
ancestor of centuries ago hanging from a rocky crag, and that
he was looking at it through the reversed lenses of a powerful
field-glass. I ask:
"How old is that?"
" It was planted by my father 52 years ago."
"And that?"
" My grandfather put it in the pot 70 years back."
" And this other here that looks as if it had been watered from
the fresh-water tank in Noah's ark ? "
" Ah ! that is a beauty, and is the pride of my garden. It was
transplanted when no taller than my little finger by my great-
great-great-great-grandfather, nearly 200 years ago. He spat upon
its roots. He is a good god now, and his soul sits among its
green branches every day and blesses his children." And the
good man folded his hands and looked as if he felt that the spirit
of his ancestor, now one of his household gods, heard his pious
utterances. These old little trees are in gardens, and adorn niches for orna
ments in the houses of the well-to-do. They are grown on either
side of the central incense burners before the inner shrines — the
holy of holies, — where abide the living souls of the gods in the
great temples, both Shinto and Buddhist. One looks upon them
very much as you look into the meek eyes of a baby elephant —
so cute, so quaint, so knowing, and so like its monster mother,
when it stretches forth its flexible trunk to take a peanut from
your hand.
Then, too, there are monster trees, claimed to be a thousand,
or nearly a thousand years old, whos§ branches have been trained
into every conceivable, abnormal shape, and are venerated, if not
absolutely worshipped. We visited one at Karasaki, on Lake
Biwa. It is about six feet in diameter just above the spread of
the roots, but a little higher up, where its three great branches
spring out, it takes a 39-foot line to girdle it. At some 20
feet altitude the many limbs coming out of the three great
branches have been trained nearly horizontally, and cover a space
of 180 feet from out to out. One branch, up to a few years since,
lifted to a height of 90 odd feet. A typhoon took it off. The
broken place is cemented over, and a little god house is perched
over the cemented fracture. A small temple lies in its shade.

70 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
and the soul of a god lives and sings among its needles. The
attendant priest told me it was l,ooo years old. I believed him.
Why should I doubt ? Thomas doubted. I never do, especially
now that I travel for rest and wish to live in a half-dream.
These people have had no horses to speak of, no beasts of bur
den, no complicated machinery. They themselves have been
beasts of burden for so many thousands of years that the moon
was young and had not worn its harvest phase when they became
people and commenced to earn their food by the sweat of their
faces. With their naked hands they have chiselled rocks of
monster size and erected them into mighty walls, 40, 50, 90,
and 100 feet high, about the castles of the great capitals.
Some of these walls are miles in length, and are built of stones
brought from great distances and weighing from 100 and 200
pounds up to very many tons. In the castle at Ozaka, high up
on the wall, are granite stones 30 feet long, eight feet high, and
nearly as many feet deep. These I examined on either side of
the gate-way. But within were stones so huge that they looked
like rocky precipices erected by nature upon a mountain-side. I
could not go in to measure them — I had no permit, and the
guard, after politely permitting us to look for a minute or two,
motioned us to pass on.
But we had time to see two monster stones, which seemed to us
to be over 40 feet long, 15 to 20 feet high, and how deep we could
only guess, for they were a part of the great inner wall. These
mighty walls were not erected, as was Cheops pyramid, by cap
tive nations worked to destroy them, but by a cheerful and
politically enslaved people, but still the people of the land ; peo
ple who caa chase a piece of bronze with a delicacy of touch and
a lightness of finish few European people can reach ; can carve a
bird and have done so for centuries, and did so when these
massive works were erected ; can and have carved from wood,
birds so natural that one can almost see them pick the rice they
appear to be feeding upon, and can see the ruffling of the feathers
as they fly. " What will be the future of this wonderful people ?"

CHAPTER X.
HONOR TO PERRY— THE MIKADO FORMERLY A GOD ; NOW A WISE
RULER— RAPID PROGRESS— GOOD POLICE— GOOD ROADS—
A THOUGHT OF MOTHER— FARM HOUSES.
Kobe, Japan, October i6, 1887.
America delights in doing honor to the memory of her great
dead, and her people never weary in recounting their heroic
deeds. One of her great men, however, has not yet received the
honors due him, and his noblest act is appreciated only by a few.
When Commodore Perry conceived the idea of drawing back the
bolts which for centuries had locked this country against
foreigners and then calmly and bravely carried out his design, he
showed the brain of a great statesman, and did one of the boldest
acts recounted on the page of history. The bristling guns of his
fleet did much to bring about the wonderful success of the under
taking, but not so much as did the calm, dignified, and patient
bearing of its commander. The reticent diplomacy of the states
man did as much as did the bold demeanor of the sailor. Other
nations have taken greater advantage of the results of the expedi
tion than we have done. Let us at least do all honor to the man to
whom belongs the glory of the idea and of the act.
At that time Japan had an anointed ruler, who reigned in seclu
sion as a god, who was worshipped and venerated as such, and was
feared because he was the son of the sun, and was supposed to
have daily intercourse and communion with the great Author of
all things. She had, however, another ruler, who governed in the
nanie of the hidden one and was feared as a master, whose sword
was never sheathed. For ages the mikado had never been seen
by his subjects. He gave audiences to the princes, nobles, and
great priests of the realm, but he Spoke from behind a veil — an
impenetrable screen — and those who pleaded before him did so
with their foreheads bowed down upon the ground. They would
not have dared, even if they could, to turn their eyes upon the
brightness of his dazzling face. To have looked upon such
effulgence would have been an impiety, punishable by the offend
ed gods.
Through the kindness of our excellent Minister, ex-Governor
Hubbard of Texas, we had a permit from the Minister of Home
Affairs to visit the mikado's palace at Kioto. We saw the pavilion
on which the descendant of the sun-goddess formerly sat when
71

72 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
giving audience, and lifted the heavy silk curtains which once-
screened the mighty one. It was less than 20 years ago that
the great crowned but unsceptred monarch-^the 121st
ruler of his line — lived in this great palace and reigned
over, but did not rule, his people. For hundreds of years
his ancestors had lived and reigned as he did, while the shogun
(tycoon) governed for him from Yeddo, and ruled the people in
his name with despotic sway. Perry opened Japan to the gaze
of the world, and western civilization soon opened the palace of
the mikado and showed his face to his people. The last of the
shoguns is now a pensioned civilian. The tyrannical daimios are
simply influential nobles, and the noble class, the samurai, are
trying to earn an honest living by filling government posts or
plying the lusty limb in honest toil, instead of hewing peasants
down for a pastime, or debauching their wives and daughters for
recreation. The Mikado has moved from his celestial palace in the sacred
city of Kioto, and now lives in the palace of the tycoon at Yeddo
(now Tokio) ; rides in an open carriage before the people ; visits
the great cities of his empire ; governs by a species of responsible
ministry, responsible at least to public opinion, and in two years
his 37,000,000 of people are to have representation in the councils
of the nation. Colleges and universities are crowded with intelli
gent seekers after knowledge, and the professors' chairs are filled
by well-paid, educated men, summoned from all lands. Women
are being educated fully and completely, concubinage is forbid
den, or at least is no longer protected by law. Railroads are being
built all over the land. Great ships and huge steamers of all na
tions ply in her waters and lie in her harbors by the dozens, and
the people recognize the fact that they owe all this to America.
All hail to the memory of brave Perry ! Paradoxical as it may
sound, it was well for this people that they were governed by
despotic sway when the country was opened, The force of des
potism alone could have broken down the prejudices engendered
by centuries of seclusion and bigotry. For ages the people had
possessed no will of their own. They were told to march for
ward, and with implicit obedience they started on their march,
and are still marching to a quickstep, \vhich dazzles not only the
outward world but the old rulers, who are, and will be, compelled
to keep in line to the quickened time.
To all outward appearances the country is well governed. It
is certainly the safest country to travel in I have ever known.
We have wandered in highways and byways ; we have been in
crowded cities where the people swarmed as bees swarm about
hives ; in dark mountain gorges and on lonely mountain sides ;
being foreigners and travellers, we were known to carry valuables
and to possess funds ; we have walked and ridden thrdugh dark
streets and lonely roads by night; we have slept in hotels in

JAPANESE CITIES. 73.
small villages and in large towns, with no locks upon our doors
and no walls about us thicker than a panel of strong tissue paper ;
we leave our rooms with open valises, and valuables on open
shelves. We have lived thus for five weeks, travelling over 500
miles, and have lost nothing, except through our own for-
getfulness. We have seen hundreds of thousands of people, and have not
seen a really drunken man, nor a single quarrelsome or boisterous
one. We have seen hundreds of well dressed, quiet policemen : we
have never seen one gossiping with the people, or two talking to
gether. We have seen crowds collected by curiosity or other
cause, and have seen them at once and good-naturedly disperse
on a low order from a patrolman. We have never seen a street
blockade for a minute, although we have often seen them thickly
crowded. We have driven through towns when holiday proces
sions were moving through the streets, but have never been com
pelled to stop, a way being always opened for our passage.
The rulers may be tyrants, and the people over-taxed, but the
tyrants evidently rule wisely, and the people pay the taxes with
out a murmur. In England the lower classes — the hardworkers
— look sullen and ill-tempered. In France they wear an air of gay
recklessness. In Austria the peasants always make me sad, so
tired and hard-worked do they look. Here there is an appearance
of absolutely bright cheerfulness on all faces, even when the arms
and legs are doing the work which beasts alone should perform.
Why is it ? Is it because they are but merry, speaking animals,
and do not know that they suffer? If so, it proves that it were
folly to be wise.
In March, 1886, Tokio's population was, in round numbers,
1,300,000. It had 3,748 policemen, divided as follows : One chief,
26 captains, 26 lieutenants, 341 sergeants, 3,441 patrolmen, 8
mounted men, and 141 detectives. During the year 1885 the
whole "number of arrests were 6,414; during January and Feb
ruary, 1886, 808. We have been in five cities with populations of
over 150,000 each; in eight with populations from 5,000 to
50,000 ; in at least 50 villages and towns with from 500 to 2,000.
Policemen are all over the country in every village, all wearing a
common uniform. We have not seen a single one with a prisoner
or in any altercation with a citizen.
The streets and public roads are beautifully paved, nearly all
with gravel, shell, or fine macadam, and all well crowned, thor
oughly rolled, and kept in constant repair. A stone roller about
four feet in diameter, drawn by a dozen or more men, is used to
pack the gravel down. The streets in towns are as clean as if
swept. It must be borne in mind, however, that there are com
paratively no horses to make a street or road filthy, except in
Tokio, and no heavy wagons to cut into a road-bed. The light,
loaded vehicles simply keep them well packed. In Tokio the

74 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
cavalry soldiers and gentlemen's carriages employ quite a num
ber of horses, but all droppings are at once swept up.
There are four great national highways leading from Tokio and
running in different directions to the extreme limits of the land.
These are well graded and are kept in thorough repair by the
central government. Branch roads lead from these great high
ways in every direction. Many of them may, too, be maintained
by the government. This I had not the means of fully learning.
The most of them, however, I did learn, are built and supported
by the several prefectures or by the villages traversed. There
being such an abundance of rivers and streams, there results
naturally a necessity for a vast number of bridges. Many of them
would seem at first blush unnecessary, but this idea is removed
by the reflection that in the spring and rainy season floods are
greater here than elsewhere, and the people would be cut off from
locomotion by streams which, though small rivulets to-day, at
times become fierce torrents.
Many bridges on the public highways have been built over the
large rivers by contiguous villages. These are toll bridges. The
tolls for a jinrickisha ranges from one to two and a half cents.
We did not see a toll-gate or bridge presided over by a single toll-
taker. All seemed to have three reverend fellows, who were
squatted within the toll-house with the inevitable charcoal brazier
for lighting a pipe and another for making tea. Are they thus
placed in threes to watch each other? I wished to halt and
advise them not to have 15. Chicago experience has proven that
to be a fatal number. Majorities of 8 and 19 are not healthy
for the people.
The width of the great roads depends much on the lay of the
land. I found the average to be, in road-bed, from 12 to I3|-feet.
Outside of this is a ditch on either side, sometimes rock lined, but
generally in the simple soil. Along these ditches, in all moun
tainous or hilly, and therefore well watered, localities, run streams
oftentimes full and clear enough to be fine trout brooks. They
are either feeders to or drains from the irrigating ditches and
canals which supply the fields with their indispensable fluid.
These roadside brooks are frequently deliciously laughing and
babbling. The branch roads and small byways are very narrow,
in mountains, barely wide enough for the jinrickisha, or for a
pack-pony, with turnout places here and there, for the conven
ience of those which may meet. By the way, the little man-
carriages are 34 inches from tread to tread, when made for single
persons ; 48 inches when intended for two passengers.
Outside of the ditches on the great roads are rows of trees,
often doubled. These leave the width of the whole road from 20
to 25 feet. Many of the trees are of great age and size. Between
Utsonomieya and Nikko, on either side of the road, are old
cryptomerias, a species of cedar, none of them under two and a

SAD REFLECTIONS.

75

half feet in diameter, running up in many to five, and extending
to a height of not far from 200 feet. They are planted so close
together that frequently the trunks near the ground are incorpo
rated one with another as a great solid wall. The old road has
been worn down through ages until it is four to six feet below the
original level. The roots of the great trees seeking the moist soil
near the ditches, after the manner of cedars, have become so
interlaced, and have grown to such a size, that they form an abso
lute wall of woody roots from four to eight or ten feet high, for,
like other cedars, the flanges of the roots lift considerably above
the soil. The branches of these lofty trees unite overhead and
form a perfect Gothic arch. Looking through one of these great
woody arches, the effect is very weird and picturesque. The
trunks of the trees, running one into the other in the perspective
view, resemble a mighty basaltic wall. High above springs the
green arch, through which the sunlight at noonday barely pene
trates, and toward late evening makes one feel he is moving
between rows of spectral monsters. Rows of trees are on all the
great roads, not always of cryptomerias, being sometimes yellow
pine and other species. When of yellow pine the effect is very
grotesque. The trees throw out no branches until at a consider
able height, and then these are so gnarled, bent, and yellow, as
they lean towards each other Over the road, that the effect is more
artistic than with the other arrow-like, straight monarchs of the
forest. In some of the mountain passes the public roads are for miles
paved with basaltic stones laid flat. These have become polished
by the wear of centuries. Over them the traveller has to walk,
and hard and ugly work it is. One slips and flounders as he goes
uphill until his knees and thighs ache to the bone. One slips
and flounders as he goes down hill until the calves of the legs feel
like monster boils ; at least mine did. When I sit on a nice seat
and look at a beautiful scene, I am but thirty-two and the rise,
and " all my skies are rosy bright, laughing in triumph at yester
night." I am young and full of to-morrow, and live in the present
and glory in the future. But when I climb a mountain I am full
sixty-two years old, and I feel thej-e is no morrow until the
to-morrow of eternal rest shall come. This is a beautiful world,
and made beautiful for man, or it is a beautiful world and man,
springing from its soil, is so fashioned that he revels in the beau
ties showered upon the lap of his mother earth. Man's sins and
wrong-doings scar and mar the picturesque earth, and if he com
mits no sin, the decrepitude of age dims the eye and numbs the
senses until all is sere and in the yellow leaf.
We are now in the latter half of the middle fall month. It is,
to all intents, glorious summer. I look out of my window.
Light, fleecy clouds chase each other athwart the clear blue sky.
I lay down my pencil and am lost in revery. How blue would

76 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
be yonder sky ! How light the floating clouds, if she who was
my sunshine were but by my side to enjoy and drink in the beauty
about me ! How far off in yonder blue is her pure spirit float
ing ? Or is it hovering near me now ? Does it join me, and is it
journeying with me as I make my "race with the sun?" I envy the
Japanese their absolute faith in the living presence of their dead
ancestors. But their fathers and forefathers alone live about
them. No thought of the dead mother. One look of love, one
sweet whisper — " My darling child I " — from her who bore me,
who nursed me upon her lap, and bade the fever go when she laid
her cool hand upon my baby brow — these would be worth to me
more than a thousand blessings from all the fathers through whose
loins I came, from Adam down. One look of undying devotion
from the dark eyes, which were deeper than fathomless wells ;
one touch of the soft hand, which a few months ago could cause
every drop of blood to dance and sing through my veins ; one
earnest " I love you " from those lips which a year ago made my
life a song of living joy — Ah ! Fathers may be revered and hon
ored, but dead mothers and wives are for worship, as living
mothers and wives are for devotion.
I said all the great roads were lined by rows of fine trees.
These rows are broken by many villages lying along the high
ways. One is rarely out of sight, three or four miles being a long
interval. These villages are the homes of the farmers. They
dwell along the road, it being to them the one street. The
farmer's house is rather a hut, and would deserve the name of
hovel were it not for the cleanliness of the living part of it. In
mere farm villages they stand back a little from the road, the
space in front being generally planted as a field, even where such
space is not over 20 feef.
I will describe a house which may be taken as typical, for these
people are thoroughly homogeneous, and, though their dialects in
different localities differ one from the other, yet the houses, dress,
manners, and customs are everywhere the same. Imagine a house
of 30 feet front and about the same depth, now and then considera
bly deeper. It consists of ^ silicon a loose stone foundation.
Upright studs are set at the corners and every three feet between.
To these studs are lashed, with coarse grass thongs, bamboo lath.
On both sides of this is a smooth coat of plaster, composed of
mud and straw. The story is, say, nine feet high. Above this
springs a steep, hipped roof of thatch. The roof is, rather, half-
hipped, for a ridge runs, say, ten feet along the centre. The
thatch is a foot to 20 inches thick, very compact and tight. The
ridge rises a foot above the comb, and is planted with flag or
grass, and is always green. This is to keep the wind from tearing
it off. Sometimes the whole roof is green with the little succu
lent plant vulgarly, called " hens and chickens." The eaves of
the roof overhang two, three, and sometimes four feet. The main

JAPANESE ENDURANCE. 77
story has no ceilings, but above what should be the ceiling there
is a partial one. This, and under the hanging eaves of the house,
is the farmer's barn, where he stores his utensils and all of his crop
which is not immediately sold. Barns as such are not needed.
The Japanese live from hand to mouth. Crops are sold as soon
as harvested. Only enough is stored for home consumption and
for seed. The front of the house is open by day, but closed by
night. About ten feet of one side of the main floor is of dirt.
Here all rough under-cover work is done, and wood, straw, and
materials for manufacture are kept. Raised above this is a plat
form two and a half feet high, covering the remainder of the
main floor or house. On this is a sunken hearth, four feet square,
where is built the only fire the house ever has. Over it hangs a
chain from the roof ; it is the pot-rack. To it hang one or two
pots, the bulk of the cooking utensils. At night the front of the
house is closed in by sliding wooden shutters, and within, the
raised platform is subdivided at bedtime into as many compart
ments as the family needs or can afford. The floor is more or
less polished, and is covered by mats. There is no chimney ; the
smoke goes out at the opening in the ridge or quite as often
escapes by the door or rear windows, which frequently are so
black as to look untidy. When one reflects that there is never a
fire which would fill a half-bushel measure, that the Japanese wear
no woollen garments, and only sandals or clogs on their feet, that
the winters are cold enough to make ice two or three inches
thick, and that the ground is often white with snow, one wonders
how they live. There seems to be something peculiar in their
physical make-up, as well as in their plants, which enables them
to endure safely great cold. I am told that plants which, in
America are killed by autumn frosts, here live and bloom in the
midst of snow, and when the thermometer has gone much below
the freezing-point. Certainly the people have wonderful powers
of endurance, if their sensations are such as ours.
Every Japanese, high or low, takes his hot bath every night.
He jumps into a vat of water heated from 115 to 120 degrees,
and enjoys the boil, and yet when necessary stands for hours up
to his waist in cold mountain torrents, and it is said will break
the ice in winter and work up to his neck in immersion, seeming
to feel no ill effect from it. He is certainly a wonderful animal,
and ethnological data must yet be furnished to convince me that
he be not indigenous to the soil he lives on.

CHAPTER XI.
TEMPLES AND GODS— TOKIO ; ITS CASTLE AND DENSE POPULATION
—EASY-GOING TRADESMEN— BEAUTY OF THE YOUNG AND
UGLINESS OF OLD WOMEN— PROSTITUTION— FISH.
Kobe, Japan, October i-j, r887.
Japan has five great cities : Tokio, with its population of over
1,250,000 ; Kioto and Ozaka, each with a population of over
250,000; Nagoya, with some 200,000; and Yokohama, with 150,-
000. Tokio, Kioto, and Ozaka are the most interesting of these.
They are great hives of people, and bewilder one who rides or
walks through them. Each has its castle or central palace, each
has great temples, and densely populated, narrow streets. I will
not attempt accurately to describe the temples. It could not be
done, except at the expense of great prolixity, without the aid
of pictures and drawings. They are all of wood, with huge,
bending, massively thick roofs, and large pillars ; and are either
elaborately and beautifully lacquered in various tints, vermilion
predominating, or, being unpainted entirely, have their natural
woods mellowed by time. The great majority of the temples are
mausoleums of some great man who has become a demi-god and
is worshipped.There are two religions in the land — Shintoism, the old nation
al religion, and Buddhism. The foundation of Shintoism was a
worship of the sun, or the sun-goddess, the original creator of all
things. Following her are thousands of gods, monsters of the
imagination, the denizens of mighty forests and lofty mountains,
or horrible caverns and caves, and of belching volcanoes. The
majority of them were probably men in far distant ages, who
awakened men's fears by their deeds of bloodshed and rapine, or
awakened their affections by charity and acts of love. Their hu
man character has been forgotten in the long lapse of ages, and
they are now regarded as never having been other than super
natural. The great bulk of the gods, however, are recognized as
men who, after death, were deified. The ancestors of every man
are to him household gods, and he chooses the one he will wor
ship as such.
The shogun or tycoon rulers of the past are all worshipped as
gods. When a ruler died his successor erected to him a great
mausoleum and buried his body in a tomb at its rear. The mauso
leum at once became a temple, and the soul of the dead man
78

TOKIO. 79
lives in the inner shrine and is worshipped by the masses. Some
of these temples are of great beauty in their architecture, and
their adornments are wonderfully elaborate and rich. The two
richest temples in the empire are at Nikko, the mausoleums of
lyeyasu and lyemitsu, the founders of the late family of shoguns,
200 and odd years ago. They are models of temple beauty.
Here it is that one sees the wonderful lacquer work for which
Japan is so famous. As beautiful as it is, however, I was more
delighted with the wood carvings which surpassed any thing I had
ever seen. The flowers and vines cut from wood seem to be
growing and the birds to be breathing and flying. I counted in a
frieze in a sort of wall or fence around one of the temples 227
birds of life-size, in alto-relievo so wonderfully wrought and ex
quisitely painted, that I almost imagined I could see them pant
and flutter.
The roofs of the temples are many feet thick, and made up
of richest cornice-work, the several members all painted in
charming neutral tints. But I dare not attempt to describe
them, for without the technical terms I could not possibly enable
one to see them with me. The Japanese have a saying : "See
' Nikko ' before you say ' kekko ' " — " See Nikko before you utter
the word ' Splendid.' " I will say, see Nikko before you attempt
to read of its splendors. The temples of Tokio are very beauti
ful, and are also the burying-place of shoguns. All of the suc
cessors of lyemitsu were buried here, except the last, who was
expelled in 1868, and is still alive but will probably never be
deified. It is said that Tokio covers nearly if not quite as much terri
tory as does London. It is certainly of vast dimensions. The
central portion — the castle, as it is called — covers a space several
miles in circumference. This comprises the first, second, and
third castles, the one surrounding the other, and between each a
great moat 100 to 150 feet wide. Each inner castle and moat is
on a higher level than the next outer one. The inner side of
each moat is bordered Jay a great wall from 60 to 90 feet high,
built of huge stone and of massive strength. Each of these inner
castles, or divisions of the castle, is on a level with the top of the
next outer wall. Such walls and moats are zigzag or serpentine
in line. These so-called castles are nqt such according to our
ideas. They are simply enclosed spaces, and could be success
ively defended in case of an attack. The outer one being taken,
the next became a strong fortification. The inner castle of all,
which covers several hundred acres, was the home of the shoguns.
The mikado is now erecting a magnificent palace in place of the
old one, which was burned down, as every thing is sooner or later
in Japan. This inner castle is a garden or park covered with
magnificent trees, and is beautifully laid out so as to represent a
thoroughly rural locality, with lakes, streams, meadows, woods,

So A RACE WITH THE SUN.
and thickets. We had a permit to go through the grounds and
found them very picturesque, with running streams, rocky water
falls, thickets of bamboo of great height, dense jungles, and
beautiful gardens. The two outer castles are occupied by gov
ernment buildings and some of the city residences of the nobles.
This portion of the city, however, has but a thin population.
Outside the outer moat is the main city, stretching for miles
from this imperial centre. The houses are of one and two stories
in height, except the public buildings. These latter are all
European in form and architecture.
Formerly the daimios were compelled to spend a part of each
year at the shogun's capital, and large spaces of ground were
allotted them in the outer castle, on which they erected great
quadrangular buildings resembling barracks, each covering many
acres, for themselves and their numerous retainers. In this way
the shogun forced them to expend a large part of their vast
revenues, wrung from the poor serfs, to adorn his capital, and was
at the same time enabled to keep his eye upon them and to pre
vent them from becoming too powerful in their great baronies.
It is said that many of these daimios had revenues running into
many hundreds of thousands of dollars, and had at their command
men enough to form large armies. During the past two and a
half centuries, while the foreigner was absolutely locked out of
Japan, the nation was one of spies. No man dared speak, for the
very walls had ears, and no man of rank knew when he might receive
a secret command to commit hari-kari. This espionage went into
the very nature of men of all ranks, and was the source of the
worst of this people's rather national characteristics — suspicious
ness. Even in the little time we have been here, I have seen this
disposition cropping out among all with whom we have had deal
ings. They are ready to be suspicious of every one with whom
they come in contact. Time may undo this blot, but it will take
a long time of fair dealing. If the present march of improvement
and its consequent large expenditure of money should end in a
collapse, I much fear that the suspiciousness of the people may
cause them to lay it to the foreign ideas which are so cultivated,
and cause them to take a reactionary step which will require years
to undo.
While I write I hear a bagpiper's dulcet tones upon the street
¦and the loud voice of some jolly Scot in wild hurrah. I look at
my watch and find the night has reached the " wee sma' hours
ayont the twal." To bed I go, but not immediately to sleep.
The hurrah is kept up ; the bagpipes screech and wheeze in
wildest slogan. Dozens of voices yell out, " Fall in — march ! "
and there are none to fall in but those who give the orders. Each
fellow sees just fourscore kilted Highlandmen in line, for he has
put a glass before his eyes this night.
I find on getting up this mOrning that there was a regatta yes-

POLITICAL REFORMATION. 8i
terday, and a club feast. The whole "-concession " seemed to be
jolly, if one judged by the hurrah I heard last night ; and all were
apparently Scotch. It is wonderful how quickly the bagpipe and
the juice of Scotch rye will manufacture true sons of Scotia, or
will multiply a few into an uproarious host, ready
" Wi' tippeny, to fear nae evil,
Wi' usquebae to face the devil."
But I was speaking of the daimio residences in Tokio. All of
these have been turned into manufacturing establishments, or
have been torn down. The daimios claim great credit for the
part they played when the shogunate was abolished and their own
vast feudal rights and possessions were abandoned. The claim
may be somewhat just, but it is rather too much to believe that
the doings of '68 and '69 were noble acts of self-abnegation. It is
easier to think that they had the wit to comprehend the inevita
ble, and the courage to face the music. How much more com
mendable and manly than the miserable egotism and grimace the
French Noblesse paraded before the world during the first half
of the century just ending. The samurai made, I believe, no
pretense of patriotic self-immolation. They had been lording it
over the land, and were so used to the carrying of arms at all
times that they did not quit with grace, but resisted cl Toutrance
and only surrendered when the inevitable was upon them with
crushing weight. It may have been imagination, but I have a
great many times, in the streets and roads, met men whose heads
seemed more proudly lifted upon their shoulders than was natural,
and whose curled lips and haughty, fierce eyes seemed to tell me
how the owner hated the foreigner and detested his ways.
I was about, however, to tell you of the great city of Tokio,
outside of the outer moat. The streets, as are nearly all streets
in the land, are very narrow, the majority being of the width of
our narrow alleys. There are no sidewalks. The ground-floor —
the genuine rez de chauss^e of the houses — runs into the street
pavement. Each little house is shop, workshop, and residence of
the occupant. If there be a second stoFy, it is not over eight feet
high. One at once asks, how do all these people live in these
little coops? He goes to the rear of these small buildings, and
finds there are no back yards and gardens such as we are accus
tomed to. The whole square or block is filled with houses, one
behind another, packed together as honeycombs are packed in
beehives, and the people move in and out among each other and
over each other as bees do in reaching their cells. The streets,
narrow and crooked lanes, running in all directions, twisting, turn
ing, zigzagging, and winding, are crowded with people, all engaged,
all busy, but apparently busy in doing little things. All, while
busy, do what they have to do with an air of nonchalant uncon-

82 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
cern, which is odd and strange to an American, accustomed to see
men work as if to-morrow they had to die, and do they must and
must do to-day. Is ours the better mode } jF' en doute.
The inevitable charcoal brazier and teapot is close beside every
dealer and every worker. The dealer takes two or three whiffs at
his little half-thimble-sized pipe, inhales the smoke, blows it from
his nose in a white cloud, and closes his bargain. The carpenter
draws his plane or drives his chisel, then takes two or three whiffs
from his pipe, knocks out the ashes, and goes on with his work, or
stops to finish the game of checkers with his fellow-workmen, or
perhaps with his employer. Every one works as if there was no
limit to his time and no necessity for hurry, and yet the work is
done, for they labor from the very dawn far into night. It is no
uncommon thing to hear the hammer or heavy rice-beater pound
ing long after the outer shutters are put up, and the house looks
as if there was no living thing within, or that all were wrapped in
night. Houses in which are forges cannot be so closed up at night,
so that one sees the glow of the fire and sees Vulcans hammering by
the light of their little furnaces as late as ten and eleven o'clock.
But all is done easily and leisurely. As a gentleman of colored
persuasion, formerly of Philadelphia, whom I met on a holiday
excursion, with his Japanese wife and semi-pickaninnies, told me,
" They never strain tharselves, sah ! "
The streets are crooked and twisted. When one takes a
"kumura " or jinrickisha for a run to a distant part of the town,
more or less beyond the castle centre, he is amazed at the tortu
ous doubling his man makes to reach it, and wonders how he can
find his way ; the streets have such innumerable windings, and all
look as much alike as the faces in a flock of sheep. But the man
will pull you at a dashing pace by day, or even by night when all
is dark, with only a paper lantern here and there, no names on
street corners, and each street resembling another as a row of
corn resembles its neighbor. He seems to find his way by
instinct, and is never at a loss.
The Japanese are thoroughly homogeneous. While there may
be said to be different types among them, they all have certain
characteristics in common, and as far as I have seen, some never
failing ones. The eyes are not almond-shaped, like the Chinese,
but generally set slanting inward. The upper lid, however, never
fails to be somewhat drawn at the inner curve, as if the skin of
this lid was somewhat thick and inflexible and too short. This
seems to be absolutely universal. All have enormous heads of
crow-black straight hair, except now and then one sees a brownish
tint among children under eight or ten, as if sun-burnt. This,
however, cannot be the cause, for few grown people wear any
head-covering, except working in the sun when high. Then they
put on, among the cooly class, straw hats. These are of sev
eral varieties, but generally resemble a large inverted water-bowl

BEAUTY OF JAPANESE YOUTH. 83
in form. The rich or better-to-do, are bare-headed everywhere,
and carry umbrellas when the sun is hot. In rainy weather the
working- classes wear a sort of rain-hat about two feet in diam
eter, shaped like a straight-ribbed parasol. This is set on top of
the head and held by a straw thong tied under the chin. In
addition to this, they wear a rain-coat, or mantle, made of coarse
grass. Some of these resemble a simple mat thrown over the
shoulders. The real national rain-coat, however, is a mass of dry
grass, woven together, about the neck and hanging in grassy
fringe nearly to the knees. This costume is decidedly pictu
resque, especially when the water is dripping from the fringe.
The heads of the grass hang towards the bottom. It takes a
heavy rain to wet the wearer.
In and through the city (as such) of Tokio runs a considerable
river and many canals. They carry commerce of a heavy character
to distant parts, which would be excessively laborious to a people
who have no horses. But I have wandered from the subject I
was talking of — the physiological characteristics of the Japanese.
I think I have discovered another peculiarity. When waited
upon by the girls in the hotels I was struck by the delicacy and
beauty of their hands. Their finger-nails would be the admira
tion of a manicure. I also thought I saw a peculiar shortness of
the little finger, as compared to the third. I have thought this
peculiarity common to all. I have watched, but not having lan
guage to excuse a desired scrutiny, and being modest in the
extreme, I have only seen from casual observation. There is very
great difference in the complexion of the people. One sees many
girls and boys as fair as the Caucasian — beautiful, clear, white
complexions, with more of the cream under-tint than the starchy
white of the English blonde. The masses, however, are dark.
The young have a higher average of good looks than any other
people I know, particularly those from ten to twenty years. The
very young children are not so nice to look at. A cold in the
head seems universal among them, and the nose seems never to
know a handkerchief. They appear to enjoy the dripping, as
a bull-dog delights to have ropes of slaver hanging from his
under-jaw. But one sees a great many handsome boys and
pretty girls, from ten years up, many of them of rare beauty. I
believe I have seen far more beautiful young women in the past
six weeks than I ever did before in as many years. I do not mean
the high, refined beauty of one of our really beautiful women,
but lithe and rounded forms, undulating motions, which the awk
ward clog-gait cannot wholly overcome; well turned and finely
chiselled features; rosy, budding mouths; dark, soft, and expres
sive eyes ; massy crowns of black hair, always perfectly coiffured ;
and with-all a thoroughly womanly, modest expression of face,
and beautiful complexions, running up from the nut-brown to
the pure, creamy white. Such as these, are to be seen every-

84 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
where as one runs through the land. The fair complexion does
not seem to belong to the upper classes, as I had been led to
suppose. One sees a perfect complexion on a waiter-girl in a
hotel, and I have seen many such on young women picking cotton
near the roadway ; while among officials at Tokio, and indeed,
everywhere, we find very swarthy people. Count Itto, the real head
of the nation at this time, and the commanding general who
entertained us at the old castle at Nagoya, are both of dark,
copper-colored, chestnut hue, and the Countess Itto looked to
me, in a hurried passing, as dark as one of our octoroons, but
without the yellow tinge. This dark tint among officials is
owing to the fact that they belong to the bold soldier caste, and
came originally from Kinshiu and Shikokou, the great islands be
yond the inland sea. There the people are dark, and more brave
and hardy than those of Hondo and Niphon, the main island.
While the young girls and young women are pretty, I can say but
little in praise of the old ones. When married they color the teeth
to a glossy black, shave the eyebrows, and pluck the lashes. This
is said to be done to prove that henceforth they do not desire
the admiration of any but their husbands. Poor fools, they do
not know that some of the brightest men of the century have
gravely asked the question if the tinkling of the marriage-bell
does not toll the funeral knell of love, even in lands where
marriage is really the commencement of female adornment. But
aside from this custom, the women here do not wear their good
looks long. They toil, bear babies, and rapidly grow old. One
superadding cause of this I suspect to be the habit of nursing
their children at their breast until four and five years of age.
We have frequently seen children playing and romping with
their mates in the streets, then suddenly stop, rush to their
mothers, and draw from the breasts their own lunches and the
very life of the poor women. They never wean a child until
another comes to take its place, and it is no unusual thing for
the two to divide the produce of the dairy, if it be a plentiful
one. It is said this custom is so prevalent because there are no
cows which give milk to speak of, and no food other than moth
er's milk to bring the youngster through the teething season. In
spite of this, however, the mortality, as shown by statistics, among
children is simply frightful. This is hard to understand, for the
children are in great numbers everywhere. The)' are tumbling
and playing in the streets ; they make the welkin ring in the ham
lets and villages, and when we have been on the road as early as
seven in the morning, we would meet or pass them by the hun
dreds on the country highways, on their way to school, all with
little baskets for their books and luncheon, and with their droll
counting-tables strapped to their backs. Education is compul
sory, with certain exceptions I have not been enabled to learn.
¦Will the extension of education put a stop to one of the

JAPANESE IMMORALITY. 85
strangest of all this country's institutions — its public prostitu
tion ? Large sections of every city are set aside for this purpose.
In Tokio it is a suburb, but in many places the establishments
are in the most frequented localities and close to the temples.
Every house in such localities is devoted to the demi-monde.
Some of them are of palatial .splendor — two, three, and now and
then four stories in height. At night these are a blaze of light.
The first story has in front a light wicker screen, not unlike the
bars of a cage in a menagerie, only being of wood. Behind
these sit the girls, dressed in their finest toggery, eating confec
tions, drinking tea, and looking their best. In some of these
show-rooms one will see, according to the size of the house,
all the way from a dozen to 30 or 40. They are so
whitened by cosmetics that their faces assume an unnatural
and almost ghastly look. They are all mortgaged to the keeper
by their parents, or by themselves, for a longer or shorter period.
Music abounds in these streets. One sees in Tokio several thou
sand of these girls, all sitting with perfect decorum, nothing be
ing done that is unseemly in outward appearance. The streets
are crowded with men of all ages ; and frequently there will be
seen a father, with his wife and children, walking up and down
and looking at the show. Among these children, with their
parents, are females. Now and then a girl is called to the
bars and talks with a friend, a lover, or a passing admirer. One
by one the girls drop out to entertain a friend or lover. And in
such places men often find wives, and not a few of them are now
in good society in the nation's capital. With these exhibitions
it is not to be wondered at that the good wife of a missionary
said that the Japanese were the most immoral people on earth.
I had to confess that the immorality was more patent than any
where else. But, after all, does the ostrich destroy its enemy
when it sticks its own head beneath the sand ? Let wise men
look the evil straight in the face and do their earnest best to
undo it as far as is compatible with humanity ; but do not let
the love of morality — true soul morality — degenerate into sickly
sentimentality, or into pharisaical outward form. It is a sad
thing to see this horrible depravity Jiere, stalking openly in the
blaze of light, but sadder far to think that in Christian America
and Europe the same exists, only under cover, and that thou
sands sink into wretched graves from the unholy life, and that
countless thousands of our good people pay no attention to the
leprosy, except to demand that it be kept out of sight, and that
their nerves be not shocked by its open view. The Japanese
seem never to have wakened to the thought that this sin is one
of the most hideous of all ; or, indeed, that it is a sin at all ;
otherwise parents surely would not take their young children,
both boys and girls, to look upon it.
They do not take them to be shocked by its deformity, for no

86 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
deformity is seen — all is decorous, and, to the eye, pretty. No
ribald jest is heard or permitted, either within the bars, by the
girls, or without, by the crowds who look upon them. Police
are ever on the watch. There is no look of shame or sadness on
the faces of the poor creatures thus put up for sale. They are
beautifully dressed and seem amused at the interest they awaken,
and their eyes dance when an admirer beckons them to the rail
for a chat. It is known that when they go out of their bondage
its scars are not left upon limb or forehead. There is nothing
to say to the young: "Look, tremble, and beware!" It is a
strange phase of the strange civilization of this strange people.
There is a great inland commerce constantly going on among
these people. Nothing is so small as to have no value. One
sees bushels of fish no larger than a baby's little finger on the
stalls, and sea-cockles smaller than our little snails, while near by
will be wiggling eels three feet long, the peeled head and arms
of great devil fish, and the fins and steaks of monster sharks.
With all the anomalous productiveness of the soil, producing for
centuries, year after year, great double crops ; yet the land is not
more bountiful than is the water. It is said there are several
millions of people actually engaged in taking fish from the sea,
and this has been going on from time immemorial, and still the
sea never tires of its generosity. Fishes spawned in icy regions
are caught in the same waters here with those which ordinarily
are found only within the tropics, all in boundless quantities,
and many of them of finest flavor. The supply does not seem
diminished by the catch. This is true of lake fish as well as of
those of the sea.
Gov. Hubbard did us the honor to give us an elegant lunch.
The "tai" upon his table was superior to any red snapper I
have eaten, and good fries are to be had in every hotel. The
inland waters, too, are almost as prolific as the sea. Every
stream and lake has its fish. There are on Lake Biwa quite
good-sized towns, the bulk of whose people are fishermen upon
its waters. The salmon trout, and two or three kinds of speckled
trout are in the cold lakes and mountain streams in abundance.
The people all fish, from little fellows of six and eight years up.
One sees little toddlers catching crabs as large as the crown of a
hat in small irrigating streams, and others on the salt bays fishing
with a line and hook for shrimps and tiny minnows. Parents
never seem to think it possible their children should drown.
Little troops are seen along rushing torrents and climbing on the
rocky walls of deep canals with such apparent recklessness that a
stranger trembles for their safety. They seem to have an in-
stinct of self-protection, as little animals have.

CHAPTER XII.
BEAUTY OF JAPANESE SCENERY— TERRACED FARMS— THE INLAND
SEA AND NAGASAKI— MISSIONARIES— CHEERFULNESS OF NATIVE
WORKERS— SWEET BUT SAD THOUGHTS ON QUITTING JAPAN.
Steamship " Port Augusta" October 26, 1887.
Our tour through Japan has been one of pleasure, but at the
same time one of no little toil. We had so little time at our dis
posal, and there was so much to be seen, that we have been
forced to be up early and generally to bed late. We have had no
easy coaches in which to ride and look, and to rest as we rode
and as we looked. The jinrickisha, although in many respects a
most delightful conveyance, is yet one that causes great fatigue
when constantly employed, and for such long stretches as we
have used it. The tread is so narrow that the slightest inequal
ity on the road brings sidelong jolts, which cannot be resisted.
A run of 50 to 60 miles a day in one of these little man-sulkies
is followed by a somewhat racking pain in the small of the
back, and causes the traveller to feel very stiff when he ends
his course. It is then that the blind massage-rubber comes de
lightfully into play.
We were anxious to see and study the country as much as pos
sible, without any attempt or pretence of diving deep into any
subject or of solving national problems, but rather to place our
selves in a position which would enable us to study and under
stand what we may read and hear when we shall have leisure.
My letters are intended to enable others to see somewhat the
things I may see, so that they can more intelligently study the
country we pass through, in the writings of others who may
claim to know more than we know, and to understand what we
simply observe on the surface. But while we have employed our
time in such way as to make it as practically useful as possible,
we have endeavored to enjoy the novelty of our position and the
beauties of our surroundings. In other words, to be tourists as
well as students. The Americans are to-day the greatest tourists
of the world. To these I shall devote this — my last Japanese
letter, and shall try to show them how, when they have done up
the European continent, and fully enjoyed the vast field of beauty
afforded by our own land and by the Canadian dominion, this
old-new empire will offer them a great deal which will be entirely
novel among men, their manner and works, and at the same time
8?

88 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
a mass of varied and beautiful scenery, unsurpassed, if not un-
equaled, anywhere else they may have been.
We have been forced to forego visiting many localities said
to be of great beauty, but have visited enough to get samples of
each and every kind of scenery. We were too late to climb Fuji,
from whose lofty cone the panorama is said to be equal to any in
the world. But we have had fine views from considerable heights.
We saw no snow-clad pinnacles piercing the sky as in the Alps,.
nor yet the home-like landscapes one sees in England. There
are no homes nestled down in copses of wood, or mansions sur
rounded by lordly parks. The music of no distant church-bell
reaches and lulls us, nor do the carol of the mountain herdsman,
the chants des vaches, come in wavy deliciousness from any dis
tant lofty pasturage. But in place of these, one looks upon
mountains cutting the sky with lofty cones, green to the very
summit, and clothed in a wealth of forests far up their sloping
sides— ranges of hills from i,ooo to 5,000 feet high, not stretch
ing in fatiguing sameness, but notched, broken, bent in short
curves, then lifting into sharp points, never the same in any
direction, and never hurting the eye by rocky qoldness or sandy
or brown barrenness. Few peaks exist in the land so lofty as to
reach beyond the line of vegetation. When the tree-line is passed
there comes grassy verdure so luxuriant that the tall heights
seem clothed in emerald velvet. One looks far up narrow valleys,
which elsewhere would be wild gorges, and sees them terraced-
far into their depths and variegated with various crops in all
stages of maturity, from those but lately planted and freshly
green, to others golden and ready for the sickle. Every moun
tain slope, every mountain gorge, is thus terraced as far up as
streams offer the opportunity for irrigation.
In other lands fields on level flats only are supposed to be capa
ble of artificial watering, but here one sees even rice fields 2,000
and upward feet above the sea on mountain slopes which any
where I have heretofore been would have been entirely aban
doned to pasturage. The climate is so humid that brooks have
their sources very near the summits of ranges. These brooks are
caught and made to flood little fields, frequently only a few feet
wide. The overflow covers another range of fields a little lower
down, then runs into the stream to water farms on yet lower
grounds and in the valleys. In some of the mountain ranges,
which are composed of disintegrated granite, there are no springs.
In such, the winter and early rains are caught and held in ponds
and lakelets, some only a few feet across, others larger, till one
sees some of them pretty little artificial lakes of from a quarter
of an acre in size up to one or more acres. The embankments
holding these waters are often 20 to 40 feet high, and the ponds
are stocked with fine fish. These artificial reservoirs enable fields
to wave in green where otherwise all would be desolation, and

FUJI-YAMA, FROM THE TOKAIDO.

PICTURESQUE FARMS AND VILLAGES. 89.
help to make pretty landscapes where, but for them, all would be
barren and unsightly. In some of these upper farm-lands, the
tourist is charmed by the quaint sight of rice, after harvest, hung
to dry on the gnarled branches of the umbrella pine and other
spreading trees. Often rice is thus hung on branches 30 and 40
feet above the ground, and at nightfall reminds one of the moss-
grown trees of Louisiana, only the rice hangs in thicker masses
than ever the mosses grow. Rice, by the way, here is nearly al
ways hung to dry when harvested. Rain is so frequent and dews
so heavy that it cannot be dried except along road-edges or on
poles or trees.
The system of terracing mountain sides for general farm pur
poses is, as far as I know, peculiar to Japan. On the Rhine and
in France and Italy steep slopes are thus managed, to make them
the homes of the grape, but the localities are few and the extent
so small that one can refer to them only to enable you to know
how millions here obtain their entire farming land by thus wrest
ing it from worthlessness. This system of terrace-farming is one
of the great sources of beauty in Japanese scenery. In many
lands farms on plains are pretty when viewed from heights. In
Belgium and parts of Germany it is a pleasing sight to look down
on the long, narrow fields in different crops, looking like old-
fashioned carpets woven in rows of different colors ; but here the
fields are so small and so irregular in shape, being cut into every
form to enable the level to be preserved, that one looks down
upon a patchwork, a genuine crazy quilt, of a dozen different
colorings. Then, too, here trees on all plains aje more or less
abundant — little fields are grown in mulberry, others in bamboo,
still others in orchards of low, trained pears and plums. Persim
mons, golden with their beautiful fruits, some larger than hens'
eggs and shaped like them, are about every village, and trees
skirt every large irrigating ditch or canal, so that the flattest
river estuaries are variegated and pretty. The Japanese persimmon
is a very fine fruit, and when dried is a good substitute for the
fig. Villages are so plentiful that no plain is without several in
view. From the old feudal castle at Nagoya we counted 70 odd
villages in sight to the naked eye — villages of all sizes, forrte of
30 or 40 houses up to others of 500. *
In the mountains many of the villages and little towns are ex
ceedingly picturesque, hanging on the sides of the gorges ; houses
perched on projecting rocks overlooking feathery cascades ; houses
so close together that the little streets are almost roofed by the
jutting eaves. Above such villages on the mountain sides are
the gnarled and grotesque umbrella pines, with their yellow
trunks and branches and spreading boughs. Dense thickets of
feathery bamboo and of camellias and other waxy evergreen
shrubs enclose the lanes and roads. These adjuncts add to the
romantic picturesqueness of many mountain villages.

90 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
In some mountain localities beautiful little jinrickisha roads, as
smooth and well paved as one of our boulevards, climb up the
valleys by a grade so easy and well engineered that they could be
used for a railway track but for the shortness of the curves.
These pretty roads mount on one side of the narrow valleys,
climbing higher and higher, the torrent getting farther and far
ther below, till one looks down i,ooo feet upon the foaming
water, while beautiful slopes lift high above, and perhaps are
wrapped in a soft veil of cloud. Perched high up the gorge, the
traveller will, after the climb of a few miles, find himself in a
pretty hamlet, and enjoy his evening or his mid-day lunch in a
hotel deliciously clean, and as cool as could be wished. Nearly
all travellers content themselves by a voyage by steamer from
Yokohama to Kobe, at the beginning of the inland sea. One
should go from one to the other of these points either by the
great Tokaido road through fine scenery and a dense population,
or by the Nakasendo through the heart of the country and fine
mountain scenery. Indeed, one should take both of these trips.
But, as I said, most travellers content themselves with the sea
voyage between these points. They see in the locality of Hiogo,
Ozaka, and Kioto, several ranges of mountains, composed of the
detritus of granite rocks. These ranges have a somewhat sterile
appearance, with deep gorges of yellow or gray sand ; dunes of
sand left everywhere, and not more than half relieved by the
forests climbing the mountain sides. I am unable to comprehend
the causes which brought about the disintegration of this hard
stone. There must have been, at some period of the past, a
peculiar chemical composition of the atmosphere to have enabled
it to melt down the mountains and turn them into granitic sand.
Water alone will destroy mountains of sandstone, but something
else was needed to change these granite hills. People who have
travelled here as the majority do, will think my pictures of
Japanese scenery overdrawn ; but these localities are exceptions
rather than the rule.
I spoke of the Japanese saying : " See Nikko before you say
kekko " (splendid). This referred more to the temples in that
sacred locality than to the scenery. The genuine tourist, how
ever, who is not afraid of a good and heavy tramp, or who can
mount a Japanese pony, will find the temples afford less than half
the delights to be found about the sacred town. In every direc
tion are fine excursions, some of them of almost unequalled
charms. One I shall always delight to recall — that of some
20 miles, to Chusenji Lake and Umato sulphur springs. Fear
ful that we would be unequal to the walk, we had one pony
between us. And what a pony ! The horse here is said to be
indigenous to the soil. He is a sort of doubly enlarged Shetland
pony, shaggy mane, and foretop as heavy as a Jap's head of hair.
He carries his head very low, and seems as ugly and determined

JAPANESE HORSES. 91
in his disposition as his master is cheerful and easy-going. The
horses are entire, and are used for riding and for the army, while
the mares are employed in raising colts and carrying packs. The
saddle-horses go when they please and stop when they will.
They are the most gallant brutes on earth, and every lady-horse
we met called forth all the chivalry of my steed, and once or
twice got me into a scrape which gave me trouble to get out of.
One advantage, however, accrued to me — the boys dared not
ride ; and, while we theoretically rode in turn, I was generally in
the saddle. Our road was up a river of a crystalline clearness I
had never conceived of. The perfectly white clear water rushed
over rocks in every imaginable way, now cataract, then rapid,
crossed every half mile by odd bridges, some of them springing
from rock to rock, through which went tumbling the rushing tor
rents in wildest fury. The road-way of these bridges is never
over four feet wide, and without any guard on the sides, the
floors being fagots lashed down with grass ropes. My steed, who
never failed to cry halt when he met a pack-animal, to find
whether he were meeting one of his sweethearts or not, displayed
the most discreet care when crossing these frail structures, never
once lifting his nose a foot above the floor. By the way, horses
for the saddle are shod with iron ; all others, as well as the pack-
cows and bulls have their feet protected by shoes of straw, and
very excellent shoes they are. The straw sandal for a man costs
about a cent and a half of our money. I doubt if a full set of
horse-shoes cost any more. In some parts of the roads we have
travelled we could almost say the roads were paved with worn-
out horse- and men-sandals. Whenever the wearer finds his foot
protection too much worn he discards it and dons another, of
which he usually has an extra pair. Every tea-house along the
roads, and there are many, have good supplies of these cheap
foot protectors.
But I was speaking of the excursion from Nikko to Umato.
The road is along the river, between beautifully forested moun
tains, of most picturesque forms, one of them having an elevation
of over 8,000 feet. The vegetation is of great luxuriance, lofty
pines and cedars, beech of large size, birch, elm, and many other
trees, such as are the denizens of temperate climates, standing
side by side with those one is accustomed to suppose the products
of the tropics alone. It is one of the peculiarities of this land,
that not only does nearly every kind of tropical vegetation grow
in great luxuriance, but mixed up with these are the growths of
the temperate zones, in equal sturdiness. Along our road were
thickets of rhododendrons and tree-hydrangeas, the latter 10 to
20 feet high ; thickets of bamboo and of birch trees, glossy-
leaved evergreen oaks, interlacing their boughs with those of
beech and gnarled deciduous oaks ; monkey-slipper trees, with
crooked branches, looking as hard and smooth as if made of

92 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
bronze, and bronze in color, twisting their tortuous limbs among
those of the maple and elm.
In this one day's walk we saw four beautiful cascades, tumbling^
down into the wildest gorges from heights varying from 50 to
230 feet, and two singular falls — I scarcely know whether to call
them cascades or not — one having a fall of over 200 feet down a
smooth incline of 40 degrees, the water rushing down with a
width of about 25 feet in a mass of foam, over a bed of tufa as
black as polished ebony. The other, on the same stream, tumbles
in a succession of such falls from a much greater height. One of
the cascades leaps from a jutting ledge so far over the gulf below
that the pious natives have placed a life-sized statue of one of the
gods high up under the sheet, and a picturesque temple on a lofty
ledge, attainable only by the climbing path under the faUing
sheet of water. Two of the cascades and two of the cataracts are
very unique and very beautiful, and many of the whirls and rush
ing rapids along the river for miles would in England be of suffi
cient beauty to attract tourists from a distance. At an elevation
of some 4,300 feet we came to Lake Chusenji, a sheet of crystal,
seven miles long by a mile in width, 400 feet deep, nestled down
among forest-clad heights from 1,000 to 4,000 feet above the
surface. A lunch of delicious salmon trout on a piazza of polished floors
jutting over the water prepared us for a further walk of eight
miles, now along the tumbling stream, then in thickets of flower
ing shrubs, over a beautiful prairie of about 8,000 acres, along the
shores of two other lakes of say 30 to 300 acres extent, at a height
of 5,500 feet, which brought us to the hot sulphur baths of Umato.
Thousands of pilgrims visit Nikko each year, and after paying their
devotions in the temples, climb to this spot to wash out any fur
ther' impurities of the body and soul. Men and women bathe
promiscuously, without shame, and without any sense of im
modesty. If I be correctly informed, the Japanese have no con
ception of any past sins. No forbidden fruit ever tempted their
forefathers to entail sin and death upon them. In praying they
never ask to have a sin forgiven. They pray for a pure heart and
a spotless soul, for blessings of a temporal character to be show
ered upon them and theirs. A clean body, in their estimation,
conduces to a clean character. They take their hot baths nightly,
and, when able to do so, crowd the natural thermal baths in which
the country greatly abounds. They are pronounced immoral
because they bathe men and women together. But they certainly
have no feeling that there is any immorality in it. We had a
striking illustration of this at the thermal bath of Arima, a few
miles back of Kobe. We three were in the high-priced tank — two
cents each. Beyond a screen was a cent tank, about eight feet
square. Around it were 13 men and women, hanging by their
hands to the edges like frogs to a floating log. In the half-cent

JAPANESE SCENERY. 93
tank, much larger, were dozens of laborers and coolies. Presently
a man and woman passed us, and finding the next tank rather
full, slid into ours. They were man and wife, and in nature's own
dishabille. They thought us Japs, and were disposed to be talka
tive, but as soon as they found we were foreigners the woman
became confused, and blushed. She knew we, being of a differ
ent civilization, might regard her as immodest. But going into
the bath with her husband showed she did not regard it as im
proper to enter it with strangers and other men. It is their
custom, and is not much stranger than that I once saw in Asia
Minor, where we met a dozen or more women fording a stream
nearly waist-deep. They did not wet their garments, but would
have considered themselves disgraced had we seen their faces.
After all, the more I see and learn the more fully I concede the
truth of England's motto — " Hani soil qui mal y pense."
The next best excursion we took for scenery was in passing
over Hakone pass on the overland trip from Yokohama to Kioto.
In the Nikko neighborhood our pleasure was principally in look
ing upward. Here we looked downward. Fuji is to all central
Japan the one great landmark, and is, in many of the finest views,
the great attraction. From every direction he is seen a perfect
cone, with apparently easy slopes. When we passed nearest him,
about the 5th of October, snow had already fallen about his sum
mit, and ran down more or less in lines some 2,ooo or 3,000 feet. It
looked as if he had on a lace mantle, or, rather, collar, which
showed his dark neck through its meshes and points.
We expected to sail by the Japanese mail-boat for Shanghai on
the 20th from Kobe, but found her so crowded that we could get
no rooms. We then found that the Port Augusta was to sail
to-day. We took tickets on her, and are the only passengers.
She was at Vancouver when we arrived there, the 1st of August,
in the employ, for one trip, of the Canadian Pacific Company.
She had a perfectly smooth sea over, while, a month later, ours
was an unusually rough passage. She now goes to China to get
a cargo for New York. We were somewhat disappointed in the
great inland sea. There are a vast number of islands, some
mere grotesque rocks, others forest-clad and green, many of
them quite lofty, and not a few lifting from the water in per
fect cones. They were so close together that oftentimes we
seemed to be thoroughly land-locked. But there was not the
terrace-farming we had been led by enthusiastic book-makers
to expect. Comparatively few of the islands were terraced,
and none to any considerable height. Its extravagant praise
comes from those who have not seen the interior of the coun
try', with which its beauty cannot compare. The sea was filled
by day with little fishing sampans, so plentiful that one is wil
ling to believe that there are, as claimed, several millions of
people, more or less, directly engaged in, or connected with, fish-

94 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
ing. In more than half of the boats seen on this and other trips
there would be a small boy, from ten to fifteen years old, and a
man. These little fellows work an oar as steadily as do the men,
and seem to be expert boatmen and fishermen almost from their
cradle. Sometimes a httle girl was in the place of the boy, the
gods not having blessed her parents with one of the stronger sex.
Women are not exempt from work in Japan, and although treated
with kindness and tender affection, they do their share of the
hard work of the land. The western inlet to the inland sea at
Shimonosaki is about 250 miles from Kobe, and is deserving all
the praise so lavishly heaped upon the whole sea. The passage
here is narrow. The hills and mountains are lofty, all very green,
and frequently terraced high up the sides. As we rushed through
with a tide flowing six knots an hour we had a feeling of great
regret that we were so soon past the beautiful spot. For the
balance of the day we were among many fine islands in the
Corean Strait. While somewhat disappointed, we yet feel that
we have nowhere else had any water trip near so fine as this of
nearly 400 miles, and regret we could not have laid off so as to
have it all by daylight.
When, however, we waked up on the 22d and looked out upon
the little bay of Nagasaki all the Jf^g-t- was forgotten. This is
beyond any thing we can say of the beautiful. Imagine a bay
whose mouth is less than a third of a mile wide, running with a
width of less than one, some seven or eight miles through moun
tains from 500 to 1,400 feet high. The mountains come down to
the water in rapid slopes, with narrow valleys and deep gorges
intervening. On one side the city lies upon a narrow shore, run
ning back into the valleys and deep gorges. The hill-sides are
more or less clothed in trees, half-hidden among which are many
handsome bungalows and terraced and hedged gardens. High
above the town, which has a population of over 100,000, the entire
hills are terraced and green with turnips and other root crops, or
white with buckwheat. In the harbor lay at anchor seven men-
of-war and a dozen steamships, and a vast number of sailing and
rowing sampans. The sampan is not rowed but sculled by one
or more oars set in the side, and worked like the fin of a fish.
We took lunch aboard the flag-ship Brooklyn, Rear-Admiral
Chandler, and had a pleasant time in her ward-room. The Brook
lyn is an old wooden ship of pretty model, but would have a sorry
time in an engagement with any of the first-class vessels which
lie near her. There were the iron-clad Turenne, of the French,
the iron-clad Constance, of England, and an iron-clad Russian.
But we felt with pride that the personnel of our officers surpassed
that of any of those we saw while in the city. Most Americans
seem to feel a sort of shame when they see our poor show of a
navy in these waters side by side with the powerful steamers of
England, France, Russia, Japan, and other nations. I must say

MISSIONARIES IN JAPAN. 95
that I do not have any such feeling, any more than I feel morti
fied when I look at a Grecian or Roman ruin, and reflect that we
have none, or when I admire a royal palace and know it has no
counterpart in my own land. America's strength is in the iron-
hearted men who tread her ships, and not in the iron-clad ships
which carry privileged classes. I believe in being prepared in
times of peace for war, but not in having too many ships to strut
around the world for show and glitter. We had as much pride
when treading the deck of the Brooklyn and seeing the Stars and
Stripes floating over a sturdy body of American tars, as we would
have had if she had been a solid ram, and much more than if she
had been a splendid ship like the Russian near by, and her sailors
reeling in stupid drunkenness, as so many of the Muscovite crew
were Sunday evening. Nagasaki is said to be the worst city in
Japan. The Christian nations have set it a bad example, and for
the first time since our arrival we saw absolutely intoxicated
Japanese swearing like mad in rugged English. They have no
native oaths. Their worst epithet for a man is: "You fool,"
"You beast." But we heard one fellow swearing like a London
hackman in pretty good Saxon. I hope the good missionaries
will keep the " cuss words " out of the island. A round oath
when a man is really mad I can stand, but the oaths uttered by
so many of our people merely as expletives are very disgusting.
The missionaries of Japan ought to do their level best to show
their thankfulness to the Lord, for He has certainly cast their
lines in pleasant places. In every city where there are conces
sions these are the best part of the town, and the houses and
grounds of the missionaries are among the most charming. The
prettiest bungalows are those of the missionaries. The hedges
and flowers of the missionaries are the greenest and the brightest,
and the tidiest children and the best-drilled servants are theirs.
In the summer they all go to the mountains, where, in tent life,
they spend a beautiful two months. Altogether, commend me
to the life of a missionary in Japan. I have no doubt they do
their duty. I have not too much faith in the direct conversions
they make, but, indirectly, they do great good. They inaugurate
education, especially among the women. Christianity will follow
in the wake. It will be an intelligertt Christianity, even if men
turn Christians for the sake of trade. I do not know that this is
worse than people among us who attach themselves to a particu
lar church for the sake of social position. When men become
Christians in the broad sense for policy, they will have a better
chance of becoming Christians in the narrow sense from conviction.
While in Nagasaki we had an opportunity of studying the
people very advantageously. We took on 1,200 to 1,500 tons of
coal. This was done by men, women, and children working with
little straw baskets. At 7 o'clock in the morning, after we got
out of dock, in which our ship was cleaned, a couple of dozen

^6 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
large coal-boats and dozens of little sampans filled with people
came around us. Soon the decks were crowded — men shouting,
boys romping, girls laughing. Such a bedlam I never heard. On
the ship and about it were nearly i,ooo people. Soon the
hatches were opened, and 14 small platform scales were put up.
To each scale was a tub, to hold 112 pounds. The coal is sold
by the long ton. Ladders were erected from the sampan coal-
boats below to the deck of the ship. Women, girls, and boys
then formed a line from the boats below, up these ladders, and
along the decks to the hatchways. These lines held from 30 to
35 people, in some cases considerably more, so as to reach a boat
which was outside of those next the ship. Then the work com
menced, the baskets, holding from 12 to 15 pounds each, being
started from the boat and run from hand to hand to the tub at
the hatch. As soon as this was filled a man would empty it over
into the hold. The baskets came up so fast and in such regular
order that they seemed to be imbued with life, and simply sliding
along the uplifted hands. As the baskets would mount they took
a somewhat rotary motion. So rapidly did they move that a tub
would be filled in very few minutes. Among the workers were
women and girls from about 13 years up. To each gang there
were three or four men, one to empty the tub, one to empty the
basket, and one at a heavy point near. So rapid were the motions
that they seemed often the work of machinery. From morning till
night these people worked, stopping only at noon for an hour for
their two ounces of rice and their lacquer boxes of fish and vege
tables. Not an angry word was ever heard. All were jolly,
laughing, and talking. Now and then some woman would say
something to her neighbor at the expense of us three who were
watching from the quarter-deck — then one by one looked and
laughed. A brighter, happier set of people I have never seen at
a pic-nic — indeed, none as bright, for at a pic-nic there is always a
sort of listless appearance of having nothing to do. Here all
were busy, and willingly busy ; all were working, and working
with a heart. Other ships were coaling near by. In other words,
these people were not at a pic-nic, but this thing goes on more or
less through the whole year, the great Japanese coal-fields being
close by. They were all clean and tidy. Many of the girls had
their hair done up in elaborate style. Over every head was a
blue kerchief tied under the chin to keep out the dust. Many of
the gowns were patched, and some had holes in them, but not a
single one had the slightest appearance of untidiness. All were
clean, all looked cheerful, all were ready to laugh, and all seemed
happy. Yet the men who did the heavy work received only 15
and 20 cents a day, the women ten and twelve, and the children
five and seven ; add to this two ounces of rice for their lunch.
These people were the wives and children of fishermen and
farmers in the near neighborhood, who do this sort of work

CHEERFULNESS OF JAPANESE LABORERS. 97
•when the crops are laid by and when their husbands and fathers
are out at sea. We noticed many of the young women and
children with delicate, well-cut features and sweet expressions of
face. They evidently do not regard work as a hardship. What
right have they thus to toil and be happy? In civilized Chris
tian lands men are being taught that work is a penalty, and
many go at it as if they had a grudge against their employers.
Here these people work for a pittance, and then seem to feel
kindly toward the man who pays it.
As I have said in my other letters, they are a strange people.
I have studied them as best I could. Heretofore, in travelling
in other lands, I have been able to hold some intercourse with
the people, whereby we could interchange ideas. But I have not
attempted to talk with these, even through an interpreter. I
have studied them as I study the crows flying at eventide to
their roosts ; as I study the ants climbing over the tiny hill and
valley, mountain and gorge, in their ceaseless toils ; as I study the
-spider spinning gossamer threads and with them making upon
the air geometrical figures ; as I study the bees in musical hum
toiling for sweets. I have studied these people and leave them
-with keen regret that I had not more time to give to the study.
If any should be induced by what I write to make a tour of
Japan I envy them, for their pleasure is in the future, and not,
;like mine, all in the past. When we weighed anchor, I had for
(the last time trod upon the mikado's soil.
We sailed out of Nagasaki's beautiful harbor, close under
rocky Paffenburg, where so many Christians were hurled to their
death. We watched the land as it receded, and then I sat down
to my work and have worked hard all day. And now, late at
.night, I close this letter and thus end my visit to the Land of
the Rising Sun. Three months ago to-day we left Chicago to
commence our race with old Sol. It was with expectations of
pleasure to be enjoyed, but yet with no small misgivings at thus
parting with those we loved. Six weeks ago to-day, late in thte
afternoon, the typhoon had gone to the eastward, its angry centre,
fortunately for us, having passed some miles to the south, and
many of us were on deck looking to the west, hoping to be able
-ere nightfall to cry " Land ho ! " The sun was struggling to
drive away the clouds lying between him and the earth, and by
fits and starts shot down his pale-gray rays. The low clouds
were racing wildly along, chasing each other like mad coursers.
Within a few degrees of the western horizon there were no
¦ clouds, but the air was so full of spray that the sun sank down
ward red as a ball of blood. We kept our eyes fixed upon his
bloodshot face, for the captain told us we would probably see
land just as he would dip below the horizon. He dipped lower
and lower, when our skipper quietly said : " See, there 's land ! "
-And lo ! across the sun's lower disk there was drawn a zigzag

98 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
line of a broken mountain range, and close to the left was lifted
the clear-cut cone of mighty Fuji, 72 miles away. It was thus
we first saw Japan — to us the land of the setting sun. For six
weeks we have journeyed in and about that land, among its
light-hearted, its strange and incongruous people ;' its cheerful
and happy, its bright and generous, loving and modest people ;
its down-trodden and toiling, its suspicious and immoral, re
vengeful and innocent people ; for they seem to possess all of
these contradictory characteristics. We have wandered among
and have studied them as best we could. In spite of their glar
ing faults we like them, almost love them. And this morning, as
the sun was gilding the heights about Nagasaki harbor, we came
out from among them and cried out as we passed Paffenburg's
bloody rocks, " Farewell, good Japanese, good-bye ! " For six
weeks we have wandered among the mountains and valleys of the
land ; its dark gorges and terraced slopes, its forest-clad heights
and grain-covered plains. We have wondered and admired. We
have been happy, where birds are without note and insects make
nights musical ; where wild flowers deck mountain and valley,
forest and prairie, flowers of every form and of every hue, but
none of them endowed with fragrance, or ever inviting the bee
to sip from their cups ; a land where frowning crags and dark
gorges were made to strike terror to, and wring awe from, the
bravest heart, yet clothed in trees and shrubs and mantled in
garlands, bid the youthful swain and gentle maid to wander in
dreams and to sigh for rosy love. We have been happy, yet the
happiness of one of us was all the time tinged with sadness.
Thirty-six years ago he had wandered afoot and alone over
Alpine heights and through Alpine valleys. Before him then there
was life and its gilded hopes. He looked upward and was filled
with gladness, for he could sing —
' ' The bravest and brightest that ever was sung,
J Shall be, and must be, the lot of the young. "
He was alone, and yet never alone. By his side was one of
his fancy's creation — gentle, loving, dark-eyed, and caressing,
who would yet look with him upon all he now so much enjoyed.
His every look was then upward. His sun was always climbing
and gilding the lofty pinnacles. There, clothed in garments woven
of sunbeams, was the being who was to make his years years of
brightness. He was alone and yet never alone, and never sad,
for there was always the reflection in his heart of a glorious
to-morrow. But here in Japan, in the midst of the beautiful,
there came through the pine needles a gentle dirge and a sweet,
sad song of the past. There was, and could be, no loving eye to
look upon and revel in the dreamland around. There was not,
and never could be again, a loving heart, real or in fancy, to beat
in tune to his own pulsations. There was not, and never could

AN OLD DREAM.

99

be again, a gentle voice in loving tones to whisper : " Hope and
live, live and hope, for there will yet be in this world a bright and
rosy to-morrow."
This afternoon we three, the only passengers of our good ship,
stood upon the deck, and as the sun hurried down to the west,
looked earnestly to the east for one more, one last sight of the
land we left. The captain told us we would see no more land
until the Chinese islands should lift up from the sea. But we
looked, and far off there rose a point — a mere point. It was a
mountain cone on the westernmost of the mikado's islands. We
looked, and as the last ray of the setting sun gilded its far-off
height one of us sighed : " Farewell, Niphon, land of the rising
sun ! Farewell, Japan, land of dreams ! Good-bye !"

CHAPTER XIII.
YANG-TSE-KIANG— CHINESE FARMING— FISH AND MODES OF CATCH
ING—APPEARANCE OF THE COUNTRY— MISSIONARIES,
CATHOLIC AND PROTESTANT-.
Steamer " Kiang-Foo," on the Yang-Tse-Kiang, China,
November 8, 1887.
A LONG while ago, so long that I cannot fix the date as having
been within any given five or six years, when I was a big boy, a
flood in the lower Mississippi dug a crevasse in front of the town
of Lake Providence, La., and carried away some eighty or more
acres of its land. The local newspapers alluded to the fact in this
terse phrase : " Where our office stood yesterday now rolls the
mighty Mississippi ; out of respect for the father of waters we
moved out and he moved in." Whenever in my journeyings this
great river has come into view I have recalled this epigram, and
involuntarily have taken off my hat with a feeling of awe, and then
would swell with American pride that ours was not only the long
est, but the greatest and grandest of fresh-water streams. But now,
after having spent over seven days on the Yang-tse-Kiang (Celes
tial for " Broad River ") ; after steaming so many hundred miles
over its mighty floods, floods which move with a current as swift as
that of our own great river, yet so broad and of such depth that
oftentimes the movement is scarcely more apparent than are those
of the tides in an open sea ; after looking over the thousands of
square miles made by its droppings throughout countless ages ;
after sailing over a great yellow sea, dyed by its red waters ; after
looking down day after day upon its placid bosom — placid in its
broad reaches, yet, when occasionally contracted to a mile in
width, rushing in angry, whirling swirls of waters red and thick
with the washings of 450,000,000 acres of territory, washings
not of coarse and sterile sands, but of soil of almost impalpable
fineness; red and thick, yet teeming with innumerable fishes in
great variety, furnishing food to millions of people ; — after seeing
and learning these things I am forced to lower my national pride
and acknowledge that while we have the longest, we have not the
grandest, of rivers. Hereafter I will touch my hat to the " father
of waters," but I uncover to this, and hail it " mother of waters."
The Mississippi is a moving, active symbol of resistless force, of
uncontrolled and uncontrollable power, and of inexorable energy.

THE YANG-TSE-KIANG. ror
The Yang-tse-Kiang is the very embodiment of lofty dignity, of
conscious might, and of calm, unbending majesty. Catching
its first cup 3,630 odd miles from the sea, in the great table
land, the heart of Asia, where is claimed to be the pillar of
the world and the cradle of man, for 20 odd hundred miles
it washes the feet of vast mountain ranges with lofty peaks
and slopes, said to be of marvellous fertility and clothed in
almost tropical exuberance and therefore of considerable hu
midity, draining great valleys, peopled with dense popula
tions, cutting, in canyons from 1,000 to 3,000 feet deep, through
mighty rock barriers, it rushes down gorges in fearful rapids, but
so deep that steamers are now being built to navigate them, and
spreads itself, about 1,000 miles from its mouth, into a broad,
dignified stream one and two miles wide, and deep enough to
float the largest ocean steamers.
At Hankow, where tea-ships load, 600 odd miles from the
sea, it spreads out two to three miles in width and in the
summer months has a depth of 60 feet in the channel. Here
congregate the huge ocean steamers during the tea season, and,
loaded with the fragrant leaf, steam for the sea, with nearly the
speed which they maintain on the ocean, to the great western
cities. A hundred and thirty miles from the river's mouth it
becomes still broader, and maintains to the sea a width ranging
from five to eight miles, and when we went up it was as smooth
and glassy as a lake. It is now, on our homeward run, somewhat
white-capped. So great is the volume of the river that, although
the tide rises at the mouth of the Wunsung, 18 miles up which
the city of Shanghai is situated, to a height of 12 feet, yet the
water is not even brackish, and even the water-supply for the city
is taken from the river at high tide. Indeed, far below this to
the very mouth it is fresh enough to drink. Forty miles from
the mouth, near the Wunsung, the great island 'Tsung-wung'
begins, dividing the river into two great channels on to the sea.
A hundred years ago this island had no existence. It is the riv
er's offspring during a century's labor, and now supports a popu
lation of 1,000,000 people. 'When we sailed toward the Chinese
shore 12 days ago, whe-fe-yet 20 5,miles out at sea, the whole
surface was quite muddy, and the captain said we were in the
Yang-tse. Stretching along the eastern coast of China is a low, and to a
great extent, absolutely flat plain, over 1,000 miles north and
south, running back, the books of travellers assert, over 500
miles. From my own observation on this journey, and from
what I can learn from some intelligent missionaries, I am led
to think this is a mistake. Broken, short ridges of low moun
tains are seen from the steamer after ascending the river 100
miles. These at much less than 200 miles, are constantly in
view on one or the other shore line, now close to the river

I02 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
and then lo to 15 miles or more away. After passing Chinkiang,
180 miles inland, these ridges are constant and seem piled up
one behind the other as far as the glass will enable one to
see through openings and gaps. Indeed, one gentleman as
sured me that, so far from plains being up here a rule, they
are the exception. The bulk of the country is made up of low,
broken mountains, with valleys and plains interspersed. The
mountains quite frequently run down to the river in bold head
lands and rocky bluffs several hundred feet high, and many of
them very picturesque. Lofty rocks now and then lift from the
bed of the river, covering an area of a half acre or more. These
are precipitous cliffs marked in the charts from 150 to 300 feet
in height. A small portion of each is a steep, broken slope,
growing small trees and surmounted with bushes. Somewhere
on each is perched an old picturesque temple. The rocky cliffs
are almost black with thousands of cormorants perched on every
projection large enough to hold a bird. At the points where
these headlands approached the water's edge the river is nar
rowed to near a mile. Through these narrows it rushes madly
and makes what the boatmen term bad " chow-chow " water.
These headlands and the mountains are sufficiently numerous to
relieve the voyage of too much sameness and monotony. Indeed,
in several localities, the scenery is quite fine, but is hardly suffi
cient of itself to attract the tourist in search of, and loving the
beautiful. But the noble river, its vast surface generally so calm,
its great depth and mighty performances, render the trip up it
very interesting, and the scenery is sufficiently varied and fine to
make it a voyage of pleasure. I found the return trip nearly as
interesting as the upward one. This is somewhat rriore so than it
would otherwise be, from the fact that the locality we passed at
night going up, we see by day coming down.
And now, while I write, my letter is and will be less connected,
because of the constant temptation to go to the door and use my
glass. The great plain mentioned as lying over 1,000 miles along
the seacoast, is apparently alluvial, and has been made by the
deposit from this river and from the turbulent Hoang-Ho, which
aided in its mighty work in the northern part of the empire.
That river, from what I can learn, is much like the Mississippi
and its great branch, the Missouri. Where its dykes are laid, the
river constantly elevates its bed, and has frequently burst its con
finement, cutting new channels to the sea, carrying destruction of
a great amount of property, and killing millions of people. Its
disposition to break over the artificial barriers is a source of con
stant dread to the people, who never know when the monster may
shake his tawny mane and sweep them and their property into
the ocean. Its mouth is to-day several hundred miles away from
the exit of not many years ago. Like the Mississippi, it cannot
be bridled, and is impatient even of the slightest restraint. Had

CHINESE RIVERS. 103
our Southern planters been content to turn sweat into upland
cotton instead of trying to confine the Father of Waters between
miserable earth-works, the floods of the Mississippi valley would
have carried the washings of countless millions of plowed fields
down to the lower swamps, and would have made millions of
acres of splendid lands the homes of a healthy people, instead of
leaving them, as they now are, under the imperial sway of the
mosquito and the ague. This is what the Lord intended, and had
He been permitted to work out nature's designs, cotton would
never have attempted to usurp a throne, secession would have
been a thing unborn, and the democratic party, instead of spend
ing years to undo mistakes, would have made America the home
of 100,000,000 of contented, happy people, all enjoying a com
parative equality of moderate fortune ; and the monopolist and
the anarchist would never — at least for ages — have become natu
ralized exotics. But I am growing politically sentimental. Senti
mental I am willing to be in my old age ; political — kind fortune
guard me ! and protect me !
The Hoang-Ho is throughout the most of the year utterly
nnnavigable. But during the summer floods it rises to a great
height, and is often so destructive that it has been called the
^'Chinese Sorrow." The Yang-tse, though subject to great rises,
is so calm and grand that it shows no disposition to demonstrate
its power. Low dykes easily hold it to its bed. It feeds canals
and irrigating ditches, bearing blessings instead of sorrow to the
millions who are the denizens of the lands which stretch for
hundreds of miles along its shores. The immediate river banks
are so low that from the steamer's deck one can look over the
dykes and study, not only the country, but, with a good glass,
even the habits, homes, and industries of the people. Travelling
by land here is so disagreeable to the foreigner, and subject to so
many annoyances, not to say possible dangers, that few, except
missionaries, attempt it, and these latter only after acquiring con
siderable knowledge of the language. Even then it is found that
a Chinese costume, a shaven head, and a regulation queue, with
the ability to sleep in filthy abodes, and to eat native, nasty food
without a wry face, are almost indispensable. The Catholic mis
sionaries, barring the complexion, l6ok thoroughly to the manner
born. Like St. Paul, they are " all things to all men," and
500,000 Chinese communicants attest the wisdom of their system.
Not only do they pray, preach, and teach, but directly, or through
their agents, do a large business, and have acquired to the Church
large and valuable properties. The Zickaway institution, near
Shanghai, belonging to the Society of Jesus, is a noble foundation.
Possessing some of the finest instruments in the world, some of
the brotherhood are devoted to science, and furnish to the gov
ernment meteorological observations and data ; furnish meridional
time to the mariner, and foretell storms and note their track and

I04 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
nature. They are " Old Probs." to these people. They print
scientific, religious writings and newspapers, and quietly exercise
a great influence. They are not, like most Protestant missionary
societies, impatient of slow progress, and ever striving to show
returns of souls snatched from the burning. They feel the Church-
to be eternal, and that sooner or later good returns will come.
They educate a heathen in useful branches and in mechanics, and
do not try to knock salvation into him, but patiently work and
pray, trusting that the educated soul will ultimately become an
inquiring one. They have schools in which not only Christian,,
but even pagan young men study and prepare themselves for the-
annual competitive examinations, without which no one can be a.
candidate for official position in the empire.
By the way, few people know in Christendom that there is.
no caste in China. The lowest as well as the highest can compete
for all positions, and none, except in times of trouble, can reach
them without first receiving a diploma from the board of literary
examiners. These examinations are said to be so carefully
guarded that favoritism is reduced to the minimum. Promotion
is entirely according to rigid rules. But, unfortunately, the hold
ing and continuance in office is. dependent wholly upon the will
of the emperor, who is absolute and a master. All others acknowl
edge themselves as his slaves, and so call themselves when ad
dressing the throne. The emperor owns every foot of land in his
dominions, and fixes taxes, rents, and imposts as he, from year to-
year, may deem fit — that is as nominally he deems fit, but in
reality as the several governors of provinces so deem. His subjects
obey without questioning his motive or wisdom, and are generally
quiet and easily satisfied. Occasionally, however, they awake from
their lethargy, and then are the most determined and dangerous
rebels in the world.
The Taiping rebellion, which lasted from 185 1 to 1865, proved
the persistence and ferocity of those people when once aroused..
It ravaged more than half of the eighteen provinces. It ended
only after having destroyed millions of people ; in fact, after
depopulating the richest of the agricultural districts. I heard
the numbers destroyed put at 10,000,000 to 15,000,000, but Mr.
Hart, the very intelligent superintendent of the Methodist mis
sion on the Yang-tse, told me he thought the number was between
20,000,000 and 50,000,000, not destroyed by being absolutely
killed, though millions so came to their end, but by being starved
or carried off by diseases which resulted from poverty and want,
superinduced by the rebellion. He has been here 20 years, speaks
the language fluently, and has travelled over nearly all of the
revolted districts. Seeing no evidence of a very dense population
along the Yang-tse, in fact, just the opposite, I asked him his
opinion on this matter. He thought that the population of
China had been greatly over-estimated, and that there need be na

CHINESE ED UCA TION. 1 05
anxiety in the outer world lest this land, being overcrowded, may be
dangerous to other lands ; that it can support a greatly increased
number of people. I should call the Yang-tse plains along the
river rather sparsely peopled ; judging from what I saw in Japan,
not half full. It is true, this was the line of the great rebellion,
but that rebellion ended considerably over 20 years ago, and a
Chinaman can erect a house nearly as quickly as an Arab can set
his tent.
But to return to Zickaway. The institution has a large orphan
establishment. The little heathen look happy and well fed. We
saw 1 50 ; some at play, others at work in the shops, where they
learn good trades, while still others, swaying back and forth, were
chanting their lessons. Every thing looked Chinese — Chinese
tools, Chinese postures, and Chinese manners. As the good
young father, who kindly showed us every thing, said, their aim
is to make as few innovations upon fixed habits and ideas as they
can consistently with the great ends and aims — Christianity and
education. Thus they prepare their scholars to go into the
Chinese world, to battle first for their bread, and afterwards for
the right. The Protestant missionaries are awakening to the
wisdom of the Romish system, and now one occasionally sees on
the steamer one of the " interior missionaries " in the native part
of the boat, in every thing, except the yellow skin, a thorough
Chinaman. One of the good men — in answer to my assertion that
a great mistake made by christianizers of pagan lands was that
they persisted in preaching Christ crucified to a people enslaved
by ignorance and superstition, when, even in our own enlightened
country, more than 50 per cent, of the people were unwilling to
bear the cross — sighed, and replied : " Yes ! but we can only live
and work by the aid of the home churches, and they insist upon
receiving, as a dividend, and seeing a balance sheet, showing souls
saved." It took many hundred years to christianize Europe, and then
it was a slow process until the rulers were themselves converted.
Missionaries can do great good in these far-off countries. But
their work can be made still more efficient by first making educa
tion the handmaid to and forerunner of religion. Teach the
child to read and think, and when it becomes a man or woman it
will see the folly of the old superstitions. The ground will then
be prepared for the true seed. But these heathen find it hard to
understand how our different sects so dispute with each other
after 1,800 years of Christian rule. Buddhism amalgarhated with
the older superstitions and won ; and our Saviour himself says.
He came to build up, not to destroy.
Not being able to go among the farmers, I have been constantly
on deck with the glass in my hand, and in going up and returning^
I have seen nearly every house and hamlet, town and city, along^
the shore, and much of it from close view. Looking upon the

io6 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
lowlands as they lie upon a level with the eye, they seem at first
almost wooded, but on closer inspection the trees are found to be
about the houses and hamlets and along the canals. The foliage
of one tree appears to run into that of another, which may be far
behind it. Canals or bayous run into the river every few miles.
These intersect each other back in the country — so much so that
the whole country for 1,200 or 1,300 miles north and south, and
from 200 to 300 or more miles east and west, when not interrupted
by the mountain ranges, is a perfect network of waterways. The
masts of junks are occasionally seen miles back over the tops of
the low trees. The canals carry commerce and irrigating water.
The banks of the rivers and of the artificial and natural canals are
all dyked. Sometimes on the river the dykes run quite far back,
TOO, 200, and even more feet from the banks. The land in front
of them is overflowed from June to September or October. As
soon as the water recedes this is sown in wheat, which will be har
vested in May, before the summer floods come down. It is sur
prising how wet the land is plowed. I have seen it worked when
wet enough to make stiff mortar. This soil makes good sun-
dried brick, yet seems friable after the crop is put in. The
plowing is done with a single-handed plow, drawn by a buffalo or
cow, generally the former, which are sturdy-looking brutes and
very strong. When not working they graze, each in charge of a
boy. Frequently they are seen lying in the edge of the river,
with barely the head out, and do not get up when the wave from
the boat goes quite over the head ; they simply lift the nose
higher. The grain is generally sown broadcast, a little being
drilled. About half of the fields now are up and green, and what
speaks badly for the farmer, are very often being grazed by the
buffalo and cows and by hogs, a thing never permitted by one of
our good farmers. By the way, the buffalo is by no means like
our wild bison ; it is the bubolo, or water-ox.
The land is evidently cultivated in small holdings, narrow, long
fields, as in Belgium and parts of Germany. One little field,*
however, so runs into another that on an island we saw many
thousands of acres nearly all green, and to the naked eye looking
like a single large farm. There are a great many low islands in
the river, varying in size from 100 to 200 acres up to a great
many miles in length, most of them in cultivation. The farming
does not strike me as being good. It may be better off the over
flowed land. But near Shanghai, where I rode several miles into
the country, I was struck by the great inferiority of the Chinese
farming to that of the Japanese. Every thing, except rice and
vegetables, is broad-casted— even the cotton,— and cannot be
worked as it is in the Land of the Rising Sun, where every thing
is in drills, and thoroughly cultivated. The result is, these people
raise no such crops as do the others. This judgment is not
wholly drawn from what we saw from the steamers, but at cities

CHINESE FARMING. ro7
I ascended elevations from which I could overlook and examine
with my glass large areas of cultivated lands. Nor do the fields
often make the bright landscape presented by the farms of Japan.
There the varied crops, the great variety of root crops particular
ly, make the whole country look like the elaborate vegetable
gardens about an English or American city. Here vegetables are
grown in small truck patches, instead of being a regular farm
product. I expected, from what I had read, to find that the farmers live
in villages ; several travellers so stating positively. It is not so
along this great valley. Farm-houses are abundant, not isolated
as with us, in the middle of good-sized farms, but on the ridges —
artificial generally, — and stand 50, lOO, and sometimes several
hundred yards apart. It is true little hamlets are often seen, where
three or four farmers' houses are thrown around courts or farm
yards. Now and then a farm-house of hard brick with tile roof
is seen. But most of them are of sun-dried brick or of light
frame with reeds interwoven, and then mud-plastered — in other
words, miserable huts or hovels designed simply for shelter, with
no attempt whatever at any sort of ornamentation. The trees
about them are evidently for shade, and not arranged to please
the eye ; no flowers and no adjuncts for beauty. The same ill-
cut and badly arranged thatched roof covers the dwelling-house,
and continues over that part devoted to the buffalo and cow.
The pig, the cow, the chickens, and the dog stand about the
house door, where sit the women and the children, and before
which, after sun-down, the man would be seen strutting with his
hands locked behind him. The Chinese man, in city and on
farm, delights to saunter in a sort of strut when his work is done.
One sees this in cities only with the comparatively well-to-do
merchant, for the cooly or the mechanic has no time to strut. His
work is never done while it is light enough to do any thing. He
works by day and by lamp-light. When not working he is eating,
gambling, sleeping, or looking for a job. The farmers, however,
•saunter along the river bank. They are frequently alone, or with
a little boy or two, never with their wives. These and the little
girls rarely promenade with the lords of creation. A boy baby is
a man's blessing ; a girl he despises, and leaves to be the compan
ion of the drudging mother. The farmer's domestic animal is as
thoroughly domestic and a part of the family as the dog or cat.
They do not eat cats and dogs in northern China. And here
I will add, the people I have seen so far are good-sized, and a far
superior lot to those who go to America. Our Celestial emigrants
come from the Hong Kong district, speak a different dialect,
or pronounce very differently from those in the northern half of
the empire, and are very much despised by them. Though not
knowing a word of Chinese, I can tell when I hear a man talk if he
be from northern China or from Hong Kong. These latter are

io8 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
met with as sailors and waiters on the steamers, and are said to do
better as servants and coolies than those from the north.
The hogs are the scavengers of the cities, and up here are
all black, have very long flap-ears, and a snout and face-front
singularly wrinkled, utterly different from what is known as the
China pig in our country. They are the demurest-looking brutes
one can imagine.
The farmers seem to be also fishermen. This is a vast business
on the Yang-tse. For i,ooo miles a huge dip-net is to be seen
every lOO or so yards on either bank. It is from 20 to 30 feet
square, is attached to a long pole inserted in the banks, and lifted
by pulleys. The fisherman invariably lifted his net as we passed,
intending probably to have it up before the steamer's swell should
drive the fish out. A large fish caught is taken out by a scoop-
net. The smaller ones drop through a throat in the centre of the
net into a bag, where they remain until the fisherman is ready to
quit. Thousands of fishing boats are to be seen, and in swarms
early in the morning and late in the evening ; some with dip-nets
ingeniously rigged out at the stern and also lifted by the pulleys,
others with drag nets. This muddy river is full of fish in great
variety, and some of them of large size. In the spring vast quan
tities of " samlai," a species of shad, are caught. .They are said
to be fine. I have myself seen many varieties of fish, some very
beautiful, and have eaten several kinds which are equal to any
fresh-water fish I know.
As with the Japanese, fish seems to be the flesh food of the
average Chinese. Pork is his delight, but fish is his regular flesh
diet. It is everywhere to be seen for sale, and is carried dried in
great quantities to the far interior. It is very cheap, the very best
costing only two or three cents a pound. Many singular modes
of catching fish are practised. Boys and men dive down from the
piers in the cities and bring up good-sized ones. They catch
them in their hiding-places. But still more amusing is to see a
boat go out, with a bamboo pole across its bow, having a dozen
or so trained cormorants perched upon it. Reaching the fishing-
grounds a cord is tied about a bird's neck, and he is sent down to
fish. He rarely fails to bring one up. He cannot swallow it on
account of the cord on his "guzzle," so he brings it to his master,
who rewards him with a small fish, and sends down another.
And so on till he fills his boat. Some of the birds are so trained
that throttling is not necessary. This mode of fishing is used
more on the small lakes or ponds, left when the river falls, than
in the river itself. Vast numbers of such lakes are left when the
floods go down, and these are simply alive with the finny tribes.
I saw no evidence of dense population in the plain or valley,
but quite the contrary. All of this alluvial country is of great
fertility, and it is apparent that the hills have many of them at
some time or other been considerably terraced. Now the plains

CHRYSANTHEMUMS. 109
are not a third full, and the mountains, as far as I could see back
among them, furnish but little support for man. They are barren
of trees, and look almost as brown as the ranges of Nevada, and
remind me, in some localities, very much of them. Now and
then one sees trees about temples perched high up, and a few
sparsely scattered along the gorges and crests of lofty hills, thus
showing that they could grow in forests if properly protected.
But these people suffer greatly during the cold winters, which are
not infrequent. Their houses are miserable hovels with no chim
neys, and their clothing is composed entirely of cotton stuff.
They not only cut the young trees and shrubs, but actually grub
up the roots for fuel. Straw, cotton stalks, bushes, bulrushes, and
the leaves of the trees are gathered and baled for winter use. On
some of the overflowed lands, too wet for wheat, a sort of coarse,
reedy rush grows in great luxuriance, and to a height of 10 to 15
feet. This is now all being cut, and is used for mats, screens, and
for the woven sides of hovels. We saw women raking up the
leaves of these rushes, and carefully tying them into bundles for
fuel. It is now nearly the middle of November, and yet many of
the vegetable crops in the truck patches about the farm-houses
are but half matured. A frost to hurt does not come until about
Christmas, but after that there is weather cold enough to form
considerable ice. It is said, however, that, as in Japan, the frost
does not kill, as with us in America.
After returning to Shanghai I paid a farewell visit to the public
garden to get one more look at the chrysanthemums, which are
now in full bloom. We in America have no conception of the
beauty of this flower when perfected. I measured one flower, a
perfect ball, every petal placed just where it should be, and. as
white nearly as snow, and found it was 20 inches around,
without stretching out its petals, when measured horizontally,
and 18 inches measured vertically. Spreading its petals out
it was over eight inches in diameter. On one little plat, three
feet by eight, I counted 42 perfect flowers, from four to seven
inches in diameter. One smaller variety resembled a beauti
fully formed aster. I had to examine the leaf before I could
satisfy myself that it was not of that family. Another was the
size, form, and compactness of a fine dahlia. There are many
varieties, some fringed, some quilled, and some compact, with
petals resembling a mass of bent gourd seed These latter are as
solid and compact as a ball of candied pop-corn. To see this col
lection is worth a long voyage.
I am now finishing this letter on board the Kut Sang, a few
miles south of Amoy, on the Eastern Sea of China. 'We have
passed a great many bold mountain islands. They resemble the
mountain ridges lying from 100 to 350 miles west of Shanghai,
and suggest the idea that those were once out in the ocean, and
that the Yang-tse-Kiang has filled a part of the sea and left the

no A RACE WITH THE SUN.
mountains as islands in the plain. The enormous wash from the
Hoang-Ho and Yang-tse-Kiang is said to be filling the sea very
rapidly. Last night we witnessed an extraordinary exhibition of phos
phorescent lights. The officers of the ship say they have
never seen it surpassed, and hope not to see it often repeated, for
it made the surface of the sea so light and so dazzling that
though the stars were out yet the sky seemed intensely black,
and some island headlands, which ought to have been landmarks
to navigate by, were not visible. There was a brisk, monsoon
wind coming down from the north, covering the sea with white-
caps. These were all aflame, and as they rose and fell, resembled
a wild dance of fairies robed in light. Here and there a wave
would lift higher than the rest, and would whirl and pirouette in
mad glee. The horizon looked like a thin band of pale electric
light, as if made by an arc burner reflected upon gauze. At
times the whole sea was ablaze, and one could almost feel certain
of seeing gentle lightning flashes from above when the blaze
would die out, and there seemed to be millions of twinkling stars
darting about in the dark waters. At times for a mile or so there
would be no great mass of light near us, but only these twinkling
ones, or the flaming foam made by the prow of the ship catching
and rolling it back. The ship was lying apparently in a blazing
pool, not much larger than itself, which moved along with us and
carried us along, instead of our moving in it. Where the screw
churned the sea under the stern, the mass seemed to be a cold,
molten metal, so bright that it cast a shadow. I held my watch
over it. The face shone bright enough to enable me to see the
hands and read the dial. It was a fascinating scene, and with
regret I turned in considerably after midnight. I have often
watched these displays on the Atlantic, and thought them fine,
but compared with this they were as flashings from fireflies.

CHAPTER XIV.
CHINESE CITIES, HOUSES, TEMPLES, AND WORKSHOPS — CAT AND
DOG ROASTS— FLOATING POPULATION OF CANTON —
FLOWER BOATS — WOMEN BOATMEN — SUSAN.
Steamship " Mongkut," November 24, 1887.
It is now high twelve, and Captain Anderson has just an
nounced that we are in latitude 8 ° 29'' north, longitude 104 ° 38 '
east. We sailed from Hong Kong the 20th at 4.30 P.M. for
Bangkok. We are out of the China Sea, and have entered into
the Gulf of Siam. We have been upon a pale yellow, pea-green
sea all day. It will get blue later. It is shoaly all about Cape
Cambodia and for a long distance out. Yesterday we looked
down upon a sea of emerald, broken into light, feathery, pros
trate, foamy plumes ; the day before we seemed to be plowing
through a vat of indigo dye, so deeply blue was the world of
waters about us.
When we weighed anchor at Hong Kong, Johnny, Willie, and
I lay down upon easy-chairs on the quarter-deck to enjoy a genu
ine rest. The air was deliciously balmy. We were the only
passengers, as we also were from Kobe to Shanghai and from
Shanghai to Swatow and Hong Kong, and could feel the ship
was our own. About us was the busy harbor, with its 24 steam
ers, its many sailing ships and junks, and its hundreds of sam
pans, crossing each other's tracks in every direction, like flies
in a summer room. The beautiful harbor, from a mile to two
and a half miles wide, lay land-locked by lofty heights in every
direction, and resembled a crooked lake in a mountain land. To
the north, upon the water's edge, were pretty, white buildings,
hospitals, dry docks, and their necessary houses, and at farther
points dingy-looking Chinese villages ; to the south, stretching
along the inner cord of a crescent for two or three miles, near
the centre, were the three-story hongs or merchant houses, with
factories and manufactories toward either end of the bow. Tier
after tier, one behind the other, came houses piled one upon
the other, on long, bending terraces, climbing 400, 500, and
600 feet upon the steep mountain sides. All buildings,
except the churches and factories, were fronted and flanked
by deep colonnades and verandas for each story. Here and
there, more ambitious than the mass, isolated bungalows

112 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
mount above the regular terraces, and are nestled down in the dark
green of tropical trees and shrubbery. Everywhere, except on
the water front, and for one or two streets back, long lines of fine
trees in glossy dark green mark the windings of the terraced
roadways. High overhead, nearly 2,000 feet above us, lifted
Victoria Peak with its lookout tower. About its summit,
and for a few hundred feet below, and along the crest of the ad
joining mountain, 100 feet perhaps lower than the peak,
were bright, white colonnaded bungalow houses, the homes dur
ing the summer of the wealthy Hong Kongese and the summer
palace of the colonial governor. Between these upper clusters
of houses and those climbing the heights below, for 1,000 or
more feet, lay the steep mountain sides partially planted in young
pine, but generally wearing the brownish green of autumnal
grass. Across this intermediate steep slope ran zigzag beauti
fully engineered roads, white among the shrubs, climbing in
different directions the loftiest heights, while crossing them from
the western end of the town, by an easy and gradual rise, ran the
beautiful viaduct road, it being also an aqueduct over bridges and
arched ways, sometimes consisting of 20 odd lofty arches. To the
west the sun was rapidly see'king its couch in a flood of yellow-red
light. We steamed around the picturesque island, once famous as the
birthplace of the deadly Hong Kong fever, but now having as
low a death-rate as most European cities, and lower than any, if
only the foreign population be counted. They, however, go off,
I suspect, to their far-off homes when disease sets its stamp upon
them. They certainly ought to die fast, all of these Europeans
in the East ; they eat too much and far too often, and drink hke
fish. I do not think any of them have any bowels of compassion
for the natives, but every one is thoroughly conscious of having a
liver. I may be rather hard upon them as to their lack of feeling
for the natives, but if so it is their own fault. They certainly
rarely speak of them with half as much kindness as they do of
their ponies (when they have any). For example : the steamer
which followed us to Canton was burned up, and_^.oo to 600
Chinese passengers were burned or drowned. Several times
this disaster was the subject of conversation among Europeans in
my presence. They always spoke with great satisfaction of the
foreign officers being all saved, and passed by the other terrible
,loss with a shrug of the shoulders, and some remark, such as,
'' There 's plenty more to fill their places" It is said the present
healthiness of 'Victoria or Hong Kong is owing to the island
having been so well planted in young pines, etc.
I can, by the way, hardly help but shudder when I think of this
burning steamer. We went from Hong Kong to Canton by the
morning boat. While at breakfast, just before starting from our
hotel, a friend who had reached the place some days before us.

THE POLOOBI ISLANDS. 113
joined us at table and advised us to take the evening boat, and
thereby save a day and not lose any scenery. We would prob
ably have taken his advice but for the fact that when we went
from the breakfast-room our luggage was already down, and our
room assigned to others. This little thing alone kept us off the
evening boat, which burned, and with it from 500 to 600 passen
gers. This was our only narrow escape up to date.
Just at nightfall we passed the Ladrone Islands. I well re
member, when I used to read the " Pirates ' Own Book " and other
kindred works, these names were always connected in my mind
with the homes of the human sharks of the sea.
The 2 1st and 22d our little ship of only 800 tons rolled
heavily and rocked in the cradle of the deep. The northeast
monsoon, which commenced its steady course nearly two months
ago, brought down heavy seas upon our quarter, nearly upon our
beam, so that we rolled and heaved in the deep sea-trough very
badly. We lashed easy-chairs upon the centre line of the quar
ter-deck, and to a considerable extent passed a pleasant time.
We lay all day drinking in the balmy tropical air, watching the
deep sea, as blue as a mighty vat of indigo dye, and building cas
tles in the light, fleecy, cumuli clouds piled up all around us.
Yesterday we bent more to the westward, throwing the seas di
rectly aft, and the ship only swayed gently, but I could hardly
force myself to write. It was so pleasant to lie on deck and
dream and dream. To our right were the high, broken, brown
ranges of Cochin China. Far to the west stretched the bound
less ocean, for the Philippine Islands are hundreds of miles away ;
beyond them is the mighty, surging Pacific, washing the far-off
shores of our native land, and beyond them were those we loved
so dearly. We have steamed among hundreds of Chinese fishing-
boats. All of these and all junks are unpainted, but have on each
bow-quarter a great flaring eye painted in bright color. I asked a
Chinaman why this was universal : " Him no have eye, how him
can see?" was the reply in pigeon English.
Two hours ago we passed Poloobi — Potato — Islands, south of
Cambodia mainland, three pretty, dome-shaped pieces of land,
the largest probably one to two miles in circumference, and 400 to
500 feet high ; the next, not a third as large and lower ; the third, a
few hundred feet in circumference. We ran quite under them
and admired their dense tropical forests, all covered with hard
wood of many varieties, but to me unfamiliar. The thermometer
,is 82 ° in the shade, pretty warm for the last of November.
But I must write of the Chinese and their cities. We have not
been long among them, only a few weeks, but every day and
evening were spent in work. The neighborhood of the almond
-eyed Celestial neither suggests nor invites idle enjoyment. On
the steamers we were constantly on deck, watching the country
-we were passing, watching the mass of Chinese passengers stored

114 ^ J?^C.£' WITH THE SUN.
between and upon decks (going up to Canton we had 2,500
packed like pigs in a car), or collating facts and digesting ideas.
We have visited and somewhat closely studied old Shanghai,
Chin-Kiang, Wuhu, Kieu-Kiang, and Hankow, all large, walled
cities in the Yang-tse valley; Swatow, on the seacoast, 180 miles
north of Hong Kong ; and Canton, the largest and finest of
Chinese cities. These are all purely Chinese. We were in the
outskirts of several other walled towns, and thoroughly explored
New Shanghai, with its 1 50,000 inhabitants or more, and Vic
toria (Hong Kong) with 140,000 native population. These sev
eral cities are scattered over a wide extent of country. Canton
being 900 and odd miles by water, and nearly 700 as the crow
flies south-west from Shanghai, and Hankow 600 to 800 miles
from each of the others.
The dialects spoken, north and south, are so different, one from
the other, that I saw in a court of justice in Canton an interpreter
used to convey to the magistrate the answers of the prisoners,
who were north Chinamen. I was told the words and construc
tion of all dialects, of which there are many, are practically the
same, but the pronunciations are so varied that, to all intents and
purposes, there are several languages spoken in the empire. In
spite of all this, as far as I could see, the people are thoroughly
homogeneous, the same in thought, in manners, in customs, and
habits. All are industrious — their industry plodding almost ani
mal in its patient steadiness. Acuteness and cunning seem more
evinced among those of the south than among their brethren
of the north, superinduced, I doubt not, by their earlier and
longer intercourse with foreigners, who had and yet have little
feeling in common with the natives. They came to the East
as their congeners went to the West, in quest of gold and
fortunes, and left their rules of ethics far-off in their Christian
homes, as likely to be incumbrances when dealing with pagans
and those they choose to call barbarians. I do not want any
Chinese in America, because I wish ours to be a homogeneous
people, and amalgamation of the almond-eyed sons of another
progenitor than Adam can produce only hybrids with our Cau
casian races. I am not one of those who feel that America is
to be or should be the harbor of refuge for all lands and all
peoples. It should be the home of those, and only those, who
can become Americans in every sense of the word. This the
Chinaman cannot do, and I would therefore say to him : " You
may come among us for pleasure or for information, but you
cannot work on a soil you do not consider good enough for
your dead bones."
The foreigner, European and American, comes to China to
make money to carry back with him. He, too, wants his dead
body to lie in the graveyards of his native land. Coming
thus, feeling thus, he is too utterly lacking in those feelings

INFIDELITY AMONG FOREIGNERS. 115
and kindly sympathies which 1800 years of Christian teachings
should have planted in his breast. By the way, I have been
struck by the open expr.essions of absolute infidelity uttered
by so many foreigners here. Many seem proud of the ability
to say : " I am no Christian ; I don't believe in Christianity."
One hears sneers uttered about the missionaries everywhere,
and no joke is told with more gusto than the one about the
good man in Japan, who reported home that, " The few bricks
left after building the temple of the Lord we used in erecting
a- little house for ourselves." The temple, they say, was a
miserable little pretence of a church, while the dwelling-house
was a commodious and comfortable building. They delight to
point out the charming gardens and comfortable houses of the
missionaries in some localities, particularly in Japan, and pass
over in silence the work of many good men and women who are
sundering their home affections, in their desire to teach the ways
of God to man. These good people have to be fed and housed.
It has been a long while since the Lord actually fed the young
ravens, human or feathered.
The north Chinaman is larger and more muscular than those of
the south, but less quick and active. Both are creatures of habit,
and it is difficult to make them recognize the necessity for im
provements of any sort. But when innovations are inaugurated
they quickly take advantage of them for their own profit. They
will never seek progress, as do the bright and hopeful Japanese.
Progress must be forced upon them. They are born, grow up,
eat, live, die, and are buried, as their forefathers have done before
them for countless generations, and count it unfilial and irreverent
to wish or to imagine that the ways of their canonized progenitors
may be or can be improved upon. The dead fatheri'becomef the
son's household god^and he chooses from among his forefathers
him who is to fill the niche in his domestic shrine.
They work like ants — not like bees buzzing and humming as
the Japanese do, — but like the plodding, patient, never-to-be-dis
couraged ant, and as quickly as their work is finished, can lie
down and sleep like animals. And like animals, too, can get as
much rest, stolen in little cat-naps, as from the same amount ob
tained in a steady doze. They have no conception of the con
gruous, and none of their senses seem ever to be shocked or even
incommoded by the most absolute incongruity. They can eat
and enjoy a meal while their eyes are resting upon objects which
ought to be most offensive, or their nostrils are filled with disgust
ing stenches. They can spread their table over an open cesspool,
and there enjoy their most desired delicacies, and can sleep
sweetly with the breezes wafted to their couches from carrion.
They lay the coffins containing their loved and honored dead by
the dusty roadway in an open field browsed over by buffalo, or
on a rocky hill to swelter uncovered for months, and pay large

1,6 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
sums for a spot all uncanny, because the crafty priest has made
them believe it to be a lucky spot. It is strange how crafty men
become who assume holy robes, and how the believer can be so
blind to the craft.
One sees frequently a shop beautifully decorated with screens,
and hanging friezes of finely carved woods of trees, trailing vines
and flowers painted in imitation of nature, with pretty birds
of gaudy plumage among the branches ; with hangings of exquis
ite embroidery in gold and brilliant silks ; with a shrine in the
rear richly carved and bright in lacquer, gold, and enamel, holding
the household god, clothed in gold and garments of richest dyes,
while a part'of the walls are bare and dingy with dirt ; the shops
opening wide upon a narrow, dirty street, with next door a cook-
shop smoking, or a fish-monger with his walls hanging in nasty
dried fish. The rich merchant has no idea of the incongruity in
his surroundings, or that his lavish expenditures are thereby made
in bad taste.
A gentleman in control in one of the concessions- — i. e., locali
ties set apart for foreigners, and entirely governed by them under
laws administered by the respective consuls— told me of a native
who had fitted up very elaborately and at considerable expense a
shop next to a corner, used for not very odorous purposes. As a
reward to the native for fitting up his shop so expensively, he
ordered a rail put across the corner to prevent its disagreeable use.
To his surprise the shopkeeper complained of the fence, saying
the old use brought people, and thereby gave him customers.
In Hankow, Kieu-Kiang, and Swatow hogs abound in the streets.
They are the scavengers. I have seen men in shops gathered
around their little tables, taking their noonday meal, while a sow
and pigs were walking among them to pick up any thing they
might throw away. In one of these places, under the counter of
a sort of notion store, I saw a sow with a large litter of two-day-
old pigs. Pigs, dogs, and chickens are thick in the streets, and
have free ingress into the shops, and seem to cause no annoyance
so long as they do not actually get in the way.
Travellers all speak and write of the filth and horrible smells of
Chinese cities. It is the fashion so to do, and as the majority of
writers simply copy what some one else has written, only guard
ing to use altered modes of expression, no one seems to take the
trouble to examine for himself. Early in this century a crazy
Englishman sang of the hundred stenches of Cologne, and every
scribbler since has to write of them, until now these bad odors
number a thousand. Thus it is with Chinese cities. Some young
Englishman told us to get smelling-bottles before we went within
the. walls of old Shanghai. We spent hours in the old city. We
walked through nearly all of its streets — not carried in chairs, as
nearly all travellers are. We did not find sweet odors very abun
dant, except when passing a shop where fresh wood was being

CHINESE STREETS. 117
worked into coffins or pails and tubs ; nor did we find any thing
so offensive as to make our walk disagreeable — nothing as bad as
I have often found in a hotel in continental Europe, or on the old,
narrow streets of London. We spoke of this to travellers, who
said : " Yes, old Shanghai has learned neatness from its new
European-governed neighbor. Wait till you see some of the
other cities, especially Canton, then you will catch it." We went
through other cities. We found narrow streets, six to twelve feet
wide — eight about the average. Most of them are covered with
bamboo matting, and all are densely filled with people. The
shops are all wide open to the streets, — no doors, — each shop
rather a recess running back from the street, with a counter
covering a third of the store front. All kinds of work are done
in open view : shops of embroidery and silks ; shops with fish of
every size and kind ; shops of all sorts of groceries in baskets on
the floors and counters and hanging to the walls ; blacksmith
shops, in which half-naked men sit hammering before their fur
naces ; shops, in which coffins are made ; crowds buying and
eating in and before the cook-shops; masses going to and fro,
some in chairs ; men with heavy loads swinging from the end of
a strong bamboo balanced on the shoulder ; carriers of water in
pails, now and then a splash dropping near one's feet ; carriers of
garden vegetables; carriers of night soil in open pails, giving one
a whiff not very agreeable — these latter, however, were rare,
except in the early morning ; pigs demure as saints grunting
along ; often the streets so packed that all had to keep step ;
peddlers crying their wares ; carriers crying for pedestrians to
make way, and all making way good-humoredly ; now a big
porker squealing, as he swung from a pole carried between two
men ; dogs barking at us foreigners, and then yelping as a native
would give them a kick for their lack of hospitality. We did not
find the air as sweet as if we were in the broad streets of the con
cessions, but we found nothing more than momentarily disagree
able ; nothing to prevent our hearty enjoyment of the novelty of
our surroundings. We then looked forward with a sort of long
ing to get into filthy, unfriendly Canton. There we were to get
the breadth and depth of Chinese nastiness. There we were to be
constantly insulted, and to have stones or clods thrown at us.
We went to Canton. We spent three days walking through its
densely packed, narrow streets. We found it to be the cleanest
city we had seen in China. We told our guide to take us to the
nasty streets. We wanted to see something very filthy. Ah
Cum replied : " Belly well, I take you where poor people live."
We went. We walked through the old walled city of 1,000 years
and the new city only 400 years Old. We walked everywhere,
among the wealthiest and among the poorest ; through the fine
streets lined with handsome shops, and through those occupied by
the poverty-stricken ; for three days we wa,lked from early morning

ii8 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
to dark. We met some foreigners in chairs. The cunning guide
made them think walking nearly impossible — thus he, too, rides
and gets a commisssion from the chair-owners. Footsore, on the
evening of the third day, we went on the steamer for Hong Kong,
without having found any thing really disagreeable, and without
having received any other than courteous treatment from the
people, except from some idle boys at Honan temple, who take
pleasure in calling the tourist a " fanquoi " (a foreign devil), and
then running, just as a lot of boys with us would call a Chinaman
" pig-tail." Everywhere we showed our curiosity by looking at and
examining every kind of industry. We did this in each city we
visited, but more in Canton than anywhere else. We frequently
stopped men at their work. We really incommoded them, until
more than once I was ashamed of myself. In every instance they
seemed amused at our curiosity, and, I thought, surprised that
we should evince ignorance at their modes, which, I doubt not,
they think the only ones ; but not once were we repulsed ; not
once was the slightest unwillingness shown to our seeing.
I had been led to expect possible injury in going through these
cities. I would now feel no hesitation in walking alone through
any Chinese city, if I only knew the language enough to make
known my wants and explain my curiosity. I made " Ah Cum "
explain to them the difference between their ways of doing some
things, and ours. They were quite curious to learn, and seemed
to think me lying when I told them the quantity we sometimes
turned out. We went into the big mill of the city. There were
twelve stones. The upper stone is turned upon the nether by a
sweep drawn by a blindfolded ox going round and round in a
narrow circle, his track not more than four feet from the edge of
the stone, the flour dropping on a narrow rim around it. There
are three relays of oxen, or about 36 to the mill. I told the
owner how we made flour, and when I named the number of
barrels turned out each day at one mill at Minneapolis, I regretted
having done so. He set me down as a fearful liar.
Coffins are a decidedly prominent article of manufacture in all
the cities. They take a stick of timber, round in its natural
form, and, say, tlA inches in diameter. This is ripped into two
pieces. The flat surface is then scooped out, the piece straight-
edged, and a shorter section of a like stick is mortised into two
ends. A bottom and a top are then scooped from sticks, a couple
or three inches wider than the sides. The sides, ends, and bottom,
are then put together with a cement varnish. When finished,
the two ends show that the sides, top and bottom, are about
three inches thick in the centre, and rounded to an inch or two at
the edges. The whole is then covered, for a well-to-do man, with
cloth more or less rich ; for the poor man, with simple cotton.
Different kinds of wood are used : cheap coffins of common pine,
costly ones from wood brought from far-off in the mountains,

A CANTON SHOP. 119
supposed to be impervious to water. Some of these cost $1,000.
A Chinaman can offer no such evidence of piety as in giving his
father or mother a costly coffin. The coffin, with some quick
lime about the corpse, is then not necessarily buried beneath the
ground, but laid on top — I suspect sometimes to show its fine
ness. It thus lies for weeks, months, or even years. It costs
something to erect a mound over it. A man may leave money
enough for a coffin, but not sufficient to put him well under the
sod, so he lies on the surface until his family or friends can afford
to put him under. The first care of a man is to lay by enough
for a decent burial. Mourning by widow or daughter is by
wearing white, not black garments. A man abstains from shav
ing his head a certain number of months, more or less, according
as he mourns for father or mother. I could not learn that he
mourns at all for a wife. He abstains in mourning from sleeping
on a bed, and wears common cotton garments for a certain num
ber of months, and denies himself certain luxuries of diet. A
wealthy man we met aboard the steamer from Canton was very
careful to tell us he was mourning for his mother, thereby ex
plaining the cheapness of his apparel and the lack of luxury in
his supper. To the initiated his dress would have rendered his
apology unnecessary. These rules are very exacting.
I will endeavor to describe a Canton shop or store. It is a
type of all we saw in other cities, only that in the north, where
it is colder, the ceiling is lower. Such house, of the purely
Chinese style, not those occupied by them in cities more or less
Europeanized, is from 10 to 18 feet wide — a few may be wider —
and from 30 to 40 feet deep, with a steep, common, pitched
roof, the eaves to the street. The ridge of the roof is from
20 to 30 feet high. There is strictly no second story. The light
comes in through windows in the roof, which is invariably, in the
large cities, of rounded tile. The street, where there are fine shops,
is more or less covered with matting; much of the light, there
fore, going from the house to the street, instead of from the street
to the house. Around and within this front house is generally
a gallery used for goods. The gallery answers to the second
story of our houses, and perhaps is so considered. Other houses
come behind the front one, and more or less opening into it. These
all have galleries wider tjian the one in front, and thereby much
light is excluded from them. The sidewall of the house is com
mon to the next house, or stands against it. Usually the wall is
a party wall between the two. Sometimes these houses or, rather,
parts of houses are three deep, each one meeting the next with
its eaves, and forming a trough between the two. The conduc
tors of the inner roofs run down within the house. The ground-
floor is of brick or tile, and only one or two bricks higher than
the street. Some of the front shops are very richly decorated
with brilliant shrines holding the household god or gods, and all

I20 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
rather tawdry, somewhat in the style of our gaudy, gilded theaters..
Being lighted from above, the effect is very pretty. All houses,.
by the way, in Canton, are of brick. In Swatow the majority
seem to have concrete walls. These latter, about the doorway,.
are prettily painted al fresco, and almost immediately after the
last coat of mortar is put on. Some painters seemed much
pleased at our watching them work, and evidently put in their
best touches. Some of the scenes painted were really artistic —
artistic in Chinese style. As far as I could discover the dis
tances between street and street were about 200 feet, the
houses, or, rather, sets of houses on one street backing against the
rear wall of those on the next street. The dividing walls of the
two or three houses standing one behind the other are often so
opened as to make one continuous shop. The mill I mentioned
ran from street to street, but was under 20 feet wide. In northern
cities I noticed no lofty stores as in Canton. There the first
story was rarely over 10 to 15 feet high, and usually when
there was as much as 1 5 feet there were two real stories.
Many modes of work were to me very novel. Razors and fine
knives are all cut by hand with a hand chisel. A fine stone lies
before the mechanic, and every few minutes the cutler sharpens
his chisel. Ordinary cutting implements are only hammered out.
When filing any thing to a smooth and even surface, the file is
worked in one hand and the thing filed is held in the other, in
stead of being laid on a bench. The file has at the small end a
wooden continuation, which runs back and forth in a ring,
thereby keeping it level and regular in its motions. All timber
is sewed into boards by hand in the shop using the boards.
There are evidently no saw-mills. I could hear of no great rice
mills. The rice is hulled by being placed in a mortar and beaten
by a maul at the end of a lever, lifted by a man stepping upon
the short end, and thus lifting the maul, which then falls when he
steps off and beats out the rice by its own weight. It is a lively
sight to see double rows of these pounders, 10, 20, and at one
place 40 or 50, all worked by athletic naked men, one to each
mortar, usually moving so that a given number of mauls would
fall at a time, thereby thumping in regular musical intervals.
The manner of mangling and glazing cotton nankin is very
droll. The stuff, after coming from the dye-vat and being dried,
is slightly dampened by a man spewing upon it from his mouth
a delicate spray of water. I could not make one of them smile
enough to loose his pucker. He would send the spray out as
fine, almost, as ' ¦" particles of fog, and as evenly over the goods
as one could conceive, folding the stuff as he sprayed it. He
would then laugh as much as we. The goods is then laid before
a man who, with his feet, "manipulates" (excuse the bull) a
stone, weighing several hundred pounds, three or four feet
long, two feet deep, and ten inches thick, with a convex curve on

DOGS AND CATS AS FOOD. i2r
the base, about two feet long. The top of the stone is scooped
out and the ends cut down to take off weight. The manipulator
rolls some of the stuff around a wooden roller, three inches in
diameter, and places it in a smooth wooden trough, hollowed so
as to have a concave, a yard wide. By a quick motion of the foot
the stone is thrown on the top of the roller, and rapidly worked
back and forth, rolling the roller in the trough, the man all the
while, as does the rice-mauler, sustaining himself by a sort of
trapeze bar above. In an incredibly short time, by a motion of
his feet he tips off the stone, and the stuff is drawn off perfectly
ironed and glazed. When one of our fair ladies touches to her
cheek a beautiful piece of glazed nankin, let her remember the
delicate spray which dampened it for mangling.
The process of drilling holes through pearls and small coral
beads is pretty. The pearl or bead is dropped into a little pit
barely large enough to hold it. Then, with a drill as fine as
a cambric needle, worked by a silk thread on a short bow, the
hole is cut through in less than a minute. Beads are counted by
being passed over a sort of wooden platter with 1,000 holes just
large enough to catch them ; each hole catches one, the remainder
are rolled off, and if a hole or a few holes are discovered to be
empty, enough are counted to supply the deficiency, and the
whole is then tipped into a box. A thousand are thus counted
in a half minute or so. Wood and ivory carving were also in
teresting features of Canton, and I was sorely tempted to invest,
but we were yet far from half-way around the world, and I had to
forego. Cook-shops abound in all Chinese cities, and hanging in and
before them were many delicacies tempting to the Chinese palate :
whole-roasted pigs, fowl, hares, game, etc. The pig's jowl is
cleaved vertically, and then the whole animal is spread so as to
exhibit the porker in his entirety — that, too, when weighing 100
and more pounds. Ducks and game have the head and feet, and
sometimes the tail-feathers or hair are stuck in or pulled over the
tail-bone. In the cat and dog cook-shops the claws and feet are
all left on. By the way, a fat young puppy makes a beautiful
roast. The cat looks like a huge sqijirrel. These are only eaten
in Canton, as far as I could learn, and I am led to believe it true ;
for in every other city the dogs were a nuisance and have a mortal
hatred of a foreigner. They would discover us by scent before
we could be seen, and would commence barking furiously and
seemed desirous of testing our flavor. But, like all wolf-dogs,
they are great cowards, and nearly all Chinese dogs have the
Siberian or coyote characteristics. In Canton we were barked at
by only one dog, and he got a furious kick from a native. I
have a suspicion that the curs know they are good for the dish
as well as for the bark, and are very well behaved. I could meet
no Chinaman who confessed to eating cats and dogs. All said

122 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
they were only cooly food, but I found they cost more than that
of a like quantity of pork. I therefore have a suspicion that
others eat them, but on the sly, and why not ? It is not the
mangy cur and starveling cat that are eaten. They are fattened be
fore killing, and all we saw roasted were appetizing in appearance.
They are only offered at special markets, and prepared at special
cook-shops. At one of these I saw a number of coolies eating
from a large bowl of stew. I suspected the leaner curs and purr-
ers were stewed, and not roasted, and were cheap.
About nine in the morning, and again about one P.M., the people
seemed to be eating their meals. In all shops the employees eat
in the place ; the meal furnished, we were informed, by the master.
Each man had his small bowl, which he filled from the rice-tub,
and then, each would, with his chop-sticks, pick out pieces of
fish, flesh, or vegetables, from a large bowl of stew common to
them all, and around which they all squatted. The dexterity
with which they can pick up a thing, even a grain of rice, with
the chop-sticks is very remarkable. They can use them much
more deftly than we can the fork. The rice from the small bowl
is thrown by a sort of jerky motion into the mouth, to which the
bowl is brought. They eat a kind of macaroni, or rather vermi
celli, which seemed absolutely to run into the mouth as if it were
alive, and one piece following another so continuously as to seem
a single long string. In eating, the bowl is lifted close to the
mouth. This is done among all chop-stick people.
Embroidery is done by men rather more than by women, the
soft Chinese hand being admirably fitted for delicate work. The
hand of every Chinaman, not absolutely occupied in very hard
labor, is as soft as a new kid glove. The designer draws off the
figures with a sort of pencil, without any model, and apparently
without any preconceived design. The thing comes out, however,
curiously harmonious. I admit it to be purely Chinese harmony.
Chin-aware is painted in the same way. Each piece is done
separately, and rapidly, yet a man will design and paint dozens
of pieces all alike, yet each in some small detail differing from
the other. If you will examine any of your real china-ware you
will notice this peculiarity. The same will be observed in their
embroidery. The white crape shawls were very rich and artistic,
and were a sore temptation to me, and the paintings on rice-
paper are grotesque, but very pretty and of exquisite coloring.
We visited the place of execution. There was one head in a
basket, cut off some weeks before, and around were many copper
pots, neariy three feet in diameter, filled with heads, and cemented
down. The body is buried, but the state holds on to the head.
For ten cents the executioner showed the sword, and solemnly
went through the motions of taking off a caput. He said he had
cut off a good many hundreds, but admitted he would have
to strike hard to sever my neck with a single blow, but would try

TEMPLES AND PAGODAS. 123
it if desired, and looked as if he would do it most good-naturedly ;
that the Chinese neck was smaller, and he rarely had to strike
twice. Executioners have much practice. Six thousand heads
are annually taken off in China. The sword was about two feet
long in blade, and not over two or two and one half inches wide.
By the way, these people have very small necks. It is a little
singular that the execution ground is used for drying earthen
ware for the kiln. When did this idea commence? Potter's Field
is almost synonymous with the burial-place of the destitute.
The temples of China are far from interesting, and greatly
inferior to those of Japan. Indeed, except to note the lack of
interest, they are not worth visiting. The three great temples of
Canton are those of Honan, a large Buddhist temple, with its
many acres of ground, and its trees trained to represent men, ani
mals, and birds, its great fat, sacred pigs, and the three large
statues of Buddha ; the temple of Five Hundred Genii, with 500
gilded, wooden, or clay figures, none of them having any preten
sions to artistic merit ; and the temple of the Five Genii : these
are the only ones we have seen at all worthy of notice.
Two guild halls, one at Hankow and one at Canton, are de
serving of close attention as examples of rich, florid Chinese
architecture. The tiling of the roof, the elaborate wood-carving,
the rich shrines, and gold-carved gods at Hankow are gorgeous.
Indeed, it would seem the design was to see how much gilt and
carving could be gotten into given spaces. The hall at Canton,
though very fine, is much less elaborate than the other. They
are both a species of merchant boards of trade, where heavy
native transactions are completed. Each has several halls, several
small temples in honor of different gods, theatres, banqueting
halls, and gardens, and cover large areas of ground. Great trans
actions, from what I could learn, are closed and cemented with a
feast. The pagodas are more attractive than the temples. Some are
of great antiquity, dating far back in the early centuries of our
era. Some are more or less in decay, shrubs and small trees
growing on the projections of the several stories and on the sum
mits. Five and seven stories are the usual heights of those on the
Yang-tse ; nine of those on the Pearl Hiver and in Canton. Some
of these latter are in good restoration, and are very pretty land
marks, and as such they are used by the navigators on all the
rivers. As far as we could learn they seem to have been erected
not in connection with any temples, or in any way as places
of worship, but as a sort of propitiatory offering to the gods, for
the purpose of bringing good-luck to the builder or builders, or to
the locality. The whole theory of Chinese worship seems to be
based upon the idea that the gods are a species of devils, ready
and rather willing to work harm to mortals, and, therefore, to be
constantly propitiated and appeased. The one great god whom

124 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
Buddha represents is a good god, and does all things well. A
man's good ancestors are in heaven in the presence of the one
good god or gods. To them, and through therh to him, thanks
are rendered for blessings on earth. No prayers are offered for
the purpose of affecting in any way the future state of the
petitioner. Temporal blessings alone are sought. The future is
fixed and determined, in accordance with his good or bad deeds
on earth. But the devilish gods are constantly meddling with
men's affairs, and putting their fingers into men's pies. To pre
vent such interference being harmful, offerings are made. There
are some gods who now and then do good and kindly acts toward
men. These have rich promises and sometimes valuable presents
offered to fix their kindly interference.
One sees frequently a small-footed wife — the first and real wife
— who has not been able to hold the affections of her husband,
who is spending too much of his time with one of his big-footed,
and, therefore, more active, wives ; one sees this neglected wife
clap her hands to the god of woman, and give him a few " cash,"
while she prays him to bless her by making her the mother of a
boy, and thereby acceptable to her liege lord.
By the way, a wealthy Chinese merchant told me that the rea
son he married a small-foot was because she was not able to get
into harm, but a big-footed woman could get about too easily, and
could get into mischief ; that his main wife lived in Canton — he
would not take her where Europeans lived ; that his second and
third wives lived with him in Hong Kong. He went twice a
moon to Canton to see his first wife. The first wife is the lawful
one, and cannot be put away at will, or if so must be well main
tained. The other wives are little more than slaves, and can be
put away at pleasure. But he said public opinion protected them,
and no man dared send off one of his wives after she had borne
him a child without making ample provision for her support, and
that custom bound a Chinaman even more than law did. That if
he himself were to go abroad with his wife he would be willing and
glad to introduce her to intelligent foreigners, but that here
in China custom would not permit him to let any man, other than
a father or a brother, visit his wife. " The fact is," he finally said,
" the Chinaman too fool jealous. When he lose his fool jealous,
he come as good man as Englishman or Melican man."
On the 15th, in Canton, we found ourselves in a densely packed
street. We could scarcely get along. A procession was moving,
in honor of the " God of Water," I think. Well-dressed mer
chants, in a sort of guild uniform, were marching behind bands of
music, followed by Httle boys, dressed in exquisite embroidery, on
ponies, and girls beautifully dressed, on chairs all covered with
flowers ; some in studied positions, but sustained by hidden
frames so adjusted as to prevent weariness. These were followed
by little pagodas and temples of lacquer and kingfisher enameL

CATHEDRAL OF CANTON. 125
Successions of this sort of thing followed each other for nearly an
hour. All was good-humor and good order. Before the proces
sion came up the street was packed, yet, by some sort of Chinese
jugglery, the crowd jammed itself to the sides so that there was
room for the moving line. We got into a pretty store, and to our
amazement the owner had stools brought for us to stand on, so
we could look over the heads of others, and even made some men
move to one side who were in front of us. And yet we came to
the " City of Rams " expecting to be insulted, and probably
injured. Probably the traveller imagines much, or brings upon
himself much, of that which he is in the habit of calling Chinese
hostility. The real fact is, the Chinese very much fear foreigners,
and stand in awe of them. They will rarely fail to lower the eye
and turn away when a European or American looks upon them
with an earnest eye.
We had quite a long conversation with the bishop of Canton,
who received and treated us with great kindness, for which
we are under obligations to his Grace, Archbishop Feehan,
whose Latin letter we carry with us when calling upon any of
the Catholic hierarchy. The good bishop has been in this
country some 25 years, and speaks only French and Chinese.
He was greatly pleased when informed of the kind treatment
we had received in his city, and agreed with us thoroughly
that much of the reported hostility of the Chinese was imagi
nary, or somewhat brought on by the mistakes of the tourists.
He said there was a very bitter feeling toward the French
after their late war with the Chinese, but he could see that it
was growing less year by year. In his district he has in his
church about 30,000 members. They had hard and slow work
to win these people from their superstitions. I suggested that
the bishops of some 1800 years ago would have thought his
success great, and that he had cause for hope. His face bright
ened up as he replied : ^'' Ah, oui ; toujours I'esperance ; V esperance
€St toujours le notre." The bishop wears a pig-tail and looks a
Chinaman. The church building, whose foundation was laid
some 25 years ago, has now a complete exterior, and is being
beautifully finished within. It is all of cut stone — no wood or
plaster. It has two lofty towers,' and is excelled in architec
tural purity by few such buildings in Europe. There are beau
tiful marble altars and rich stained-glass windows. They are
earnest and wise, these French priests. The Orientals cannot
comprehend pure simplicity. They must be appealed to through
their admiration and their awe for the grand. This magnifi
cent church towering far above every thing else except a few
pagodas in the " City of the Rams," seen for many miles up
and down the great river, will do a vast deal to win the Celestials
from their belief in the five genii, and the supposed petrified
rams' heads which lie before them.

126 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
The legend is that ages ago five genii were flying over the
land, which was greatly distressed by a famine. They kindly
alighted, together with five rams of plenty. Monster footprints
— i. e. old-time water-worn marks — several feet long are shown in
their temple garden, where they first touched earth, and five
water-worn stones, resembling rams' heads, are in front of their
statues. A httle kindly treatment by the gray head of our party
to a prettily dressed child brought upon us the bright smiles
and kindly words from his Mantu mother — the wife, probably,
of some high official of the quarter, and here that day for
worship. Before forgetting what I said of the beneficial effect of pomp
on these people in religious matters, I will say something of the
misplaced economy of our government in all the East — that is, the
niggardly manner in which our consuls are forced to live when
compared to that of other western powers. I think every other
government has its fixed consular residence, always handsome
buildings, with fine grounds. These impress the people, and
win respect from men who value an official in proportion to the
style in which he moves. A mandarin or magistrate goes to and
from the courts in a procession of officials, with wheezing fifes,
and beating gongs, and banners flying. This is approved of by
all the natives, because it impresses all with the power surround
ing the officials. A magistrate hearing a criminal cause has his
personal attendants about him, and every few moments his pipe-
bearer hands him the pipe, from which he takes a few whiffs, to
help preserve his calm sense of justice. There is absolutely no
caste in China, but the official moves and acts ever in great state.
Wise men have found these things beneficial.
America sends consuls out here clothed with judicial powers.
They settle all difficulties and all troubles involving the property,
life, and liberty of their countrymen. They represent the majesty
of our government. They take evidence involving fife and
property and give decisions, and yet one we met lives in a re
spectable building because a missionary happened to desire a visit
home, and next spring I fear he will have to roll up his bed and
look out for a bunk to lay his head on. He may or he may not
get a fitting house, but even- if he does he loses, by his forced
moving, prestige with the people around him. This thing has
been thrown up to us both in Japan and China by the few natives
with whom we talked. If a thing is worth doing, it is worth
doing rightly. Our government is a mighty one. Its navy is
the laughing-stock of the worid. That one can stand ; we are a
peace-seeking people. Our institutions do not require ships to
send around the world for the junketing of admirals and commo
dores and their wives and daughters. But our merchants and our
business men visit all lands. When they come to the East let
them find ministers and consuls who can try their causes in

LIFE ON CANTON BOATS. 127
buildings which belong to our government, and thereby help to
make the people we may be forced to contend with feel a respect
for the government whose flag floats over us. Our Congressmen
do not take their seats for 13 months after being elected. It
would be a good idea to force each one of them to spend a
good part of the time in going around the world, thereby learn
ing how to legislate for the nation, instead of running back and
forth to Washington to get some paltry position for workers at
the polls.
One of the peculiar things which strikes the traveller at Can
ton is its vast floating population, and its boats, manned by
women. It is said there are over 80,000 of the 1,600,000 Can
tonese who live and die in little boats on the river. These are
of three sizes. The largest or regular marine boat is 25 to 40
feet long, with a beam of 10 to 15 feet. Some of them have a
sort of second story. They traffic, carrying freight and passen
gers. Their owners never go off of them. At night these lie
side by side, 10 to 20 deep, with another row meeting their bows,
and so on for hundreds of yards. Some of them are beautifully
decorated within, not outside — no Chinese boat ever is, or even
painted — and are called flower-boats. Opposite them are those
termed the room-boats. Here the revelry of Canton is carried
on. Susan, our bright sampan girl, guided us from one boat to
another, now and then stretching out her tiny hand to assist us
in our movements. A gentleman wishes to entertain some
friends. He hires a flower-boat for the evening, the hire securing
the supper and wines. He then hires one, two, three, or more
singing- and dancing-girls — a sort of odalisques ; — each guest
can bring a girl if he wishes. Here they meet to make a night
of it, eating and drinking and gambling, the girls singing, play
ing, or dancing for their amusement. The boats are all open in
front, like the stores, and hundreds of idlers pass to and fro to
see the revellers. This they seem to relish. We were beckoned
to enter and partake, but with a motion of thanks declined. This
is kept up from five in the afternoon to one, two, or three at night.
Although there are hundreds of these pleasure-boats, and perhaps
thousands of the singing-girls, yet the population of the city is so
great that this thing goes on night* after night throughout the
year, and from year to year. The water makes the air cool, and
these flower-boats take the place of beer-gardens in Germany,
cafds in France, and tea-houses in Japan and in other cities of
China. The girls are of the lower classes, belong to the master
or mistress of the house-boats, and are hired at one dollar an
evening. They are allowed to drink, but not to eat. I was told
that if this were permitted their coarse manners would crop
out in eating, but that they quickly learn how to drink like
ladies. The sampans are much smaller boats, about 15 to 20 feet long.

128 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
with a beam of five to eight feet. In this little affair a woman
will live with two or three children. If she has no daughter old
enough, she manages to buy a girl grown or nearly grown. These
two manage the boat, of which there are thousands. They do all
the light river carrying, and it is very great. Sampan women will
rush upon a steamer, seize one's valise or even trunk, and carry it
down a gangway with the strength of a man and with more
agility. They will give one a hand to steady him, and, in fact,
protect and assist a strong man as he at home has been accus
tomed to assist women.
Our hotel was in Honan, an island suburb across the river from
the main city of Canton. Susan, lithe, sharp, quick-witted Susan,
owned two boats, and had three pretty daughters, all nearly as
old as herself, and two little children. She or they were always
on hand to scull us from the hotel to the city, a few hundred
yards across. And how they could scull. In and out, under the
bows of junks, through crowds of big boats or little sampans,
rowing like men, climbing like monkeys. Our Susans were all
pretty little women, beautifully formed, with tiny hands, if hard ;
and such feet and ankles ! It is impossible to describe them.
The reader can imagine them, and can't go amiss, so perfect were
they — real models in nut-brown. And Susan was ubiquitous.
It mattered not where we would reach the river after a walk,
Susan was sure to be there to scull us over, to take our ten cents,
and to crack a joke in pigeon English — a joke not always the
most delicate ; for none of them are prudes. We wondered how
she with only two boats could be everywhere at once. On our
last day we were rowing down the river when a woman's voice
from another sampan rang in my ears. We looked, and lo, it was
our real Susan ; and yet Susan was rowing us. We then dis
covered that all these little boat-women — that is, the young ones,
had beautiful forms and perfect feet and ankles. The boys on
taking a boat never saw above the ankle, and in that way were
joking with a bright-eyed woman supposed to be Susan, and
had not discovered we did not have our Susan, whose ankles
were pretty, but whose eyes squinted badly. It is truly won
derful the amount of work these little women can do. Often
one will be seen sculling a boat with a baby strapped to her
back. Indeed, nearly half of the boats had babies, and one was
generally fastened to one of the women's shoulders.
The Chinese are fearful gamesters, and one never goes far
that he does not see a game going on — a sort of faro — coolies
gambling on the ground at the corners of streets, workmen gam
bling in shops, and, what was queerest of all, we rarely passed a
temple without seeing a game in progress on the steps or the por
tico. The stakes are very small — all in " cash," which is the tenth
part of a cent. These are the money of the people, and some of
the heaviest loads carried by the porters are the baskets of cash

APPROACHING BANGKOK. 129
transported to close purchases, 1,000 of them to a dollar. Each
cash weighs about as much as an American cent.
This is the 25th ; we will be at the bar in the Menam River to
night. To-morrow we will be in Bangkok, and fear we will swel
ter in the heat. Out here, over a deep blue sea, the thermometer
is high in the 8o's. The boys are in their shirt-sleeves and I am
uncomfortably warm in an alpaca.

CHAPTER XV.
SIAM— RICH SOIL— VAST FORESTS OF TIMBER— BANGKOK— VUL
TURES EATING THE DEAD— A CREMATION— AUDIENCE
WITH THE KING— SIAMESE THEATRE.
Bangkok, Siam, December 5, 1887.
If we could study secret biographies of the great men of the
world, those who have left footprints on the sands of time, we
would probably find that the currents of their lives were turned
into the channels which bore them to their greatness by most
trivial circumstances, by mere straws. So, too, are men's opin
ions moulded, or at least colored, by the veriest trifles — colored
into prejudices which require time and care to eradicate. He
whose mother's treasured porcelain service was of the old blue-
willow pattern, has, more or less, his impressions of the Celestial
Empire fashioned upon the model he studied upon the plates from
which he ate.
Our ideas of tropical landscapes are nearly all built upon the
pictures in our geographies, showing us a dense fern and palm
jungle, with a huge boa-constrictor wound about a tree, and a
tiger springing for a deer, but likely to land in the open jaws of a
crocodile ; or of a forest of banyan and tree-ferns overhanging a
dark stream, with a naked native paddling a tiny canoe beneath
the clustering branches. These facts should be considered by the
educators of youth ; even the illustrations of children's books
should be made carefully true. Here I would suggest that school
atlases lead into errors which fix themselves in the minds of chil
dren and last through their lives. Maps of our own country and
of the several States are upon a large scale, while those of for
eign countries are on a greatly reduced one. The eye of the child
measures all by the space covered on the sheet, without reference
to the scale. The result is that erroneous ideas of the relative
magnitude of different countries become fixed in their mind.
This has been the fact in my own case, and of every fellow-trav
eller to whom I have mentioned the thing. School geographies
should have all maps on a uniform scale. Pupils would then,
without a thought, acquire accurate comparisons, and would
better understand the world's geography.
Travellers' maps have on the margin a small one of some famil
iar home land, on the same scale with the maps, so as to enable
130

TROPICAL SCENERY. 131
the traveller at a glance to understand the dimensions of the coun
tries he visits. Rand and McNally's admirable folding maps use
Ohio as the base for comparison. We have several times heard
intelligent travellers, who knew the approximate number of square
miles in China in figures, yet exclaim with surprise when remark
ing the insignificant little spot represented by Ohio's 40,000 square
miles in the margin of the map of the Celestial emperor's mighty
dominion. This is thrown out as a hint to intelligent school-
boards. My early imbibed impressions have been a constant stumbling-
block to me in the vasty East. These thoughts have been sug
gested by my week's sojourn in Siam, the last and fast-changing
relic of Oriental kingdoms yet existing in the world. When we
steamed up the Menam River to Bangkok a week ago, and after
ward in a little steam barge to the old capital, Ayuthia, 70 miles
above, I felt as if I were continuing my boyhood dream of a tropi
cal land — the living picture of the huge banyan, with its many
arms ; the dense tangle of mighty tree-ferns and broad-leafed, low
palms ; the spreading low trees, clothed in a mass .of flowering
vines ; the clumps of bamboo, with their feathery tops ; the slen
der betel, the stately cocoa, and the massive fan-topped sugar-
palms ; the tiny canoe darting in and out of the little creeks and
canals almost dark in' ¦• deep green; the dusky native paddling
his little dugout. Here almost alone did the early pictures give
us true ideas of tropical lands visited. These were my first reali
zations of a veritable land of the burning sun, and might well have
been the spots which suggested the pictures (or rather one of
them) which I had seen in my school-book a half century and
more ago. These have printed on my mind a photograph which
will not fade while I live, and one I will ever enjoy when looking
back upon it.
When we left home for a race with the sun we had no idea of
coming here, but did so owing to the promise of Prince Deva
wongse, whom we met, as before stated, on our voyage across the
Pacific. We did not expect much from the promise, for we knew
men of his position would be overrun if they pay too much atten
tion to travellers, who are now so abundant. But, finding we
could get here and not exhaust more than a couple of weeks of
our time, we came, and have been well repaid for the trip, and
must acknowledge our indebtedness to the Prince, not only for
courtesies extended, but for others he wished to extend. We
would have probably gone up the river to Baheng, and then
across the country to Moulmain by elephants, had not the king's
barge been absent on an expedition up the river. This would
have been a decided novelty, but there was no possibility of do
ing it by purely private conveyance, except with a loss of at least
six or eight weeks. With a royal barge and the king's order for ele
phants we could have done it in a month — possibly in three weeks.

132 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
Siam has about 250,000 square miles of territory in the king
dom proper and its immediate dependencies. It is the most
speculative land in Asia. Every thing is possible to it, and a vast
deal may come out of it. Its native name is " Thai." I am writ
ing on the steamer, which we boarded an hour since for Singa
pore, but which, with true Orientalism, will not get off for three
or four hours after its advertised time. I mention this to show
why I have no means of finding whether I have the proper name
or not. It means " free land," or " land of the free," and yet
there is not a single free thing in it.
The king owns every thing, and, in a certain sense, everybody.
He is lord of all he surveys, and yet is himself the veriest slave
of the grovelling superstitions and vile customs of his people —
superstitions and customs which must be a source of intense dis
gust to so intelligent a man as King Chulalanghorn evidently is,
yet which he could not escape except at the risk of losing his
throne. Absolute monarch, his will a law to every man in the
realm, his proclamations gainsaid by no one, yet he himself is
absolutely governed by custom and the opinions of his nobles,
even to the daily routine of his life. With tastes and aspirations
natural to a man of culture, and ambitions growing out of his
royal position and his evident desire for his country's prosperity,
he is utterly powerless to do the half he would for his people, be
cause he is locked up in his palace and can see the people's needs
only through the eyes of others, and can hear only the voice of
flattery, or, what is yet worse, the voice of self-seeking and too
often dishonest ambition.
With a kindly, gentle face, bespeaking a warm and generous
heart, capable of deep affection, and showing his loving disposi
tion by his real grief for the untimely death of his first queen, he
is compelled to take many wives, — the daughters of his noble
men, — and now a little over 34 years of age, is the father of some
30 odd children. When I left his presence, after a kindly and
free audience of a half hour, and recall the warm and manly grasp
he gave my hand at parting, I could not help saying to myself :
" Monarch ! absolute master of 9,000,000 of human beings, that
man is the veriest slave in his whole dominions." I pity, rather
than envy him.
This country is one of great fertility, having a soil in many
parts equal to the valley of the Nile. Indeed its fertility in all
the rice-growing sections is owing to the annual overflow of its
great rivers, which bring down rich deposits from the forest-clad
mountains. This year its product of rice is somewhere about 12,-
000,000 of piculs, each of, I think, 130 odd pounds. It sends to
Singapore about 16,000 head of cattle each year, and yet a vast
portion of its territory, and a very rich portion too, is an impene
trable jungle of the most valuable timber in the world,— forest of
teak, ebony, and other hard woods, — all of which the world wants,

BETEL CHEWING. 133
and yet the trees grow and die, and breed the deadly jungle fever,
which even the natives cannot brave with impunity. Millions of
acres of these forests are of great fertility, and would, if the tim
ber were cut off, feed millions of people. She has rich coal-fields,
and very rich gold and tin mines. Some parts of her mountains
abound in precious stones, especially sapphires and rubies. These
rich mineral valuables are almost entirely lost, and the immense
timber resources idle, because there is not a road in the kingdom.
In the lowlands near the coast, and running back 100 miles or so,
there are for the sole means of transportation, the river and little
canals. These irrigate the rice fields, and are navigated by small
row-boats. The land is cultivated very poorly ; the small one-
handled plow, drawn by the buffalo and ox, doing the work. It
is said her people are all slaves. But it is not the slavery we gen
erally understand, but a species of slavish feudalism. Prisoners
of war and their children for all time are absolute slaves. Of
these there are a large number. But the remainder are bonded to
some master. A parent sells his child, or a man sells himself, or
rather mortgages himself. He borrows a sum of money at a very
heavy rate of interest — 15 per cent, being the legal rate, but a
higher rate permissible, — and pays the interest through life. The
debt also binds his children under this feudal custom. Every one
first belongs as feudatory to some nobleman, being marked by a
tattoo, generally on the wrist, to indicate his master. He owes
to the nobleman 15 days' work each year. In addition to this, he
is bound generally by a mortgage or sale to some other master,
perhaps less than a nobleman.
Polygamy is universal, and one sees at the theatre a man in the
dress circle of men, while his wife or wives and slaves (female)
are in the women's circle. All classes chew the betel nut, and at
the theatre each family has the betel-pot and spittoon. The latter
is carried by a slave, who hands it to the ladies when they wish
to spit. The betel nut is astringent and somewhat intoxicant. It
is chewed in connection with a paste made of lime, tobacco, and
pepper leaf. It not only blackens the teeth but cracks the lips,
and so injures the gums that the teeth are caused to protrude and
look straggled.
The king, princes, and common people are alike slaves to the
nasty habit, and half of the women have their mouths injured, if
not absolutely distorted by it. Otherwise the women are decidedly
comely, having fine forms and good gaits. Women and men dress
so nearly alike that we could hardly distinguish one from the
other for several days, for all wear short hair. The dress is a
cloth, called " panoong," about two feet wide, wrapped around
the waist, with one corner drawn between the legs and caught in
a girdle at the waist. This makes a sort of flowing trouser, falling
to the knees. A gentleman wears a closely buttoned coat (sacque),
buttoned to the neck, with long stockings and low shoes. The

:i34 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
woman generally allows the " panoong " to hang like a petticoat,
and wraps about her breast a girdle, leaving the upper part of the
bosom and shoulders entirely bare, and none wear shoes. Many
of the working women dispense with the girdle entirely. The
great mass of people, even in the city, go bare-legged and bare
footed. This is universal in the country. The women appear to
be industrious, and perform much more than half the work. The
men are lazy, and, with the exception of fishing, appear willing to
leave the women to earn the bread. All are inveterate gamblers,
and one rarely sees a gambling-house, of which there are a great
many, otherwise than full. They are entirely' open to the street,
canal, or river, and at night are distinguished by their many
lights. I am told the king would gladly lessen the number of
these gambling places, but could not dispense with the revenue
they bring in. The inveterate habit of gambling is the cause of
a large part of the people's slavery. They sell their children and
themselves for its gratification. The wily Chinese monopolize the
gambling-houses, as, indeed, they do nearly all the avenues of
wealth and nearly all kinds of business which require industry
and skill.
Bangkok has over 80,000 of these people, many of whom have
acquired large fortunes and hold prominent positions. They are
the business men of the country, and also the cooks and waiters
for the Europeans who live here, and to my surprise the waiters
in the prince's dining-room wore pigtails. I do not wonder so
many foreigners throughout the East prophesy that they are the
coming race of the world.
Bangkok lies on either side of the Menam River, thirty miles
from its mouth. This is a stream varying from 400 to 800 yards
in width, and running through a perfectly flat country, the banks
at high tide being barely out of the water. Fringing it for many
miles from the mouth is a heavy growth of tropical plants — palms
of several varieties, tree-ferns, tamarind and mango trees, several
trees with waxy leaves and having large flowers, and indeed many
varieties of beautiful woods, so thick together that seen from the
level of the river they appear to be an almost impenetrable jungle.
But behind this fringe of forest stretch great plains of rice fields
as far as the eye can reach, unless when varied by another fringe
along some large canal. Scattered through these fields are beauti
ful sugar-palms now and then clumped in groves. The great teak
and ebony forests up the river are several hundred miles from the
coast. These are so dense that the superintendent of the con
struction of telegraph, Mr. Fritz — an American — consumed two
or three months in cutting a way for a line through a forest of
65 miles. There was an advance party of some 500 natives cutting
the trail, and a second party of 170 putting up the poles and wire.
Elephants were used for all carrying. So terrible was the jungle
fever that in that one jungle some 250 natives died within two

BANGKOK AND BATHING. 135
months. If a dose of 20 grains of quinine failed to break the
fever death almost immediately ensued.
A large amount of logs are floated down the Menam, and
sawed at Bangkok. But so difficult is the getting of logs to the
river, there being absolutely no kind of roads, that the timber
sells in Bangkok at about 60 cents a cubic foot. And yet Mr.
Fritz assured us there are vast quantities of this timber rotting in
the forests within comparatively short distances from the streams.
The people are so utterly lazy that their labor can never be de
pended upon to build roads, or in any way develop the resources
¦of the land. Foreign energy and capital must be called into
requisition. The constant aggressiveness of the English and
French in this corner of Asia makes the king naturally fearful of
¦getting their aid, and the jealousy of these two of the Germans,
renders them out of the question. One can see but one way out
of the dilemma, and that is for the king to call upon American
pluck and energy. He has nothing to fear from them politically
or otherwise ; and the other nationalities can feel no jealousy of
the republican in this land of despotism. I have good reason to
believe, in fact to know, that king and princes feel very kindly
towards us, and have no doubt that an American syndicate could
find a splendid field for energy in Siam — a field which would
bring to the operators large profit, and would do more good in
educating and elevating this squalid people than 1,000 mis
sionaries could do in a quarter of a century. A prince said to me :
" We acknowledge our great indebtedness to the American
missionaries ; they never turn a man from Buddha to Christ, but
we owe to them nearly all of our ideas of western progress. The
king feels very kindly toward them, and has no fear that they will
do any harm by converting our people ; but business follows where
the missionaries go."
Bangkok is entirely different from all other eastern cities we
have seen. Elsewhere the houses are compacted together so as
to cover as little space as possible, and the people are massed as
in hives. This city, however, with its 350,000 people, covers
more ground than Canton with its great population. There are
few streets, but they are quite broad. Canals run in every direc
tion, and are so numerous that the Siamese are proud to call
their capital the Venice of the East. Houses project over these
¦canals, with open balconies, and both sides of the river for six or
more miles are lined with floating houses, used not only for resi
dences, but for business. People do their shopping in boats;
and while a woman sells to her customer in view, for all houses
have open fronts, her lazy husband fishes, sitting upon a box of
goods, and his children bathe and swim around the house. In
j-owing or being rowed about there was never a moment that we
could not see somewhere a bather ; and just at sundown all the
common world seems amphibious. The " panoong " is kept on

136 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
when in the water, and is then either exchanged for a dry one or
left on to dry. Rivers and canals are always filled by freight
boats, 40 to 60 feet long ; by small peddler-boats, by canoes of all
sizes, from ten feet, barely holding a man, up to 100 or more
feet, with 50 or more paddlers moving in state with some high
official. I saw one long canoe with nearly 100 rowers. Each one
would dip his paddle and then lift it on high, a curious sight thus
to see nearly 100 paddles poised in air at the same time. There
are quite a large number of small steam barges in the city
belonging to Europeans engaged in timber sawing and in rice
milling and shipping. These dart about very rapidly. In fact
all boats seem to do so, for the tide runs very swiftly, and boats
going with its current move in the channel, while those going
against it stick to the shore eddies. This makes the river a very
lively one, especially towards the cool of the day. Trees abound
throughout the town, along streets, along the canals, and about
the houses, many of them of good forest size. Looking down
from a high pagoda, one can scarcely realize one's self in the heart
of a great city. The ordinary house is almost entirely lost in the
mass of green. Here and there one peeps out looking cool and
shaded. But the lofty snow-white pagodas, the tall steep-roofed
temples, roofed in tiles of many colors, many of them in gilt ; the
beautiful kiosk turrets of the palaces, the gilded royal " wat " and
cenotaph, and the white palaces themselves, make the city
from an eminence look like a vast royal garden, wth princely
palaces and Oriental temples nestled among ornamental tropical
verdure. The " wat " is a sort of monastery, with its temple and
kiosk and lodging-houses of the priests within a single enclosure.
There are a great many in the city, and many of them of wonder
ful richness.
Some of the temples and pagodas are apparently made up en
tirely of gilt and glass mosaic, in small pieces inlaid in cement
walls and flashing in the sunlight like mountains of gold and
diamonds. The royal " wat " makes the looker-on feel that
Aladdin's lamp is close by, revealing to him scenes of fairy won
der, rather than scenes of actual reality. It is within and with
out — its several temple buildings and its five or six lofty round-
pointed pagodas — made up of gold and gems. The gold is of
burnt, gilded pottery in small squares of an inch, brilliantly
glazed ; the gems are of glass of different colors, and set like
rose-faced diamonds, sapphires, and rubies. Looking upon the
pile of these buildings, covering several acres, just as the sun goes
down, with a gentle breeze causing the thousand tiny bells which
hang to cornice, frieze, and projecting point to tinkle, we almost
felt as if we had been carried off by some flying genii and gently
dropped upon a scene of Oriental fable. Unfortunately all of the
temples, pagodas, and kiosks are of brick, stuccoed with Portland
cement, and the gems and gold planted into it will last only for a

CORPSES EATEN BY VULTURES. 137
short time. Many thousands of dollars are required each year to
keep the entire fabrics of beauty from tumbling into decay. A
change of dynasty will bring quickly the glory of Siam's capital
into a heap of debris. Ayutia, once a great city, which was aban
doned 100 and odd years ago when this royal family founded
Bangkok, is already a heap of ruins, its " wats " and lofty pagodas
furnishing soil for the roots of rapidly-growing tropical plants.
They are not absolutely fallen down, but the plants and shrubs
are climbing up their lofty heights and find homes.
The first thing we did on our arrival at Bangkok was to drive
to the royal garden, where a fine military band plays every Sun
day afternoon. The music was good, the leader German. The
gardens are beautiful, one avenue of bamboos being as unique as
pretty. This tree here, as we are told, too, it does in India, grows
in massy clumps, almost like a solid tree. These clumps, about 50
feet apart, on either side of a long avenue, send up their feathery
plumes about 60 feet, meeting at a less height over the roadway,
and making a perfect green, Gothic arch, which, viewed from
either end, is as regular as a cathedral aisle. In the gardens we
met many of the 200 foreigners who make Bangkok their home.
The next day early we called upon Col. Child, our genial min
ister. He took us in charge, and to him we owe much which
made our visit to Siam very charming. We called on Prince
Devawongse, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, who received us most
cordially, and, after entertaining us for some time, sent one of his
aids to show us the famous sacred white elephants and the royal
" wat." The white elephants have blue eyes, are light-colored, but
not whiter than Barnum's beast, which, by the way, did not come
from Siam. The poor brutes here do not seem to enjoy very
greatly their sacred bondage, but tied by the hind leg they sway
back and forth, and beg for a nut as readily as do those in
menageries. The oldest wears a brace of ivories which would
make him quite sacred to an ivory worker, but munches green
grass in a very unsacred way. Instead of being housed in gilded
quarters, he is tied up in a dingy stable and is attended by a half-
naked mahout instead of a priest in saintly robes ; a priest, how
ever, oversees his household.
On our second day we rowed about some of the canals, and then
climbed the old " Wat-Se-Kat," a huge pagoda over 300 feet in di
ameter, built of a solid mass of brick — countless millions being in
the mass — and lifting 200 feet high. A stairway leads around it,
as in the picture of the Tower of Babel. From this we had our
first view of the forest-clad city. Below us immediately were the
common crematory grounds, and the square in which the bodies
of those too poor to pay for cremation are given to the vultures.
A large flock of these mournful birds, were roosting on a low
pagoda close by. Seeing a smoke we supposed a cremation was
going on, but found it arose from burning coffins and rubbish.

138 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
We then went to the square for the poor, and, to our surprise, al
most horror, a newly dead body had just been laid in it. It was
limp and hardly cold. It was of an old woman who had died of
cholera, always here. A covering was laid over the middle of the
body, but the head, bust, arms, and legs were bare.
Just as we entered a vulture flew down, then another and
others. Two or three dogs were walking about near-by. The
birds hopped about the body, but did not seem satisfied it was
dead. Presently one of the dogs stole up and commenced to tear
a piece of flesh from the cheek. Rapidly the birds closed in, com
mencing at the eyes. The sight was so sickening that we all
turned and went out, not looking back. We saw, however, the
relations of the dead squatted in a sort of shed temple close by,
while a robed priest was reading from bamboo leaves the service
for the dead. We felt that if these, the relatives, were not hor
rified at the mangling of their loved one, it was sickly sentimen
tality for us so to be ; so we returned. We had not been absent
five minutes, but in that time the vultures had come in such num
bers that they were a squirming, tossing mass over the corpse.
Five dogs were there by this time, snapping and growling and
trying to drive the birds away so that they could get at the feast.
Presently the birds seemed for the moment satisfied, and hobbled
off. Then the dogs went in. But one of the attendants, seeing
our disgust at the dog part of the drama, drove them away, when
the vultures again returned. In less than thirty minutes from the
time the body was laid there, the bloody, gorged birds flew off,
one by one, and left the bare skeleton for the dogs to pull at the
sinews and at the tough hands and feet, which the vultures' beaks
could not tear.
At first we were all shocked by the sight, but very quickly this feel
ing passed off. We could not help feeling it was not a whit worse
than laying a loved one in the ground to become food for worms.
The vultures seemed but fitting ministers ; it is their calling, and
has been so for countless ages.' For countless successions of gen
erations they have been aiding man in this way to get rid of his
dead, instead of putting them in the ground to feed worms and
poison the waters of life. But there was something horrible in
the dog's performance. He is man's friend, and man takes care
of him. We did not after that pass a Siamese cur that we did not
feel a desire to whack him over the head. But, after all, the
revulsion of feeling which came so quickly to us was owing to the
fact that the friends of the dead woman — perhaps her daughters
and grandchildren — were there within ten paces of the scene, lis
tening, with bowed heads and clasped hands, to the promises of
their deity to those who have lived piously. The priest chanted
in monotonous tone, but reverently and with intense pathos, the
lesson he was reading. After the birds had taken all they cared
to have, we turned from the dogs fighting over the skeleton and lis-

CREMATION OF A PRINCE. 139
tened almost with awe to the funeral services, and watched with a
full eye the faces of the stricken family. Some of them were old,
and would soon lie in that same charnelhouse whose floor was the
earth — mother of us all — and whose ceiling was the blue sky far
above. What mattered it to them how their bodies should return
to the dust, if their souls could only wing their flight through
yonder wondrous blue to mingle again with the spirit of the ever-
living God from whence they came? We spoke to a Siamese
prince of our manner of burying. He said : " I will be cremated,
but a thousand times rather would I be eaten by vultures than to
lie and rot in the sodden, nasty ground." Which is the better,
his ideas or ours ? The world is governed by conventionalism.
That which is accepted by all is the best. There is but one thing
which is absolutely good. That is a life in accordance with the
will of God. Who can, who may rightly, interpret that will ?
By a singular transition we were witnesses that same afternoon of
the ceremony of cremation of one of the powerful and rich of the
land. At half-past four we went to a large " wat," to be present
at the last rites in honor of " Phranai Samochai," who died nine
months before, and had been lying in state in spices and sweet
herbs in one of the spacious halls of his palace. Colonel Child and
I got there a little early. We wandered about. On the matting,
spread about on the grass in one of the temple courts, were the
wives and female slaves of the dead man, all crouched down, with
black " panoong " and white scarfs about their bodies. In an inner
court were some men sawing into a very large box. We went
near. It was the outer case containing the coffin, and air-tight.
Scarcely had the saw passed through the board when the putrid
gases escaping, drove us from the inclosure. The body was then
put into a small vaulted room. Into this the head wife entered,
sobbing, and following came others.
In the outer courts two theatrical performances were going on
out of hearing of each other. One in Chinese — for the deceased
was a Chinaman by birth — ^the other in Siamese. These are pro
vided for the people that they may enjoy themselves, for the
burial of a good man is not a cause of mourning. He has gone to
a better Hfe, and his friends should rejoice. Between these two
theatres (temporary) there was an erection, some 12 x 20 feet high,
on four columns. This was a handsomely carved white cornice,
from which to the ground drooped black drapery, caught up in
white. Under this was an oven-shaped altar, and over it an open
white catafalque covered with flowers and gilt. The son of the
dead man, acting as master of ceremonies, seeing us walking
about, sent to us a bright lad, who we learned was grandson of
the deceased, and spoke good English. He guided us to a tented
pavilion close by the catafalque, provided us with chairs, and soon
gave us tea and cigars. Quite a number of prominent people
were there ; two of them had been passengers on the Parthia in

140 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
Davawongse's suite. These spoke to us, and gave us some ex
planations. Presently some other foreigners arrived, — mission
aries and consuls. Soon the coffin, in a brass case without top or
bottom, was put on the altar, being lifted up a foot or so. In the
meantime priests were chanting all around. Large bundles of
cloth were then put upon the bier, and after lying a moment
were taken off by the priests. They were presents from the dead
man's estate. Many of them had extra sheets and robes for a
year. About the catafalque were tall bamboo frames, so covered
with lanterns as to resemble blazing pagodas. Just at dusk a
steam barge steamed up in the canal close by, and Prince Ongnai,
full brother of the king, and regent or second king, the first
prince in the land, arrived, and then with a flourish another barge
came from the palace with the sacred fire, which is never allowed
to die out, sent by the king. " Ongnai," after passing among the
guests with a few words for his friends and a polite greeting for
all, lighted from this fire a piece of sandal-wood and a stick of
resinous incense, and set fire to sandal-sticks under the bier.
Other leading men followed him, and then flowers of sandal-wood
were given the foreigners, and we were asked to assist. Our
doing so seemed to please the family. Thus in one day we saw
vultures and dogs eat one of the poor of the land, and with our
own hands helped to burn up one of its rich and great ones.
Soon the whole pile was in flames.
We were invited to the house close by to dine, but declined.
At night we again went up to see the brilliant fireworks in honor
of the dead. All was feasting and enjoyment. Food was spread
about for the poor. Shows and pageants were kept up for the
public amusement. The funeral pile at night was become a mass
of coals, all of fragrant woods. A man stood by who, with a sort
of hooked poker, would push up the fire and pull up scraps of
body to keep them burning. The fire is kept up for 24 hours. The
ashes of the bones were then gathered together and kept in an urn,
while the remainder of the ashes were taken out and scattered on
the river, a boat solemnly floating down it for the purpose.
The next day we were informed that the king would grant an
audience to Col. Child to enable him to present an autograph
letter from the President of the United States, and would then
give us a private audience at 5 P. M. At the appointed hour, in
full dress, we were at the royal palace. We were met at the
grand gate by an officer, who conducted us through the courts.
Prince Devawongse met us on the way. Passing through a file
of household guards, we passed up the broad palace steps. The
palace is, by Hie way, a long, two-story and basement Italian
building, with a central projecting pavilion, and a pavilion at
either end, of beautiful kiosk-form. It is of brick, cemented and
painted in pure white. It cannot be termed magnificent, but it is
very chaste and pure in its style and exceedingly handsome. All

AUDIENCE WITH THE KING. 141
the public buildings, by the way, except the city walls and gates
or portals, are Italian in style and erected by Italian architects.
Entering a broad and lofty vestibule, we were seated at a table
and served with delicious tea and cigarettes. We wrote our
names in a handsomely bound, large register, and each one his
name and place of residence in an autograph-book, under the
date of birth, and opposite a verse of English poetry.
Scarcely were we through with this when a master of cere
monies announced that the king was ready to receive us. Ac
companied by Prince Devawongse, we mounted another short
flight of steps into the grand reception-room. Through this ele
gant room, 100 feet long, beautifully furnished, and with walls
ornamented with European paintings, we passed between files of
body-guards into the king's private reception-room. This is also
a lofty and large apartment, most tastefully furnished. Near the
door stood Siam's celestial monarch. We were all presented and
shaken by the hand. Mr. Child then, in a neat speech, which
was not interpreted, presented President Cleveland's letter, a
copy of which had already been sent in some time before ; the
king, therefore, did not open it, but said in Siamese, interpreted
by Devawongse, that he was much pleased to receive this auto
graph letter from the President of the United States, and thanked
him for the kindly and friendly expressions in it, and requested
the minister to convey to the President his thanks, and also to
the Americans for their courtesy to his royal brother, when lately
passing through the country. He then said he felt very friendly
toward the President and the people of the United States, and
asked us as to the health of the former. The minister's speech
and replies were not interpreted, for Chulalanghorn understands
and speaks English well, but will not, as a matter of etiquette,
use to a foreigner any other than his native tongue.
Our royal host then stepped back to the middle of the room,
taking a chair at the head of a long business table, and with a
pleasant word and gesture asked us to be seated. He motioned
me to a seat immediately to his right, saying he had heard I was
a fellow-traveller across the ocean with his brother, and that we
had become quite good friends. T^e official interpreter stood
behind him, but the Prince acted in his place during the audience.
I replied that I had that honor, and that it was a great pleasure
to me, for I had found his Royal Highness not only a pleasant but
very instructive compagnon du voyage. My replies were not in
terpreted, and I found the king caught my remarks quite as
readily as did his brother. He then asked what sort of a travel
ler his brother was. I said an admirable one, but I .was forced to
state, even in his presence, and with my apologies, that he was
not always in a most fitting condition — in fact, was frequently
not entirely himself, not, however, from wine, but from an over
indulgence in sea air and well-stirred water. The king laughed

142 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
heartily at this and made some by-play remarks to the Prince.
We afterward learned he had himself not long since suffered con
siderably from sea-sickness, and was glad to get his brother on the
hip. He asked me if the Prince spoke my language well. I
replied ; " Like a native, but that he was so patriotic that in his
intercourse with the young princes and his suite he always used
his own language ; that our rooms had been adjoining, and I
could vouch for his sleeping and dreaming in pure Siamese ; that
he talked in his sleep." This set them into quite a loud laugh.
He asked what relationship there was between the young gen
tlemen with me and myself. I told him. He then wished to
know if they thoroughly appreciated the benefits of travelling
with an experienced man like myself. I told him : " I could
hardly answer ; that we had in our country an adage which was
that ' Young folks thought old folks fools, but that old ones knew
the young ones to be so.' " " Very good ! " he said, " we have
the same in Siamese," and then repeated it, at the same time
turning his chair squarely to mine as if to assure me our audience
was not at an end. " But," he continued, " how do you find the
young gentlemen as fellow-travellers?" I replied : " I wished to
retain the feelings and aspirations of youth as long as possible,
and to that end preferred to associate with the young rather than
the old." He said: "That was a most excellent idea — that the
young should seek the companionship of the old, while the old
should mingle with the young; that the older ones would teach
by example and precept, while they would imbibe lessons from
the hearts of tbe others." He wished to know our plans for our
continued voyage and how long we would yet be from home. I
told him I was an American sovereign, and as such kept myself
untrammelled in my movements, and permitted nature and cli
matic laws alone to control my actions. He was amused at my
sovereignty, and said a good deal which the Prince translated, but
which I cannot repeat, except that he hoped that I would
bear back to my own land benefits and improved health. But
that my sovereignty had to bend to the will of Him who gov
erned all. He wished to know if I was travelling merely for pleas
ure, or if I intended, as many did, to write of what I saw. I told
him that I had proved the motto, " Uneasy lies the head that
wears a crown " ; that I had borne the burdens without enjoying
the pleasures ; I had felt the thorns without shining in the jewels
which a crown possessed, and was travelling for rest and health.
He replied he had heard I had for many years governed a great
city, and that I was fortunate in being able to lay down its
cares. I replied : " If your majesty will forgive my presumption,
I would say that I had heard that the King of Siam worked
too hard and attended to many details which responsible men
might perform." Col. Child here remarked that his Ma
jesty was one who thought that the throne was a public

THE KING'S CONVERSATION. 143
trust. The king said : " Yes, it is the duty of those in
power to make their people happy." I replied : " But when a
trustee breaks himself down he does a wrong to his trust ; that I
wished to report to my countrymen that the monarch whose
order had gone forth that no one born in his reign should be a
slave, and who was doing his best for his people, was at the same
time conserving his health." " Then you do write, do you ? " said
the king. " Only for a couple of newspapers." He quickly said:
" What you write of Siam I hope will be impartial." I told
him "that when I looked into the Siamese sky, with its ever-
smiling hues of soft blue, its sunsets of pearly white, changing
and melting into tints found elsewhere only in the inside of a
shell, I feared I would be in danger of tinting my picture with
too much rose." The compliment seemed to please, for he had
just before made a motion as if to terminate the audience, but he
sat back, and asked what I thought of Siam. I told him that
what Siam needed most was roads ; that she had none, and,
therefore, I could not see much of the country ; and then there
were no steamer lines on the river. He then entered into quite
a talk with the Prince as to the possibility of sending us up on a
royal barge. But, as I before stated, this could not now be. He
then said : " But you have seen Bangkok. How do you like it ? "
I replied that we had a national air called "Yankee Doodle."
That " Yankee Doodle went to town, but could not see it for the
houses ! " The Prince did not catch what I said, and asked me
to repeat. " Ah, yes, Yankee Doodle," said the king, forgetting
himself and speaking in English. I then continued : " I could
hardly see the town of Bangkok for the magnificent trees, which
embowered it in such delicious shade that from Wat-Se-Kat I
felt I was looking down upon miles of royal gardens and splendid
palaces and gilded domes." The king said he was very glad I
was pleased with what I had seen of Siam, and paused. I replied
that I was more than pleased ; that it was the realization of my
early dreams of rich orientalism and tropical luxuriance ! He
said : " The climate and soil of Siam were unequalled, and, con
sidering the time she had been improving, she had done well ; that
although America was yet younger, she had in her very infancy
educated people from all lands, and could be called old even in
her childhood ; but Siam had to build herself up, her people
being made up from an uneducated, old land, and was, therefore,
young in her age." I replied : " But your Majesty has touched it
with your wand, and your land has wonderfully improved under
your reign." The king did not talk much himself, but seemed to
wish to get me to talk. I cannot recall near all that was said,
but we were complimented with an audience of fully half an hour
— two or three times longer than usual. He finally arose, wishing
us a prosperous voyage and a happy return to our homes. He
went with us half-way to the door, and gave me two cordial shakes

144 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
of the hand at parting. Col. Child said as we went out : " You
did well, Mr. Harrison. You caught the king." I must confess
he quite caught me.
He is of medium height, of very graceful form, admirably set
off in his dark sacque, buttoned close up to the chin, his dark
" panoong," and silk stockings. While of a dignity rarely met with,
he was free from all hauteur or stiffness, but gentle and urbane,
and was the realization of what I had often read of the character
istics of Oriental potentates. He is 34 years old,„rather dark-
yellowish nut-brown complexion, black mustache, and wore no
orders of any kind. If I had met him as a traveller, I would have
set him down as a man having wonderfully easy yet very dig
nified manners. He has many wives, and his first and second
queens are his half-sisters. A few years ago he lost by drowning
his chief queen, a full sister to the two he now has. They were
all three full sisters of Prince Devawongse, the present Minister
of Foreign Affairs. His marrying his half-sisters is from the cus
toms of the land — that no one can ascend the throne except a
Celestial prince, and these can only be those born of the king and
a princess. No woman is a princess except the daughter of a
king. His brothers have wives, but not princesses. In fact
they are not strictly married to their wives. This is to prevent
a line of princes. The son of a prince not being the offspring
of a regular marriage is not himself a prince. In this way
there can be no long line of hereditary nobility to intrigue
for the throne. The succession is fixed by the king, but from
custom and public opinion must be from the Celestial princes.
When we backed out of the king's presence, the boys congratu
lated themselves that they got out of the room without a stumble.
Before parting with Devawongse we were asked to fix a time
when we would dine with him. Being told to suit himself, he
sent us invitations for the next day. His palace is within the
walled town, has lofty, cool rooms, tastily but not richly decorated.
The menu was extensive and the cooking good. The dining-
room was deliciously fragrant from white jasmine and a tree
flower resembling somewhat a tuberose, but fresher. It is a holy
flower, and used to decorate shrines and altars in preference to
all others. The guests were the Celestial Prince Ongnai, full
brother of the king and the highest nobleman in the land ; Prince
Nareth, half-brother to the king ; Prince Shwasti, also half-brother ;
and several noblemen and officers of the army. The wines were
good, the company fine, and, with no restraint upon any, the
evening lasted from 7:30 to 11:30, and made it difficult for me to
realize that we were in Siam, a far-off, and, as we had supposed,
half-barbarian country ; in a company of gentlemen who would
compare favorably for elegant manners and cultivated conversa
tion and appearance with the highest in any land. " Put not
your trust in princes! " but certainly Prince Devawongse, simply

SINGULAR CHINESE PROCESSION. 145
my fellow-voyager, was as polite to me as he promised to be, and
did all he could to make our stay in Siam pleasant, and seemed
to regret we were compelled to hasten on.
His brother Swasti, being minister of the police, reminds me of
a thing showing this people off admirably. A chief of Bangkok
police seeing at a distance one policeman leading another, sent
for him to know why he was thus leading his fellow-officer. " Oh,
my chief, that was all right ; the other policeman is blind, cannot
see a thing. I was leading him to his beat." Another instance
of refreshing innocence I heard of : During a considerable fire, a
lady came out of her house with a box of very costly jewelry.
Seeing a man close by, she asked if he was a policeman. Being
told he was, she handed him her box and hurried within for
some more valuables. She has not since been able to learn the
number of her trusted officer, and has only two sets of bracelets
for her ankles.
I was pleased to hear of a thing connected with Col. Child
which made me proud of his Southern birth. There are in Bang
kok some Chinamen who in some way claim the protection of our
consulate. One of these came to our minister to get his assist-
tance in the recovery of a slave who had run away. The Colonel
told him his country had not long since gone through a mighty
war to break the shackles from the limbs of .slaves, and he would
be d  d if he would help to catch anyone's slave unless directly
ordered so to do by the United States State Department.
The same day which gave us the two examples of getting
rid of the dead also gave us a view of a Chinese procession in
honor of some festal period which, for four days, occupied the
thoughts of the almond-eyed Celestials of this place. Every
thing Chinese was demoralized ; waiters at the hotels would barely
serve us. Cooks and servants in private houses were utterly
unreliable. A circus come to town could not more thoroughly
upset an American village than did this the pig-tailed 80,000 in
Siam's capital. The procession took over an hour to pass a given
point. John Chinaman was in his most elaborate toggery. Silk
gowns glistened in the sun ; mantles and innumerable banners
embroidered in silk and gold glittered q,nd flashed. Chinese wind
instruments, in tone resembling a bagpipe ; little fiddles with
body of bamboo not longer than a half-pint cup, yet affording
from their two or three strings tones to reach the musical ear of
a Chinese professor ; gongs banging and whanging. These were
in bands of 12, and these bands to every 100 or 200 feet,.
and jolly, happy, prosperous sons of China. Some of the em
blems borne were decidedly curious. One was a huge dragon
over 300 feet long, worming and squirming, its feet being legs of
men whose bodies were lost in its abdomen ; pretty pagodas with
bedizzened girls on their tops ; great pyramids of flowers, in the
cups of some, a lily for example, were little real Siamese babies,,

146 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
some not over three months old, but generally a half year.
These poor little things were perched up and tossed aloft in the
blazing sun. Men hoisted in palanquins and some sitting upon
seats composed of spear heads and knives, so placed as to look as
if they were being impaled, and through their cheeks, necks, ears,
or arms were run the spikes of long iron spears carried by sev
eral men.- These were ghastly sights, intended to represent the
capturing of .some horrible demons. Hour after hour these poor
devils would be borne upon men's shoulders with these iron
spikes nearly as large as my little finger, some straight through
their cheeks, and held between the clinched jaws to prevent as much
as possible the laceration by the steel. One fellow sat upon the
blades of knives — a false motion would have sent them deep into
his flesh ; a long spike ran through his ear — a single jarring motion
would have given him agony. For hours and during three days
these men underwent this torture to the huge gratification of the
Celestial lookers-on. They were paid for this suffering and were
a part of the show, and John wanted the value of his money.
The king ordered that the baby part of the show be discontinued.
Wily John Chinaman had hired Siamese babies, thus saving his
own little ones.
One night we were at the Princess Theatre. Like all buildings
for spectacular entertainments in the East, this was simply of
rough boards, and resembled the interior of a huge American
barn. The stage extends quite a distance into the body of the
house. Around was the parterre ; next the stage was given up
entirely to the women ; behind and over and all around were
galleries for men on one side, for women on the other. There
were at least five times as many of the fair ones as of the sterner
sex. Each gentleman, being the husband of two or more wives
and the owner of several handmaids, is enabled to fill many seats
by his women to his own one. The women were in some parts
of the house in full dress ; and like the full-dressed in our own
civilized land, wore as little dress as possible. No doubt, like our
own fair ones, they know when concealment begins to beckon for
peering. Some of the ladies had their little ones from one to
five or six years old. These, too, were all in full dress ; that is,
a couple of earrings and anklets, the balance made up of nature's
own satin-brown cuticle. These little fellows ran around among
their mammas and nurses, and enjoyed themselves hugely. In a
box next ours was a rich Chinese with his son of three or four
years. The little fellow was smoking a large cigar as deliberately
as did his father.
The entire troupe, musicians and actors, in this the finest thea
tre in the city, belong to the proprietor. He bought them when
young, and had trained them finely. All are women except two
clowns, and some of them very pretty, and all finely formed.
The orchestra was large, I .should think fully 50. The play was

SIAMESE THEATRE. 147
a mixture of pantomime and opera, with a little witty off-hand
colloquial performance. The actors go through their part gener
ally on their haunches. Those acting the parts of slaves when mov
ing from one part of the stage to another, walk on their knees.
All were exquisitely dressed in blazing vestments, but all in
pretty naked feet. Oh, how much of God's best and most beau
tiful gifts to woman she hides when she covers her feet. A well-
turned ankle and rosy toes would be such an addition to Worth's
most elaborate toilette. The scenery does not, as with us, change
from act to act ; but a scene, say 13 by 20 feet, is hung up at the
rear of the stage. This tells the locality and suggests the role,
and is changed when the act changes. At the end of each
act all go off the stage with a grand fanfaronade of music.
A part of the play is sung by the orchestra, each one keeping
time to their words with naked sticks. To this the actors
perform in pantomime. More expressive pantomimic perform
ance I never saw in Italy. Indeed, some of the motions were
too realistic, and some of the poetry of the motions was injured
by certain contortional gestures considered by these people per
fect. But, taken as a whole, the play was infinitely superior to
those of the Chinese. The dialogue was sustained in a natural
voice, and judging from the frequent bursts of laughter, the jokes
and hits were apt and amusing. We were informed that it was
quite as well that Mrs. Child and another foreign lady of our
party did not understand the language, for the jests were not
quite such as we should consider fit for polite ears. The music
was to my ear really pretty, though somewhat monotonous, but
with tones and cadences very charming. One instrument was
delicious, composed of a large number of glass cups, and played
upon by a soft leather-covered stick.
We were forced to leave Siam too soon, for India was beckon
ing us, and we knew we must not fail to reach Suez in March.
Our first and second days from Siam to Singapore were beautiful
and gave us delight when we watched the sweet sunsets, so differ
ent on this sea from any we ever before saw. There was none of
the gorgeous red-purple, yellow, and orange, and gold of our own
unparalleled American sunsets. But,- on the other hand, one
sees the soft pearl-white of the sky, melting into an orange-yellow
so delicate, so soft and evanescent, that one almost holds his
breath lest it go before it is fixed upon the eye ; then this blend
ing into a purple-rose, as soft and melting as the tints of a beau
tiful woman's ear. You turn your head for a moment, and a
light gauzy cloud has floated by, and has become a web of pink
and rose, orange and yellow, and violet and purple, the most
delicate of these several colors, and changing and vanishing like
the tints on an opal's breast, or the dyes in a mother-of-pearl
shell. The tints and coloring, while momentarily distinct, defined
and brilliant, yet vanish so rapidly, or rather melt so quickly into
others, that they produce the effect of softest neutral dyes.

148 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
When we reached the parallel of Point Cambodia a heavy sea
was rolling from the far east. The Hecate, of only 600 tons,
rocked like a cradle. Our 250 cattle, tied in rows along the open
deck, slid and fell and suffered badly, and we three passengers
passed as unpleasant a night as I ever had on a sea. There was
little rest and scarcely any sleep. The third day was overcast
with slight rain. At noon we were on the fourth parallel, and
were bounding in a smoother sea toward the equator. When
the sun went down and the black night set in we saw a clearer
horizon toward the east. I lay on the deck and watched the
patches of brilliant starry sky steal from under the clouds, and
before the moon rose there was over me the wondrous mass of
blazing suns nowhere seen except within the equatorial regions.
The milky way was swallowed up in the fulness of starlight, but
athwart the zenith was the mighty belt of starry worlds blinking
and twinkling in countless mass. To the southeast rose Jupiter,
flashing in blue and diamond flame so brightly that a path of silver
lay between him and us along the sea. Then, much farther to
the south, came another large planet, it, too, making a broad
pathway of light toward our ship. At 11:30 I looked three-
quarters of a point toward the east of our stern, and could just
see the north star, the guide and beacon for countless millions in
the northern half of the world. He was hardly as high as my
head above the horizon. I looked to the south, and a few points
westward from our bow the great southern cross, seen by my
longing eyes for the first time, burst into view. In two months
and a few days I will have seen the light throughout 63 years,
yet will confess to an intense boyish enthusiasm when I thus
looked now to my right at the light set in the sky far off toward
the south pole, and then to my left, and there hung the one over
the northern pole — the north star, — eternal beacons lighted by
the one mighty Maker and Ruler over all things, and throughout
this world's mighty flight through the realms of eternal and
boundless space, the guides and leading stars of countless millions
of men since light was ordered ; and will yet be beacons for count
less millions more, until the one unknown and unknowable Ruler
shall put out the lights, and measureless space shall be filled
with measureless nothing.
I watched and wondered in intenSest awe — an awe too deep for
dreams. I did not dream, I did not think. I could only sit a
silent nothing in the midst of a silent immensity of all things,
spread over me and under me and all around me; around and
over me a mighty map of eternity — eternity of space and eternity
of time. Presently a deep red spot crept over the eastern hori
zon, and then the moon spread over our world a gentle light.
The stars paled, and soon nearly all had hidden behind the veil
of light spread over the world by its silvery satellite. I looked
and looked again, then sighed and went — to bed.

CHAPTER XVL
SINGAPORE— BOTANICAL GARDEN— A SAIL THROUGH THE RHIO-
LINGA ARCHIPELAGO— ITS EXQUISITE BEAUTY-
CHICAGO ISLANDS— THE EQUATOR.
Bay of Bengal, near Rangoon, Burmah, Dec. 21, 1887.
Again I am writing while on the wing. This time aboard the
steamship Secundra, one of a line which sails every Wednesday
from Singapore to Calcutta, stopping one day at Penang and four
at Rangoon. Travellers from China to India usually continue on
the great mail ships to Colombo, Ceylon, and, after seeing well
that island of spice, go to Calcutta by another ship, calling at
Madras. We expected to follow the beaten track and take the
P. & 0. steamer on Monday. I made the present deflection for
several reasons : First, we are desirous of having a peep at Bur
mah ; and, secondly, of going through southern India. We hope
now, after finishing the great tourist routes of India, to drop
down from Bombay through the Deccan to Tuticorin near
Cape Cormorin, and over to Ceylon, and thence directly to Suez.
In this way we will do Ceylon the last thing in the far East ;
thirdly, we found we were in the middle of the rainy season, the
clouds emptying deluges two or three times a day. We would
probably find the same climatic conditions among the cinnamon-
groves of Ceylon, whereas the last of February will probably
give dry weather in that locality ; and lastly, we pined to strad
dle the equator, which was impossible if we sailed on Monday.
Therefore are we steaming north over beautiful seas on the east
shore of the Bay of Bengal, but at a most disgustingly slow pace.
Arriving at Singapore from Siam the morning of the 8th
(Thursday) we made ourselves as comfortable as possible with
the thermometer high in the 80's, and with precious little breeze
blowing. In the afternoon we called upon Major Studer (our
kind-hearted Teutonic consul), who has been here 17 years, and
is as full of information about this locality as he is running
over with rheumatism. He was sent here by Grant and has
not been removed by Bayard, and is thoroughly satisfied as to
the shortsightedness of Congress in not making more ample
provision for the consular service. I would be, too, were I a
consul or minister. It is idle to say there are plenty at home
who would gladly fill their places. That is true, for what is
149

15°

A RACE WITH THE SUN.

there around which the average politician would not take ?
But whether the administration be of one or the other party, the
people want good service, and want their servants in all coun
tries respected. This is an impossibility here in the East, with
our consuls living as they do. If Congressmen would
stop up the bung-hole through which the national treasury
empties itself into the lap of monopoly, they would not have
to show a saving at the spigot for the purpose of deluding
their constituents.
Singapore is a pretty town on the southern shore of the
island of the same name, which is almost 60 miles in circum
ference, and is separated by a narrow channel from Jahore,
the extreme southern land of the Malayan peninsula and of
the Asiatic continent. Approaching the town one sees a long
line of two-storied, colonnaded hongs or business-houses, part
white and part of pale blue. Flanking this at one end is a long
esplanade covered with fine trees, and on the other a couple
of miles of docks and factories. Behind rise hills 100 or 200
feet high. On one of these are the long, white houses of parlia
ment, half lost in verdure. The town is a thriving one, doing
a large business, and possesses great wealth, much of which is in
the hands of the Chinese. These people are the Jews of the
East — persevering, indefatigable, and shrewd. They work and
make money, and it matters not whether their gains be large
or small, they lay by something. They get the highest wages
possible to them, but they will accept any wage rather than be
idle. They have not graduated in that social school which
teaches that there is a dignity in labor which makes it more
honorable to starve or go in rags in idleness than to work at a
pay deemed insufficient. The result is, while the natives in many
lands are strutting with gaunt bellies, John is soberly at work and
quietly filling his purse. Every town from northern Burmah
south and throughout the vast Indian archipelago has already
fallen, or is fast falling, into his hands. Even the farms and
gardens about the towns are becoming his. The little white ants
eat up the houses throughout the Eastern tropics. They burrow
into the heart of every sill, joist, and rafter. They leave the out
side untouched, but suddenly the house tumbles in ; the timbers
have become simple shells. The Chinese are the human white
ants of the east. They burrow or live in the light or in the dark,
and are fa.st eating out the heart and substance of foundation,
joist, and framework of the industrial fabric of many people. I
do not like John, but I fear I am nursing a great admiration for
his sturdy qualities, and am constantly amused by the quiet way
in which he wins in the battle for bread.
When the //^fca/^ dropped her anchor in port on the 8th she was
immediately boarded by boatmen to cany us and our traps ashore.
We always make our bargain in advance, and asked how much.

TWILIGHT AND DA WN. 1 5 1
" One dollar and a half," said a stately Indian ; " a dollar," said
another ; both too high. But not a cent would the dignified
gentlemen drop. A couple of Chinamen stepped up and quietly
said 60 cents, and before we could answer had our baggage on
their shoulders. The Indians smiled grimly, and said : " China
men cheat you," and stalked off in half-naked dignity. John did
try to get some more from us at the hotel, but when we refused
he went off contented. I have had a half-dozen or more exam
ples of this kind. They are the cashiers, clerks, and porters of all
the banks and great houses throughout this land, and are found
reliable beyond any other people. I do not like them, but I can
not help admiring them, and if I were an Oriental I would fear
them. The island of Singapore is said to have a population of from
160,000 to 200,000. About 2,000 are Europeans. Of the remain
der, more than half are Chinese, a third Malay, the balance peo
ples from different parts of India, Java, and other islands. The
place is on the highway from Europe to China through the Suez
Canal, and has since the opening of the latter become of great
commercial value. The little rajahship of Jahore is governed, by
grace of her imperial Majesty's ministers, by a " sultan," who be
longs to England body and soul, and is holding his dominion for
its absolute dropping into England's lap whenever she may deem
it for her good. In the meantime he most hospitably receives
all Englishmen and Americans who have a desire to air their heels
before a monarch. Of all the tuft-hunters I know, Americans are
the worst. O Lord ! how the smile of a king or a prince does
melt far down into our hearts ! With a lord we are happy, but a
prince wafts us off into the seventh heaven. Like all the Pi'A^rS.,
Johnny, Willie, and I would have gone to pay our court to the
tawnj' little potentate, but, unfortunately, he was up in Malacca.
Jahore and Singapore islands are going quite extensively into
coffee planting. The Liberian plant, the one adopted, is one of
the most beautiful of shrubs. It has the densest of foliage, and is
of the richest green. The berry, like the fig, grows from the
large branches directly, and not from the twigs of the coffee tree.
The mass of pods clustering about a bpnch is wonderful. Clove
plantations, another of the industries here, are very beautiful.
The tree is conical, with pale-green, waxy leaves; the young
shoots, however, being of a purple pink, at a little distance look out
as if abloom.
The morning after our arrival we were up a little after five. A
streak of light had appeared in the east, which rapidly extended
into a mild dawn, and before half of the hour had passed it was
bright, and yet the sun did not rise until after six. I cannot
understand why the tropical twilight is so short and the dawn so
much longer. When the sun sets darkness, like an exhalation
from the earth, immediately spreads its panoply over all nature.

152

A RACE WITH THE SUN.

Scarcely have the sun's rays departed from the hills before the
stars peep out, and but for their light all would be in a few min
utes pitchy black. Yet the next morning the chickens come from
their roosts a half-hour before sunrise, and the most delicious
time of the day is opened. The same causes which make twilight
short should do the like for the dawn. With the dawn at Singa
pore appear the horses of the rich Europeans, led for exercise
about the esplanade by their half-naked Malay grooms. Then
come Chinamen, pacing along with a Newfoundland-dog gait, car
rying suspended to the two ends of bamboo poles baskets of
vegetables for market, and near by is a string of carts drawn by
beautiful hump-backed oxen, with gray or tawny hides, horns
pointed almost straight up, and looking at us with eyes as soft as
those of a fawn. The drivers of these carts are Clings, from the
Madras country ; straight as North American Indians, generally
very tall, with long, black hair, and skins of all shades, from the
very dark-brown to a sooty black ; their features are generally finely
chiselled, and their forms superb. How their black skins, well
oiled, shine in the morning sun ! They wear only a skirt about
their loins, and look like Apollos cut from ebony. They are the
workers upon the streets, and when the heat of noon is on
them their sweating shoulders and backs look as if they had been
polished. Immediately after breakfast, which throughout the East for for
eigners is about nine o'clock, we went to the botanical gardens,
some two miles out of town. Our road was through cocoa-nut
trees and orchards of mangoes. The gardens were a delight to us,
and we were enabled to learn the names of many beautiful trees
we had seen but were not able to designate. The garden is
large, — a part a handsome park, and a part devoted to experi
mental tree and vegetable growing, and a still larger part yet a
tangled mass of jungle. I wish I could properly describe the trees
and flowers. There were clumps of sago palms, their mighty
leaves rattling in musical measure as they were swayed back and
forth by the gentle breeze. The Malay wine-palm, with great
leaves of most delicate green, looked cool and refreshing. Wide-
spreading spathalodia, clothed in a mass of great red-orange, cup
like flowers ; large bushes, not labelled, of almost solidly growing
flowers, looking like huge golden chalices; cocoa-nut trees, with
a hundred nuts hanging under their spreading fronds, resembling
huge green roc's eggs ; and by their side the slender betel trees,
with clusters of nuts not larger than bantam eggs. And see
yonder low spreading tree, not 25 feet high, and yet shading lOO
feet of soil. What bright leaves ! Ah, it is the gum copal from
Africa. Fine trees of acacia flamboyant, their leaves as beautiful
as the most delicate ferns, and their tops a-blaze in golden bloom.
Ponds of victoria regina, its leaves resembling mighty platters
spread for a feast of Titans, and with sweet-scented pink flowers

BOTANICAL GARDEN. JOHN BLAIR. 153
a foot across for titanic boutonniferes. Ponds of pink lotus, more
bright far than the lilies which Solomon could not vie with, and
near by a dozen coal-black swans, so royally proud of their crim
son bills, and graceful small water-fowl, which would shame even
an English sportsman of his desire to kill. But how the boys did
enjoy the hedges of wild mimosa, which folded its leaves under
the gentlest touch. They carried them afar, and in fancy they
could see the sweet coyness of a dark or blue-eyed girl in their
far-off homes. Though this park and garden were so interesting,
yet, when we at one time got lost, and had to make our way
through a newly cut path in a dense chaparral, we could not help
remembering that man-eating tigers swim the narrow channel be
hind the island, and carry off one or more hundred natives every
year, and that not long since a python, 28 feet long, was killed just
after he had swallowed a pig weighing 130 pounds; and, worse
yet, that we were in the belt of the world for venomous snakes,
which cause the death of over 150,000 people every year in India.
Saturday we went to see the machine shops of the Tanjong
Pagar Dock Company. I had a note to Capt. John Blair, the
general manager and superintendent. He went out of his office
with us. It rained. John offered a part of his umbrella. " Oh,
don't mind, there 's one near," and, sure enough, a good-looking
Indian stepped up and held an umbrella over him as he walked.
That umbrella is always ready in sunshine or rain, and the pro
tected man never has to hoist it. The captain said it was a very
part of himself. I informed him that I had a great desire to
cross the equator, but could not spare ten days to go to Batavia,
and wished to hire a launch to take us down. In the course of the
conversation England's beneficial rule in India was mentioned.
" And yet," I remarked, " she keeps her next neighbor isle, poor
Ireland, in a constant ferment and a blot upon her escutcheon,
and all because the Englishmen could not or would not compre
hend the Irish character." To my surprise and delight I found I
had at last met a Briton who was a Gladstone man — the first one
I have seen since we sailed from Vancouver. I have felt my way
again and again, but every Englishman, Irishman, and Scotchman
I have seen in the East either was or pretended to be an intense
Tory. They nearly all depend more or less upon the ruling party
at home, and many of them speak of Parnell as if he were a regular
anarchist, and pronounce Gladstone an infernal scoundrel. But
burly, handsome John Blair, of Alloa, Clackmannanshire, I found
to be an enthusiastic admirer of England's great Liberal leader;
this was probably the secret of his telling me to be ready at
Johnston's pier at 1 1 o'clock Monday, and he would have a tug
or a launch there for us to run to the equator.
Sunday, in the rain, we drove out to Major Studer's bungalow.
He lives in a beautiful spot, shaded with tropical verdure. But
the air was as heavy as it is in a glass fernery. Tropical verdure

154 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
is a glorious thing, but I begin to yearn for one good sniff of
frozen wind.
At II o'clock Monday, with our .satchels and some hampers of
solids and fluids, in a launch 40 feet long, with three Malay sea
men, two Chinese engineers, and all under a marine engineer, Mr.
Haderup, a Dane, we steamed* from Singapore in quest of that
line which is the earth's girdle, and yet sits so loosely about her
waist that it continuously, through the ages, grows bigger and
bigger under the gentle pressure. I know this will appear a
wild-goose chase, or worse. But we were only 70 odd miles from
the equator. We wanted to put those 70 odd miles behind us,
and to feel we were on the southern hemisphere. Even that
sturdy Scot, John Blair, of Alloa, Clackmannanshire, did not look
at me as if he thought me a fool when I named my longing. He
saw our youthful fire, and became himself enthused, and gave us
a launch. Across the Singapore strait, and spreading over the sea to the
south and to the east of Sumatra, lies the Rhio-Linga archipelago.
The islands of Battam and Bintang, both quite large, lie along
the strait. Behind these are a vast number of small islands, said
to be 1,000, of all sizes, from those containing several thousand
acres down to tiny ones not many feet in diameter. Some of the
larger ones have hills several hundred feet high ; the smaller ones
are comparatively new coral structures. After passing through a
group of these there comes an open sea, probably 15 miles across,
where a new group similar to those at the north lie like emerald
gems on the water, and run down to and about Linga. These
all belong to the Dutch, but are under the immediate sway of
Sultan Abooal Rachman and his father. Rajah Mohammed Joe-
seep. They acknowledge the supremacy of the king of Holland,
who has at Rhio a " Resident," who keeps watch and ward for
his king.
Capt. Blair told me at parting that we might not get much
pleasure from our introduction to the equator, but that we would
have the most beautiful sail in the world. But even this left me
rather unprepared for the beauty we were to enjoy. Our launch
was swift. The day was glorious. Fleecy clouds were scattered
over the heavens from zenith to horizon — not enough to shut out
the soft blue sky, but every few moments veiling the sun and
sheltering us from his too hot rays. The speed of our craft gave
us a gentle breeze, and, above all, we were in the highest spirits.
We entered the archipelago through a narrow pass opposite Singa
pore, and hour after hour were in the midst of scenes of surpass
ing loveliness. Now we were on a broad lake a mile in diameter,
mirroring upon its placid waters the i.slands around. These were
fringed all along the water's edge with mangrove trees of beauti
ful green, their roots standing in the water six to ten feet high
like spider legs beneath the bodies of the trees. They looked

A SAIL THROUGH RHIO-LINGA ARCHIPELAGO. 155
like monster insects, and when the swell on the glass-smooth
water from our little craft would run toward them, their thousands
of long legs would be reflected, and would bend and dance upon
the mirrory waves. Above and behind this fringe the islands
would lift 50, 100, or 200 feet, clothed in dense forests, their leafy
tops so thick and bunched that they looked like masses of emerald
spun and then woven into tufted fabrics. Some tropical travellers
speak of the sameness of the green about the equator, and declare
it greatly inferior to the variety shown in northern zones. So far
I have not found this well founded — certainly not in these 1,000
islands. There was every tint, from pale pea-green to one that
was almost black in its waxy depth ; from the ashy dye of the
olive leaf to the transparent emerald green caught from the breast
of a breaking sea wave.
From the fairy lakes there would apparently be no outlet — all
was landlocked. But see yonder little creek! We bend into it,
and scudding along a narrow green sea-river, lo ! the creek
spreads, and there before us lifts a conical little island, with a
narrow shore-line of golden sands. Then into another lake stud
ded with little islets, some barely large enough to furnish foot
hold for a single tree, whose spreading branches kiss the rippling
waters beneath. One could almost fancy he saw a boat of
mother-of-pearl shell moored to a twig, with a fairy occupant
sleeping in the shade. Now and then we passed close to native
villages on some of the larger islands, with low palm-walled and
palm-roofed huts lifted upon bamboo piles, and children laughing
and romping in the cocoa-nut groves in which the village would
be nestled. Every hut in this land is lifted up as a protection
against venomous serpents and carnivorous beasts, and for cool
ness. Tigers swim from island to island, and have a tooth for
young human flesh.
Sometimes the villages were piled out over the water ; about
these, tiny fishing canoes, with a shining native in each, were to
be seen gliding about and among the spidery roots of the man
grove trees, through which the rays of the sun never pierce. If
it be not the loveliest sail in the world, it was certainly the most
so of any I had enjoyed. The Thousand Islands of the St.
Lawrence and the inland sea of Japan are as much inferior to
this as they are superior to the islands in the upper Mississippi.
England may claim to hold the golden land of India, but Hol
land holds the gems of the sea.
Rhio we found a very pretty place. It has been the seat of a
Resident for 102 years, and the houses of the Dutch inhabi
tants, perhaps 100 people, have an air of sedate comfort not seen
in any other place we have visited. I had a letter to the Resi
dent, Mr. Halewijn, from the Dutch Consul-General at Singa
pore. In our flannel shirts we did not feel at liberty to call.
But, passing by his house, we saw him in his grounds in light

156 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
dishabille. We thereupon ventured to go in and introduce our
selves. We were received most cordially, and went upon the
cool veranda, floored with light Italian marble tiles. Here we
partook of a collation. The sun dropped behind the curtain of
the west and darkness came suddenly on, when servants lighted the
swinging lamps and we found ourselves in one of the most charm
ing tropical residences one can conceive of. A lofty veranda, 50 to
60 feet long and, say, 20 odd deep. Behind this a salon or par
lor of same size, and separated from the veranda only by open
columns. Behind this the bedrooms and the offices, all on one
floor. The ceilings were lofty, and the whole floored in Italian
marbles. Nothing can exceed it for chaste and cooling design.
We were most cordially invited to stay and dine, but we felt we
could not accept in the garb we wore.
Imagine our dismay (that is, of the boys), and my pleasure,
when Miss Halewijn, a very pretty young lady, dressed in ele
gant evening costume, entered and was introduced. She came
to honor us, but I suspect was dressed for a handsome young
gentleman from Java, who shortly called, I suppose having pre
viously left his card. He had come over on a steamer plying to
Singapore. We spent a most charming hour and left with re
gret, but we knew dinner must be nearly ready. His Excellency
gave me photos of the Sultan, of the Rajah, whose palace is on
a small island a half-mile off Rhio, and one of himself.
We slept that night at a little hotel which is supported by the
government, for travel is rare. I will here make a note of two
things. The bread was most delicious — I mentioned it, and was
told the " Resident " had given orders that if the bread of the
village should be at any time bad he would punish the baker.
We threw up our hats for the good-sense of the Resident of his
Majesty of Holland.
The other point is this : At Singapore and in this hotel we had
no top sheets on the beds. No one sleeps under any other cover
than the mosquito bar ; but lengthwise on the bed is a firm bol
ster three or four feet long. This is to lay the leg or arm, or
both, over, so as to permit free circulation of air and to keep the
sleeper cool. It is a Javanese-Dutch invention, and is called a
" Dutch wife." A strange misnomer, if my recollection of Dutch
wives be not at fault. For I certainly never saw one in flesh and
blood whose contact could possibly keep a bed-fellow cool in hot
weather. But whether misnamed or not I cordially commend
the inanimate " Dutch wife " to every man in a hot climate.
The next morning very early, while our tanks were being filled
with fresh water — the launch could not use that of the sea — we
strolled about the town. It is certainly a charming place for one
who cares not for contact with the worid, to spend his days in,
and carried me back in memory to Robinson Crusoe, and the
Swiss Family Robinson. Not that one sees no people, for the

WE WERE ON THE EQUATOR. 157
town has several thousand inhabitants — a considerable quarter
is built out over the sea tenanted exclusively by the Chinese, —
but on account of the delicious morning atmosphere and the
fine tropical fruits. With the exception of the Chinese quarter
the bulk of the town is of scattered houses among groves of
palm and mango and mangostine. We ate mangoes and man-
go.stines, the two famed fruits of the East, and ripe in India
proper only in the spring. This was to me a fine sensation.
I am a great lover of fruit, and would go far to taste a new
and good one, and had feared I should not have a chance at
these two. They were freshly plucked, and yet cool from the
heavy dew. We also drank the cool water from green cocoa-
nuts, just brought down from their nests above. This was not
all new to us, but it was the first experiment with one we
knew was just gathered. The balmy breeze coming in from
the north was simply perfect.
We were soon steaming off toward the Linga group of
islands, separated from those of Rhio by a somewhat open sea
of 15 to 20 miles. The day was again fine. Pretty fish were
leaping and skipping upon the waters, which were barely rip
pled ; one leaped aboard. The northern group of islands began
to sink below the horizon, and then those to the south to rise
up like little specks in the air, for the mirage so lifted them
that they seemed to float several feet above the sea. Out of
the sea they would grow as if by magic. Then they would
take form and other more distant ones would break out of the
shining, far-off waters. In three hours we were threading
through another thousand isles and living over again the de
lights of the day before.
About one o'clock our Malay captain pointed to an island to
the east of the northern end of Linga, and called it " Bulu
Bleeding," and told us it was the middle of the world. How
I wished it were midnight. Then we could have taken note of
the stars in the zenith, and could have called them up hereafter
as witnesses of this, our first glide upon the southern hemisphere.
Onward we sailed, our prow still pointed to the south pole, only
a little over 12,000 miles away. We reached a point, and felt that
there, in our frail barge, only a thickness of one inch of oak plank
between us and eternity, we were upon that magic line which
every school-boy knows of, which countless billions of human
people have crossed, and yet no single one has seen. A mighty
belt, 25,000 miles long, of intangible breadth, and yet so powerful
that ocean currents and vast sea-rivers, compared with which the
Amazon, the Mississippi, and the Yang-tse are but feeble brooks,
are turned and bent and forced to change their courses and to flow
off for thousands of miles, carrying health and wealth, warmth
and thaw, to the far-off frozen continents of the north and south.
A line — a mere intangible creation of the brain, — it speaks to the

158 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
sea, and says in whispered tones : " Thus far and no farther shalt
thou go ! " and its whispered words are imperial law, and are
obeyed. The howling winds rush from the icy caves of the poles,
carrying death upon their frozen wings, but far away the genie of
this line lifts up a gossamer web so light that Herschell's mighty
lens could not reveal a single one of its meshes ; and yet, before
this phantom screen the storm-fiend bows his head, slinks back
into his frozen lair, and the borean storm melts into a gentle
breeze. A zephyr comes from the sweet zones of the north or of
the south ; it is laden with the breath of spicy groves, and is
redolent with the sighs of fairies bred in the cup of the honey
suckle and fed upon petals of the rose. It touches this phantom
line with its rosy-tipped fingers, and is hurled back in frightful
change, and is sent crashing and slaying in the monster fury of
cyclone and typhoon. Far away in the dimness of my boyhood
days I had dreamed and wondered if I should ever stand upon
the equator. My boyhood has long since been spent ; my man
hood is fast going ; but at last, at last my dream is reality ! We
stop the engine and float upon the gently rippling sea ; we dream
a sweet short dream, and feel that our barge is moored to the
mighty girdle of the world. We dream and dream, and with a
sigh change our course and tear ourselves away.
We bend again to the north. We leave the tall mountain of
Linga behind. We pass close to a more than usually pretty
island of a few hundred acres and some 150 feet high in its loftiest
point. There is no evidence of its being inhabited. We try to
land, but find treacherous coral reefs a few feet below the surface
at each point we attempt, and are about to abandon our design,
when we see two tiny canoes stealing along at a distance. 'We
steam towards them and call them to us. They are native fisher
men from an island near by, and pilot us to a point where we run
within a hundred yards of the shore. Then, one by one, we, with
Haderup, go off in their boats. The little canoe sank to within
two inches of the surface under my 200 and odd pounds. We are
told the island has no name and no inhabitants. We wander
about the beach gathering beautiful little shells and bits of coral
not too heavy to carry home as souvenirs. There were some fine
specimens of the negro-head or brain corals, and some with large
branching antlers. We had to leave them ; they were too heavy.
We amused ourselves watching the little hermit-crabs chasing
about with shell-houses over them. The crab finds a little conch
or periwinkle-formed shell which suits his fancy ; he eats the
mussel out of his home and backs himself into it, tail foremost,
and lives there the Yesi-'i of his days, or until he grows too big
for his stolen house, when he goes out to steal a bigger one.
They stick their feet out of the opening, and move nearly as fast
as they do without the shell. 'When attacked or alarmed they
draw in their bodies and barely the large claws are visible. When

WE CHRISTEN AN ISLAND. 159
backed in, their two large claws so perfectly fit the mouth of the
shell that one can scarcely realize that it was not made for its
inmate Some of these shells, being very pretty, we wanted ; we
put them into our pockets; the little robber crabs, finding them
selves in dangerous quarters, came out of their houses and crawled
from our pockets. Some of the shells so tenanted are not larger
than small snail shells, others are as large as an apple.
How we hated to tear ourselves away from this charming spot !
The strand was only a few yards wide, a mass of coral sands and
beautiful shells, and broken corals of various sizes. A .high
bluff lifted from this, a part of it of purple rocks, of considerable
boldness ; lofty trees hung down from the bluffs. Their large
branches were covered with several varieties of orchids and
trailing vines. Low palms and plants with huge spikes like the
aloe made the jungle almost impenetrable. We dare not attempt
to penetrate it ; we knew not what venomous reptiles might
be hiding among them. Our Malays said there were none. A
pretty little stream trickled down the bluff, giving us cool, pure
water. It, however, was not perennial, but flowed only in the
rainy season ; otherwise the island would have been inhabited.
We ate a little lunch and drank to loved ones on the other side of
the globe. We thought it probable that we were the first white
men whose feet had ever trod this island. Why not take posses
sion of it in the name of the United States ? But we had no flag.
We attempted to improvise one. We cut strips of red and blue
paper in which our wine and beer bottles were wrapped. We
pinned these to a large sheet of white paper, but we could not
make the stars. Luckily I had in my satchel a piece of paper
with the Chicago seal and motto printed upon it. We fastened
it to our flag. But this was hardly Uncle Sam's ensign. We
resolved this should, for the time being at least, be the Chicago
flag. We fastened it to a tree quite securely. Then we all took
a pull at the claret bottle, and pouring some upon the soil, called
the island " Chicago," and formally took possession of it in the
name of our own proud city. To seal the matter we fired a
volley of 38 shot from our two revolvers and my little two-
barrelled Derringer. We left the flag.. Long may it stick to the
far-off " Chicago " near the equator in the Rhio-Linga archipel
ago ! We were then paddled aboard, and as the sun was hurrying
toward our own land we steamed for port nearly 80 miles
away. We drew into Rhio for water. We called upon the Resi
dent for a moment, and told him we had named one of his
islands after our own proud city. He was as much pleased as
amused. All night we sailed, not among the islands, but the
shorter way, followed by larger craft through the broader straits.
The boys lay down and slept. Mr. Haderup and I dozed in cat
naps, and watched the stars. There was no moon, and the
heavens about midnight were ablaze with stars. The clouds all

i6o A RACE WITH THE SUN.
disappeared. The pole-star was just visible on the horizon at
the north. The true and the false cross rolled around in their
little circuits far on the southern horizon. The Magellan clouds
were seen by me for the first time — yellow luminous circles of
cloud-dust far to the south. Orion and Sirius rode across the
zenith, and mighty Jupiter shone forth in resplendent brightness —
large and brighter than a full moon. It was a glorious night,
following two glorious days. We reached the pier near our hotel
at 5: 15, just as the dawn broke out of its hiding-place in the east.
'We had enjoyed two glorious days and a glorious night. We
had stood over the equator. The boys had not slid down upon it,
as they threatened to do. But all three of us had been filled with
fresh enthusiasm. Even Mr. Haderup, who had crossed the line
many a time, caught the contagion, and brought us his photo on
the ship when she sailed. In the forenoon I went to Captain
Blair's office to pay for our pleasure. He refused to accept a
cent, but permitted me to leave a small sum to his men. He
seemed very much to enjoy the pleasure he had afforded us, and
when he gave my hand a warm grasp with his good-by, he said :
" Stand up for Gladstone." " I will," I replied, " and for Parnell
and Ireland too."

CHAPTER XVII.
BURMAH— PAGODAS— working ELEPHANTS— THE IRRAWADDY
RIVER— PAGAHN WITH 9,999 PAGODAS— MANDALAY—
EXQUISITE EDIFICES— THE BURMESE.
Calcutta, January 3, 1888.
We sailed the afternoon of the 14th of December, 1887, from
Singapore, for Rangoon in Burmah. Had a delightful smooth sea
to Penang, at the northern end of the strait of Malacca, where we
stopped for several hours. This is one of England's colonies, and
an important point both for national and commercial purposes. It
is on an island some 40 odd miles in circumference with a popu
lation of a hundred and odd thousand, mostly Chinese and Malays,
a few thousand Indians and 100 or 200 Europeans. We vis
ited its botanical gardens and water-fall. The latter is very
pretty ; a good-sized stream coming from a mountain over 2,000
feet high in the centre of the island, tumbles several hundred
feet — about 200 being in three cascades. It furnishes the
town with fair water. At the fall we saw for the first time wild
monkeys. They were springing from bough to bough on the
trees, like frisky squirrels, and were some the size of large cats,
others as large as good-sized terriers. After playing a while they
would stop, and, like true monkeys, go to catching fleas from each
other. One had a baby in her arms ; this did not prevent her
leaping 10 to 20 feet.
The climb of 2,200 feet to the top of the hills was well paid for
by the magnificent view. The strait with its many islands and the
mainland beyond with its large cocoa-nut groves and mountain
background made a picture of unusudl beauty. No voyageur
should miss it. The weather thence continued fine and the sea
smooth — about as warm as a mild May day in Chicago.
On the 20th we anchored at Rangoon, the capital of British or
lower Burmah, which fell into England's lap in 1852. At that
time it was a poor place, only celebrated for its great pagoda. It
lies on the Irrawaddy, about 35 miles from the mouth and has
doubled its population several times within the past 35 years ; it
is the great shipping port of the two Burmahs , doing a trade of
nearly $100,000,000 a year. In rice exportation it stands to the
world as Odessa did, and Chicago does in wheat, and sent abroad
last year not much under 1,000,000 tons. It also exports vast
161

i62 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
quantities of " kutch," the brown dye which is supposed to pre
serve nets and sails from rot. This dye is from a sort of gum
obtained by boiling down the heart wood of a species of acacia.
Hides, teak timber, and horns are also exported largely. There
are about 400 Europeans residing here. They have handsome
bungalows surrounded by large grounds ; move in considerable
style, and do their business in fine houses. Some of the Chinese
have substantial places of business. The remainder of the town
is of frail light frame huts, with walls of plaited bamboo, and
roofed with palm thatch or leaf shingling.
The first thing we did was to visit the Schway Dagohr Pyar,
or Golden Pagoda. This is one of the most sacred of the Bud
dhist monuments and shrines of Asia, and is claimed to be over
2,000 years old. In it are several of Buddha's hairs and other
relics, and under its foundations are said to be vast treasures
deposited in ages past by those who desired to obtain immortal
" merit " by their gifts to the Buddhist god. Here I will state
that a " pagoda," or " pyar," is not a temple, or of itself a place
of worship, but is simply an offering to God. It is promised that
whoever erects one escapes all loathsome transmigration after
death, and reaches an immortality of absolute rest — a species of
eternal death in life or life in death, or rather a tranquillity so
complete that its serenity I cannot separate from the idea of
death. The mere building of these edifices does not win this
ineffable rest or condition of " nirvana," but it prevents any deca
dence of the soul after death, and thus enables a man in some
near future existence, by a life of purity, to obtain the condition.
A man may live the greater portion of his life in purity, but one
or more backslidings may send his soul after his death into some
of the more degraded animals, and then thousands of years may
be passed before it again enters a human being, when a life of
piety can again be commenced. All of this danger is avoided
by building a proper pyar. This induces men to accumulate
wealth and to spend it all in one of these pious offerings. The
result is there are thousands upon thousands of them in the land.
There are said to be 25,000 within a few miles of the Irrawaddy.
The Golden Pagoda of Rangoon stands upon a hill in the edge
of the town. About 170 feet up from its base, the hill is levelled
off into a platform 800 feet square. In the centre of this stands
the main structure. It is octagonal at its base, with a diameter of
over 450 feet. This runs in, by a succession of terraces or high
steps, a hundred or more feet, giving it a bell-shape. From the
shoulder of the bell springs another circular member, also in the
bell form, but more steep ; then another. On it lifts a tall, thin,
four-sided lantern, on which rests the " htee," or open-work metal
lic receptacle for sacred mementos. The " htee " is surmounted
by a half-open metallic umbrella. The whole height from the
platform is 370 feet. Around the base are 56 small pagodas

THE GREAT PAGODA. 163
about 30 feet high. The whole of the main structure is solid, of
well-burned brick, covered over with cement plaster, and gilded
from foundation to pinnacle. The upper half is freshly gilt, the
scaffolding being removed while we were there. At a distance
the whole, when the sun is sinking, looks like a mountain of gold.
The htee is said to be of solid gold and studded with real gems,
and was erected by a late king at a cost of $250,000.
To repair an ordinary pagoda does not work " merit " for the
one making the repair, but the merit is relegated to the original
founder. But any repairs to this pagoda, and to three others in
the kingdom, avail for " merit " to the repairer. The result is
these three are kept in good condition. Around the platform are
a number of smaller pagodas, and many chapels and kyoungs
or temples for worship. These are filled with statues of Buddha
in gilded plaster or white alabaster. Many of them are much
larger than life. The kyoungs are of wood, — some of two only,
others of seven stories. These latter taper inward as they rise,
each story receding behind the one below, and each being also of
less height than the one under it. They, too, are surmounted by a
lantern-shaped member and an umbrella, and are a mass of beau
tiful carvings — fringes of net pattern, scrolls of flower pattern,
rows of little figures, men, animals, and birds, all of wood, carved
with a free hand, and generally very graceful in spite of their
grotesque postures. When I say these structures are often seven
stories in height, I refer entirely to the apparent exterior archi
tecture, for within they are open from top to bottom. The
kyoungs invariably have a pagoda attachment, either of the
conical form and of brick or a tall wooden building with the
many stories, and the metallic htee, or umbrella, surmounting the
whole. The kyoungs oftentimes consist of many buildings, and
are a species of monastery, in which the priesthood live and devote
themselves to study and holy meditation. A pagoda, however,
may have, and in the greater number of cases, has no kyoung
attachments. They are simply and purely offerings, and fre
quently have the ashes of the founder buried beneath them and
occasionally some so-called relics of Buddha stored in the
htee. They are often built on uninhabited and uninhabitable
spots. Every Burman has to pass through the priesthood. High and
low, rich and poor must don the " yellow robe," shave the head,
and live upon alms during a more or less lengthy period of life,
generally, I think, three years. Even kings are not exempt.
Little yellow-robed boys are constantly seen going from house to
house with their rice-pots in quest of food for their respective
kyoungs. These are novitiates learning their humanities, and do not
generally continue in the order. Some however remain for years and
many for life. The latter escape the degradation of bestial trans
migration, and if they be good " pohn-gyees" (priests), have a fair

i64 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
chance of soon entering upon a state of nirvana — that is to say,
blissful, eternal rest or conscious, comtemplative death. After
our return from Mandalay we spent several hours at the Golden
Pyar, now resplendent in its new garment of gold. So thor
oughly well-proportioned is it, that at first one does not realize its
vast size or great height. The view from it is very fine. The city
lies nearly veiled in tropical trees, and immediately around is a
large park with fine drives and lakes studded with pretty islands.
These lakes cover many acres ; are irregular in shape and artificial
in construction. They were made long since by throwing dykes
across some ravines, and are the reservoirs for the city, furnishing
an abundant supply of pure water, carried in pipes and available
in street hydrants, but without much head.
Early the next day after our first arrival in the city, while yet
cool, we visited one of the decided lions of the city — the work
ing elephant. Formerly these were very numerous, being the
heavy workers in timber-yards and great saw-mills. Machinery
has now supplanted them in all establishments run by foreigners.
In each of the native mills, however, where small orders are filled,
two of the noble beasts yet perform the heavy labor which human
hands unassisted could scarcely manage. We visited some of
these the second time on our return from up country, and were
greatly interested. The elephants draw the logs many of them
three feet in diameter and 30 to 40 feet long, from the river, pile
them up in systematic order, and when they are needed roll them
to the ways and assist in adjusting them for the saw. Lumber is
not here sawed into boards, but the slab is taken off and the good
stuff left in square timber to be ripped up into boards where con
sumed, oris cut into scantling or studding. This is done both for
home consumption and for exportation. After the log is thus cut,
the elephant goes among the machinery, takes the slabs away, and
then carries the good timber and piles it up or lays it gently upon
the ox-carts to be hauled off. A carpenter while we were present
wanted lumber from a particular log which was under several
others. One of the monsters rolled the upper logs off and pushed
the chosen stick to the mill. The way was not clear — the log
butted against the others. He pushed these aside and guided his
piece through them with a sagacity almost human. His stick
became wedged. He pushed and tugged ; it would not budge, but
at a whispered word from the mahout and the promise of a bit
of nice food he bent to it. Still it stuck. With a whistle audible
for a quarter of a mile, he got on his knees, straightened out his
hind legs, and put his whole force to it. He was successful. We
could almost read his satisfaction, in the gentle flaps of his huge
ears and the graceful curve of his proboscis as he put it up to the
mounted mahout, asking his reward.
Sticks, over two feet thick and 20 feet long are lifted up bodily
upon the great ivories, and are then carried off and laid upon the

SAGACIOUS ELEPHANTS. 165
gangways so gently as not to make a jar. One stick 22 inches
thick and 22 feet long we saw carried in this way. In carrying
this the beast had a path not three feet wide among masses
of loose logs. He had to plant his fore-feet upon the latter and
thus walk a considerable distance. He looked as if he were
walking upon his hind legs. The corner of a frail little bamboo
hut stood in his way. He lifted the log over the roof, and bent
his body so that his sides gently scraped the corner of the house
and did not shake it. A hundredth part of his weight would have
caused it to topple from its pile foundation. He was ordered to
carry off a pile of 4 x 6 pieces 10 to 15 feet long. He ran his tusks
under quite a number. The mahout told him that was not
enough. He tried again, and probably doubled his load. His
driver gave him a fierce prod with his iron hook over the fore
head. With a shriek of rage he sent his ivories under the pile and
threw his snout over the top. He had to get on his knees to get
the load up. It was a decent dray-load. As he passed us, perched
on a pile of logs, we moved away, for we thought there was
blood in his eye and that he might dump the load on the foreign
ers. But when he came back he stopped before us, got on his
knees, bowed three times, and held out his snout to us for a
gratuity. I pitched a coin to the mahout. He whispered to the
beast that his elephantship would get a part of it. This seemed
satisfactory, for he snuffed up a pint of dust, blew it over his big
rump, and marched off for a bath in a mud-hole not far away.
Each native mill has a pair. They work only in short spells, and
take their rest while feeding in grass-grown mud-ponds.
In Mandalay we saw quite a number belonging to the English
commissary department. They were formerly King Thebaw's.
One of them had a little baby only 34 inches long. The mother
was chained to a tree. The baby toddled to us and held out his
snout. I tried to catch it. He gave a whistle. I feared the cow
would break loose — she seemed so uneasy and strained so at her
chain. But I got my hand on the little fellow's back and
scratched it. How he wriggled with pleasure ! The mother
understood the thing and eased up. When we started off the
calf wanted more rubbing and followed us. The cow blew a
whistle that made us hurry. The little fellow then toddled back
and took a pull at his morning bottle.
On the steamer going to Mandalay, a Mr. Lacey, superintend
ent of the great Bombay Timber Company, was a fellow passen
ger. He employs 600 elephants drawing teak logs to the creeks,
several hundred miles up one of the branches of the Irrawaddy.
He has been here many years, and gave me several curious
anecdotes showing the wonderful sagacity of the great monsters.
With the risk of being prolix, I will give some of them, which he
assured me were true.
A mahout (elephant keeper) was addicted to the use of opium.

i66 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
Orders were given that when the elephant trains went to the
market village for supplies, this man should remain at an out
station some miles away. The wily fellow had a long talk with
his elephant — they seem to understand Burmese, — and told him
to go to town and get him some opium. Off he went alone, and,
reaching the village, tore around like mad. The villagers went to
the trees. The elephant nosed around, smelt where opium was
stored, took a ball, and trotted to his keeper. This was done a
second time, when the foreman gave orders to the opium vendor
that a small piece of the drug should be given the beast whenever
he came. In this way the mahout was kept on very short
allowance ; the elephant did not seem to comprehend the
necessity of getting a ball, but was satisfied with a small bit.
At another time a logging camp got out of sugar. It was near
a trail along which a pony train to and from China passed. The
mahouts knew a train was near at hand ; one of them explained
to his brute what was wanted, and sent him to intercept the
train. He did so, scared the men to the trees, and scattered the
loads of the ponies. The elephant found some sugar baskets, ate
his own fill — they are very fond of sweets, — and carried off a
basket to his keeper.
Each elephant has his individual keeper, but when they go into
camp at close of day they are sent off alone to the jungles for
dry wood, and never fail to bring the proper kind. From what I
saw and from many things told us, I am persuaded they have
decided reasoning qualities and are not simply taught tricks by
rote. We watched the performance of several at Rangoon for
two or three hours, and saw evidences of sagacity far surpassing
the little tricks done in the menageries. The mahout sits on a
houdah on the back of the animal. He rarely speaks loud enough
for one to hear him a few feet off. Mr. Lacey believes the
animals understand Burmese. One day he praised one of the
elephants in this language. The animal showed evident pleasure.
He, to test the thing, then spoke disparagingly of him. The
vain monster gave such unmistakable signs of being angry that
the mahout asked Lacey to desist to prevent danger. He
watched closely and could discover no sign or word from the
mahout. It was on the night of the 22d we boarded at Rangoon the rail
road train for Prome, several hundred miles up the river, but
only 170 by the air-line road. The first- and second-class cars are
a species of sleepers, a swinging berth being let down over the
seats, which run lengthwise. Each car has two compartments,
with a wash-room attached, and holding four passengers. The
traveller furnishes his own bedding and towels. The first-class
has cushioned seats ; the second not. The moon was bright till
midnight, so that we could see the country almost as well as by
day. Up to Prome the land is flat, grows great quantities of rice,

IRRA WADD Y RI VER. 167
and has good-sized plantations of bananas, and many scattered
sugar- or toddy-palms. At seven, the 22d, we took a steamer for
Mandalay, up river 300 miles. The river resembles the lower
Mississippi. It is now the dry season, and the stream is nearly
50 feet lower than in the summer. It does not rain in Burmah
from November to May, and the dry weather changes the coun
try almost as perceptibly as the winter's frosts do with us. Half
of the trees on the hills, which run down to the river much as on
the Ohio, are nearly as free from leaves as with us in late autumn,
and the grass was dry and parched. On the east bank rolling
lands run back many miles. These look as if they would produce
nothing ; but we are told tolerable crops could be grown on them.
The river is fringed with beautiful trees — tamarind, sacred ban
yan, and several varieties of the leguminous family of great beauty.
The stream has a rapid current and a treacherous channel, which
changes so often that native pilots are taken aboard two or three
times a day. But still with these, so rapid are the changes that,
the steamers dare not run after sunset, even when the -moon is at
its brightest. When the sun sets the anchor is dropped, and is
not weighed again until daybreak.
We had been led to expect beautiful scenery along the river,
but were disappointed. The hills are fine, often rising to the
dignity of low mountains, but the foliage was so sparse and the
grasses so parched that we could not call the scenery even good.
To the people of lower Burmah, accustomed to the almost dead
flats of the delta of the Irrawaddy, the upper river may be beau
tiful, but not to us who have seen so much during the past five
months. About half-way between Prome and Mandalay there is
a stretch of country, for nearly or quite 100 miles, which is almost
desolate. The plains to the east are broken and almost as bare
of trees as those of our Rocky Mountains. What trees do grow
are low and hardly green enough to relieve the eye as it looks
over the yellow-brown hills. The prettiest part of this tract is
where there is an almost dense growth of tree cactus, 6 to 20
feet high, and frequently with trunks a foot thick. They were
covered with leaves of bright yellow, and resembled huge, beau
tifully branched candelabra with bflrning candles. This is the
region of oil wells, of which there are many. One feature of the
picturesque, however, was never wanting — the pagodas. They
were always in sight, and oftentimes scores of them could be seen
of all sizes, from 20 feet to 100 and more in height. Some were
in ruins, with shrubs and trees growing out of their debris;
others were white and well preserved, with gilded umbrellas on
their pinnacles and ornamentations of mirror glass flashing
back the sun's rays, and about sunset looking like light-houses ;
sometimes they were on little elevations in the plain, then were
mounted on almost inaccessible hill-tops. Some were single,
others were in groups. Some had kyoung attachments, which

1 68 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
were monasteries in the neighborhood of villages ; others were
miles away from any habitation.
At Pagahn, once the capital of the kingdom, on a space along
the river of eight miles, by two miles deep, there are said to be
9,999 ; many of them of great size and gilded from top to bot
tom. The gilding, however, is much tarnished. Several here
are totally different from the ordinary pattern, having the ap
pearance of noble cruciform cathedrals, with windows and great
halls within, and surmounted by lofty domes and conical spires.
Both on our upward and downward voyages we anchored op
posite this old town. It was a strange sight to look upon,
this city of beautiful buildings in every stage of decay, in
which no living people dwell. As the sun dropped down its
rays were caught by the mirrors, now on one and then on another
lofty spire, as if the spirits of the long since dead were revisiting
the scenes of their pious deeds. After nightfall, when the nearly
full moon lighted the whole up with her pale face, the thing was
wonderfully weird and touching.
Centuries have gone by since a great population lived close
by. Superstitions — not cruel and revolting — whose aliment was
a beautiful and dreamy philosophy, caused this strange profusion
of vain offerings. The centuries have been laid by with those of
the mighty past, and the descendants of the builders of these
edifices are, just as their forefathers were, governed by a faith
sweet in theory, but deadening in its practical results. Their
faculties, naturally bright and joyous, have been numbed, and
their energies repressed by a religious philosophy which teaches
that a life of dead tranquillity and an eternity of slothful dreami
ness is better than a life of toil and progress and an eternity of
active joys and singing delights.
A tradition tells that an old prophecy declared that if 10,000
pagodas should be erected at Pagahn, it and the ruling dynasty
would be eternal. But whenever new ones were built and a
count was had, it invariably turned out that an old one had
crumbled into decay for every new one erected. The
io,oooth pagoda could never be counted. The king became
alarmed. He thought the demons had conspired against the
then capital, and so moved away. But the pagodas remain,
and Pagahn is, to the Buddhist, as sacred as Jerusalem is to the
Christian. By the way, the capital of Burmah has been many
times changed. When I was a boy it was Ava. Mindoon,
Thebaw's father, 29 years ago, conceived his capital to be un
lucky ; so he packed up and moved his palace, the people, and
the town to Mandalay, and to-day there is nothing to show that
Ava was ever a city. A large number of pagodas are about
its old site, but that is all. And Mandalay grew in 27 years to
be a city of over 250,000 inhabitants.
All Europeans, friends and foes, charge the Burmese with

BURMESE MEN AND WOMEN. 169
being among the laziest oT men. Their long adherence to
Buddhism has schooled them to a life of idleness — they say, of
meditation. But meditation, without a real, living object, be
gets idleness. Their government has been for ages one of selfish
despotism. Accumulation invited the tax-gatherer. Oriental
taxation has always been another name for extortion and rob
bery. Thrift begat extortion. There was never any inducement
for thrift except the hope of the acquirement of enough to build
a pagoda. To conceal wealth enough for this pious object was
difficult and dangerous.
Every thing conspired to make the people live for the enjoy
ment of the passing hour. The climate is so genial that wants
are few. A paddy field, when planted requires little labor. The
lands suited to rice culture are very fertile. Tickle the soil with
a plow — a mere single-toothed harrow — and it is ready for the
seed. Then cover it with water and nothing more is needed
until the harvest begins. The Burmese man works with great
energy while getting his crop in. Lazy men generally do.
After that is done he passes his time in visiting pagodas and
praying, — in gossiping with his neighbors and playing chess. A
wide strip of cotton cloth about the loins is his every-day dress.
One of silk and a bright handkerchief for his head makes him an
elegant gentleman. He works just enough to get these and his
rice, and his tasks are done.
His wife, however, is industrious. She attends the shop, gets
the meals, and does fully half the out-door work, leaving the
man to play the idler, or to take care of the children. She is not
hidden, as in most Oriental lands. She goes about town, rules
her husband and the household, drives the best bargains when
selling the produce of their fields, wears of evenings, or when
visiting religious places, gay-colored silk "tameins" — generally
of some shade of red, — and has a scarf of bright yellow figured-
silk over her shoulders ; dresses her coal-black hair in most be
coming style, rarely failing to have a sprig of flowers in her
chignon ; covers her arms and fingers with bracelets and rings,
encircles her ankles with silver anklets, and fills her ears with
gold and jewels. With the poor the gold is brass, and the jewels
are but glass. When a number of them are together they make
a gay and pretty picture. The colors used by a single individual
do not seem to harmonize, but when several are grouped they
make a most harmonious whole.
The women are far from being ill-looking, and many are not
only pretty but really beautiful. They do not fade and grow old
as in Japan and Siam, but continue fair when fat and 40. When
looking into their full faces one sees decided beauty. The pro
file, however, is defective. They all have the Mongolian cast of
face — high cheek-bones, short noses, and flat visage. These make
a bad side view. They are all self-possessed, without boldness.

I70 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
easy and graceful in deportment, without either coyness or
coquetry. If asked how I can form an opinion on so short an
acquaintance, I reply I saw many women at the various pagodas
visited, in the shops and attending the bazaars, and have forti
fied the result of my own observations by information gained
from men and women who have resided here for many years.
Europeans have opportunities for studying this people not given
anywhere else in the East — for the intercourse between the sexes
is quite as free as anywhere in Christendom.
Marriage is simply a civil contract, dissolvable at will. When
dissolved the property is equally divided between the parties.
Certain forms are gone through before the elders and the knot is
untied. Not only do the women trade and attend the shops,
manage the household, and do light field-work, but we saw squads
of them sweeping the street in Mandalay. In going up and
down the river we landed at several towns and villages. We,
when possible, took a few minutes' run through the little towns.
They were all very dusty and dingy. The houses are a frame
work on posts, with walls of plaited bamboo or woven palm.
There was no evidence of any luxury — a few flowers in pots the
only attempt at ornamentation.
"When the steamer reached a landing-place we would hear a
plunge and a splash near the bow, then others in succession made
by the deck-hands leaping into the river and swimming to the
shore with the line, and when we pulled out the man left on shore
to let go the line invariably swam to the boat. Then the brow of
the high bank would be seen — bright in red, white, yellow, and
orange, and all tints of these, made by the gay garments of men
and women gathered to see the boat. A woman's dress is the
"tamein," a strip of cotton or silk reaching from the waist to the
ankles. This is wrapped once around and girded at the waist.
Around the bust, leaving the upper part bare, is a strip wrapped
in a fold. A scarf goes over one shoulder, falling under the other
arm, and caught. This can be spread so as to cover both shoul
ders. Ordinarily, however, one of the shoulders, arms, and the
upper bust are bare, and in walking the " tamein " parts on one
side so as to slightly expose the leg, considerably above the knee.
In Rangoon many of the native ladies wear a short white jacket,
a modern innovation borrowed from white people.
The people are yellow, tinged down to quite dark, and sometimes
almost black. The hair is long and glossy on men and women. The
men, however, of the coolie class cut close, or else shave a good
part of the head. The holes for earrings in the woman's ear are
large enough to admit a thimble — she sometimes carries her
cheroot in it. All classes, old and young, smoke — ordinarily a
cheroot filled with a little tobacco mixed with certain barks and
wood. The covering is, to a great extent, the inner shuck of In
dian corn or fibre of some of the palms. It is about the size of a

BURMESE LADIES AT TEA AND SMOKING.

MANDALAY. PALACES. 171
common candle. The women smoke these so much that their
lips curl when the cigar is absent. They smoke when walking, in
the shops, and attending the stores of the bazaars. They are very
devout, and throughout certain days and about sundown of every
day are to be seen kneeling in crowds in the kyoungs or chapels.
Large numbers of cattle are reared along the river, and many
buffalo. The latter do the heavy plowing, but the ox is used for
carts and cabs. He is a very pretty animal, small, short-horned,
and with a pretty hump. A ride at Mandalay in an ox-cab was
enough disagreeable for me to remember the rest of my life. The
carriage body was three and a quarter feet wide, four feet long,
and three feet high. I had to squat down in this. My team were
good movers, and trotted at a good rate from the steamboat to
the hotel three miles away. I bore it without swearing, but I
prayed most fervently that we should reach our goal. Each ox
at Mandalay wears a little bell. Pony carriages take the place of
these at Rangoon. The ponies are fine little fellows, 10 to
14 hands high, and move with fair speed.
Mandalay grew from a naked plain to a city of 250,000 inhabi
tants in less than 30 years. This was not from its advantageous
situation, but simply sprang from the fiat of Mindoon, the king.
He ordered the place to be a city, and it was. Its inhabitants
paid no taxes, and to a large extent were fed upon the master's
bounty, at the expense of the taxpayers of the kingdom. Min
doon laid out the city exactly a mile and an eighth square, sur
rounded it with a wall 30 feet high, prettily crenulated and
backed by earth 20 feet thick ; outside of this is a broad esplan
ade and a moat 50 yards wide, deep, full of fish, and supplying
the city with water. In the centre of the walled city he placed
his palace, enclosed by a strong stockade of teak timber and a
brick wall 20 feet high. The remainder of this inner city was
packed with buildings, but outside of the moat the bulk of the
people lived in their huts, surrounded by gardens covering a very
large area. The king lavished great wealth in making this palace
as beautiful as Oriental taste could suggest. The queen's garden,
at the south end of the palace enclosure, must have been very
beautiful when it was kept fresh and green. Two or three acres
contained lotus and lily ponds, with heavy rock-work and gravelled
walks. The ponds had islands surmounted by kiosks, beautifully
carved, and pretty bridges springing from island to i.sland. In
the centre was a great bath sunken below the surface, cemented
to resemble marble, surrounded by pillared arcades planned by
Italian architects.
The palace does not consist of one large building, but of a large
number of wooden structures, 30 to 40 feet wide by 50 to 60 in
length. They are rather open porticos than houses. The roofs
are supported by columns eight to ten feet apart. Apparently
they are two stories, but this is only for architectural effect. The

172 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
second story recedes upon the 'first some eight or ten feet, and
is supported as the first is, only by more lofty pillars lifting from
the floor of the first story. The houses are, therefore, large
vaulted porticos, 30 to 40 feet high, divided by a partition running
across the centre and surrounded by open network cut from metal
or wood. The low cornices of the two stories are a mass of wood-
carving, generally very prettily executed. The entire structure
is lifted from the ground about eight feet upon columns. Some
two dozen of these structures were for the immediate use of the
king and queen, and are a mass of rich carving within and with
out, and are gilded from top to bottom, except where red lacquer
is used as a relief, and where gems are used for ornamentation.
These gems are of glass in imitation of diamonds, rubies, emeralds,
and sapphires.
One of the king's edifices, called the " Centre of the Universe,"
is apparently seven stories high, surmounted by an oblong struc
ture or lantern two to three feet in diameter and 30 odd feet high.
This is a mass of mirror glass cut into gem form ; on top is the
Buddhistic umbrella. Immediately under this umbrella, on the
main floor, is the throne, in a vaulted room supported by columns
70 feet high. All columns are of perfectly straight teak timber. The
ceilings, rafters, partitions, the outer roofs, and even the pillars
beneath the houses, are gilded and covered with gem ornamenta
tion, which is very beautiful. It was all built for present use, and
lacks that necessary ingredient of architecture, the appearance of
permanency ; but, with all the lavish richness and Oriental ex
travagance, there is nothing tawdry or out of keeping with true
Oriental taste. The buildings used by the attaches of the court
are of the same general design, but are colored in red lacquer,
without either gilt or gems.
Many of the pagodas and kyoungs of the city are very remark
able. The Koo-thoo-daw is a plain but perfectly proportioned
gilded pagoda, nearly 200 feet high, and surrounded by 500 small
pagodas or shrines, each about 12 feet square and 30 high. Each
of these has a chapel within, containing a tablet of stone four feet
high, covered with extracts from the most sacred of Buddhist
scriptures, cut in delicate letters. The gateway through the wall
which surrounds these would do credit to any architect in any
age. Not far from this on a huge raised platform of many acres,
is the Incomparable Pagoda, 400 to 500 feet square, elevated
by terraced stories, seven in number, to the height of 170 feet; at
a distance it looks, in its plain whiteness, like a huge wedding-
cake. It encloses a vast vaulted hall, with lofty ceilings, sup
ported by 100 to 200 beautiful columns, 70 feet high. It contains
a vast wealth of wood-carving of exquisite workmanship. The
interior is entirely of gilt, with vermilion relief. The lacquer-
work of Burmah, by the way, is inferior only to that of Japan.
The shrine of this pagoda, containing a monster Buddha, is gor-
geously decorated.

BEAUTIFUL EDIFICES. 173
The king's throne house, called the " Centre of the Universe," is
considered by the Burmese the chef-d' oeuvre of art. But to me
the true gems of Mandalay are two kyoungs, one called the king's
and the other the queen's house of prayer. They are not far
from the Incomparable Pagoda. I have lost the leaf from my
note-book in which I had measurements taken on the spot. I will
try to describe them as they are fixed in my memory. Imagine
a wooden platform raised about eight feet on a great number of
gilded wooden pillars about 20 inches in diameter. This platform
is, say, 50 by 150. Across one end is a two-story pavilion, 30 by
50 feet. The first story is 12 to 15 feet at the eaves. The roof
is a bent concave. From the inner line of this roof springs the
apparent second story, about 10 feet high, with a concave bent roof
running up to a large roof-tree. At the four corners of each roof
lift dolphin-shaped ornaments several feet high. Midway between
these is a sort of dormer roof, with a front, a species of broad
spear-head. Under the eaves of each roof is a frieze in carved vine
and flower pattern, and over this long rows of pretty little
statuettes. The second story is enclosed solidly. The first story
is enclosed with open screens of network pattern. The roof of
both stories is supported by a mass of columns or pillars running
from the main or only floor to the rafters. Standing with its end
toward and behind this pavilion is another similar one, united to
it by a low covered colonnade, and behind this, also united to it
by a colonnade, is still another similar pavilion, except that it has
seven stories, each story less receding than the one under it and
of less height, but with similar ornamentation. This latter is
surrounded by a tall, oblong, lantern-shaped- member, and on
it a metallic half-opened umbrella. The whole of these struc
tures are of exquisitely carved wood, and within and without
gilded from platform to pinnacle, and studded with imitation
jewels — diamonds, rubies, sapphires, and emeralds. The brackets,
dentelli, and rafters are colored, principally in vermilion lacquer.
The seemingly seven-story building contains a lofty hall, in the
centre of which is a colossal alabaster Buddha, surrounded by a
shrine of great richness. The carvings in and about one of these
payars are very elegant, and consist^s of hundreds, if not thou
sands, of little statuettes and a great length of scrolls and friezes.
Every thing is gilded and jewelled, except just enough of tinted
lacquer for relief. About three feet at the lower end of each
column is painted in vermilion, with gilded lacework uniting the
lower member with the upper solidly gilded portion.
I cannot imagine any thing more perfect in Oriental exuberance
than one of these sets of buildings. I am not sure whether it is
the king's or the queen's. One of them is used as an English
chapel. The other, like the majority of the kyoungs of the city,
is occupied by officers of the English army as quarters. A few
are left to the natives for purpose of worship. It is greatly to
the credit of the officers that they are careful to preserve every

174 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
thing as much as possible. The palaces and kyoungs are par
titioned off for bedrooms, and the officers' mess-rooms have
thrones and exquisite shrines for sideboards. The ruling powers
do as little violence as possible to the religious prejudices and
superstitions of the natives. Absolute tolerance is the rule. I
understand the government is desirous of preserving some of the
more beautiful buildings as curios. The estimates require 700,000
rupees to place them in good condition, and 100,000 annually
thereafter to maintain them.
We visited, just before sunset, a place of worship distant from
the army quarters. It was an elaborate kyoung, with four colon
naded approaches several hundred feet long, leading from the four
surrounding streets. The centre shrine and building over it,
together with the long double rows of columns and their roofing,
were a mass of imitation jewels, bits of mirror, and gilt. This
was but la^tely erected, and indeed is not yet finished. Hundreds
of men and women were worshipping before the golden Buddha,
and the priests let us know that they considered it a thing of
magnificence. We, however, found it tawdry and utterly lacking
in art. The worship in Buddhist temples is apparently as sincere
and quite as earnest as in any Christian church, and many of the
ceremonies very touching. I recall a memorial service for some
dead man in a temple at Kioto, Japan, which was as interesting
and full of feeling as any thing I ever witnessed. One has to
become accustomed to the peculiar shout, and to the occasional
striking of the gong and sounding of a bell. The intelligent
religious ideas of the world are to be found within Christianity;
but there is much genuine piety and real fervor in the Buddhist
church. We send missionaries to convert the heathen in India, China,
Siam, Japan, and Burmah. In all of these countries there are
large colonies of Europeans and Americans. The missionaries
preach Jesus. The foreigners at the same hour are practising the
devil. Everywhere all kinds of business is closed during the race
week, and our good people bet like Portuguese, and very many
get as drunk as lords and swear like troopers. I do not mean
that all do this, but enough do to leaven the whole lump in the
eyes of the poor benighted heathen. The missionary in the pulpit
tells his Chinese or Indian audience that one of the vices is
gambling, and that this is a sin intolerable within the Christian
church. While he preaches on Sunday every billiard hall in the
city is being patronized by foreigners, who have to take a " peg "
(drink) in honor of each fine run. And in the clubs games of
cards are being played in quiet rooms, and drinks are being
brought to the players by native waiters, who take tips, and
afterward buy candles to burn before the shrine of their own god.
Christmas-day we visited the many beautiful kyoungs of Man
dalay. In one, a part of a regiment was holding high carnival.

A JOLLY CHRISTMAS. DACOITS. 175
It was a holiday, and considerable license was permitted, so that
the boys, so far away from their homes, could celebrate the day
our Saviour was born. How the boys did celebrate ! They sang
in every brogue known from Kerry and Cork up to Dublin, and
in every dialect from York to Cornwall, and from Glasgow to John
o'Groat's house. Their heads were as full of grog as their hearts
were of devotion. Some came out of their barracks. Their eyes
were red from weeping tears of joy because they knew the
Redeemer lived. They danced in remembrance of the fact that
David danced before the ark of the Lord ; they reeled and leered
from intense fervor, and talked in drunken gibberish. They were
drunk in joyous frenzy, because of the brightness the Star of
Bethlehem had brought to the world. Ah ! they were shining
examples of the blessing handed down through 1,800 years to the
enlightened sons of Europe.
The poor, benighted natives can point to these as living evi
dences of the blessings conferred when a pagan is converted at
the cost of $10,000 to $20,000 a head. Missionaries are needed
throughout the East, but they are needed most to convert the
Christians of the East, and to lead them to follow the path trod
den by the Son of Man. The examples set by the foreigners
undo the good the pious missionary preaches to the pagan. A
native in Rangoon wanted a job and claimed to be a Christian.
When this was doubted he said he " could drink brandy now,
and could say God d  like an Englishman." This gave his
idea of what a Christian could do.
I doubt if Mandalay long retains its population. Just now the
army supports it. But when it departs the bulk of the people
must go. There can be no commerce to support there a large
city. Burmah will, ultimately, be greatly benefited by English
rule, but it will be at the expense of the Burmese. They seem
too lazy and careless to hold their own against the Chinese and
Indians who will flock to the land when it becomes quieted.
Several years must elapse before this condition can be brought
about. I refer to upper Burmah, taken two years ago from King
Thebaw. A species of brigandage, called " Dacoitism," is rife
throughout the land. The dacoits are poorly armed, and cannot
make any headway against the well* armed English soldiery.
But they kill and pillage friends and foes and burn down the
villages. They are the young and restless men who have no
means of self-support, and take this means of avenging them
selves upon the conquerors and of gaining the livelihood they
are too lazy to earn by work. When pursued they scatter and
simply appear to be villagers. I saw, on our steamer, coming
down the river, a large number of them in irons as prisoners.
Many were mere boys and none were even middle-aged. Under
the old government they eked out a scanty subsistence, but their
wants were few and they knew nothing of any thing better. Con-

176 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
tact with the outer world enlarges their wants, but will not stim
ulate their industry. The women will ultimately intermarry
with the intruders (not Europeans), and a sturdier race will grow
up. Then, and not till then, will upper Burmah fill up and be
come prosperous. It is about as large as France, four times as
large as Illinois, and has not more people than our own prairie
State, and has not increased for several centuries. There are
evidences that it has been constantly decreasing for probably
several ages.
Thebaw is a state prisoner in the Madras country, and the
English blacken the poor devil's character, so as to justify, in
the eyes of the world, their high-handed act when they took from
him his country. I met several intelligent Italians who have
been in the land many years. These declare the representations
of the English to be calumnies ; that Thebaw was not a drunk
ard ; that he was a good-hearted, overgrown boy, and that the
acts laid to his door as barbarities were the acts of his ministers,
in which he had no hand. But the Italians were the fellows who
feathered their nests under the old regime. They probably ex
aggerate in one direction as much as the English do in the other.
It will be for the good of the world that Thebaw was deposed.
But I do not see why England should not boldly acknowledge
she wanted all Burmah for strategic and state reasons, and justify
the act by an honest declaration of the truth, instead of using so
many little make-believes. She took and will hold the country
because she wants it, as she holds so many other countries. His
tory will paint her as a wholesale, but wonderfully wise, robber.
¦While I write on the Palatina, between Rangoon and Calcutta,
the sun has gone down. The ship has anchored outside of the
Hooghly River, one of the many estuaries of the Ganges. The
moon has just come up from over a low island to the east. The
air is balmy and has the sweet odor of the land. Light clouds
move lazily across the ruddy face of the queen of night. A well
born daughter of that far-off island, which rules nearly a third of
the world by her brain and through her well-filled coffers, is play
ing on a piano, under the awning covering the quarter-deck, and
with gentle touch, the sweet variations of the " Mocking Bird."
Refined gentlemen and gentlewomen loll or walk softly about,
respectfully listening to the music. Every thing immediately
about us : the great steamer with its electric lights, the refined
passengers, some of them Urasians, or half-breeds, indicate high
civilization. It is hard to realize that on yon island, just under
the low-lying moon, tigers are more abundant than in any other
part of the world. The keepers of the signal station on it live
within high walls, and dare not go lOo yards beyond them.
Refuge houses are built along the coast on high piles close to
the water. Canned goods, 400 gallons of water, a chart with full
directions how to find a port, and a boat are stored in each. And

ENTRANCE INTO THE GANGES. 177
great placards are stuck up on the walls warning the shipwrecked
man to beware of the tigers, and not to attempt to get off ex
cept by day, and at no time to venture into the jungle. The
islands and surrounding mainland are swampy, and the low
jungles are said absolutely to swarm with tigers and crocodiles.
Nothing less than a tidal wave seems able to drive them away.
To-morrow (the 3d of January, 1888) we proceed up the
Hooghly to Calcutta, the capital of India — India, the cradle of
the world's lore ; India, the land of the sacred Ganges and of
" coral strands," of Juggernautic cars, and of blazing funeral
beds ; of lovely women, old India, the world's dreamland since
history first was written.

CHAPTER XVIII.
THE HOOGHLY— CALCUTTA— MOUNT EVEREST— A WONDERFUL
RAILROAD— A DINNER WITH LORD DUFFERIN, AND
A STATE BALL.
Calcutta, Jantcary 13, 1888.
I HAVE always been to some extent a reading man, and consid
ered myself reasonably well informed historically, geographically,
and ethnologically on the countries of the world. I had been
taught to think of India as one concrete whole. I even casually
regarded both it and Farther India as a unit. This was all er
roneous. India is a compound of many distinct peoples, and is
widely diverse in its geographical, climatic, and historical ele
ments in its parts. Steaming up the Hooghly, one of the
branches forming the Ganges delta to Calcutta, the land on
either bank was low and flat. Dykes 10 to 15 or more feet high
ran along the banks 50 to 200 feet back. These are for protec
tion, less against floods in the rainy seasons, than against tidal
and cyclonic waves, which are frequently very destructive. Great
rice fields were seen as far as the trees would permit the eye to
range. Clusters of straw stacks were frequent, showing that the
stubble is not left on the ground, as is the case among the lazy
Siamese and Burmese, but is saved. The stacks are as pretty in
shape as grain stacks are in our land or even in England. Cocoa-
nut and date palms were everywhere seen, either standing singly
over the fields or in clumps about the villages and hamlets, the
picturesque bent roofs of the houses barely visible among the
palm fronds. These roofs are all of thatch, laid smoothly and
thickly over a ridge-pole of bamboo bent longitudinally across
the centre of the house, several feet higher in the centre than at
the two ends. This gives the houses or huts the appearance of
smooth-topped bent hay-ricks, and makes them very picturesque
in the midst of the rich verdure. As we proceeded up the river
the tropical growth on each bank became richer, frequently ap
pearing as a dense jungle.
We passed the dangerous sand bars at the mouth of the James
and Mary River with some little anxiety. There was nothing
apparent in the conformation of the river to indicate the smallest
danger, but every sailor aboard was at his particular post, and
several at the great wheel, ready to act on a moment's notice if
178

THE JAMES AND MARY QUICKSANDS. 179
any thing should derange the steam-steering machinery. The
ship bent in and out along the tortuous channel some two or
three miles in an almost serpentine track. Close to us was the
mast of a great steamer, a few feet out of the water, and day by
day sinking deeper. Under it are other ships, we are told many
others, which went down at different times during past years, and
the natives believe are constantly sinking, to stop only when the
centre of the earth shall be reached. The entire bottom of the
river is composed of quicksand. If a ship touches bottom it is
liable at once to be thrown around by the strong current, to be
careened, and to become unmanageable. The quicksands begin
immediately to swallow it into a maw which seems insatiable.
Sailors consider this the most dangerous bar in the world. When
we had passed through, the passengers, with solemn mien, con
gratulated each other that we would not be crocodiles' meat this
time at least.
We met many ships in the afternoon and saw a forest of masts
extending for miles along the river at Calcutta. Great three- and
four-masted ships were often lying four deep. I had never be
fore seen so many vessels at any river town. We passed the now
deserted palace of the old King of Oudh, who died only a lit
tle while ago, having been England's state prisoner for many
years, living in royal splendor with his women, with his tigers
and other animals, and watching and guiding the flights of his
thousands of fancy pigeons. England took from him his king
dom, his diamonds, and his liberty, leaving him his luxury, his
superstitions, and his bitter hatred of his despoilers. What a
mighty throng of Banquos could shake their gory locks at Al
bion and, pointing to their fatal wounds, say : "Thou didst it."
When we drew up to the pier we had to surrender our revolv
ers. The next day, after considerable delay, I got them back,
on payment of a duty equal to nearly half the value I put upon
them. The duty on firearms is almost prohibitory, and is in
tended to keep them out of the hands of the natives.
Calcutta is a very handsome city, with a population of about
500,000, 14,000 being Europeans. There are many handsome
buildings belonging to the governing classes. All are of brick,
plastered in whitish or yellowish cement, and of chaste architect
ure. There are no long monotonous rows, but here the house is
tall, there low, some with pilasters and porticos, others without,
thus presenting a picturesque outline. The streets are well paved
and kept clean. The viceroy's palace — " Government building " —
is a large structure, with lofty, airy rooms of state, and decorated
with life-sized portraits of eminent Indian rulers and princely
rajahs. It is quite in the heart of the town, is surrounded by
fine grounds with, at its rear, a noble garden. Behind this is a
grand esplanade along the river, not far from three miles in
length and three quarters of a mile in width. It is cut by fine

i8o A RACE WITH THE SUN.
gravel roads and lined with spreading, handsome trees. The road
ways are kept well sprinkled. Toward sunset they are thronged
with handsome carriages, drawn by good horses, mostly brought
from New South Wales. Along the river is the drive of the
elite. Here are to be seen foreigners well dressed and natives in
gorgeous attire. Cut out of this esplanade is the Garden of
Eden (named after a prominent man or woman and not after the
one from which our first parents were driven). A full band plays
here every evening. Carved out of the lower end of the espla
nade is Fort William, a magnificent fort, capable of holding a gar
rison of 12,000 men. At the lower end of the esplanade is the
zoological garden. It is well kept up, and has a collection of huge
tigers. Two captive man-eaters are noble specimens, as far sur
passing the beasts of the menagerie as a big tomcat does a sick
kitten. One, not long since captured, is said to have eaten 200
natives. I shook my stick at him ; he sprang toward me with a
roar which caused my heart to pulsate painfully for nearly an
hour after. Lord Dufferin told me the next day he would give
me an open letter which might be useful to us in our tour
through the country, provided I would not ask for elephants for
a tiger hunt, which was the great airri of globe-trotters. I
laughed, and told him of my scare, and that I would not hunt
tigers if the elephants were twice as high.
The European resident quarter of the city lies contiguous to
the esplanade. The houses are large and nearly all surrounded
by extensive grounds (throughout the East called compounds),
filled with fruit or ornamental trees. They must be very beautiful
in the spring when the flowering trees are in bloom. Many of
the trees are then clothed in flowers of great size and of many
colors. We have seen many varieties of trees and large shrubs,
which bear flowers of a size utterly unknown in our temperate
zones, the magnolia grandiflora being the only one in our South
ern States which can be compared to them. The native quar
ters of the city are better than in Siam or Burmah, but pre
sent very few features which lift them out of what an Ameri
can would term squalid. The suburbs have a great many tanks
for holding water. These are generally oblong pits 50 to 200
or 300 feet long and half as broad, and 10 to 15 feet deep.
Some of them are parts of a system connected by small canals
running to the river, not for navigable purposes, but simph' as
tank feeders. Many, however, have no connecting streams, but
are filled by the enormous rainfall in the wet season, and be
come stagnant pools, breeding malaria and cholera. As in
Bangkok, this dread disease is always here, the statistics ascrib
ing to it several deaths every week in the year, and running up
to perhaps a hundred without being considered an alarming epi
demic. Foreigners seem to regard it lightly, and several have
told me we pay it a ridiculous if not cowardly attention when it

CALCUTTA AND ENVIRONS. i8i
shows a disposition to visit our shores ; that, with the present
knowledge of its proper treatment, it could never become a
scourge in Europe or America if the people would only restrain
their alarm.
Calcutta, in its central parts, is supplied with water from many
miles up the Hooghly. It is settled and filtered in large reser
voirs, and seems fairly pure water. Very careful people, how
ever, boil it ; but the majority of the foreigners use it as it comes
from the hydrants. It is carried into upper floors in goat-skins.
It looks queer to see coolies sprinkling the streets from skins
slung over the shoulders. It is thus done throughout the espla
nade. In the business streets coolies sprinkle from large movable
hose, or from carts which are filled by women carriers. Mr. Lin
coln regretted during our unpleasantness that he had more briga
diers than mules. Here men and women are cheaper than mules
or oxen, and do the work which the four-legged beasts of burden
should perform.
Two days after our arrival we made a trip of 400 miles to
Darjeeling in quest of the mighty Himalaya mountains. We were
told we would get a freeze, and that mighty Everest was hiding
under continual clouds. Trusting to our usual good-luck we
went. The road ran due north over the flat lands forming the
great delta of the Ganges. Both in going and returning we were
upon the train at night, but the time-tables were such that we
only lost 100 miles in the middle of the great plain. We had
daylight while going and returning while traversing 250 to 300
miles of country. Nearly all of it is under close cultivation. For
several hours the road passed through rice-fields and plantations of
cocoa-nut and date palms, orchards of mango, and jack-fruit, thick
ets of bananas, and fields of sugar-cane ; then through fields of
wheat, some just planted or barely green, and others going into
head ; fields of gram, of split peas, and other cereals ; then through
fields of jute and of root crops. The whole country is a dead flat,
crossed by several branches of the Ganges and bayous or natural
canals. The fields had everywhere scattered trees, so that on
looking over them from our low elevation they had the appearance
of being almost wooded and briglitly green. There were many
villages and hamlets nestled down among palms, fruit orchards,
and broad, spreading banyans. We made our beds in the cars,
slept well, and in the morning had our first view of the dark foot
hills of the mighty backbone of Asia. These hills rise abruptly
from the plain to a height of nearly 4,000 feet. They reach the
plain in well defined spurs. Behind them rise mountain upon
mountain, running back to Kunchinjinga, the second mountain of
the world. This mighty pile, with its eternal snows, 12,000 feet
above the snow-line, should have been visible from Siliguri, where
we left the broad gauge and boarded the little train upon a two-
foot road, but it was veiled in cloud and mist.

i82 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
At the next station, just at the foot of the hills, we were only
12 miles from Darjeeling, as the crow flies, but had to make a run
of 46 on the road to reach our goal. We were to make this, not
by long detours, diverging far away from the straight line, but by
bending, winding, curving, doubling, looping, and zigzagging
along the direct route, never more than a mile or so away from it,
and crossing it again and again and over again many times. I
cannot describe in words this climb of 7,400 and odd feet better
than by saying, we ran up the curvings of a corkscrew. From
this point the tea-gardens, which cover many of the slopes as far
as Darjeeling, came in sight. Through the glass the deep-green
bushes, — on terraces or in long rows covering the smooth slopes, —
the white bungalows and factories, looked very pretty and pictu
resque. They mount the hills to a height of 4,000 feet. Deep
valleys and gorges, covered with dense forests, or frowning, rocky-
crags, separated garden from garden. This was the commence
ment of the celebrated " Darjeehng tea plantations." The plant
is of the Chinese variety, spreading into bushes from the root,
differing from the Assam plant, which spreads from a single stock.
At this season the bushes are being pruned down flat on the top
— about two feet high — so as to give a larger surface to the air and
sun's rays, and to permit a greater number of shoots, from which
alone the young leaves are plucked for merchantable tea. There
are now in this district 25,000 to 40,000 acres in producing gar
dens, and the government refuses to sell more land for tea-
planting, hoping thus to prevent disastrous over-production. Cin
chona is being cultivated largely, the government making the
first experiment in a 2,000-acre plantation, which has proved
successful and very profitable.
Soon after taking the narrow-gauge road we plunged on an easy
grade into a dense forest, which looked as if it might be the lair
of tigers. On the plain, a few miles back, we passed the edge of
a wild jungle of tall reedy grass, canes, and rushes with plumes
two feet long, 10 to 15 high, and of almost impenetrable thick
ness, in which are several herds of wild elephants and many tigers,
several of the latter proving themselves lately to be bad man-
eaters. A planter aboard told us of a coolie who was caught and car
ried off a few days before ; he was at once followed and overtaken.
The man seemed as yet not much hurt, but the tiger was deter
mined not to abandon his dinner. The pursuers fired at him,
trying to avoid hitting the native ; the balls did not strike the
monster in a vital part, who at each shot gave the man's shoulder
a craunching bite. The poor fellow screamed to his helpers to
shoot to kill, that he was being eaten. One of the planters,
seeing the necessity, took good aim and sent his ball into the
tiger's heart, but, unfortunate!)-, also through the man. Full-
grown buffaloes are frequently carried off.
Our train consisted of nine cars, each one being nine

A WINDING RAILROAD. 183
feet long, the most of them open, so as to permit a full view from
either side. We sat only 60 feet behind the engine, yet so short
were the curves, after the ascent began, that the locomotive was
rarely out of sight on one or the other side. Several times it
seemed to be going nearly at right angles to the line of our car.
We wormed along, now to the right then to the left, never on a
level, and often climbing grades of one foot in less than 25, the
average grade for the entire hill road being one in 28. We passed
over four different complete loops, two of them double ones.
These loops are none of them over 900 feet around. One, a per
fect circle, was between 500 and 600 feet in circumference, or less
than 200 feet in diameter. The loops are made by the road
passing on a bridge over itself in making the circle. The double
loops are made by the track passing over itself, and then circling
the hill on a higher level and to within a few feet of its first line
of approach. Imagine a mountain spur ending in a rounded half
cone of say 200 feet in diameter on its levelled summit. A rail
road comes up on one face of the spur from the valley below ; it
reaches the cone, makes a complete circle around it on an ascend
ing grade, passing over itself, then makes another circle, and con
tinues its ascent along the other face of the spur but nearer its
top ridge. Several curves are made nearly completing a loop,
and one describes the figure eight. At one loop we met a de
scending freight train on a switch. In a few moments we saw
it roo feet below us, running in the same direction we were
going. At one point a boy could throw a stone over three tracks,
each some hundred feet below the one next above it.
We were at one time climbing an hour or two through dense
masses of richest tropical growth — thickets of wild bananas, of
great bamboos of several varieties, some of them 60 feet high, of
taro and other broad-leaved plants, and waxy, green, lofty trees.
For several hours we looked aloft upon wooded mountains and at
tea plantations far above us. Then we passed beyond the alti
tude of great bamboos and bananas. We were among tree-ferns
10 to 20 feet high, their great fronds spreading wide and beauti
fully. . All trees were covered with moss from root to branch.
The branches and limbs were loaded with orchids, some of them
in masses like hanging shrubs. Mighty climbing vines clung to
the trees, their winding stalks having the appearance of huge ser
pents. Some of the trees seemed to have been strangled by the
serpentine folds of these monsters. Many of the climbers had
leaves a foot or more long. There were huge vines standing un
supported, looking like trees growing in corkscrew windings.
They once wrapped about large trees which they strangled. The
trees died and rotted, leaving the vines, resembling great cork
screws a foot and over in diameter, and able to support their own
weight. Their long, snake-like branches were clinging to the
tops of trees 30 to 50 feet away ; they had caught them many

1 84 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
years ago, when their main supporters were yet alive. Still we
climbed. Tea plantations and factories which we had looked at with
glasses a while since far above us were now far down below. We
wound around precipitous heights and looked over steep descents,
dropping like precipices i,ooo feet almost under us ; deep valley
gorges lay in mossy green far below ; green mountain heights
lifted far above us. An Englishman asked me what I thought of
the scenery. I repHed : " It is beautiful." He looked at me with
contempt and said : " You should have said grand." " No," I
rejoined, " it is too green, too fresh, too flowery. The almond-
trees are too pink ; the verdure is too tufted ; the flowing outHnes
are too soft for grandeur. There are here all the elements of the
beautiful." An hour later, when nearer the crests of the spur,
and the mountains towering above thousands of feet were freer
from trees, and rocky heights were predominating, I said to the
Britisher : ' Now we have grandeur." He answered : " Your
criticism was true. I was wrong."
We passed through several mountain villages, and saw new
races of men. Bright, active Nepaulese, men and women. Sturdy,
dirty Bhootas, men and women, carrying great loads on their
backs, suspended by a band over their forehead ; their cheek
bones as high as American Indians', and their faces of the same
hue, if the Indian's copper were only added. The women had
their foreheads and cheeks stained as if with pig's blood. In
their ears were huge drops studded with turquoises. Around their
necks were all their wealth in silver, corals, and jewels ; bracelets
covered their arms and silver anklets ran around the ankle ; stuck
upon one side of their nose were ornaments like jewelled buttons.
They were nearly all dirty, but many of them decidedly hand
some. All were good-natured and had mouths of pearly teeth.
These are the doers of hard work, and came from Bhootan, up
against Thibet. Here were Lepchees, the old inhabitants of
these hills, very active and very lazy. They quit the land as cul
tivation approaches, preferring jungle fruits, roots, and berries to
the produce of industry. The people of different tribes become
easily distinguishable, and commend themselves to a traveller's
favor by the brave freedom of their eyes, and the entire absence of
the slavish servility which so characterizes the people of the plains.
At four o'clock we had reached an elevation of over 7,400 feet,
the highest mountain railroad- station in the^world. Darjeeling,
three miles farther on, is a very picturesque town, with pretty
houses, all in gardens, scattered along the steep side of a sort of
amphitheatre, looking down over a deep valley and over slopes of
tea-gardens. Over the valley in front of the town rears a succes
sion of mountains, 8,000, 10,000, and 12,000 feet high, with mag
nificent sky lines ; and farther over and beyond them, 45 miles
away, mighty Kunchinjinga, 28,156 feet high, and next to Everest
the loftiest peak on the globe.

VARIOUS PEOPLES. 185
Darjeeling is a summer resort for the Europeans of the plain,
the summer home of the Lieutenant-Governor of India, who is
also Governor of Bengal, and a sanitarium for the English troops.
On the top of the hill, 1,000 feet above the town, is a barrack and
hospital. In the town is a bazaar, in which on Sunday we saw a
most interesting mass of 5,000 or 6,000 people, from Nepaul, Sik-
kim, Bhootan, Thibet, and Darjeeling proper. It was one of a
regular set of fairs for trading, and was food for several days'
study. Trade was going on in sheep, goats, and ponies from
Bhootan and a few from Thibet. People were there from Sikkim
with maize, beans, peas, oranges, and grain ; people from Nepaul
with knives and produce of several sorts. The stocks were small,
frequently only so much as the dealer had brought on his back
over the mountain passes. One had two or three bushels of
Indian corn, a poor article. Another a little quantity of beans or
millet. Here was a woman who had travelled for two or three
days with two bushels of oranges hanging from her forehead.
She had climbed a pass 18,000 feet high and slept in the cold
open air on the bare ground, and was happy when she sold her
stock out at retail and received three rupees, or $1.05. There was
a man who had journeyed in the same way from just under Mount
Everest, a five or six days' journey. His stock was four Roman-
nosed sheep and half-a-dozen Nepaulese knives. The sheep,
which had been the pack-horses for his knives and provender, are
worth three rupees each, and the knives one. The dealers were
generally squatted on the ground, with their little stores in bas
kets or on mats before them. Their worldly wealth was small,
but they had a contented look.
It made us, on arrival, almost blush to permit a good-looking,
soft-eyed girl take our satchels from the station to the hotel. One
of them makes our arms ache to carry a hundred or so yards, yet
this little girl swung two from her forehead, climbed nimbly the
high hill to the hotel, a few hundred yards off, and was perfectly
satisfied when we gave her two annas, or five cents. There are
many fine rides in the neighborhood of Darjeeling ; one, through
a dense forest on a steep mountain side, gave us a fine insight
into the growth of these latitudes.. So close and dense is the
forest that the sun never penetrates to the ground, and a fallen
stick never dries. The rainfall here is about 125 inches a year ;
the soil is as rich as loam can be made, and the forest vegetation
simply astonishing.
We reached Darjeeling exactly 24 hours after leaving Calcutta.
The gray and green mountains around were visible, but thick
clouds shrouded the snow-clad frozen heights. Our landlord said
it was rapidly turning colder, and the morrow would be bright.-
We went to bed to hope and dream. I was awakened just before
five by the mournful howling and queer chattering barkings of
jackals close to my window. It seemed to me there was a pack.

1 86 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
but I had an indistinct recollection that where two or three of
these brutes are gathered together much noise is there with them.
I went to the front of the house, and before me rose the viceroy
of mountains — mighty Kunchinjinga. His glaciered peak caught
the pale rays of the ascending morn, and sent them back as if
from a rugged mass of cold, burnished silver. Grand and gloomy,
he pierced the sky, a sceptred monarch. To his right and to his
left stood his royal aids, each succeeding one a little lower than
the last. For half a hundred miles these royal attendants stood
in grand array, each a king, and crowned in silvered diadems. I
could scarcely tear myself away, but looking to the north I saw a
clear sky over the lofty foot-hills, and had reason to think the
monarch of all was unclouded.
I aroused the boys, and ordered ponies out. We drank a cup
of hot tea, mounted our ponies, and were quickly tearing like
madmen through the crisp frosty air, up the pretty gravel roads,
along the mountain side, toward Tiger Hill, from whose sum
mit, 9,000 feet high, we might catch the rising sun as he gives his
morning kiss to the world's acknowledged monarch — imperial
Everest. Our coolies afoot, one to each horse, tried to keep pace
with us, but the ponies were brave little fellows, and we three,
though not at all first-class equestrians, were racing to beat the sun,
and paused not to consider that the narrow steep roadways were
frosted and icy, and that a single, misstep might send us hundreds
of feet down the precipitous gorges yawning far below. Wildly
we galloped on. We reached diverging paths. We knew not
which to take. Two of the coolies were far behind, but one
bright, lithe, young Nepaulese was panting 100 yards back.
Glorious Kunchinjinga was now catching the early dawn. The
boy came up. I made signs for him to take me by the hand. On
we rushed. My tawny boy took strides unknown since classic
footmen thus ran by the side of mounted soldiers. But his young
mountain limbs were unequal to the task. Johnnie, who is ever
ready to lend a helping hand, now offered two helping legs. He
put the boy on his horse and, taking my hand, ran for a half-
mile ; they then exchanged places. On we dashed, riding harder
than ever, for a fleecy cloud resting high over Kunchinjinga's
snowy peak was dyed in rosy pink. The sun would soon be up,
and might throw a blush upon Everest's brow, and we not be
there to see it. The road was now climbing Mount Sinchal, a
little lower than Tiger Hill, and on the way to it. From it
Everest is seen nearly as well as from the other. Our boy could
not hold to me along the narrow ragged path. Trusting to our
mountain craft we left him, and rode as hard up the side as our
panting pt)nies could bear us. We reached the summit ; we
turned to the northward and there, far away, over a depression in
the lofty gray mountain spur of Kunchinjinga, stood apparently
close together three burnished snowy peaks. The centre one was

THE WORLD'S MONARCH, EVEREST. 187
Everest, just catching the mellow tint which precedes the rising
of the sun. We had won the race ; we had beaten old Sol !
I sat upon my panting horse, my heart too full for speech. I
had dreamed of yon far-off frozen pinnacle, and had yearned to
see it ere I died ; had yearned, but hardly hoped. Countless
thousands of men had fought and battled that they might win
the laurel wreath from human kind, but the world had not yet
determined, and never would, who had been its greatest warrior.
Countless thousands of men had racked the aching brain, had burned
midnight oil, and had worn their souls away that they might win
the laurel wreath from human kind, but the world had not and
never will decide who had been the sweetest songster, the grandest
poet, the loftiest orator, the smoothest writer, or the profoundest
thinker. Man's ambition — his love of glory — is but a mockery, a
delusive snare, so fragile are the foundations, so evanescent the
superstructure, of his fame. Accident or purchased support lifts
the all-unworthy to giddy heights ; calumny, detraction, and self
ish envy gnaw away the keystone of the arch over which honest
merit climbs into the light. Purchased history draws a sponge
over the record of noble deeds, and distils from a lie a figment
with which to swell pigmy actions into heroic achievements.
Even if true worth should win its place on the historic page or
have its record deep cut into monumental stone, the stoutest
book written by the muse of history easily melts into smoke, and
the hardest marble quickly crumbles into dust. But yonder
mighty pile had its foundations welded in the white heat of the
world's ever-burning central fires. Its corner-stones were laid
over the earth's solid arch. Its superstructure was spread with
cement crystallized by the breath of the Mighty Chemist of the
boundless universe. It knows no peer, it brooks no rival, and the
world concedes its supremacy — a supremacy which can know no
derogation until the ribs of the earth shall give way, and its high
places shall sink into its bowels ; when the dark depths of oceans
shall be lifted into heights, and the seas shall give back to light
the buried cities whose as yet unattained knowledge lived in
Egyptian tradition and Indian legend, and has furnished the
nations and peoples with their many religions and their countless
superstitions. 'Until then proud Everest will rule, the one loftiest
imperial chief, or until, in the crash of worlds, this globe of ours
shall be scattered into cometic dust.
We looked now to the far-off peak in the northward, then to
the glaciered heights of the next highest, spread out at the north
east. The sky was absolutely clear, save only the filmy cloud
which poised like a lifted veil over Kunchinjinga's highest peak.
It grew each minute redder as the sun climlDcd higher. After a
few moments we turned our back to Everest and galloped towards
Tiger Hill summit, but looked over our shoulders each minute to
keep the snowy peaks in view. The morning light crept down the

1 88 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
mountain side and lighted up the deep valleys far below us. The
cloud over the viceroy began to catch a golden hue. We paused
and looked back: a slight flush was upon Everest. The flush
grew more mellow. We looked and a yellowish brush was drawn
across the pinnacle. We turned toward east of north. A flood
of rosy hue was upon Kunchinjinga. Again we turned toward
the west of north. We were just in time, for Everest's peak was
a burnished point of golden light. The sun was soon shining
upon the two mighty ones.
We dismounted, and led our ponies leisurely to the top. We
were now nearly 9,000 feet up, and had a glorious panorama
spread around us. Far below us were deep valleys green in virgin
forest, or bright in hamlet and plantation. 'White bungalows
were stretched along the ridge back of Darjeeling. Tea-factories
and tea-shrubs brightened the side of the lofty hill toward us, and
a Bhootan village was picturesque upon the almost precipitous
end of the spur. Lofty dark-green mountains lay in a confused
pile between the valley under us and the snowy range some 40
miles away. To the south, through the pass we had climbed the
day before, the great plain was stretched, its rivers and fields and
jungle patches where nearest us but dimly seen, and vanishing in
the distance where all was swallowed in dusty smoke. The air was
crisp, a hoar-frost was white upon fallen leaves and low bushes ;
a little pool a few feet across had a filmy coating of ice. We
walked about the little level to keep warm. It was a glorious
morning, and a glorious vision. I felt that if I could but keep
pace with the sun I would like to get home in a half-day, and thus
make this the culminating point in my " race with the sun."
We had two splendid days at Darjeeling, watching thp fine tints
upon the 12,000 feet of eternal snows along the great range when
the sun was sinking ; watching the gray silver tone when the
morning moon was shining upon them ; and watching the rosy
tints mellowing into a delicate orange when the sun was rising.
We took a wild ride along a narrow mountain road through vir
gin forest jungle, and left the picturesque city with regret. The
ride down the narrow-gauge rail was much finer than the ascent.
We could see where we were going, and could look upon the
bending, winding, and doubling of the road, and comprehend the
daring engineering skill which laid it out far better than when go
ing up. A train comes down the road nearly every day by gravi
tation alone. Indeed our own train practically did the same.
Our iron horse did not take his drinks a fifth as often as he had
done on his upward bound.
And now something of the society of Calcutta, and I shall have
done. The Europeans live in considerable style, own fair horses,
and the ladies are finely dressed. All have a large array of serv
ants, whose demeanor toward their employers is more servile
than was ever that of the slaves of our Southern States. This

DINNER WITH THE VICEROY. 189
perhaps is entirely outward, and has characterized for ages the
deportment of all inferiors toward their superiors. The foreigners
look in good health, but are guarded to make but little violent
bodily exertion, and none in the sunshine. The children are
fairly ruddy up to four or five years of age. After that they are
pale, and it is thought not safe to attempt to rear them here.
They become debilitated, and painfully lacking in vital energy.
All avoid great exposure to the sun, even at this season. We are
constantly warned on this point.
The day after our first arrival here, I called upon the secretary
of Lord Dufferin, Viceroy, and presented a special letter I had ; I
then disclosed my intention to leave the next day for the Hima
layas. This was just at noon. When I went to my room from
the lunch-table, I found an invitation from the Earl and Countess
of Dufferin to dinner that evening at 8 o'clock. On the invitation
were the words : "Mess dress." I do not know what they meant,
for I found the company in what seemed full evening dress.
Lord and Lady Dufferin received me with great cordiality. I had
met them years ago, but only casually. The dining-room is a
very fine one, handsomely decorated. Stalwart servants in brilliant
red stood one for each guest, and behind the earl several splendid
fellows, I think of his guard, in dazzling crimson. The table, at
which there were 18 plates, was brilliantly lighted with candles
in three lofty branching candelabra of 12 and 18 lights. The por
celain and glass were of costly pattern and ware. A large quan
tity of plate, and spurs, horseshoes, and roses, all of gold, of great
value were the table decorations. I conducted to the table Lady
Helen Blackwood, the Earl's very distinguished-looking daughter,
I sitting next to the countess ; both were very affable. Opposite,
across the narrow way of the table, sat the Earl and the beautiful
young Duchess of Montrose. The menu was excellent, and the
cuisine perfect. The Earl was exceedingly kind, and gave evidence
during our talk of the tact which has so marked his long and suc
cessful career. We left the table early, to drive to a Shakespearian
reading at the institute. The hall was well filled, seats being re
served for the viceroyal party at the front, a sofa in the imme
diate front being for the Earl and Countess. With great courtesy
the Earl placed me at his side, his lady taking a chair. During the
intermission he passed to several ladies, having a few pleasant
words for each, and the Countess sat with me. When the reading
was over, every one arose and stood until the Earl and Countess
and aids passed out. When they drove off the aid in waiting. Captain
Gore, informed me that he was ordered to get immediate informa
tion of our return from Darjeeling. I promised to inform him by
telegraph. I give these little incidents to show the politeness of
the vicegerent of the empress in her vast Indian dominions.
On our return from the mountains we found invitations to
a state ball on the 12th. On the afternoon of the day before, the

190 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
Countess gave her annual garden party. All who have the entree
of the government house have the right to attend. There was a
brilliant assemblage of people, including a large number of na
tives, in gorgeous attires of silk, gold, and diamonds. The Earl
and Lady Dufferin made the boys feel easy when presented.
They wished us to be present at the state ball, regretting that we
would see so few of the leading natives. But they have adopted
the rule to invite none to the balls who will not bring their wives.
This the majority of natives cannot do, their wives being kept in
absolute seclusion. I was told this rule was adopted at Govern
ment House because of some insulting criticisms made by natives
on the ddcolletd costumes of European ladies. Their own wives
being absent, they were free in bandying ribald jests. We saw
eight chieftains from the mountains near Afghanistan. The Earl
told me they could bring into the field 25,000 good fighters.
They were dressed in plain flowing garments, wore massive tur
bans, and were profoundly respectful to the viceroy, but had none
of that servile manner which characterizes those who live on
plains. They were being carried over the country at the expense
of the government in a sort of pleasure excursion, for the purpose,
I su.spect, of impressing them with English power.
The next night we attended the ball. It was a very brilliant
affair. The ballrooms occupy the entire third story of the large
palace. The consular- representatives, except our own, were in
state dress. The large number of officers in their red coats cov
ered with gold lace and cords were very bright and rich in appear
ance, and did more to make the room brilliant than did the
beautiful dresses of the ladies. Many of these, however, were in
gorgeous array and wore many diamonds, and some of great cost.
A native lady, the Maharanne, the pretty wife of Maharajah
Kuch Behar, wore diamonds of great beauty and enormous
value. Lord Dufferin's court dress was very rich, and the costume
of the Countess was both beautiful and costly — jewels on her neck,
and a coronet of stars in brilliants lifting from her brow. The
governors of Bengal and Bombay were over for the occasion, and
both in court dress. Lady Reay, wife of Bombay's governor, was
beautifully attired. Lady Dufferin presented me. She kindly
invited me to call when in Bombay. Taken altogether, the ball
was most brilliant. In the dining-room, on the main floor, a buf
fet was spread during the whole evening. Champagne and other
wines were freely offered. A little after 12, all went to the rooms
in the entresol to a full supper, at tables where all could be seated.
These rooms are large enough to seat 1,000. The menu was ex
tensive, and champagne flowed recklessly. When the viceroyal
party and the governor left, all arose and stood till they had gone
out. When taking my leave I asked Countess Dufferin if she had any
message to send to America. Her handsome face beamed with a

A STATE BALL. 191
bright smile when she said : " Tell the people of America I have
a warm place in my heart for them." The Earl, when shaking my
hand, said the thing he most missed here was " the ability to run
over the line, as he often did from Canada, to get the warm treat
ment he always received from Americans." He certainly possesses
tact, and a kindly heartiness with it.
On leaving I saw a thing queerly Oriental. The entrance to the
palace is on the ground-floor in an archway under the great por
tico and steps, which are used alone for state purposes. Along
the outer wall of this archway, there were facing us 200
footmen or runners, squatted down upon their haunches in
four long rows, as close as they could be packed, like so many
frogs. They were awaiting their respective masters to run before
or beside their carriages going homeward. Style is somewhat
measured by the number of runners. They looked bright in their
many colored turbans and various wrappings, but presented a
most grotesque picture. I wrote till near daylight and every now
and then paused to listen to the howling of Calcutta's hundreds,
if not thousands, of scavengers — the night-prowling jackals.

CHAPTER XIX.
CALCUTTA TO BENARES— THE HOLY CITY AND PILGRIMS— SACRED
BATHING, AND BURNING CORPSES— SARNATH AND
BUDDHISM— LUCKNOW AND CAWNPORE.
Agra, India, January 20, 1888.
From Calcutta to Benares by rail is 556 miles. The country
at first, for 100 and more miles, is in general appearance and
production practically the same as that on the road to Darjeeling,
already described — a great flat plain with only a single eleva
tion — a short range of low hills lifting in a single ridge from the
dead level. After running 100 and odd miles the plain looks
very unproductive. The soil is a light-gray, and in the short cut
rice paddies looks as if it could produce but little. Large num
bers of cattle were browsing in the bare rice-fields and unculti
vated lands. How they find any thing nourishing I could not see.
The ground looked absolutely bare, and yet the poor brutes were
picking it over, if not licking it, and had not a starved condition,
being fed, I suppose, night and morning. There had been no
rain for some months, and all was dusty. Much of the land is in
wheat. It grows very low in stalk, thin on the ground, and of
short head. A couple of hundred miles from Calcutta the coun
try put on a greener appearance, in wheat, gram, castor-oil,
dahl, pea, and poppy. Some of the fields of the latter at a
distance in full flower looked like snow fields, so white and pure
was the bloom. England will require long generations of piety
to undo her great wrong in coining gold as she does out of the
mania and misery of so many millions. Like the poppy flower,
she boastfully spreads to the breeze a banner of light, while she
kills and destroys in her greed. Her people decry the Yankee
because he has such love for the almighty dollar. But, thank
heaven ! America as an aggregation, as a nation, has never
oppressed for gold. Her only semblance of a shame was slavery
fastened upon her by English cupidity. England's opium policy
is one of her shames. Preachers who believe in special providence
and national retribution for national sins could pour from the
pulpit fearful anathemas upon this sordid nation for its crime in
encouraging for gain in gold the most frightful of all degrading
vices. On the road we passed near coal-fields, said to be rich both in
192

BENARES, THE HOLY CITY. 193
the quantity and quality of the yield. For the last lOO miles tow
ard Benares much of the country was very pretty. The mango
and other orchards were abundant, and every plain had its many
scattered trees. Barley was added as a growth, and was well
headed and green. Hedges, where there were any, were of a
prickly pear and cactus. The spider webs over them covered
with dust looked like great gossamer veils spread over spiky
frames. Rows of aloes or century plants lined the road. Now
and then as far as the eye could reach, through openings in the
trees, the prospect was that of a perfectly flat plain, relieved only
by trees and villages. One odd thing is frequently seen — small
round circles of mud wall topped by cactus, three to five feet
high, and say four to six in diameter, and built for protection for
young trees. They protect against intrusion and also against hot
sun rays. The railroad is a good one, cars comfortable, and sta
tions handsome. Several fine school-houses with large and good
grounds were seen.
In 18^ hours we reached Benares, the Holy City of India; a
city already old three centuries before Christ, and at one time
consecrated by eight centuries of Buddhistic sway and sanctity,
and followed by 17 known centuries of Brahminism. Here an
nually come pilgrims, probably a million or more, from all parts
of India — the rich and the poor, the old and the young, the strong
and the decrepit, crowded in railway cars, packed like hogs, or
hobbling along dusty roads, suffering every kind of privation,
spending the hoarded savings of years of toil, dirty and weary, for
they perform no sort of ablution from the time they leave their
far-off homes until they can wash away the filth of the body and
the pollution of the soul in the cleansing water of the sacred
Ganges. Here comes the prince in his silken robes, with diamonds and
rubies in his coffers, ready, if occasion arises, to have them glitter
upon his neck and arms ; and there a poor farm peasant in a
scanty cotton rag. Here the bold soldier who would quail in the
presence of no danger, and there the high-born woman who
trembles if looked upon by any man not her father, brother, or
lord. They know that disease is rife in the midst of huge multi
tudes, yet they falter not, or rather come all the more cheerfully,
for to die in the Holy City, to have their cold limbs laved in holy
water, to be burned on the banks of the sacred river, and have
their ashes scattered upon its broad stream — these things will in
sure them a blessed eternity. Strange faith ! Unconquered and
unconquerable. Blind, abject superstition ! Slavish yet sublime,
because of its human intensity. For countless ages this thing has
been going on year after year. It began before history had
learned to grave imperishable annals. Its origin is as impenetra
ble as the Himalayan heights, where their ruling god sits in his
frozen home. Millions as countless as are the sands reached by

194

A RACE WITH THE SUN.

the ever-surging swell of old ocean, have believed in and per
formed these pious duties with sublime earnestness. We call
these things grovelling idolatry. They say our faith is a silly
superstition. Who can say to another : My way is all right, your
way is all wrong ? One thing, however, we can determine — charity
to the opinions of others, and kindness and good-will to all, are
teachings of all religions which acknowledge a supreme ruler, and
make them all somewhat akin to the divine.
The railway enters Benares over a magnificent iron bridge just
completed across the Ganges. It springs by noble spans along
great stone piers, the foundations of some of which are sunken
230 feet below the bed of the river. We paused at its northern
end to let off several hundred pilgrims. A strange sight they
presented in their various conditions. There were old women,
almost bent double with infirmities or age ; there were young
women with half-naked babies straddled on their hips, and lead
ing others but a few years older : there were proud men, of
noble, manly bearing, and poor men, cringing and servile in their
poverty ; there was opulent comfort, with servants bearing its
bedding and its fine gear ; there was abject poverty so weak that
it staggered under the weight of a single basket or bundle which
contained its owner's worldly wealth. All, when stepping from
the crowded cars, turned wistfully toward the holy city; their
eyes betrayed the delight felt that now at last they were about
to bathe in this holiest of holy rivers ; and that the bath would
cleanse them from earthly pollution, and would prepare them for
eternal bliss.
We went a couple or rnore miles to another station behind the
town. There in line were red-coated cavalrymen to be an escort
of honor for Bombay's governor, Lord Reay, and his lady. They
were conducted to a victoria drawn by four horses by the heir
apparent of the Maharajah of Benares, whose low turban cap was
wrapped in a cord of diamonds and pearls, and around whose
neck hung a necklace two or more inches deep, a mass of enor
mous brilliants. His dress was flashing in gold and jewels. His
sword-hilt glistened in gems. I could not tell if the jewels were
of first water. If they were, then this dusky prince must have
had a million or more upon his person. Strange contrast, this
lavish extravagance and luxury, with the poverty, squalor, and
.misery we had left two miles below.
We found a very nice hotel. Hotels in India are the product
of the last few years. Early in the morning we added an egg to
our " chota haziri " (early breakfast of tea and coffee and bread),
and with a guide proceeded to the river, and then on a row-boat
!to see the points of interest best seen from the water. To our
surprise we found the stream clear and of a greenish tinge. From
.a point nearly opposite the lower end of the town it presents a
imost picturesque appearance. It is built on a bank 60 to 80 feet

PIL GRIMS BA THING. 1 95
high above the water, and extends along this height fully three
miles. This entire stretch is covered with what appears to be a
succession of palaces of stone, with domes, conical temples, and
minarets wedged in among them in confusion, yet artistic confu
sion. Under many of these palatial buildings are walls orna
mented with buttresses and relieved by loop-holes and small
windows. They lift from high-water mark. Here and there
small temples of conical form crowd down to the present low-
water line. All of these are of beautiful design and of elaborate
ornamentation, and some richly gilt. Every ' few hundred
yards apparently coming out of handsome portals in the
palaces, are narrow flights of steps, spreading as they descend,
until toward the water's. edge they are broad enough to belong
to royal residences. Now and then are elegant buildings rising
out of the water's edge, with their turreted upper stories still be
low the buildings on the high bank. One of these structures of
large, front has slid into the river in such way that its rear is
sunken several feet, its well-laid front, except for one break,
looking as if it had been chiselled from solid stone — so solid that
it has stood for perhaps a century, and will yet last for other
centuries in spite of being fully 30 degrees out of level. Crowds
of people were descending or ascending these many flights of
steps, and in front of them were hundreds bathing in the sacred
stream. Our boat was broad-keeled, with a sort of arched roof,
on which we sat, while several oarsmen slowly stemmed the strong
current close to the bathers.
The view of the city from the distance was very fine, and the
bathing pilgrims when closely seen were wonderfully strange and
interesting. They were of all ages and of both sexes, and of many
conditions: the well-to-do and the very poorest ; the most robust
and the emaciated and diseased ; the most athletic — their half-
naked forms fit models for a sculptor's chisel, — and the deformed
and shrunken-limbed ascetic. Some sprang down the long
flights of steps as if fatigue had never been known ; others were
tottering and leaning upon long staffs, or were supported by
friends or servants. Some entered the water with joyous faces,
and eyes sparkling with hope ; others slowly and reverently, as
if they could scarcely be sufficiently thankful and humble enough
for the boon they were about to enjoy. After wading out to
nearly waist-deep, all would place their hands reverently to
gether before them, utter a prayer, evidently in deep earnest
ness, and then dip themselves, generally, I thought, three times.
After this they washed themselves with great care, scraping the
bottoms of the feet, and scrubbing the inside of the mouth as if
doing their best to take some thing out of it. Many had flow
ers as offerings ; these they threw in one by one as they prayed.
The stairways of which I spoke are the ends of narrow streets
and are called " ghats," and all bearing individual names. The

196 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
several sects bathe at different " ghats." Many of those we saw
were so weak from age or from disease that they must have suf
fered to no small extent in the chill water of this season. But
no amount of chill would cause them to abstain. Persons about
to die are brought to the stream to expire with their feet in the
water. After cleansing themselves the pilgrims wash their gar
ments and fill a vessel with water to sprinkle with it certain of
the statues or figures of gods in the city ; for the wily priest has
fully impressed all with the benefit arising from, or the necessity
of, visiting its many sanctuaries and receive fees for their holy
ministrations. Before departing for their homes all have certain
marks put upon their foreheads by the priests, to show that the
great pilgrimage has been made. There are now large numbers
of pilgrims in the city, but we were advised to remain a few days
longer, until, owing to the eclipse of the moon, there would be at
least 100,000 more than usual.
At three of the ghats crematory piles were erected ; at each of
two there was one body, but at the other, five pyres were burn
ing, and two other corpses were wrapped in white cloth, one ly
ing with the lower limbs in the water, to be cremated when the
pile should be ready. A sewer from the city was emptying its
reeking, filthy sewage into the river not 20 feet above the spot
where the body was lying, and several bathers were gulping
down great mouthfuls of the water about ten feet below the
dead body; — strange infatuation! Not far from this and above
it was a deep tank in which was as nasty a compound as one
could imagine; — it was, say, 15 by 30 feet in dimensions. Its
waters had not been changed for months. Thousands have
bathed in it, and great quantities of marigolds, and other flowers,
milk, and confections are daily thrown into it as offerings, until it
looks as fetid as a cesspool ; yet dainty women, whose necks,
arms, and ankles are weighted down with rarest jewels, lay aside
their outer garments of embroidered gauze and silk, and lave
their faces and rounded forms in the stinking slime, and believe
themselves washed from impurities, and are fflllowed by withered
old men and women, whose very forms seem reeking with fetid
disease. We rowed slowly up the city's front, now on close observation
bereft of much of its picturesque beauty, for the majority of the
palatial buildings are in more or less dilapidated condition, not
observable from a more distant view. These fine places are resi
dences built by rajahs and other Indian princes from every part
of the land, and are occupied when the owners come to use the
holy water, and, if possible, to be the places in which they may
take their flight from sublunary things. One very pretty and
costly edifice was the property of Nana Sahib, the butcher of
1857. After going up stream to the last ghat, we descended near
the farther shore, but the illusion had been somewhat marred by

CORPSE IN GANGES AND CREMATION ON THE BANK, BENARES.

SARN^ATH AND BUDDHISM. 197
the too close observation. Yet I shall always remember Benares
as one of the picturesque cities of the world.
We visited many parts of the city and the sacred wells, and
Johnnie came to the conclusion that one of the big baboons at
the monkey temple, which slipped up behind him and snatched
a guava from his hand, was slicker even than an Italian boot
black from the neighborhood of the levee in Chicago. One
peculiar Nepaulese temple which we saw, is styled "picturesque,"
from a frieze of queer ornamentations, which lady travellers are
never shown. Our guide, an orthodox Brahmin, gave with much
gusto a racy explanation of them, evidently glad to hit hard the
schismatic worshippers. From the lofty minaret of a mosque
close by the river, we had a fine view of the compactly built
native city and the country for many miles round, green in barley
and grain, and studded by clumps of tropical fruit-trees. I did
not enjoy this as much as I would have done a few years ago, for
it is hard for a man of 63 to climb 150 feet over high steps, not
two feet wide, winding around a spindle only 16 inches in diameter.
This city is noted for its workers in brass, many of their prod
ucts being as beautiful as chased gold, and costing less than
Britannia ware with us. We could have spent several days here,
but the sun will be north of the equator before we shall be out
of India. At the station we found the Governor of Bombay was
again to be our co-traveller. The young Hindoo heir to the
maharajahship was there to see him off. When he had seen his
visitors seated he happened to stop near where we were standing.
I had never shaken hands with a man whose garments glistened
with $1,000,000 worth of diamonds. I boldly walked up to him
and introduced myself. He seemed really glad to meet an
American, and regretted I was going away, saying that he would
be glad to see me again. The boys declared I had exhibited
" gall " quite worthy of Chicago.
But I had nearly forgotten to speak of Sarnath, the old
Benares of many centuries ago. It lies some four miles out of
the present city, and is all cultivated over, except where great
heaps of broken brick, mark the spot where its costly edi
fices once stood. A lofty old round tower-looking structure,
about 100 feet in diameter, and over that in height, solid mass of
brick, marks the spot where Gautama (Siddartha of the Bud
dhist) taught his creed, and probably beneath it were buried some
of his bones or hair. A part of its outer casing of stone is in
good condition, exhibiting exquisite design and finish in its elab
orate and intricate carving. It is said to be over 2,000 years old,
and is probably the original from which the pagodas of Burmah
were modelled, they however taking more of a bell form. It was
a touching thing to sit under this old " stupa," and go back in
fancy twenty odd centuries, and to imagine myself listening to
the gentle tones of the man who abandoned the luxuries of

198 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
princely possessions, the power of royal position, to become
for long years a recluse ; left the couch on which Yasodara
dreamed — " Yasodara of a form of heavenly mould ; a gait like
^ayati's ; eyes like a hind's in love time ; face so fair words can
not paint its spell " ; the idolized Prince abandoned all, that he
might spin from his brain the thread which was to bind and unite
man to his God. " In a wild and desolate spot far removed from
men's abode, the brown sands his seat, the blue sky his only
covering, for long years, in silent meditation, Siddartha —
' ' Lord Buddha, sate the .scorching summers through.
The driving rains, the chilly dawns and eves ;
Wearing for all men's sake the yellow robe ;
Eating in beggar's guise the scanty meal
Chance-gathered from the charitable ; at night
Couched in grass, homeless, alone ; while yelped
The sleepless jackals round his cave, or coughs
Of famished tiger from the thicket broke.
Subduing that fair body born for bliss
With fast and frequent watch and search intense
Of silent meditation, so prolonged
That at times -while he mused — as motionless
As the fixed rock his seat — the squirrel leaped
Upon his knee, the timid quail led forth
Her brood between his feet, and blue doves picked
The rice-grains from the bowl beside his hand " —
and who, after he believed he had found the soft, silken bond,
gave himself up to a life of labor and deprivation, while he
preached his beautiful philosophy, teaching loveliness of spirit,
absolute purity of life, love to God, and a boundless charity tow
ard all living things. Here, close by, he lived for many years,
preaching a religion which has more votaries than any other
faith professed by men ; here he preached that exquisite charity
which can give pain to nothing breathing ; which can take life
from nothing into which God has blown the breath of life; which
teaches that no living thing is so degraded that it may not hold
a soul which God has created and which can never die. Here he
lived, -who to-day is worshipped by countless millions as a god.
Here he walked and here he sat, uttering those maxims which
soon crystallized into a faith, and is claimed to be the " Light of
Asia." I sat and thought. Around me were more than a dozen
little boys and girls, bright, but all begging — lithe, healthy and
pretty, but all steeped in poverty and ignorance, and all followers
of Buddha, or rather the children of his followers. How much
had his teachings to do with their degradation ? Though his
philosophy be so beautiful ; though his religion be so full of
charity — that quality which proves that man is akin to Deity; —
though he taught love for God and for every thing He has cre
ated, yet his religion has depressed and repressed his followers.

LIGHT OF ASIA. 199
He taught that a life of purity was a life of tranquillity and of
calm, inactive reflection.
Man must constantly step forward. He must not stand still.
The moment he pauses in an upward and onward progress, that
moment the dead weights of the earth, from which he sprang,
begin to pull him downward. His mental as well as his physi
cal being sprang from a germ of life, — side by side with which
was the germ of decay. When growth stops decay begins its
deadly work. Gautama may have caused the " Light of Asia" to
spread over the mighty East. It was a light, beautiful, poetic.
calm, and sweet, but it was not a light which warms the torpid
into activity. It lacked glow and warmth. The pale moon rises
in the east, spreads its mild light over a sleeping world, and all
nature continues its slumber. The sun rises ; its intense rays
not only light but warm nature, and all its children awaken from
slumber into activity, man and beast, tree and flower. Buddhism
may have been a "Light of Asia," but it was not till, close to the
Mediterranean, a new and better brightness was born, that " The
Light of the world " arose. Under the one light — the sweet, calm
moonlight — the earth lies in the lap of a lethargy, from which it
may not for ages free itself. Under the other — the warm, burn
ing sunlight — the west marches with giant strides.
Among the debris of old Sarnath, growing from a poor soi!,
half made of broken brick, there is a scanty growth of grass,
very thin and now without a spear over an inch long. We saw
men and women with a sort of chisel cutting this meagre grass
up by the roots for food for cattle. A man cannot gather two
bushels of this in a day. And yet these men live. Ah ! the
changeless East. Is there no resurrection for its poverty-stricken
children? When will there be a dawn from the true light, not of
Asia but of the world ?
From Calcutta to Benares we had passed over 500 and odd miles
of flat land densely populated. The peasants were as poor as
people can be and live. The villages were miserable mud huts,
or rather hovels. They draw water from wells in buckets,
either by their own hands or with oxen yoked to the long
well-rope, to fill the ditches which irrigate the fields, or they
scoop it from bayous or canals with canoe-like troughs, one
end of the trough being at the edge of the ditch, the other
end dipping into the water, and lifted by a sweep like the old
well-sweeps at home, long since discarded as being too labori
ous and slow a process even for supplying the kitchen and the
wash-tub. These people cut their rice and wheat with a knife
hardly half so good as the reap-hook of our grandfathers.
They thresh out the grain by whipping the sheaf over a stone
or by beating it with bamboo flails, and winnow it by throwing
it into the air, over a dirt floor. They carry the winnowed crop
to market on the backs of bullocks or little asses, or if they be

200 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
of a richer class, in wooden-wheeled (all wood) carts built on
models in use centuries ago. With boundless plains where for
ests might be grown, they cook their meals over fires made of
burnt straw and grass, or of cakes of dried cow droppings. This
they gather up and knead with their hands, and then cover the
sides of the houses with the dainty cakes to dry, as we ornament
our parlor walls with pretty placques. The cow and the goat,
the buffalo and the sheep, the donkey and the chicken all share
with the master his miserable abode, faring as does his wife and
his little naked ones, only having a larger share of the house for
their sleeping-rooms. 'When will the real " Light of Asia " arise
for its poor and miserable children?
On a train crowded with pilgrims, all with marks upon their
foreheads, proving that they had satisfied the priests of holy
Benares, we traversed a country in no way different from that
we had seen a few days before, and after a run of 190 odd miles
reached Lucknow, famous in song and in the history of the fights
of 1857. It was the capital of Oude, or properly, " Oudh," and
with its 250,000 people does a large amount of Indian produc
tion — carpet and brasswork, gold lace and embroidery and tinsel.
It was the glory of its kings, until, after the mutiny, it was
swept into the absolute ownership of the sea-girt kingdom of the
west. Its people were poor and oppressed, but its kings sup
ported a luxury and jewelled magnificence, unsurpassed in India
since the mogul sultans built mausoleums at a cost of countless
millions in honor of their dead queens. The remains of mag
nificent palaces and splendid tombs attest its former grandeur.
A great many, if not all, of the king's residences have been
razed to the ground, but a vast quadrangle of palatial edifices
and detached palaces — the homes of the begums (queens) and
their great retinue of attending ladies and their servants — show
that the late king, for so many years a state prisoner at Calcutta,
had good reasons for regretting his former splendor, and for ha
ting his despoilers. He had no hand in the mutiny of '57, and
was known to be friendly to England. But his independent
kingdom, with its 14,000,000 of people, ready to be led by
ambitious intriguers, was dangerous to the peace of India, and
England, which rarely hesitates when her policy requires the de
struction of a power which may become hostile, gave to the king
a city for his prison bounds, and added his jewels and posses
sions to the diadem soon to deck an empress' brow. Several of
the mausoleums and mosques of Lucknow are exceedingly fine
and well repay a visit, and the crowded, narrow streets of its na
tive quarters give food for more than one day's digestion.
_ We gave a day to Cawnpore, 30 miles farther on. This is a
•city of 140,000 souls, has a large native leather industry and some
fine rice mills, and a jute manufactory which was very interest
ing, and where we had an opportunity of watching nimble-

CAWNPORE. NANA SAHIB'S CRIME. 201
fingered boys and men mingling with the buzz and whirl of
steam-driven machinery. We drove over the vast military can
tonment ; admired its comfortable officers' bungalows, and its
long line of large two-story barracks, arranged en echelon on one
side of the great parade-ground. Here the fury of the mutiny
was unrelenting, and the tiger-like heart of Nana Sahib had an
opportunity to exhibit its ferocious quality. I stood by the
monument which covers the great well into which he hurled 700
men, women, and children — unoffending non-combatants, mur
dered in cold blood — and many thrown in while yet alive, some
of the children as yet unhurt. I then ceased to wonder at the
bitter feeling so many English here have for the natives. The
memory of the butcheries of '57 is yet fresh in their hearts, A
colossal winged angel in pure white stands over the spot, and in
marble beauty looks down with touching pity, which every one
must feel who recalls the horrible massacre.
From Cawnpore to Agra, 107 miles, we travelled by night.

CHAPTER XX,
LAHORE TO PESHAWUR— CENTRAL ASIATICS— WESTERN HIMA
LAYAS— CASHMIR— A WILD RIDE.
Peshawur, India, January 30, 1888.
I AM writing this at Peshawur, about i,6oo miles to the north
west of Calcutta, and close to the border-line of Afghanistan, that
bone of contention on which Russia and England have been so
long mouthing, and over which they will growl for probably many
years to come. We have passed through the heart of the mighty
empire of the moguls of Hindoostan, whose luxury and splendor
made the fairy tales of the 1,001 Arabian Nights a reality,
and has furnished to the minds of Europeans and Americans
their idea and ideal of " Orientalism." We have passed days in
studying the remains of their palaces, thrones, and tombs, monu
ments of a magnificence which makes Moore's gorgeous lines
truthful descriptions rather than dreams of Hibernian imagination.
We have visited their three capitals, Agra in the south, Delhi the
central, and Lahore in the north. In these they built palaces
and mosques which are dreams of beauty, inlaying their stone or
alabaster walls with precious marbles. They built thrones for
themselves and tombs for their predecessor or their queens, of
an architectural beauty never excelled, with gems and jewels for
adornment, and lavished upon them in elaborate finish the spoils
of conquered kingdoms. Although the bulk of the work per
formed in building these structures was that of the unpaid multi
tude, yet so rich were they in construction that millions were
expended to furnish material which could not be crystallized from
the sweat of the down-trodden people. One is almost lost in
amazement that men, though kings, could be so reckless in their
extravagance, and can account for it only by recalling the fact
that in their veins flowed the blood of Genghis Khan and Timur,
whose visions of splendor were as boundless as the vast steppes
in which they were born, and whose luxuriousness was in reverse
proportion to the poverty of their past. They were like beggars
mounted upon winged steeds.
We have tried to move as leisurely as was compatible with
what we had to do within a given period, but so thick are the
relics of past grandeur that they have been constantly crowding

INDIAN WHEAT. 203
upon us, and are still so crowding our memories that I would not
hazard the attempt to tell of them were I not reminded of Shake
speare's advice to the traveller : " Think of thy friends when hap
pily thou seest some noteworthy object in thy travels, and wish
them partakers of thy happiness."
We found the same flat country which I mentioned in my last,
and the same productions, except as they gradually changed from
those of the torrid zone to those of the more temperate as we
moved northerly ; rice became scarcer, until it disappeared almost
entirely, and wheat more and more took its place, and other small
grain and seed replaced the sugar-cane, which is grown, however,
far north, but rather for fodder and for being eaten green than
for grinding. It seems to be the favorite sweet of all Indian peo
ple, and sticks of it are everywhere seen in the hands of men,
women, and children, who bite it off as they walk, and up farther
north it is peeled and cut into short bits and sold like candy.
Near the city, where elephants are used, its leaves are their prin
cipal food. Large areas appeared planted in wheat after we left
Delhi, until, on reaching the Punjab country, it is seen in broad
expanses. This is not, however, because of large farms, for there
are no such things in India, but there being no distinct demarka-
tion between the lands of different owners, many fields appear as
one. At Delhi we had our first rain since leaving the neighborhood
of the equator. It continued for three days and extended over
all northern India. It saved the wheat crop of this great com
petitor of our wide prairies. There had been no rain since Oc
tober, and there was good reason for fearing that the spring har
vest would be a total failure. We noticed the change immediately,
even from the railway windows. There are two crops a year here,
one sown in October and harvested in early spring ; the other in
May and harvested in August.
Our farmers need never fear Indian competition in good wheat.
These people are too slovenly in their manner of cleaning it ever
to send a good article to England, and, as the commissioner
(governor) of this district told me, they will not change their
habits. They hand-weed the fields,»so that no foreign seeds mix
with the wheat, but they clean it on the ground, and the middle
men throw in dirt and coarse sand to increase the weight. We
have examined quite a quantity here in Peshawur in bags in the
bazaar, and found it shamefully dirty. One seller wanted us to
buy. I told him we were from Chicago in America. He inno
cently assured me that he would make his bags tight so that it
could be taken home with us. I will explain that, in hand-weed
ing fields, every thing is saved ; what is pulled up becomes food
for cattle. Another thing will ultimately tell against India as a
wheat country. Manure is carefully picked up and dried for fuel.
The land needs it and cannot get it, and cannot continue wheat-

>«IW>UWHMM«|,ia

204 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
producing. Rice takes the bulk of its nourishment from water,
and thrives on land which cannot produce wheat. Trees are
scarce ; leaves, coarse grass, and excrement of cattle keep the
natives in fuel. These people are poor beyond any others I have
ever seen, and will not become well enough off to become land
improvers. They are not lazy, they work hard but keep them
selves poor by the ceremonies which their very religion seems to
make necessary when their children marry. This hardly seems
credible, but they save almost exclusively for this purpose, and
cover themselves with debt and mortgages when savings prove
inadequate. A man's importance in his community seems to be
measured by his display when his children marry.
It is painful to look into the huts of the farmers and laborers.
They are merely mud-walled pens, and lack every thing for com
fort. Here, to-night, I am shivering in the house before a wood
fire, yet I am well clad. These people wear little more than a
light cotton cloth, and fire-places and chimneys are unknown in
the native house. They wrap up their heads and vital parts of
the body leaving the legs nearly bare, and rarely cover the feet at
all. They squat before their little huts around a mere skilletful
of fire, and a few put a small pot of coals under their cotton cov
ering, and drawing this about them, husband the scanty heat. The
pay of a cab- or cart-driver is from four to six rupees a month. A
rupee is worth at present rate of exchange 34 cents of our money.
Out of this he has to clothe and feed himself. We give our Eng
lish-speaking servant a rupee, and four annas a day for food. An
anna is worth two and one-quarter cents. Thus he gets his food,
even while travelling with us, for nine cents a day. But his
wages are quite princely. The pay of a laborer on the construc
tion of railroads is three annas a day. That, too, between this and
Lahore, where there is frost nearly every clear night from Decem
ber to February.
One can scarcely realize when passing through much of this
country that it is thickly peopled. One sees large areas of culti
vated lands, but apparently no houses. But every now and then.
half-hidden among trees, one sees a mud wall 10 to 12 feet high,
and covering some hundred feet, others 400 or 500 feet square.
This mud wall contains a farm hamlet or village, and has
within it little hovels and cow-yards for 12, 20, or more fami
lies. Women and children constantly ask for " backshish "
(presents). They do it very good-naturedly, and never get angry
when we drive them off with a good-humored thrust from our
canes. About the large cities the old ruins cover many miles
more or less cultivated, and with hovels among old crumbling
walls. Along the roads in these, children by the dozen ran by
our carriage crying " backshish " in all the tones possible to
youngsters from three years old up to ten or more. Boys half-
naked ; girls with rings in their ears and noses, and bracelets and

^5|>!S»-

INDIAN WOMEN WITH FUEL MADE OF MANURE.

INDIAN WIVES AND WIDOWS. 205
anklets jingling. All have beautiful teeth, and grin and laugh and
pat their stomachs to assure us they are quite empty, and some
of them look as if ready for a collapse. A jollier set of beggars
one never saw, and quite able to keep up with our carriage for a
mile. A cent thrown to them makes them happy. A crack from
the driver's whip, if not reaching their naked backs, makes them
break into a peal of laughter. None are so poor that they do not
put rings and bracelets on the girls. I had a woman beg of me
today, and yet she must have had a dozen or more of these orna
ments. Much of the wealth of the family is thus carried on the
females. When necessity pinches, they sell or pawn them. The
women are thus the bankers of the men.
The women in towns and villages above the coolie class rarely
show their faces, and the better classes never. Some travellers
speak of their peeping at one from under their veils, or from behind
their latticed windows, and often coquettishly lifting the veil.
From what I have seen and can learn from people who have long
lived here, such coquetries are only indulged in by Nautch girls
(dancing girls) of a low order showing themselves, or by a still
worse class. The education of a woman is such that she honestly
thinks herself degraded should she permit her face to be seen by
a man ; rarely is it done, even to a father-in-law or brother-in-law,
especially if the brother-in-law be older than her husband. A
well-to-do Hindoo, with six brothers all younger than himself,
told me he had seldom ever seen the face of a single one of his
sisters-in-law, and when he had done so it was under peculiar cir
cumstances religiously permissible. But his brothers had seen his
wife's face oftener. This thing is not simply a social custom ; it
is mixed up with their religious requirements. Religion has a very
powerful hold even on the men, who are generally more or less
educated, for now common schools are throughout the country.
But the women are wholly uneducated, except in religious rites
and duties. With them their religion is all despotic and powerful,
leading them in the past to the burningpile of their dead husband.
That, however, was not always the cruel order of force, but was
frequently eagerly sought by the victim, first because she believed
it a religious duty, and next because the burdens, deprivations,
and self-denials, forced upon a widow by inexorable religious and
social custom, made death preferable' to a life of widowhood.
Many women regret deeply that the government so rigidly
enforced its decrees against this self-immolation, for through
it they could not only escape present misery, but they could merit
a blessed future. This latter they lose if they commit suicide.
General education must ultimately break down much of these
people's superstitions and conservatism. But the less the inter
ference with religious belief be apparent, the quicker will simple
education really sap the very foundations of their superstitions.
Mere argument rarely reaches the issue. A shrewd Indian will

2o6 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
argue with you, and seems to be certain that he has the best of it.
He is full of casuistry, and vain of his powers.
I think I called India the land of dreams. I have reached the
conclusion that more than half of what has been said and written
of it was the chimera of dreams. Travellers have indulged in
fancy when telling of what they have seen, or have taken excep
tional conditions, and written of them in such a manner as to
make the reader suppose they were the rule. Reading their
books one would think this a land in perennial bloom, that the
monkey is seen everywhere capering along the roads, and that
brilliant wild peacocks and other birds make the wayside bright
and gorgeous. We have travelled over 3,000 miles of Indian
road, and have not seen a single wild monkey or pea-fowl, and
while birds of bright plumage are often seen, they have to be
closely watched to catch their beauty ; one bookmaker who wrote
beautifully, dilated upon the gorgeous " birds of paradise " seen
from car windows. I doubt if there was ever one of these birds
in India, either wild or caged. The same exuberance of fancy
has even painted this as the land of gems and riches. The
wealth of Ind has furnished the orator and poet with similes
from the days of Rome down to the present. Alexander halted
at the Indus, which we crossed two days ago, because his Greeks
knew there was more of disease to be met in the hot lands beyond
than of gold and gems to furnish them plunder.
India is fearfully poor to-day, and I find internal evidence that
it has ever been so. There have ever been the few who coined
gold out of muscle, and crystallized sweat into gems. The few
here were perhaps smaller than in any other country. They built
its palaces and tombs of wondrous beauty, but there is absolutely
no sort of monument of past peoples or masses. These have ever
lived in squalor, their mud houses melting under summer rains;
their little accumulations vanishing in the smoke of their poor
funeral piles. Oppression has so sunken into their natures that
they have no conception of any thing else. If eels were half as
fond of being skinned as ihese people are of being ground down,
they would wiggle from their mud-holes into the frying-pan.
Like spaniels, these people delight in licking the hand that smites
them. There has been nothing in this land to make it one of
wealth, but every thing to make it the opposite. Its cUmate
enables its people to live on what would be starvation elsewhere,
and to clothe themselves in the lightest garments. Such a people
never are rich. They have been able to manufacture articles at
almost a nominal cost, whose rarity in Europe makes them of
great value, and Europe imagined these things were riches,
whereas their very cheapness here was evidence of the poverty of
the country. Wealth is accumulation ; and accumulation is the
offspring of habits arising out of the necessity of saving for the
morrow. There was never such necessity in India,

INDIAN POVERTY AND KINDLINESS. 207
England is trying hard to make its Indian subjects prosperous,
and to elevate them, but since her first step was taken in the land,
she has found the nature of the people has a tendency to make
rulers corrupt. A trial is now going on in Lahore, which shows
that it is hard even for English civil-service examiners to escape
the temptation of taking bribes. It would be amusing to read the
testimony of candidates for a higher grade of lawyers, if it were not
painful ; amusing because of the simplicity of the people in tak
ing it for granted that nothing can be had except for pay, and the
ease with which they invite themselves into traps. The climate
seems to have acted on the people as it does upon their wooden
furniture and doors. If one twists in a chair, he breaks it down.
Ifhe moves a table he is liable to have it drop in pieces, and I have
not seen a door in the land that fits as it was made. In the rainy
season every thing takes water as a sponge, and in the dry months
it shrinks like a cake of country-made soap. It acts in like man
ner upon the moral nature of the flexible people.
One sees everywhere throughout India one general characteris
tic, a sort of kindliness of disposition to man and brute. All
domestic animals are as gentle and tame as fireside petted kittens.
The cow and ass, the sheep and goat, the camel and horse, the
chicken and duck, all seem absolutely a part of the family.
Pigeons in flocks are frequently seen whirling in great circles in
the cities for several minutes, and then swooping down upon cer
tain house-tops. Often several flocks unite and fly together and
then separate as people do in dances. The owners of the different
flocks are on the tops of their respective houses waving flags and
directing the flights of the birds, and by a motion calling them
down to them. I thus one day saw six different, flocks flying at
once — now mingling, then separating, and all done under the
orders of their respective owners. They are kept in a sort of
coops on the house-tops, and are thus sent out for exercise.
After flying for a half hour or so, they are fed and quietly go into
their coops, and such as are deemed fit for the market are taken
out. One gets pigeons at almost every meal in all cities here.
Crows are as tame as sparrows are with us. Indeed, more so.
I saw one in Calcutta stealthily takmg its meal from a quarter of
beef which a butcher had on his head, and several times have seen
one steal food from a man's dish when he was eating before his
door. They come within five or six feet of natives at every rail
way station, but eye very suspiciously a foreigner, and can hardly
be tempted with crumbs nearer than 10 or 15 feet. There are
vast numbers of them in every part of the land. In Burmah they
are black ; here they have a mouse-colored neck, and look as if
they wore a cape.
A native hurts nothing if he can help it. Ants are the terrible
pest of the land. The white ant eats up the houses and destroys
the trees, yet I have seen more than one native carefully step so

2o8 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
as not to crush these little workers, travelling from their nest to
a neighboring tree. The Hindoo, like the Buddhist, believes in
transmigration of souls. Though Buddhism exists to only a small
extent at the present time in India proper, yet when it did exist it
made its teachings take a deep hold upon the Brahminical reli
gion, and has left its traces throughout the land, very greatly soft
ening the cruel nature of the older and more dominant theology.
The people from Benares to the north of Delhi are much more
stalwart and manly than are the Bengalese, but they in their turn
are greatly inferior to the men of the Punjab. This word means
and expresses the country lying between the five great branches
of the Indus. In this country is a magnificent race of men. The
Sikh soldiers in the army are the handsomest body of men I have
ever seen, and indeed I have never seen any European or American
who came any thing like being as perfect model of manly beauty
as do many officers seen in the native Sikh cavalry. We witnessed
the practice of a native regiment at company target-shooting near
Peshawur. The officers on horseback were simply superb ; afoot
all show one universal defect among the entire people of India —
an almost total absence of calf to the leg. Even in Punjab men
and women have none. I can say this of the women, because up
here there are two things quite antipodal to our customs. Men
wear what seem to be skirts and the women all wear trousers —
and very tight ones, too, below the knee. The other singular
thing is, one sees hundreds of men with beards dyed a brilliant
red. A gray-bearded man is rarely seen from Lahore to Peshawur,
for they take on a bright vermilion, evidently not for the pur
pose of concealing age, but as a sort of beautifier. This seems a
custom borrowed from, or at least common with, the Afghans and
other people from central Asia.
The men of Punjab proved themselves brave by giving Eng
land harder fighting to subdue them than perhaps all the balance
of India. But when once they acknowledge the supremacy of their
new rulers, like brave men they have shown themselves true.
They have little of the servile demeanor of the Bengalese. They
look a foreigner in the face — respectfully, but with an apparent
consciousness of their own dignity. The English here, too, seem
to meet them more as men and less as slaves than they do the
more servile people of Bengal. I suspect they cannot do
otherwise. Not only did the people change from those previously seen
but after leaving Lahore behind us a few hours the face
of the country became quite different. For about lOO miles
in width along the Jhelum River, the earth is corrugated by
strange chasms, fissures, and gorges. The soil is an exceedingly
friable clay. This is rain-washed into gullies of 50 to 100 feet
in depth, running in every direction, and presenting a most gro
tesque appearance ; great domes, and spires of clay ; walls with

WESTERN HIM ALA YAS. 209
flying buttresses, cathedrals, fortresses ; — for miles and miles these
are seen, as wild and picturesque a landscape as one can imagine.
This clay is now as red as terra cotta, then of a yellow ochre
color, then of a brown and a white, at a distance resembling great
bands of woven stuff in different colors.
Parallel to the railroad ran often the great trunk road, which,
starting at Calcutta and ending at Peshawurl, I suppose, the
grandest wagon road in the world — 1,600 miles long, beautifully
gravelled, everywhere smooth enough for a bicycle, and generally
having a fine row of trees on either side. In the lower countries
these trees are evergreen oaks or shiny-leafed fruit-trees, or some
other of that character ; up here it is the bulbul, or gum-arabic tree,
with its delicate mimosa leaf. We frequently saw long lines of
camels slowly wending their way, and large caravans of asses and
cows, showing that the country has much of the characteristics of
central Asia.
Peshawur is a very interesting city, wholly central-Asiatic. A
very large caravan had come in only a day or two ago from Af
ghanistan and Turkestan. In the bazaar are bold-looking"Afghans,
with noses so aquiline that one is ready to believe them sprung
from the lost tribes of Israel, clad in sheep-skin coats, and fierce
in their demeanor ; Kafirees, who looked at us as if they re
gretted we were not over in the mountains, that they might cut
our throats and empty our pockets ; Cashmirees, clean and fair-
skinned, some of them with blue eyes. In the great yard we
walked among 400 or 500 camels squatted around in circles, their
heads close together and eating from common centres. We passed
over 300 of them in a long line wending their way toward the
frontier, loaded with bales of English goods, great goods boxes,
and six-inch iron water-pipe fresh from England. I wondered what
use the pipes were to be put to in central Asia. With this caravan
was a wild, hardy set of mefl, and more or less armed. In this
locality men are permitted to bear arms. Nowhere else in India
is this allowed — that is, to natives, but here self-protection makes
it necessary. Indeed, we are no longer in India, except in name.
We are in central Asia, and only 12 miles from the border of the
land of one of the fiercest people in the world.
We had intended stopping at Amballa as we came up, and
thence making a trip a day long to Simla, the summer vice-regal
palace or residence. I wished from that point to look upon the
mighty peaks of the western Himalayas. Years ago. Bayard
Taylor gave me a glowing picture of them ; I wished to look
upon them as he did, and thus in fancy renew our old associa
tions. He looked upon the eternal snows of Gungootree from not
many miles away from Simla. I wished to do the same, but it
was pouring down rain, and we were told it was snowing violently
at Simla. We therefore left it for our return trip, if the weather
should be more favorable. Not having any guide-book to tell us

210 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
what we were to see on the road to Peshawur, we were most
agreeably surprised to find that the mighty snow-clad Himalayas
of Cashmir were visible shortly after leaving Lahore, and con
tinued so until night, and here we have had the opportunity of
looking upon their cold grandeur. Much of the snow seen, how
ever, passes away in summer.
We have now stood near the waters of the Brahmaputra,
which rises in Thibet, and, flowing easterly, drains the northern
slope of the Himalayas, the mightiest of mountains, then
bending around the eastern end, empties into the eastern Bay of
Bengal. Between Lahore and Peshawur we crossed the Indus,
which rises close by the fountain of the other great river, and
running westward under the northern slope of these same moun
tains passes around their western end, and empties into the Sea
of Arabia. Mighty rivers — of what mighty monarchs do they
wash the feet ?
When we first looked upon the lofty mountains of Cashmir,
there was a long line of fleecy clouds hanging over them.
One of us could not resist the temptation of calling them " the
veil of Cashmir." At the crossing of the Jhelum we were close to
the border of the land of bright valleys and brilliant shawls. We
would have been glad to have visited it, but its road was barri
caded with almost impenetrable snows. We have a letter from
Lord Dufferin bespeaking for us the good offices of all officials
throughout his empire. Armed with this, upon our arrival here,
we called upon the deputy-commissioner, and asked a permit to
go into the Khyber Pass, leading into the land of the Ameer as
far as possible. The result was that, accompanied by one of his
native officials, we drove 1 1 miles to the fort at the foot of the
mountains. Here we found our liverymen had sent a relay of
horses to carry us part of the way up the pass, where we expected
to find saddle-horses, also sent from the city early in the morn
ing. Accompanied by an escort of eight cavalrymen, splendidly
mounted, and carrrying lances, we dashed toward and into the
foothills. On every high point for a few miles a couple of soldiers
would step from a little stone hut and present arms as we passed
by at full speed. Sometimes these sentries were loo or 200 feet
above us. They made us realize that we were in a neighborhood
where dread war might at any hour break into wild whoops, and
where border robbers were more than comfortably plenty. But
our escort were splendid-looking fellows, and were fully armed.
We passed a caravan of camels, mules, and cows, all packed and
accompanied by wild-looking armed men.
We had not gone two miles upward into the mountain road
before our carriage-horses balked. We got out and walked. One
of the soldiers dismounted and offered me his horse, a beautiful
stallion, full of mettle and horse-sense. I mounted and rode
ahead with two soldiers, the others coming slowly up with the

A WILD RIDE INTO KHYBER PASS. 211
boys till they should reach the next relay. The pass is through
a wild, desolate, and grand gorge ; bold, rocky, and bleak moun
tains lifting far above the road, which is a fine but steep military
one. My two " Sikhs " were splendid-looking fellows. In about
an hour, having crossed the summit of the pass, one of them said
something to the " sahib " (gentleman), which I understood to
be that I must ride slowly. He dashed forward at full speed (we
were now on a down grade), leaving the other soldier and myself
to follow slowly. 'We met men in couples, armed and wild-
looking. Wilder-looking men and a wilder gorge do not often
exist anywhere. Several rocky points had small Afghan round
houses, with loop-holes for muskets or rifles. I guessed rightly
that my departing escort had gone forward to see if we would be
permitted to proceed, for I felt pretty sure from what the com
missioner had told me that my permit only took us to the top of
the pass. The corporal knew this, but the men with me did not,
and it was not imperatively my duty to tell them. I was going
as far into Afghanistan as they would accompany me, for I knew
England was at my back. Presently we saw our advanced guard
beckoning us from a far-off point. On we dashed. We reached
a little stone hut against a steep precipice. My men dismounted,
motioning me to do the same. They brought out of the hut a
chair, and planting it against the cliff told me to take a seat.
Hardly had I done so, when there came down a steep hill from a
sort of fortress high above, a fine-looking fellow, with a dozen
wild-looking armed retainers. It was the chief of the tribe, the
head of Ali Musjed. When he approached I grasped the situa
tion. He was an independent chief, in whose charge and keeping
was this part of the pass. I received him with a dignity worthy
of the 50,000 democratic voters of Chicago. He was very polite,
but could not speak a word of English, nor could any one of them.
Yet we talked. I showed him Lord Dufferin's passport, and also
that with Mr. Bayard's name attached, with the seal of my own
glorious land. He could read none of them. I picked up a large
round stone, made a mark upon it, and said, " Peshawur " ;
another, and said, " Calcutta," giving their relative positions.
He understood. I then made another, and said, " England,"
" London." This, too, he comprehended. I turned the stone
over and drew a big country, and said, " America." I made
America too large, for he looked at me in a way that plainly told
me he thought I was lying. I then drew a pretty big chart, and
pointed to it, and told him that was Ali Musjed, where we
were, and that he was rajah of it. He grinned. I turned the
stone around, and with my pencil made a mark the size of a pea,
and told him that was Chicago, and I was its " rajah." He
seemed pleased that his territory was bigger than mine, and
motioned to me to be seated. I wanted him to sit, trying to ex
plain that his rajahship on the stone was bigger than mine.

212 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
But he was my host, and I must have the seat. He invited me
to his stronghold on the hill to partake of food. I showed him
my watch, intimating that I was sorry not to have the time, and
that my companions would be awaiting me. We shook hands,
he touching his heart, face, and forehead. This is the token of
highest respect. I suppose my escort had convinced him that I
was a mighty man. Thus parting with the lord of the territory of
Ali Musjed, we rode forward, deeper into the great Khyber Pass,
and well into Afghanistan.
We reached Ali Musjed, a bold-looking Afghan fortress, and
as picturesque as can be imagined, perched upon a lofty, rocky
point overlooking the gorge not 50 feet wide, through which the
road ran. It was stormed by Roberts' men,^ and is now dis
mantled. By the road under it was a stone hut, large enough, I
thought, for four or five people. A dozen armed cut-throat-
looking fellows came out of it. They were some of the chief's
wild devils who convoy caravans through the pass. The chief is
under the pay of the government, and guarantees safety to all
peaceful passers who have a right to go through. After a little
palaver with them, my guard intimated we could go no farther.
But I rode on, one of them threw his lance lengthways across the
road and followed. I saw then that an armed English soldier
could not pass that line. I suppose it was the end of our last
chief's jurisdiction. But I made signs I must ride a little farther
into the narrow gorge. He looked rather perplexed, but followed
me. On I galloped until the line of Ali Musjed was far behind
me, and I was in a narrow defile as bold, wild, and rugged as any
Colorado canyon. My escort was some paces behind me, for I was
splendidly mounted. He called to me. I paused. He rode up
and pointed to my holsters and his, saying something rather
apologetic in his own language. I saw he meant we wore English
arms, even if his lance were behind ; but I was going through that
defile a little farther if possible. I dashed forward. It was a
beautiful gallop, almost a wild run, into as wild a pass as the
wildest of lands could afford.

CHAPTER XXI.
INDIA'S VAST PAST— A GLORIOUS MODERN DEED— DELHI AND
AGRA— EXQUISITE HALLS AND TOMBS— THE TAJ-
REFLECTIONS.
Delhi, India, February 4, 1888.
It is needless to say, I got out of Afghanistan with a whole
skin. I have, however, been informed that my cavalry capari
soned horse, with the holsters at my saddle-bow, might have in
vited a warning from an Afghan gun. But as the chief of Ali
Musjed did not seem offended, I am glad that I made my little
gallop beyond his jurisdiction, or at least beyond his safe-conduct.
I said in northern India there were occasional frosts from Decem
ber to February, yet plants which with us are killed by the first
frosts are throughout the Punjab green and blooming. Peas
continue in full blossom, but the pods do not fill during the frost
periods. Roses are in full bloom, etc. By the way, from Benares
for several hundred miles north is the land of this queen of flowers.
At Agra I measured one resembling a jaqueminot in the Taj gar
den, seven inches in diameter. Our hotel in Delhi had upon the
table seven flowers-pots with 12 to 15 roses in each, with other
flowers, and eight small ones with two or three in each. These
were all renewed every other day ; the whole at a cost of five
rupees a month, say $1.75. The great clumps of deep purple
" begum bola " and yellow and coral bignonias, in masses 10 to
20 feet in diameter and 10 feet high, make the public gardens gor
geously brilliant. Outside of vwa.t^'/'M gardens the whole country
has a parched appearance as far as grass is concerned. Fields of
growing crops are green, and nearly all trees, though deciduous,
are ever green, but at this season not brightly so.
Our ride of 600 miles from Peshawur back here was even more
enjoyable than the one going up. We saw by day what we
passed going by night. It took 43 hours, with abundant time for
good meals. The mountains of Cashmir covered with snow, some
of them 17,000 feet high, were in view for hours. We crossed on
magnificent bridges the five great branches of the Indus, now
comparatively small streams. But the great river-beds, a mile or
so wide, deep sunken with their bars of rounded pebbles, showed
what mighty torrents they become when the snows of the Hima
layas melt. 213

214 ^ RACE WITH THE SUN.
After leaving Umbala the lofty heights of the main Himalayas
and the immediate foothills were in view for several hours. Their
lofty, rugged peaks far over the foothills, from 20,000 to 25,000
feet high, with their eternal snows outlined upon the blue sky,
presented a magnificent spectacle not far inferior to that of
Kunchinjinga from Darjeeling. We had from the car windows
what I so much desired, a splendid prospect of those grand
heights, which my old friend Bayard Taylor travelled so far and
under such difficulties to see from Landowr, only a few miles
from the line we were so comfortably moving along. There were
no railroads here 34 years ago. He travelled night and day in an
open cart, and caught only a passing glance, between clouds, of
these stupendous heights. We had together, a year or two
before, looked upon and passed over Hermon and Lebanon,
had encamped in a wild gorge of the Taurus, and had slowly
climbed the green slopes of frowning Olympus after a long
journey across Asia Minor. He knew he had my hearty sympa
thy. When speaking of this, his only vision of the Himalayan
monarch, he said : " It was only for a little while, but oh, Har
rison, it was worth a lifetime of toil ! " How his brown eyes
glowed ! He enjoyed nature as only one can who has a heart full
of sympathy. I watched for hours those far-off frozen monsters
of silver, enamelled upon the azure sky, and they were all the
more beautiful because my dead friend had so enjoyed them. At
least I thought, when looking upon the mighty snows in the dis
tance, that they were the same he had seen, and enjoyed them
accordingly. I now have doubts if either of the two monarchs of
the western Himalayas are visible from the line of railroad. For
the time being, however, our sensations were as complete as if we
were looking upon the rivals of Everest and Kunchinjinga.
Americans visit countries, cities, and battle-fields in Europe
sacred to them because their forefathers lived and died there, or
because they were the cradles of their learning. There the soil is
dyed in blood in the name of freedom or for religion's cause. In
Rome they live over a world of history, and see legions of long
dead heroes marching before them. In Greece they watch genius
chiselling breathing forms from cold marble, and listen to undying
song flowing from the lips of the muses. If India had a written
history as have Rome and Greece, and had as grateful posterity as
they have, then would millions visit the 20-mile-square in whose
centre I now sit in Delhi, and would revel in a mighty past, com
pared to which the past of Rome and Athens is as a decade to a
century. Here for thousands of years history has been acted, but
never written. Acted not centuries ago, with a vast vacuity to
follow, but acted continuously as the ages have marched slowly
along. Not 200 yards from where I am writing, 30 years ago a
deed was done more heroic than was the stand of Leonidas at
Thermopylae. The murderous mutineers seemed safe behind

UNIQUE MONUMENTS. OLD RUINS. 215
Delhi's impregnable wall. A breach must be made, but how, and
by whom ? Two brave soldiers, with nine followers, offered to
blow up a massive gate. With bags of powder they ran to it un
der a galling fire, knowing well that if they escaped the bullets
they must be buried under the ruins they hoped to make. One
by one they fell. A single man reached the arch, applied the
torch, the breach was made, Delhi was won, and the mutiny,
which was one of the most cruel recorded in the annals of war,
was virtually ended. A plain slab leaning against the gate gives
the names of those heroes. A national anthem should carry their
fame down through undying time.
Here within a small circuit the mighty moguls ruled 200 years
ago, and during several centuries made this their capital of a
mighty empire, the centre of" an art all their own, — an art so full
of fancy and dreamy splendor that even Aladdin's lamp could
find nothing to surpass its creations. Under the ruins of the
palaces, mosques, tombs, and forts of the moguls lay the ruins
of the cities destroyed by them, and out of whose sculptured
walls and temples they found materials for their own superb
edifices. Still lower down were the relics of yet older cities,
layer upon layer in stratified debris, is the work of the enslaved
millions, who have lived, toiled in misery for thousands of
years, and died, only to make room for other slaves yet to
follow. Here one sees a red-coated English soldier quartered in the
colonnaded cloister of an old mosque erected two or three
centuries ago. Sculptured stones cut by hands of Hindoo
worshippers over 2,000 years ago are built into the walls of
the Mohammedan temple. The Brahmin temple, a part of
whose cloisters became the corridors of the conquering Moham
medan, had for its foundations some structures yet far older ;
at one of these places, piercing through all, stands the most
unique monument in the world — a wrought-iron pillar nearly a
foot and a half in diameter, and over 40 feet high — how much
higher, or rather longer, no one knows, for an excavation nearly
30 feet deep failed to reach its foundation, and at this depth
of excavation it was yet so firm below that it could not be
shaken. This strange pillar is not hollow, but it is a solid shaft
of malleable iron, and is claimed by the natives to have its
foundation on the centre of the world.
Cities lie here in strata, as the ribs of the earth do in its
mighty rocks — sandstone, shale, limestone, and marble. Can
we hope that under British rule will overlie all a stratum of rich
loam, to be yet watered by the sweat of a happy and prosperous
people, till it waves as a field of grain and blossoms as the rose ?
Close to the iron pillar stands one of the most interesting and
beautiful monuments ever seen, the Kutab Minar. This is a
species of column with a diameter at its base of nearly 50 feet,

2i6 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
and rising to a height of 240 odd feet, with a diameter at its
apex of nine. At one time it continued to a still greater height
of 20 feet ; the upper part was thrown off by an earthquake
within the present century. It is divided into five stories, gradu
ated in perfect symmetry. Each story is surmounted by a bal
cony supported by an exquisite bracketed cornice. But, as a
still further relief, each is divided into what appear to be other
stories, by broad bands inlaid in white of Arabic extracts from the
Koran. The column is fluted for most of its height, and built
of red, buff, and pink sandstone and white marble. For what
purpose it was built no one knows. It is as beautiful in its form
and construction as it is unique in its conception. The Kutab
Minar is 11 miles from the present city, — the space between
being a mass of ruins of older cities.
We counted from the top of the Kutab Minar over 100 tombs,
some in ruins, others more or less preserved. One of these is
that of Humayun, the second of the mogul rulers; the first,
Baber, was buried where he lived, somewhere in central Asia.
This, though not near so ornate as those of several of his suc
cessors, is to me the most appropriate of all mausoleums. First
there is a structure of red sandstone considerably over 300 feet
square and about 30 feet high; on each side are 18 saracenic-
arched doorways, divided by massive square pillars. The sand
stone is relieved by inlaid white marble. Within each of these
doorways are vaulted chambers containing tombs. This structure is
really the platform for the true mausoleum or main tomb, which
is about 170 feet square, with cut-off corners, and probably
70 feet high. On the four sides are lofty arched doorways 60
feet in height, inclosing the segments of rounded vaults. On
either side of these doorways are arched windows. All the
arches are pointed Oriental. The whole of the main body is of
red sandstone, picked in and relieved by beautiful white marble
inlaid work. Surmounting it is a majestic dome of white marble
probably 60 feet in diameter. Around this, along the outer
walls, are small white marble minarets, and at each corner a
small dome. Under the main dome is a vaulted chamber about
50 feet across. In this is the cenotaph of the monarch. Under
each of the smaller domes are vaulted chambers containing tombs
of his immediate family. The whole stands in a walled inclosure
of many acres, with noble gateways on three sides. A remarka
ble feature of this structure is that there are many masonic em
blems inlaid into the walls in black marble. The surroundings
of the tomb are very desolate, and, as we found, haunted by
jackals ; fit resting place for one so unfortunate as was this
monarch in his short reign.
Near this is a group of remarkable tombs of a different charac
ter, being simply spaces inclosed by screens of marble cut into
open network pattern, of a finish as delicate and beautiful as

PURE JAHANARA. 217
if cut from ivory. One of these is the burial-place of a Moham
medan saint ; adjoining it is the mosque in which he officiated
several hundred years ago. A few poor monks still have charge
of it and protect the tombs surrounding it. One of these is
that of Jahanara, who shared the seven years' captivity of her
father. Shah Jahan. We saw it when here before going to
Peshawur, but were so much touched with Jahanara's pure devo
tion and sublime faith that we visited it again. The light net
work screen of snow-white marble in beautiful pattern surround
ing her tomb, seemed a fitting inclosure for one whose spirit was
so pure and whose filial devotion was so true. She is covered
by a plain block of white alabaster, simple as was her nature. She
asked that no inscription be upon her tomb.
' ' Place naught save one green herb above my head.
This alone befits the poor and lonely dead."
To carry out her dying wish the alabaster block is hollowed out
on top and kept by pious monks always filled with green grass.
A slab stands near the head of her tomb, inscribed in Arabic :
"God is the life and the resurrection." The "Taj" made me
bow at the tomb of Montaz, whose name its wondrous beauty
for a moment almost sanctified. But Jahanara's loving, gentle
spirit beautifies the simple stone which covers her dust. Montaz
was a beautiful, proud woman, whose every caprice was a law
to her doting husband. Her life was said to have been one of
cruelty, perhaps not untinged by crime. Her mausoleum is the
perfection of architectural beauty. Poets look at it and, forget
ting the woman's frailties, sing of her as if she were fitted by
her nature for the tomb in which her ashes rest. She loved and
brightened the pleasures of her prosperous king. But when that
same king for long years pined in captivity, poor Jahanara
shared it with him, and by the sunshine of a daughter's love
lightened up his hours of gloom. I felt one should tread lightly
and speak in low and gentle tones when near her resting-place.
Delhi, like Agra, has a magnificent fort, covering nearly a mile
square, built of red sandstone, with majestic gateways, and lofty
crenulated walls. In both cities the. forts are on the river bank
and are grandly imposing in appearance. Within each is a mar
vellously beautiful temple, each called the Pearl mosque. Both
have exquisite palaces and audience-halls. The Diwan-i-Am,
or " public audience-hall," in Delhi is 180 feet long, 60 feet deep,
and 25 feet high, supported by three rows each of 16 columns, and
one row of pilasters upon the rear wall. From the outer columns
spring Saracenic engrailed arches. The whole makes rather a
portico than a hall, in western acceptation of the term. The
structure — roof, ceiling, and all — is massive and dignified, and of
red sandstone, a fitting place for a mighty monarch to give
audience to his subjects. In the centre, back against the rear wall.

2i8 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
is a white marble throne, about 12 feet square and 10 feet high,
surmounted by a canopy supported by four corner pillars. The
throne, canopy, and wall behind are richly carved and covered
with inlaid ornamentation — flowers, vines, and buds, — all of
precious marbles, and finely wrought.
Not far from this is the Diwan-i-Khas, or private audience
hall, the bath, the pearl mosque, and the zenana or queen's
apartments. The mosque is a gem of clouded white marble, with
three beautiful domes and exquisite marble arches, supporting
marble, vaulted, engrailed ceilings. It was for the sultan and his
immediate court alone, and could not accommodate over 100
persons. In fact there were not prayer slabs for that number. It
will be well here to explain that mosques are never provided with
or intended to have seats. In fine ones the floors are composed
of slabs of marble often of different colors, about five feet long by
about two and a half. On one of these the worshipper kneels
when praying, and during any services upon these, sometimes
prayer-rugs are spread for the rich. The small Turkish and
Persian rugs, seen in the houses of our rich people, were woven
and many of them possibly once used for this purpose. The
number of slabs indicate the number of worshippers a mosque will
accommodate. The Diwan-i-Khas is also a portico, 70 feet long, 60 feet wide,
and 20 high, with 36 massive square white pillars, supporting a
roof of closely fitted slabs of marble, decorated in gold and colors.
The lower parts of the pillars and outer walls are richly carved
and elaborately inlaid. The material used for inlaying all the
interior of these buildings are blood-stone, lapis lazuli, cornelian,
jasper, agate, goldstone, and other precious marbles. In the rear
of the audience-hall is a large alabaster table. On this stood the
famous peacock throne, the most dazzling and costly thing of the
kind ever fabricated : a gorgeous work in gold and rarest gems,
said to have cost somewhere from $20,000,000 to $50,000,000. All
interior inlaid work, both in this and other buildings, I shall name,
is in vines and flowers, of a perfection of design and finish equal
to the tables manufactured in Italy, and owned only by a few
very rich people. The floors are generally of Florentine mosaic ;
sometimes, however, they too, are in flowers and vines. Separated
from this audience hall by a court, is the zenana. This I shall
not attempt to describe in detail. It is about two thirds as long
as the audience-hall and is a gem of alabaster, inlaid work and
frescoing upon white marble. Across its centre runs a screen
partition of panels of open lattice-work in marble slabs, say 3x5
feet and 4x5, cut into open works of flowers and vines. Some
of the marble is cut so finely and delicately as to be nearly as thin
as knife-blades. One can hardly believe that stone could be cut
and stand when so delicate. At a little distance it appears to be
of slabs of ivory. A balcony from this zenana, overlooking the

MOSQUES AND TOMBS. 219
plain running down to the river, is entirely of this fine work. A
charming place for a petted queen to sit and look out without
herself being seen.
At the other end of the audience hall, and also separated from
it by a court, is the bath. Here one gets a true idea of the luxury
indulged in by these masters of men. There are three vaulted and
domed apartments about 30 feet square, with corridors between
and anterooms at the side, with baths for hot and cold and
fountains for perfumed water. These walls are all inlaid and the
ceilings frescoed. A long marble rivulet runs from the bath across
the court, then through a channel under the audience-hall, and on
to the zenana. The floors of these three structures are inlaid in
vines, flowers, etc., and of costly, precious marbles.
The government here, as in other cities, is repairing the finest
buildings, thereby gaining somewhat the good-will of its native
subjects. In many buildings the most valuable precious stones
were picked out by the soldiers years ago. The reparations, as
near as possible, give the appearance of the original without the
cost, the precious marbles and gems being supplied by imitations
in fine cement.
There are many other buildings, mosques and tombs about
Delhi which I have not time to name. Only will I add that the
Jamni mosque is a noble structure — perhaps one of the largest
and most imposing of its kind in existence. It can accommodate
2,000 people, under the roof, and 40,000 in the court. In the
courts are the poorest worshippers and more closely packed than
in the mosque proper. The front of all are open so that those in
the courts have the full benefit of all ceremonies. The mosque is
of red sandstone, with zigzag inlaid white marble, giving it a very
airy appearance. It must deeply affect the imagination of the
followers of the prophet. Mosques throughout the world are of
one general pattern. The dome and minaret constitute the
imposing features. To my eye it is the fittest design known for
an edifice in which to worship the one God. If Mohammed had
only left out the sensuous characteristics of his religion, and in its
place had inculcated the purity taught by Jesus, what a blessing
he would have been to the East !
Humayun did not reside in the present Delhi, but in a city two
miles off — all now melted away except the great fort and the
tombs of a few of the great ones. Not only are the new structures
here built of the material of older ones, but the very roads are
macadamized with their debris. The bulk of the inner material of
all having been brick, causes the roads built from them to have
frequently a terra-cotfa color. By the way, pulverized brick is
mixed with lime for making mortar. They say it is better than
sand. Humayun's son, the great Akbar, lived at Agra and Futtehpoor-
Sikri, a city of his own building near-by. There he erected gorgeous

220 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
palaces at vast expense. But the monarch who bent India beneath
his rod, and whose simple order was an inexorable law, could not
dispel malarial fogs from his pet city. Its marble halls were soon
deserted, its alabaster baths ceased to be cooled by pellucid
streams. Its palaces and stables remain almost as they were
erected. For they are too much removed from any highway or
new town to be quarried into for construction material. Akbar
was forced to abandon his new-built city, and returned to give
audience in the Diwan-i-Am, overlooking the broad Jumna in
Agra's fort. Here, upon a huge slab of black marble, the mighty
warrior administered justice to cringing slaves crowding the hall
below. He was a harsh and unbending tyrant, but practised a
rude justice, — often cruel, never kindly, yet never having the
tiger-like ferocity of the hot Indian jungle, but rather partaking
of the character of the wild winds which swept over the steppes
of his Tartar forefathers. He looked over the broad plain waving
in fields of green along the river ; he looked over the interior of
the fort, and there, crowding each other like tents in the mogul
camp, were domes and minarets, palaces and kiosks, zenanas and
pavilions of open network marble, light and airy as bird-cages, in
which the dark-eyed beauties of the harem sat and sang and gos
siped and chirped the livelong day, like prison birds of gorgeous
plumage, and like them, too, with throats attuned to no songs of
real joy. The parrot, in golden feathers, croaks its coarse, discord
ant jargon amid crimson flowers and lofty bowers, while all around
is a torrid prison-house of malarial damps. But the lark pours
out his soul in delirious joy, while with fluttering wing it beats the
free, bracing air of a frosted zone. The linnet carols its song of
love, when hidden among new-born buds, on a bough lately bared
by wintry blasts. O freedom ! wilt thou ever make thy home
where frosts never blast ?
Akbar conquered India, and was buried at Secundra, two miles
from Agra. His tomb has nothing about it to remind one that
its tenant is dead. It is rather a mosque-like palace of the living.
His fame will live for ages. Did the genius of exuberant mogul
art think of this when it conceived this last home for one of the
immortals ? It is the only one of its kind, and was perhaps, after
all, a stroke of highest art. One enters a va"st garden through a
noble gate of red sandstone, beautifully inlaid with white marble,
in scrolls of huge Arabic texts from the Koran and finely propor
tioned panels. The gateway building leading to the garden con
taining the tomb is loo and odd feet long by nearly the same
in height. It is nearly square, and surmounted by four lofty
minarets in white. Of itself it would be a noble tomb. The great
arched gate and two recessed windows fill the front fagade. The
mausoleum consists of five platforms, the first 20 feet high and
500 feet square. In the centre of each side is a lofty gate through
which steps mount. On this rises the second platform, 350 feet

FORTS AND PALACES. 221
square. The four sides are supported by some 30 columns. At
either end of this rise a half-dozen domed white pavilions. The
third and fourth platforms are over 200 feet square, each sup
ported by pillars. Then on top of these is the fifth, which is of
white marble with domed pavilion at each corner. The upper
platform or roof is supported by beautifully carved white marble
pillars, making- a rich corrider, within which, enclosed by net-
patterned marble lattice-work, is a room about 70 feet square.
This is airy, light, and beautiful. In its centre is the cenotaph of
the great ruler, inscribed in Arabic quotations from the Koran.
His ashes lie directly under this, but in a dark vault in the base
ment of the structure, with no marble immediately covering them.
Just at the head of the cenotaph above is a short marble pillar,
with a sort of cup on its top. In this was kept the "kur-i-nur " —
the light of the world — the great diamond, now the brightest
jewel belonging to the crown of England. The entire mausoleum,
except the top platform, is of red sandstone, lighted up by white
marble inlaid in graceful forms. The grand arch of the main en
trance is illumined by arabesques and flowers in precious marbles,
as are also the floors and lower panels of the inclosure above con
taining the cenotaph. The several stories or platforms sit back
upon the one below, so that the entire structure artistically di
minishes as it rises. The entire structure is from 130 to 160 feet
high, and is by some thought the grandest of all the mogul
structures. It is the most dignified, and fittingly enshrines the
greatest of the line.
The Agra fort is a noble citadel nearly a mile square. It
contains many beautiful buildings. One of them, the Pearl
mosque, is a perfect thing in pure marble, as fresh and clean to
day as when erected. It is very beautiful, but to me is too cold,
lacking too entirely color and tone. Probably in a hotter season
this would not seem the case. Akbar's son, Jahangir, built his
palace in the fort. Each emperor seemed to consider it a duty to
create a new city or to erect new palaces. None of them resided
in the house of his predecessor. It must be understood, however,
that these palaces in no way correspond with the vast edifices now
used for such purposes, with great state halls, numerous private
saloons, and innumerable sleeping chambers. A mogul's palace
for himself and main queen, with audience-hall and baths, would
not cover 200 feet square. They were all rather open, — pillared
and arched porticos than houses. A simple screen and the king's
command made privacy complete. A guard of soldiers made im
mediate outer walls useless. The great wall of the fort, guarded by
an innumerable army, kept the open enemy at a distance. A body
guard kept off all idle or dangerous intruders. The king's palace
was like his tent, except that marble and alabaster screens took
the place of canvas and silk cloth. Curtains of woven gold and
silk divided off rooms, and no man except the monarch ever

222 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
invaded the sacred precincts of the zenana or harem. In this
lived the queen or queens, with their handmaids and servants, all
female. They ate, prayed, laughed, and sang, and were happy
when their lord deigned to smile upon them. They were generally
simply toys for his amusement. Now and then a favored one won
his heart, and became his idol. On such he lavished untold
wealth. Was she happy ?
The Jasmine Pavilion is an exquisite vaulted little kiosk,
composed entirely of jewelled, enamelled, and lacework marble
screens. This overlooks the outside of the fort. Close by it sat,
for seven years. Shah Jahan, when kept a prisoner by his son
Arungzeb. It was there that the ill-fated monarch had leisure to
repent his own faithlessness to his father Jahangir. Jahangir's
tomb is at Lahore. It is a noble structure, and is now being
repaired and restored by the government. Jahan's years of captiv
ity had one consolation, the devotion of his daughter (heretofore
named) Jahanara, a Mohammedan girl, whose beautiful faith in
the one true God was as sublime as that of any Christian woman
around whose brow shines the halo of a saint.
Shah Jahan was the founder of the present Delhi. He built the
palaces, baths, and audience-halls which are its beautiful monu
ments. His ashes lie by the side of those of his queen, Montaz,
in the Taj. Aurungzeb's reign was a long one — nearly 50 years ;
but it may be called a half century of intrigues, murders, poison
ings, and imperial disasters, woven in with a lavish splendor un
known in any other age and impossible out of India. Here every
little principality had its own language and its own people. Cohe
sion was an impossibility, except the cohesion of slavery and des
potism. There were millions who could at any moment have
broken the cobweb rope which fettered them. The rope cut
into their quivering flesh. They themselves held their limbs
together while their wounds festered ; they had not will enough
to swell the muscles which with their own simple expansion could
have sundered the fragile cord that bound them. Aurungzeb's
fears and luxury awakened his Nemesis. The cobwet net, which
for centuries had lain over India, dropped into pieces. His reign
was so luxurious that Moore's dream of " Lalla Rookh " was not
an unreal picture of the reality — a reality of which the Irish bard
was wholly ignorant. Drawing colors from his own fervid fancy
he painted a picture he supposed all unreal, but which in fact was
true to nature. I know not where Aurungzeb was buried. A
guide at Lahore said the tomb was 12 miles from that city.
It may be so. I cared too little for the hypocritical brute to
find out the truth.
At Agra, Delhi, Amritsin, and Lahore are private native houses,
surrounded by uncouth and slovenly structures, which show, in
latticed balconies and in engrailed pointed arches and delicate pil
lars, how the strange, wild, and beautiful art of the moguls sank

TOMBS OF AGRA. 223
into the native heart. It was not Hindoo, it could not be mogul,
so lately burst from its wild, ungenial plains. It sprang from the
delicate instincts of the careless Hindoo, quickened into life by
the wild extravagance of the untutored Tartar. No simple word-
painting by a traveller can enable the reader to be " partakers of
his happiness " in looking upon such " noteworthy objects as here
surround him." With a picture he could make you see them.
I will, however, give a short description of the tombs at Agra,
and then I shall have done. First, the mausoleum of the treas
urer of Jahangir and father of his celebrated wife Nur-Mahal
— the light of the harem. The main structure stands upon a
raised platform of red sandstone and is about 70 feet square, with
octagonal towers half projecting at each corner and lifting two
stories high, and surmounted by open-domed pavilions. The
main building is only one story in height, but on its nearly flat
roof and in its centre stands a pavilion 25 feet square and one
story high surmounted by a canopied roof. The roof of the main
building and upper pavilion has a broad eave supported by pretty
brackets. A pointed arched doorway enters the middle of each
of the four sides, with window recesses on either side. The entire
structure is built of pure white marble beautifully sculptured and
inlaid within and without in Florentine mosaic or in vines and
flowers. The inlaid ornaments are of pretty marbles, the interior
being of precious stones and some gems. The windows in the
recesses of the first story and in the inclosure of the pavilion on
the top, are of most delicately wrought open lattice in network
pattern. This structure is in perfect preservation, except that
many of the gems have been removed and replaced with imitation
in stucco. While it does not show the highest artistic design, this
mausoleum is of a finish in detail unequalled by any thing seen in
India. Viewed from the diminishing end of a glass it looked like
a perfect card building. By many travellers it is thought the
most perfect thing left by the mogul empire. This, and all the
things I have named are of wondrous beauty or of lofty grandeur,
and will live in memory — but all of these pale and dwindle when
brought into comparison with the one perfectly beautiful thing,
not of India alone, but of the world. . I almost dread naming it,
lest you deem me extravagant or call me a follower of fashion.
For I confess it is the fashion to rave over it. I have myself seen
travellers visit it, saunter about it for a while, then stop to exam
ine some paltry detail, or to watch the flight of gay paroquets, or
gaze at some curiously dressed native visitor. And then I have
afterward heard these same people rave about the beauty of the
thing. It is the fashion to do so. I refer to the " Taj." I had
read much of this famous structure. I expected much, but had an
undefined impression that I was to be disappointed — a vague feel
ing that my expectations could not be realized. I almost dreaded
this when approaching it through the great south gateway, itself

224 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
a magnificent building of red sandstone, i lo feet square and 140
feet high, pierced by a portal 75 feet high at the keystone of its
pointed arch. This outer structure is so relieved by inlaid white
marble in arabesques, friezes of vines and flowers, and entabla
tures inlaid with quotations from the Koran that it looks light
and cheerful. The gateway alone would be a grand mausoleum
for a queen or for the proudest monarch. Between this and the
tomb is a garden 900 feet square, planted in trees of richest
foliage. These so hid the mausoleum that I did not see it until
standing before the great arched portal of the gate. This made a
framework showing only the tomb proper. At first it looked
small, for so perfect are its proportions that it seemed quite near,
and so light and airy as to seem a phantom picture thrown upon
the azure sky. The picture was so beautiful that I paused for
some minutes. A man passed along the platform, on which the
tomb is erected and just in front of the main doorway; he ap
peared a mere pigmy, thus showing the distance and proving the
perfect proportions of the structure. I soon knew there was to
be no disappointment. The Taj was even more beautiful
than I had anticipated. As I walked forward through the outer
gateway the picture widened into full view. As it widened I
could almost fancy the dome was lowering. Yew and cypress have
made a broad avenue partially concealing the lower portion of
the wings and minarets. In the middle of this avenue is a broad
marble walk, with a long pool of pure water confined between
marble walls, and a broad fountain bed half-way down. I walked
slowly along this walk looking at the building before me, dazzling
and white in the Indian noonday sun, and still it seemed to be
growing lower. But removing my eyes from it when passing
around the central fountain this effect disappeared, and as I still
approached it grew taller, until standing in front of the great plat
form on which it was built I realized the grandeur and immensity
of the whole. Its whole length from minaret to minaret, and the
height to top of dome, all was fully before me, with its pinnacle
250 feet above me. The entire structure is of white-veined or
rather slightly clouded marble ; is square, with the corners cut
off, and is surmounted by one grand dome, with a smaller one at
each corner, and four lofty minarets over 130 feet high at the
corners of the wings. In front and on each side is a wonder
ful doorway, 60 odd feet high, being the segment of a Saracenic
arched vault. Flanking these doorways are four lofty arched win
dow recesses in two rows one above another to the level of the
arch of the great portal. The whole is inlaid in beautiful figures
and arabesques in dark marble, thereby relieving the structure of
too glaring appearance.
Under the great dome is a noble vaulted room of polished
white marble, and wainscoting exquisitely carved in vines and
lotus flowers, and above inlaid in costly marbles. In the centre

THE TAJ. 2 25
of the vaulted room, immediately under the apex of the dome,
is the cenotaph of Montaz, called Taj Mahal, or " crown of
the house." It is cut from a great block of snow-white ala
baster. A part of it is richly carved, and the whole made very
beautiful by graceful vines and pretty flowers, composed of lapis
lazuli, cornelian, topaz, blood-stone, jasper, onyx, moss-agates,
goldstone, turquoise, and other costly stones, inlaid in tiny bits
so as to give the blended hues of the flowers. In one small
flower I counted 30 separate pieces. By the side of Montaz is
the cenotaph of Shah Jahan, of the same pattern as that of his
wife. He built this wonderful tomb and buried his wife in it.
Afterward he was buried by her side. Around the cenotaph is a
guard or fence six feet high, of open lattice-work in alabaster, of
most delicate workmanship, representing vines and flowers. In
side of this inclosure we sat leaning back against the tomb, and
John gave an octave of tones, skipping one and then descending
slowly ; these were echoed with supernatural precision — the
notes were caught and swelled till they would ring, and then died
like a far-off sigh. A deep bass note was sent back in terrible
musical groan, and then would melt into a dying wail. We could
not give a note in so low a tone that it would not return to us in
rich volume. We tried them so low that -we could scarcely hear
each other, though not four feet apart, yet they would swell until
they would fill the chamber and come back to us louder than we
- at first heard them.
We visited the Taj several times, and each time tried these
marvellous echoes. An imaginative tourist in his book states
that he tried the recitation of a celebrated poem with wonderful
effect. This must have been a long afterthought. The echo
lasts far too long to make any recitation or any song effective.
A single musical tone rises and then falls away, taking several
seconds to die out. We found that a pure round note made a
greatly more prolonged echo than a harsh one. I had no admira
tion for the character of Montaz — she was cruel and crafty ; but
after listening to these sweet echoes, I almost imagined I had
heard her spirit in chastened repentance. I arose, brought some
flowers, and laid them reverently upon her tomb. Art for a mo
ment sanctified the woman.
We visited the Taj again and again — the first time when it
was blazing under a mid-day sun. We spent several hours walk
ing about it, without close inspection, but imbibing its glorious
beauties. The next day we watched it as the sun sank in the
west, and gilded it in delicate gold, and then tinted it with rose
as he dropped below the horizon. Then, as twilight deepened, the
dark inlaid marbles in cornice, entablature, and spandrels, so
effective as relief under full daylight, vanished, and the mighty
structure was one dream of pearly-gray. The twilight became
yet more deep, and gave a weird effect almost spectral. The

226 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
light clouds which had obscured the waxing half-moon rolled by,
and then the pale queen of night bathed the Taj in its silvery
flood, and shadows of minaret in lofty arched portals and in deep
window recesses came out. The A&ecy clouds chased each other
across the zenith, now throwing the whole structure into light
shadow, and then permitting the moon to wash it in frosted
silver. Then it became what some one has aptly called it — a
" dream in marble." I wrote, when close by, the impression this
marvellous structure left upon my mind. The next day, under a
species of reaction, what I had written seemed extravagant. It
was over three weeks ago, and now in my calm moments,
with the whole thing indelibly fixed in my memory, I transcribe
what I then wrote.
The Taj ! The beautiful, the marvellously beautiful Taj
Mahal ! The inspiration of " A Midsummer Night's Dream ! "
The offspring of a miraculous marriage of the Muses with the
Graces ! A poem without words ! A song without voice ! A
rhythmic dance without motion ! A zephyr from angels' wings
moulded and hardened into marble ! A chord from the music of
the spheres dropped and crystallized into alabaster ! A dream
of love enshrined in a translucent pearl ! The one work of
human hands which is perfect ! The sublimest of poets sang the
Odyssey and chanted the Iliad. Who he was no one knows.
But an admiring world has made him immortal, and calls him
Homer. The sublimest of architects conceived and built the
tomb of Montaz. Who he was no one knows. But an admiring
world will make him immortal by naming him " Builder of the
Taj."

CHAPTER XXII.
REMARKABLE MOUNTAINS— A MODEL NATIVE CITY— MONKEYS
AND PEACOCKS— OLD AMBER— A RIDE ON AN
ELEPHANT— CROCODILES.
Bombay, India, February 12, 1888.
We came from Delhi to Bombay, 890 miles, via Ulwah, Jey-
pore, Ajmere, Ahmedabad, Baroda, and Surat. For the first 50
miles the road traversed a flat plain, gradually ascending ; then
it was cut by short ranges of low, barren mountains practically
treeless, but having a sparse growth of brush or spreading bushes,
and resembling somewhat the low mountains of our western
plains. Thpse hills rise abruptly from a perfectly flat surface,
and are frequently isolated peaks. The plains looked parched
and dry, except where irrigation made fields of wheat and
gram look like patches of emerald. Quite a large area, how
ever, of what appears to be desolate waste, was grown in wheat
during the wet season, but now being harvested, the large herds
of cattle, sheep, and goats constantly seen, have grazed into the
very soil itself. The grass plains, too, seem to be eaten so close
that scarcely any vestige of herbage can be seen ; yet thousands
of cattle were feeding upon them. There is evidently some
quality in the dried-up grass here which, like the bunch-grass of
our far West, affords much nourishment for animals.
After passing Ajmere, some 250 miles from Delhi, we entered
flat valleys between quite high ranges. All of these mountains
seem to be metamorphic, of marble and quartz and fissured sand
stone. Often the crest of the hills were great ledges of quartz,
which gleamed in the hot sun and laoked as if they were masses
of ice. The road was ballasted with it, and the plains were cov
ered with it in broken bits, which glistened and sparkled like
thousands of acres of diamonds. I do not exaggerate when I
say that at one time, for a good many miles, the eye was pained
by the sparkling of these quartz or micaceous stones. A moun
tainous land appeared to our south, broken and picturesque, but
wanting beauty from the lack of green. In the rainy season,
when, I am told, vegetation springs forward with marvellous
rapidity, it must be very fine. We entered these mountains and
found a most wonderful formation. As far as my glass would
enable me to see, the hills rising several hundred feet, were a
227

228 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
mass of granite, here broken, piled up, and there in huge natural
masses, and all water-worn as if a mighty torrent had tumbled
over them for countless ages. Deep holes and pockets were
worn into the solid stone of all sizes, from that of a peck meas
ure up to caverns which would shelter a dozen men. Some were
as round as mortars, others irregular; great masses of rock
weighing tons were cut nearly in two, and rested as if on stands.
Masses of 1,000 tons were as smooth as if rubbed down. Masses
of 100 or more tons' weight were piled one above the other and
all rounded. I asked a railroad inspector the name of this range.
He said it was called the water-worn mountain. The base of
these hills is about 600 feet above the sea, and the peaks are
from 200 to 500 feet lifted. What mighty torrent thus washed
these granite hills, and when ? Were they once under the sea
and afterwards lifted?
Ajmere is in the western edge, as Ulwah is in the eastern, of
Rajputana — an irregular rounded district lying in the centre of
northwestern India, about 500 miles in diameter, and yet under
the sway of several rajahs and maharajahs, called independent
princes, who govern their people, so they think, by divine right,
but in reality by the will of sovereign England. She has a " Resi
dent " in each of the capitals, — a well-paid adviser to each of them,
but a spy upon their actions. The rajahs tax their subjects, live
in splendid palaces, have their zenanas filled with many wives,
keep elephants, and stables filled with hundreds of horses of noble
breeds, protect the game of their dominions for their own sports,
let tigers live in their jungles within a few minutes of their cap
itals to eat the unwary peasants, because these poor peasants are
not allowed to keep fire-arms or to shoot game, which depredate
upon their little fields of wheat ; this these native princes will be
permitted to do until England wishes an annexation, and then an
excuse will be found for such annexation, and the aforesaid rajahs
will be pensioned off, and their dominions will become another
province of her imperial majesty's empire of India.
The country of Rajputana is considered rather desolate, but
from what I saw the soil is rich, but can never do its full duty to
man until a better and more general system of irrigation shall be
introduced, and trees can be cultivated to superinduce a regular
and generally diffused rainfall. There are districts in India where
the rainfall is over 100 inches a year, and yet not far off there are
other districts which suffer greatly for water. The fields are irri
gated in these by water drawn from wells by oxen, lifting it in
great skin buckets. Fields so irrigated have wheat waving in as
great beauty as I ever saw, while just over the irrigating ditch
there are thousands of acres of land which produce scanty crops in
the hot rainy seasons, but are desolate at this time, which is the
best for good crops under the burning sun of India. The Rajputs
are a fine-looking people. They look a European (i. e., a white

JEYPORE. 229
man) full in the eye, are polite, but not servile like the Bengalese,
and have ever been a fighting people. They claim, from the
highest to the lowest, to be children of the sun. They were a
constant thorn in the sides of the mogul padishas, and probably
will not over-freely yield to England now, unless she convinces
them that her dominion will be better for the masses than is that
of their present rulers.
We spent a couple of days in Jeypore, which is said to be the
handsomest native city in India, and is claimed by its own people,
and admitted by some travellers, to be the model native state.
The principality has 6,000 to 8,000 square -miles, and 1,200,000 to
1,400,000 population. The people are cheerful-looking, but I
found many begging, a thing which some other travellers say
does not here exist. It is less, however, than in other parts of
India where more Europeans go. The city was founded 160
years ago by the philosopher Prince Jey Singh, because his
priests told him there was an old Hindoo theory that no city
should be occupied over a thousand years ; so he quit the old
and built the new capital a few miles off. Fie marked the city
off nearly two miles square, built its walls and its palaces, and
then induced the people to build after his own designs. The
streets cross each other at right angles, and are very broad,
the main ones being 60 feet wide, and one of them ill. In
all other native cities the streets are but tortuous lanes, like
little paths through an irregular haphazard camp. The houses
on the four or five broadest streets are to a considerable extent
of a common design, a sort of mixture of Oriental and Portu
guese. On these streets they are from two to five stories high,
and are of stone, plastered over and tinted a sort of peach-blow
color. The effect is very striking and pretty. We found much,
however, to be a pretty sham ; many of the houses seeming of more
than one story are, in fact, one-story structures, the second and
upper ones being merely walls, with their pretty cut-stone lattices
opening upon the tops of the houses in the rear. The town is
lighted by gas, the only one (native) I have so far seen. At night
these streets are, at this season, very bright and interesting.
Their New Year is about to commenc^, and for a month there is.
a sort of high carnival, bands of young men going about singing,.
and bands of women, in brilliant colors and but partly covering-
their faces, laughing and chattering like magpies. The songs of
the young men were evidently to amuse the women, for these
would titter and pass on. Our guide said the songs were of a.
kind we would think not fitted for ladies' ears. By the way, I am
told that throughout India the wit of theatres and dance-songs is,
very broad, and not by any means chaste. Much cotton is grown;
in the principality of Jeypore, and there is considerable wealth
among the natives of the city. The palace is a handsome six- or
seven-story building, erected on the model of Akbar's tomb, at

230 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
Secundra, each upper story resting on the platform of the next
under story, and some eight or more feet less in size. A museum
is now being finished, having the same features, and of great
architectural beauty, and with much exquisite carving in white
marble. The portion already finished has many instructive speci
mens of mechanical arts and of natural history.
On the friezes of some inner courts and of the halls are Hindoo
inscriptions, with English translations, some of which I give as
specimens of Hindoo maxims, taken from its sacred writings :
' ' A man obtains a proper rule of action
By looking on his neighbors as himself."
' ' Like threads of silver seen through crystal beads
Let love through good deeds show."
" He only does not live in vain
Who all the means within his reach
Employs his wealth, his thought, his speech,
T' advance the good of other men."
" If I now take this step, what next ensues ?
Should I forbear, what then must I expect ?
Thus ere he acts a man should well reflect,
And weighing both sides, his course should choose."
"Do naught to others which if done to thee
Would cause thee pain ; this is the sum of duty."
" There is no religion higher than truth."
' ' To injure none by thought or word or deed,
To give to others, to be kind to all —
This is the constant duty of the good."
" Whate'er the work a man performs, the most effective aid to its completion — the
most prolific source of success, is energy without despondency."
' ' The little-minded ask : Belongs this man to our family ? '
The noble-minded regard the human race as all akin."
" The wise make failure equal to success."
These are some of the shorter ones, the longer ones being fre
quently the best, but too long for my note-book. About the
museum is a public garden of 70 odd acres, beautifully and most
expensively laid out, with an aviary containing all the birds of
rich plumage found in India and Malasia. It was a revelation
of beauty. There is also a very valuable collection of animals.
One set of cages was very attractive to us. They contained
ten huge tigers, all caught in pits after proving themselves bad
man-eaters. Huge brutes which sprang at us as we passed with such
iferocity that they hurt themselves against the iron bars. The tigers
of our menageries are puppets compared to these fierce monsters.
A few annas to the keeper obtained for me the privilege of doing

MONKEYS, PEACOCKS, AND JUNGLES. 231
a little practice. Looking a fierce fellow steadily in the eye, and
speaking in a stern but steady voice, I tapped him sharply over
the head with my rattan cane. He blinked his eyes. I followed
up the action with a sharper stroke before he had opened his
eyes, and made him quiet down. I tried another, and actually
made him lie down on his side and purr like a great cat. I did
not fail once. The native looked at me admiringly, and asked our
guide if I was not a keeper of man-eaters. What an amount of
nerve a brave man has when he knows danger cannot reach him !
The Maharajah has established a public library, a school of arts,
and a school for girls as well as boys, and, either of his own will or
under the advice of the British, has made the city not only a very
pretty and unique one, but also one which apparently is a blessing
to his people. He has brought much land under cultivation
by an increased system of irrigation. But the many bands of
deer we saw close to the wheat fields proved that his preserved
game was more agreeable to him than beneficial to the people's
crops. Along this road to Ahmedabad we saw many troops of monkeys
of all sizes, from that of a terrier dog up to a large setter — now
romping over the fields close by the track, or springing from
branch to branch on the trees, or sitting up on some prominent
limb wisely watching us as we whizzed by. They are sacred, and
the natives never hurt them, although they are fearful thieves,
and make destructive raids upon fields and orchards. We also saw
large numbers of peacocks — noble birds, with tails and plumage
of great beauty. They, too, are sacred. A foreigner would be
mobbed should he shoot one. They are not wild, as travellers'
books would lead us to suppose. They are simply free and roam
as they please, but are hardly less tame than the same birds are
on an American farm. They are rarely seen far away from
villages and farms. The monkeys and peacocks along this road
were the only wild ones seen by us since we left Penang.
We have now been the whole length of India, from Calcutta to
Peshawur, and back to Bombay, on the other side of the land, and
except at the foot of the Himalayas, have not seen a single
forest, or indeed what we would caH a wood. Trees there are
everywhere along the roads, along the hedge-rows, scattered about
the fields and plains and dotted over the hills and mountains, but
nothing like what most of us at home have supposed to consti
tute an Indian jungle. All uncultivated or waste lands are called
" jungle." "Out in the jungle " means about the same thing here
as with us to say "out on the prairie" — that is, on the uninclosed
lands, whether treed or bare, or in grass. The " mountain
jungles," where the tiger has his home, and from which he comes
down to carry off people or domestic animals, have no trees of
considerable size, but are dotted over with shrubby growth
resembling haws and thorns, and covered by low scattered bushes

232 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
and rocks. On these no native thinks of going alone at night or
even by day in some of them.
Snipe, duck, geese, cranes of many kinds — some of them
standing four feet high, — several species of starlings, robins, wild
pigeons, and crows are in vast numbers throughout the land, and
are very destructive to the growing crops. In many localities
each field has a watchman to drive them off. Often these watch
men are on platforms built on the tops of low trees, the branches
being trained flat for this purpose. Here he watches at night to
drive off monkeys and deer, and to be ready for the early bird.
He is generally armed with a bow or a sling with which he throws
a pebble, and so dexterous is he that many a bird is killed even
when lOO yards away.
We visited parts of the palace at Jeypore. The billiard-room
excited our cupidity. It was carpeted with many tiger, leopard,
and other beautiful skins, the trophies of the ruler's dexterity in
the chase. The princely stables have 300 horses, each with his or
her full pedigree at the tongue's end of the groom. Many of them
were beautiful animals, but too fat, for they are but rarely used.
Every horse is not only haltered, but tethered by each foot, so
that he can move only a little way. Each animal has its special
groom, who sleeps in a sort of cuddy-hole over the horse's head.
On our second day, being provided with a permit from his
highness, we visited Amber, the old city, now deserted. It
lies a few miles off, high in a rocky gorge or narrow valley. The
mountains around are crowned by forts and castles on dizzy
heights, making them ver>' picturesque. Lofty walls climb the
spurs of the mountains, and the old palace or regal castle sits
superbly on the crest of a high hill overlooking a beautiful little
lake of clear water, on the rocky shores of which were several
crocodiles basking in the hot sun. Our road going to Amber lay
through a wilderness of kiosk memorials of the past dead. Little
domes supported by the most delicate pillars and prettily carved.
Then we came to a lake of stagnant water of perhaps 500 acres, in
the centre of which is a large and stately old palace now deserted,
its lower arches dipping into the water and its balconies and
domes reflected in the placid sheet. This water is dark and un
healthy, covered with all sorts of wild fowl, and filled with
crocodiles. We counted 20 odd of them. Skirting this we reached
the foot of the gorge leading to the old city. To this point we
went by carriage.
Here we found one of the rstjah's huge elephants, of which he
has 80, which was to carry us on over the steep pass. His face
was oddly painted in Oriental characters. We made our obeisance.
He soon came down on his haunches, shot his huge legs straight
behind, while his front legs stretched before him, and on a short
ladder we mounted the mass of meat. Then, with a motion which
made Johnny think feelingly of the swell of the Pacific, our

AMBER. SCORCHING A PRIEST. 233
mastodon trudged slowly up. When we reached a particularly
steep place he groaned and grunted and sometimes gave a whistle,
which plainly told me that he thought a Chicago 200-and-odd
pounder was more than the law should allow. Along our up-hill
road gray monkeys with black faces and long tails, ran about the
trees. Some of them, with their old-folk faces, made me feel like
saying : " Be good-natured, old fellow; I confess to our kinship."
After passing the clear little lake I before mentioned, we were
carried up a very steep road into the court of the old palace, which
is kept in fair repair, and is yet occasionally used by the rajah for
a few days at a time. It is a princely old place with a noble
audience-hall and many rooms exquisitely decorated with carved
marble and inlaid work, the vaulted ceilings being ornamented
with a sort of glass or gypsum work. Small pieces of mirror were
laid on a background, then the whole covered with a plaster
peculiar to Jeypore, made of lime and ground marble, and bearing
a polish as hard and fine-grained as pure ivory. The artist then
cut through this thin pearly plate to the bits of mirror, working
out beautiful designs in delicate tracings, so that the whole looks
like ivory flowers and vines drawn over mirrors. The bits of glass
are convexed, so that they reflect any person below and make him
look large and multiplies him in infinite numbers. This palaceis
built on the model of the padisha's palaces at Delhi and Agra, and
served as a key to many things I did not before fully understand.
For seeing how parts are now used I understood better how the
old palaces were occupied centuries ago.
In a temple within the palace inclosure a daily offering of a goat
is made to the blood-loving goddess Kali. We did not see the
day's sacrifice, but the blood was yet fresh on the floor, which had
flowed before our arrival from the neck of the little offering. The
neck is severed by one blow from the high-priest. I was looking
at the little goddess, with her necklace of skulls, sitting back in a
deep shrine, through my opera-glass. I saw the priest suspected
me of some disrespect to the deity. I gave him the glass. He
marvelled at the huge size the image' assumed. I then turned the
glass and made him look through the diminishing end. " Wow !
wow 1 w-o-w ! " was his exclamation of surprise. After making
our offering I was about to light my cigar in the court with a
magnifying or sun-glass. I saw his reverence wanted to see the
thing. I motioned him to hold out his hand. His face wore an
expression of .sweet innocence as the rays of the sun began to
brighten on the back of his fist, but when they got to a little
focus and shot a hot spike into his brown skin, he uttered another
" Wow ! wow ! o-h, wow ! o-h, w-o-w !" I never saw such merri
ment as the other priests and attendants exhibited, and the good
old chap himself seemed hugely to relish the joke. But I noticed
that every now and then he looked at the little roasted spot and
rubbed it with his other hand. He will know a sun-glass hereafter.

234 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
Sitting in the beautiful Diwan-i-Am, or hall of audience, we
enjoyed a magnificent view far down the narrow valley, the old
deserted city nestling down beneath the frowning heights, all sur
mounted with huge crenelated walls and strong-looking forts, once
making the place almost impregnable. Here the ruler even now
holds audience once a year, sitting in this noble pillared hall with
its curved arches. We ate a nice lunch, and drank to the health
of the rajah, wishing that his line may continue to rule his people
for yet ten successions before the haughty lords of the far-off
island in the west may demand his country for themselves. He
claims the sun for his ancestor, to whom he traces his lineage
through 140 known names, the oldest pedigree of any ruling king,
compared to which that of Wales, who laid the corner-stone of
the Jeypore museum three years ago, is that of a plebeian.
Bidding the good-natured cutter-off of goats' heads good-bye,
we walked to the foot of the hill, where Jumbo's cousin had pre
ceded us, and on bended knees took us upon his broad back for
our homeward voyage. At the end of the gorge our mahout
bade us hold on, when the great hulk again came down upon his
haunches for us to disembark. We placed a token of good-will
upon his trunk, which he handed to his keeper, and then gave us
a parting " salaam." I thought I saw a twinkle in his little shrewd
eye, which said he would not care to climb steep mountains with
many such denizens of the far-off Porkopolis upon his back. We
parted with him under the shade of a sacred tree, near
whose roots was a little fane sheltering a Hindoo god. Behind
us, but hidden by the hills, was the city of past ages, in the
distance before us were the walls of the living city with its gay
people. A huge black-faced monkey looked wisely at us from an
overhanging bough. A sacred peacock, mounted upon an old
ruin close by, spread his gorgeous fan of emerald and sapphire.
The sun blazed down upon our heads, reminding us we were
among His chosen children. Below us was the stagnant lake,
with its crocodiles and its thousands of water-fowls and its partly
sunken palace, once the brilliant summer-house of a monarch. It
was a weird spot, with a long-dead past. We wished some of
our far-off friends could have been with us to partake of our
happiness.

CHAPTER XXIII,
BEAUTIFUL SARACENIC REMAINS— WOOD-CARVING— PURCHASING
SHAWLS— NATIVE DIPLOMACY— BOMBAY— TOWERS OF
SILENCE— ELEPHANTA— THE 15TH OF FEBRUARY.
Bombay, India, February 14, 1888.
Ahmedabad, the principal city of the province of Gujerat, and
once the capital of the kingdom of that name, was built by the
conquering shah, Ahmed, who poured his myrmidons over this
side of India when the fifteenth century was young. There were
no natural reasons why a city should be upon this level land, but
the dark eyes and brown skin of a daughter of the neighborhood
did what her father's arms could not do, subdued the conqueror.
In those old days cities were created like a greenbacker's dollar —
by decree. " Fiat urbs " thundered the sultan, and a city would
spring upon the teeming Indian soil. So the sultan, with Sipra's
kiss yet warm upon his lips, said : " A city shall be thy home,
sweet daughter of the sun," and Ahmedabad grew from the
materials plundered from two or three other cities near by. Warm
was the faith of the conquering followers of the prophet. They
levelled Hindoo temples of idolatry, and decked their new city
with those jewels of Islamism, the beautiful mosques of marble
and stone. The ruins or remains of these abound in the place,
and attest the zeal of the people who built them, and show how
the nimble fingers of the artisan could cause cold marble and
rough stone to catch the warm tints of dawn and to assume the
softness of woven fabric. Many of these ruins are very beautiful.
They lack the evidences of painful toil and lavish treasure-
waste shown in careful detail at Agra and Delhi, but evince
a freer hand with the chisel and a more artistic design. The
.sculptured friezes and brackets of the balconies of the minarets
and the cornices about tombs and mosques, though weather-worn
and looking somewhat rough, are very fine.
In their hatred of idolatry the followers of Mohammed so ab
horred its every form that they would not even carve any breathing
thing about their own places of worship. Vines and trees, shrubs
and flowers soon weary the eye when they are fixed in marble.
No art has yet been able to make them wave and bend in the
breeze. Animals and men have expressions of limb and face,
which seem to vary as the beholder looks. Not so with any
235

236 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
vegetable thing. So Saracenic genius, forced by religion to dis
card every representation of a living thing, invented a design
which never wearies the eye — a design which, fixed in the hardest
stone, seems ever to vary and to change. The eye cannot hold a
single detail long enough to become tired of it. It cannot be
described by language. No word-picturing can make one see it.
The eye alone can take it in. When a writer, however, says a
thing is adorned in painted or sculptured " arabesques," everyone
comprehends that the ornamentation is of that strange mixture of
vine and twig and Arabic lines, letters, and characters which no
memory can so carry off as to reproduce with accuracy. Pencil,
with scale and compass, can make a true copy, yet something is
always wanting ; the sun alone in photography can give one a true
image. In no place that I have seen is there such a wealth of ruined
Saracenic art as in Ahmedabad. Yet to the casual traveller it
offers but little attraction. An artist, however, could walk again
and again through its tortuous streets and crooked lanes, and be
delighted by the carvings in wood on cornices and friezes and in
large brackets and dentals. On many an old tumble-down house
are seen specimens which our plutocrats would be delighted to
have on their sideboards or in their libraries. The houses were
never decorated by the painter's brush. The woodwork is soft
ened down by time to a velvety shade ; the delicate design is thus
all relieved from any taint of the .shop, but looks as if it had been
cut or worn in by nature's own perfect craft. I saw some brackets
three to four feet long, no longer supporting the balcony or cor
nice above, but hanging down and loose, and nearly ready to fall.
If I had known the language I would have gone to the owner of
these, and for a reasonable price probably have been permitted to
carry them away, to be the envy of a home artist. In the rear of
an old ruined mosque are two blind windows of half circle, cut in
to solid stone in veins so artistically as to seem as wavy and soft as a
spider's web. They have been copied into photos, and appear on
many a piece of carved cabinet-work now sent from this city to
the rich in every quarter of the globe. In the show-rooms of a
manufacturer we saw its imitation in a beautiful cabinet just
finished for some New York man of money.
By the way, in every shop we have visited the most costly
articles were for the American market. In this shop we saw 20 or
more men at work on friezes and entablatures for a Mr. Forrest,
of New York. It will be a pleasure, when he sips his wine and
looks upon his elaborate sideboard of teakwood, to know that
some of the most exquisite of its rich carvings were done by a
father and son, the little fellow being only seven years old. How
his taper little fingers did handle the tiny chisel, and how accurate
was his eye, when he wrought from the hard, meaningless wood
a flower that almost had an odor, so soft was its petal! The child

EXQUISITE CARVING AND WEAVING. 237
had inherited the talent of his father, as he had done from his
parent, and so through a long line, perhaps, far back to those peo
ple whose handicraft made the rich relics in marble and wood of
three to four centuries ago. Here children follow the father's
craft. It is deemed a sort of family disgrace for them to permit
the profession of their father to die out in their generation. A
boy steps from his mother's very breast (for children are not
weaned until four or five years old), into a companionship with
the father, and a partaker of his toil and a copier of his art. We
have been in several small carpet-weavers' houses at Amritsir and
Lahore and other places, and everywhere a large part of the
weaving was done by little boys.
Carpets are not woven with a shuttle, but each thread or yarn
of the wool is put into the warp with deft fingers, the left hand
opening the one for the right to insert the other. A piece of yarn
is run through and then cut off with a knife to make the even,
velvety tuft. The weaver does not have a design before him, but
in some shops another boy sits in front with the design and calls
in a sort of chant the next color to be inserted. The weaver re
peats this as he runs the color in. The first boy calls out for
several who are on the other side of the web, and thus dictates for
them all. To one not understanding the thing, the chant would
be taken for a sort of religious exercise. In one shop in the Pun
jab there was no fixed design at all. There were four weavers on
a rug of say 10x15 feet. They had a common idea in their heads,
but each worked out his portion of the carpet simply with a free
hand as he went. They progress only a few inches a day. The
manager, to my inquiry as to the cost of these, simply replied :
" They are very costly. That is what Americans want." It seems
a general impression throughout the world that our people value
a thing by the amount of money which is worked into the fabric.
An American to whom I was showing a charming curio, and which
I told her had cost me a mere trifle, warned me not to disclose the
cost at home — that it would not be appreciated unless it was sup
posed to cost much money. And there is a general impression
throughout the East that Americans are all very rich. A native
will at any time quit an Englishman 'to ply a "Yankee, whom he
thinks ready game. These people are natural-born diplomates.
A famous Frenchman said words were invented to conceal
ideas. Certainly the shrewd Indians rarely permit their words to
express their thoughts, and a dealer in works of art or objets
de vertu considers a lie a proper part of his science in trade. He
lies while he tries and weighs his customer. They catch us at the
stations, at the hotels, on the streets, and on the thresholds of the
temples. What they ask is no indication of what they will take.
After they try us with their price, they invite our offer. We have
to be guarded or we shall be taken up. A fellow wished to sell
me a bracelet of silver. His price was 30 rupees. I offered him

238 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
six. He looked insulted, but soon plied me again. I stuck to six.
He assured us there were seven rupees of pure silver in the thing,
and took out a pair of scales. The bauble balanced six and a half
rupees. He assured us there were 4,000 separate pieces in it, and
had cost 15 days of labor. We replied: "We do not want it."
" Yes, but master rich, I poor man ; make proper offer." We offer
eight. He puts up his pack. We go to our rooms. He follows
and says: "Take it; I want master's certificate." Every one
purchasing is asked to state the fact in a little book, and is
pleaded with until the statement is made that the purchases were
cheap. I looked at cashmere shawls at Manich Chung's in Delhi. It
was through his house that the now famous Gen. Roberts, then a
subaltern, made his break upon the streets in which the mutineers
were carousing, and helped to win the city. I was shown shawls
with asking price at 400 and 600 rupees. I looked at them, ex
amined them with my magnifying glass, Manich all the time
chattering. He finally said : " Ah, those not for you ; you good
judge — you expert " ; and he brought out a beautiful thing, a
dream in wool. " That 's the thing for you ; Americans want the
best." "How much?" "Two thousand," the reply. "Why,
what do you take me for ? I am no Vanderbilt." " But you
good judge ; you want best ; make offer." I offer 800. He
laughed at me. I said : "All right ; good-by." He followed me
to the door. We part. He comes down to the carriage. " Ah,
just come back up my house." The fly walks into the trap. We
sit down and talk. He plies me with many fabrics. But all the
time he wants me to take the 2,000 shawl. He wants my certifi
cate. He knows it will help him sell. But I reply : " I am not
buying shawls ; I really do not want any." " Yes, you do ; you
rich ; you rajah of big America city." " Who said that ? " " Man
at hotel last night told me you are rajah like governor-general."
He touched my weak spot. I like to be thought rajah of
Chicago. He then wanted to know if I would like to see some
Nautch girls dance. I intimated that I had outlived that sort of
thing. He said : " Oh, no ; you old in head, young in heart ! "
Again a tender spot was reached. He then regretted that I had
not come three days sooner. His grandmother had died. The
funeral was beautiful ! I offered a tear of sympath}-. He felt
my kindness. He said it was sad, but she was ninety years old,
and they had a splendid time at the funeral. He had shut up
his shop two days. Had not sold a thing. I said that was most
bad. He admitted it, but said he had no more grandmothers. I
wished to know how many wives he had. " Not many," he said,
but was not specific. I intimated that I would like to see his
wife. His eyes expressed painful regret, but religion would not
permit. He gave me a cheroot. I asked him to smoke one.
He said he could not smoke those — they had been touched by a

BUYING SHAWLS. A NATIVE WEDDING. 239
low caste. That is, by me. All this while a handsome young
Hindoo was standing before us with a beauty of Cashmere grace
fully draped over his lithe form. We still talked of Hindoo
matters, but he managed to round up to the shawl. One man
had been three years weaving it. To shut him off I said : " Eight
hundred." With a sigh he said : " Take it, but I lose much rupees
on it. But all right ; I want Chicago's governor's certificate."
We have witnessed several marriage processions, but none so
perfect in details as one at Ahmedabad. It was in a narrow street.
First came a band of music, three little boys and girls on richly
caparisoned horses. One of the little ones was not two years old,
being held on by his father. By the side of each little rider, all
of whom were gorgeously togged out, were several of their nearest
of kinsmen. Before each horse was a band of music. Then
came the groom, about ten years old, all in gold and fine silk, and
mounted on a superbly gotten-up animal. Then another band
was followed by a troop of 20 or 30 women, richly clad, and all
singing. The burden of their song was the hope that the bride
would be kind and obedient, and that her mother would not
domineer over the bridegroom. There were a dozen or more
bands. The drum was the predominating instrument, and of all
sizes. Such a din and clatter ! There was apparently no attempt
at any air. The main thing was noise, and it was made. The
procession was going ^o the bride's home, where all were enter
tained and received presents. Then the bride was taken to the
groom's home, her lady friends accompanying her and singing.
The song of the latter was a wish that the groom would be kind
and would listen to the advice of the mother-in-law. At his
house presents were again given, this time to the bride's friends.
The little couple then saw each other, and were required to be
affectionate. One night she stays with him at his home and then
returns to her own. They will not see each other again for six or
more years, when they will be old enough to be really husband and
wife. This was simply the betrothal marriage, but entailing many
binding obligations. If he die before they meet again, she will be
a widow and will be doomed to all the hardships and self-denials
which make a Hindoo widowhood »worse than death. She can
never marry again, can never wear fine clothes and jewelry, can
not eat delicate food, nor sing and dance. If poor she will have
to become a servant, perhaps a cook, but is forbidden even to
taste the dishes she prepares. No wonder widows lament the
prohibition of the " suttee " or widow-burning pyre. He, how
ever, may, after their real marriage, take several more wives if he
wishes. One of the songs of her lady friends bears an invocation
that he would love her and not take another wife to steal away
his love from this his first and real bride.
Here in Bombay I saw a Parsee marriage procession. It was
very quiet. A European band preceded it and played nicely.

240 A RACE WITH THE SUN
Then followed some 40 or 50 Parsee men all in white. After
them, carriers with presents. Following them were nearly as
many Parsee women dressed in their charming robes of gauze
and silk.
At Ahmedabad we visited the splendid Jain temple. The
Jains are a sort of mixture of Brahmin and Buddhist. They do
not believe in any Creator ; nature was its own self-creator — a sort
of pantheistic creed. Charity and good-will to all living things is
their religious rule of action. They kill nothing and eat no flesh.
The temple is exceedingly rich in decoration. They were to
have a grand festival in a few days, and were decorating an image
in the inner shrine, a sort of deified child of nature. Its face wore
a most kindly and gentle expression, and evidently was intended
to be beaming with love. A very intelligent man took us around
and through the temple, and explained their tenets. When I
had heard him I said : " "Your God, then, is a God of love ? " He
looked quite horrified, and said : " Oh, no ; we abhor sensualism."
He had misunderstood me. I explained that I meant by " love "
that holy feeling which goes out in affection for all created things.
" Exactly, exactly ; that is exactly our religion." It is quite
a large sect in India, and embraces many good and learned men.
The country for some 50 miles from Ahmedabad, and thence
on to Bombay, is quite heavily wooded, that is, in scattered trees
about roads, hedges, etc. The main crap is of cotton ; much
more than half of all the cultivated fields were in this plant.
Some were just opening in bright yellow blossoms ; others white
with bursting bolls.
We stopped a few hours at Surat, once the chief town of
India, first under the Dutch and then under the English. Before
the rise of Bombay it had a population of 900,000. It then sank
to less than 100,000. Bombay took away its Arabian and Abys
sinian trade. It is now again improving and has 130 odd thou
sand. It wears a general air of decay, but its old winding streets
were interesting.
Here coolie women do the heaviest kind of work. One deli
cate-looking young woman I saw carrying on her head bags with
four bushels of potatoes in each. At the pier they were unload
ing a cargo of coal. Each would walk up a steep bank with a
bushel of coal poised upon her head. Another gang was discharging
a load of cobble-stones. They are as straight as arrows, and when
walking, step with great gracefulness of motion. Their dress, as
of the same class in Bombay, is of cotton cloth, so caught about
the legs as to make a sort of trouser, coming half down the
thighs and fitting like the breeches of our unweaned babies, but
caught behind instead of in front. The men's trousers of the
coolie class come below the knee. As everywhere else so far
visited in India, they have scarcely any calf to the leg. I suppose
that has ever been a characteristic of these people, for the

COOLIE WOMEN. BOMBAY. 241
images of the gods in the caves of Elephanta, executed several
thousand years ago, have the same deficiency. In all old images the
leg tapers from the thigh to the ankle. The African has a high
calf and a long shank ; the European a well-developed calf and
short shank. With these people the shank may be said to run up
to the knee. The Japanese have calves remarkably developed.
These people were evidently intended by their Creator to sit
upon their legs. They did it in Buddha's time. His oldest image
represents him as sitting, with the soles of his feet turned upward.
Indians can sleep thus for hours. We had for a day a fat high-
caste native officer for a fellow-passenger. He had room to lie
down, but instead of doing so he gathered his legs under him and
slept for several hours. It is very convenient. If I were a be
liever in transmigration I would pray that after my next birth I
be so trained that I may thus rest myself. When the native
people come to a stop they squat down as instinctively as does a
dog. It is amusing to see a crowd enter a station and await a
train. Everyone at once squats on his haunches and takes his
ease. It is, too, a great saving of chair legs, and this is a decided
convenience in this water-saturated atmosphere, where chairs have
a constant tumble-down habit. I have not used a single one in
India which did not creek ominously when I sat upon it.
Bombay is a magnificent city of 800,000 people, and is rapidly
growing. Somehow or other I had expected to find it otherwise.
I suppose from reading years ago. The high price of cotton
during our war gave it a tremendous impetus. It was metamor
phosed in a dozen or so years from a rambling town of mean houses
into a city of palaces. The public buildings already completed, or
being erected, of light-colored sandstone, of a deep olive-tinted
trap or porphyry rock, or of dark brick, are magnificent structures,
comparing favorably with those of any European capital. The
city is rich, and the Bombay presidency pours its treasures into its
capital. If it meets with no decided reverses, the next quarter of
a century will make it one of the handsomest cities in the world.
It is on an irregularly shaped island, with a pretty little bay look
ing toward the ocean, of half-moon shape, inclosed by two long
narrow strips or necks of land runnifig far out like the horns of a
new moon ; one of these is low, the other of some 200 or more
feet in height. The latter is Malabar Hill, on the extreme point
of which is the governor's residence. It is a commodious, low
building, surrounded with fine trees, and with the swell of the
ocean breaking in gentle murmur close by. On the other end of
this narrow ridge, say a mile off, where it widens into the main
island, are the Parsees' burying-ground and the famous " Towers
of Silence." Here the Parsee dead are given to the vultures.
Between these two points are fine residences of the rich, their
front windows looking over the city, two miles away, and their
rear overlooking the broad Arabian Sea, The main harbor of the

242 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
city is at its rear, on a narrow strait separating the island from
terra firma.
Much has been told of the Towers of Silence, and very much
of exaggeration. One writer speaks of the dismal surroundings
and death-like silence ; another of the fetid atmosphere ; and still
another of his having cHmbed up on the wall and accidentally
dropping his hat and following it ; and ending with an amusing
account of his escape from the birds and the watchful eyes of the
keeper. All pure imagination and pretty writing. The towers
are five in number, apparently 25 feet in height, and the largest
from 70 to 100 feet in diameter. Within the outer wall, some
five or more feet below the top, are three consecutive tiers of slabs,
sloping and slightly troughed : the outer tier for men, the next for
women, the inner one for children. Within the whole is a large
well-like chamber covered by a grating. Leading from the bottom
of this well are drains into outside wells. The dead, whether high
or low, rich or poor, approach these solemn precincts on a perfect
equality. All are borne by mourners afoot, no pageant or evi
dences of worldly vanity being displayed. Two men regularly
employed for the purpose (none others ever enter the tower) bear
the body through a small opening into the tower. All garments
and ornaments are then removed. " Naked you came into the
world, naked you must go out," said Zoroaster. The garments
covering the corpse are then immediately burned. " Fire cleanses
from all impurities," said Zoroaster. The bearers then retire,
and in one hour every vestige of flesh is removed from the bones
by the mournful birds. The bones are afterward dropped or are
washed down the grating, and falling below are, under the action of
the sun and water, and sometimes aided by chemicals, in a year or
two dissolved into lime, and flow out into the other wells. " The
earth is a good mother to all, and should not be contaminated by
the fetid remains of her children." Thus taught Zoroaster. The
lime which flows into and becomes a part of mother earth does
not contaminate.
There can be no noxious odors ; for the dead are brought
here before decay sets in. There are about 500 vultures hover
ing about the locality. The average burials are four to five a
day, but scanty feed for so many voracious birds. There is
nothing awful about the premises more than about any ordinary
graveyard ; but, to the contrary, there is a beautiful garden,
bright with cheerful and sweet flowers and many trees. No trav
eller could climb any of the walls, for they are as smooth as any
plastered piece of masonry, and there is nothing close to them to
permit any one to mount upon. No Parsees even, other than
those employed for the purpose, ever enter the towers. Into
which tower the dead of any day will enter, is decided by a regu
lar committee, and simply on sanitary grounds, so as to enable
each to take care of its proper proportion. Perched upon the

so

TOWERS OF SILENCE. 243
parapet walls of one of the towers were probably 100 vultures
mournful and silent. A smaller number were on another tower,
and a few were soaring aloft. I may be callous, or I may possi
bly rapidly adapt myself to my surroundings. From one or
other of these causes I felt no shock at the thought of the occu
pation of the birds ; and the manner of disposing of the dead
created no feeling of disgust. After all, is not man more a creat
ure of habit than of animal instincts ? Nothing proves this more
than the readiness with which we lay our loved dead in the ground,
to rot slowly in oozy slime, or to be devoured by nasty worms.
The Victoria station is a superb building, costing several
millions ; I know of no railway building at all comparable to it.
It looks like a splendid palace. The architecture adapted to and
employed in this climate is admirable for artistic effect. It
admits of deep shade and shadows. Corridors, deep recesses, but
tresses, and balconies which with us shut out the light, here protect
from the burning sun-rays, and permit those effects of light and
shade so dear to the architect. He can and does employ all these
adjuncts, and is building a city truly magnificent. Even the native
portion of the town, with balconied houses of all heights, from
two to six stories, and of many tints, and lying between the old
foreign settlement toward the northern end of the island and the
new foreign quarter, which occupies the site of the old forts and
fortifications in the east, is both picturesque and somewhat artis
tic. The fortifications, no longer valuable with the new processes
of naval warfare, have been razed to the ground and noble public
buildings and private business houses have been reared in their
place. The native city is densely packed with a seething mass of
people of many nationalities, all in their repective costumes.
The caves of Elephanta, on an island back of the city, are inter
esting. Great temples are cut in the solid rock, and colossal
statues of Shiva, the first offspring of the one unknown and un
knowable God, the most popular deity of the Hindoos, are carved
from the natural rock of the high hill, in a cave hewn out, leav
ing pillars and columns of the solid stone to support the over
hanging mass. Shrines and inner temples are chiselled into the
hard porphyry. The god in colossal p'roportions, with his worship
ping mortals at his feet and his attendant heavenly beings float
ing around above his head, are a part of the original rock-built
hill. Shiva is shown in his dual nature, one side male, the other
female, even to the minutest feature and ornament. In one niche
is the creation in accord with the Mosaic idea, borrowed from or
loaned to the Hebrew law-giver. When God made Adam, "male
and female created he them." Then, as Mother Eve sprang from
Adam's side, so Parvati bursts from Shiva, and becomes his wife.
The god, wearied with the sins of man, his creature, became the
avenger, and hurls destruction in thunderbolts over the world.
Then he demands the sacrifice, and receives victims to appease

244 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
his wrath. In another shrine he has become the redeeming god ;
and finally he sits in placid peacefulness in the heavens. All of
these incarnations of the attributes of the Deity are represented
in huge statutes or in bold alto relievo in the different shrines.
In the middle of the cave is the main shrine of the great
creator of man in three awful forms — the " Creator," the " Pre
server," and the " Destroyer." Strange similarity between the
revelations of Moses and the old legends of this land. The He
brew says Moses was the leader. These people say he was the
borrower. May not the truth be that both got the legend from a
far-off prehistoric people of great civilization, the very thresholds
whereof we have not yet passed in our boasted enlightenment, —
a wise and virtuous people, whose homes and cities were con
tiguous to Egypt and India, and now deep buried beneath the
Indian Ocean ? This is a land of dreams. Why may I not
dream as others have done, and speculate in my dreams ? High
beyond yon blazing sun lives the mighty primal cause. May
not I bow my head in adoration of the one unknown and un
knowable God ? Unknowable, because utterly incomprehensible
to human brain, and inconceivable to human thought. All-
powerful and all-wise. He cannot be other than all good. Am I
rash when I find myself unable to believe that He fails to hearken
to the sincere worship of all His creatures, whatever be the form
of their worship ? I will here say that, according to one of the
Brahminical ideas, there was from the beginning one unknown
and unknowable god, who deposited an egg, from which burst by
his own individual strength Shiva, the known all-powerful God,
the Creator of the world and of man. He was male and female,
and answers somewhat to the Mosaic Adam. The idea and
analogy would have been complete had Adam been deified in the
record of Moses.
Lady Reay, wife of the governor, has a successful fancy fair
now in progress, inaugurated to extend a noble charity founded
by a warm-hearted Parsee. The Duchess of Connaught, a fine
specimen of German womanhood, occupies one stall, Lady Reay
another, and beautiful Parsee ladies others, and so on. Native
games are exhibited, in which native cavalrymen are the per
formers on horseback. Concerts, where ices are sold, and titled
English ladies are the singers and players. Hindoos and Mo
hammedans — with ladies closely veiled, — English women in the
wretched European costumes, and Parsee ladies in their exqui
site robes of gauze and with spirituelle faces — every kind of
people crowd the grounds, and are full of enjoyment and anxious
to purchase, all for sweet charity. The bright wife of the gov
ernor kindly recognized me, and after shaking hands, asked me
what she could sell me. "Your smile, my lady, the memory of
that I can carry. My coffers are too full for any thing more
ponderous." " But this is better ; my photo for one rupee."

CONTRASTS IN INDIA. 245
" Iav», if you attach your autograph." It is done, and the lady
invites me to call at Malabar Hill, as she turns to give a kind word
to a native in lofty turban. I then ask the Duchess of Con-
naught if an American can carry home with him her photograph.
With a winning smile she regrets she had not sun-pictures of
herself, and I pass off, my republican heart full of delight be
cause the daughter of a prince and daughter-in-law of an em
press had smiled upon me — oh, vanitas vanitatum I
To-day I called upon the Governor's lady. Lord Reay is a
kind-hearted Dutchman, who, by the accident of a death in a
far-off line, found himself all at once the owner of a Scotch title.
He married then a very bright and very rich woman, and fills
one of the finest positions in the gift of the English crown. It is
whispered here that the lady really wields the governorship ; a
slander, of course. With words of regret the lady excuses her
self because of her great fatigue at the fair yesterday. A half-
dozen grand natives in blazing red see me into my carriage close
by. The road leading from Government House is being repaired,
and native women with forms as delicate as that of my lady are
carrying upon their heads huge baskets of stone. I think of the
fearful fatigue of God's anointed one in the cool palace I had
left, — fatigue almost insufferable, because she had been on her
feet two whole hours the day before, and now at noon was trying
to pass it off on a soft couch. I looked at the poor women carrying
heavy burdens beneath the blazing sun. I thought of the two
vast extremes in this land, and uttered the off-repeated ejacula
tion : " How long, O Lord ? " A coolie water-carrier came by ;
she was high caste, for none other can handle any thing to be
eaten or drunk by people of the upper castes. Another woman
of low caste wished to drink ; the carrier let water run from the
goat-skin bag into the hands of the thirsty one. Lord Reay him
self, could not touch that goat-skin with his lips without contami
nating it. Were he to lay his hands upon the mouth of the bag,
it would be thrown away. Of such hue is the reign of caste.
The high-caste English governor would not permit a man not
socially fit to grace his board. The high-caste, half-naked Hindoo
woman would consider her rice-bowl contaminated should the
Empress of all India touch it.
At a ball at the Yacht Club there were handsome women in
toilets worthy of Worth. But how awkward and ungraceful com
pared to the light, flowing dress of the Parsee beauties the night
before !
The very beautiful " Queen's statue " here is of life-size, seated
on a rich throne, and surmounted by a canopy of great beauty in
Gothic style, the whole of white marble. It is a little singular the
old lady empress cannot sit or stand in marble. It is always the
young queen. Her rich maturity appears only in photos. She
was a young lady when she mounted the throne, and she will go

246 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
down as a young lady into the long future in bronze and stone as
empress, although she did not become one until nearly 50 years
after she was anointed queen. After ages will think her possessed
of perennial youth.
The sweet chimes on the clock tower close by tell me the first
hour of morning has come, and tell me this is the 15th day
of February, the anniversary of the most important event of the
world to me. Sixty-three years ago I came into this breathing
life. To the young this seems a long time, yet how quickly has it
sped ! How poor and meagre its results ! I open memory's book
and sadly turn back its leaves and read its pages. I go a little
farther back even than memory can carry me, and read a page all
fresh as if it had been just written and I had known it all myself.
It was fastened in my brain by a mother's words. It is the picture
of a virgin forest on the other side of the globe. In the centre of
the forest tract is a small opening, a Kentucky canebrake of two
or three acres. On one edge of this opening is an Indian mound
a few feet high, when and by whom built no one can know. A
noble tree grew upon its crown, and the roots of a far older one
were moldering on its side. Here had been a camping-ground of
red men dead ages ago. I see a field being cleared by belting the
trees and burning their dead trunks. A one-roomed log-house is
built upon the lower edge of the brake. There I was unexpectedly
born. A new-made trough, cut for the coming sugar season, was
my extemporized cradle. It was a rough house for two young,
refined, and educated people. But western energy and new-bom
hope filled their hearts.
Pressed upon this page is another, printed ere the year had
taken its wintry leaf. The young father lies upon his dying
couch. His weeping wife holds before him their baby boy. His
blanching lips try to speak. She bends down to catch his dying
words. They are a message to his child.
I turn over a leaf. I see the saddest spot of all seen in my early
years — the graveyard behind my grandfather's orchard, all silent,
deeply shaded, and solitary. This picture is the earliest that lives
in my own memory, graven into the very heart's core. My
mother is holding me, now three years and three months old, by
the hand. We stand over a grave. Not a spear of grass nor a
weed was green upon it. For long years its mould was kept as
fresh as if it were newly made. Long we stood. Tears were
running down her pallid cheek ; a dove was cooing mournfully in
a tree close by ; crickets were chirruping in the warm May noon.
They seemed to make the very silence more silent. My mother
knelt upon the edge of the grave and prayed. I remember but one
sentence : " Thou hast promised to be a father to the fatherless
and the widow's God." When she arose her eyes were dry though
her cheek was still wet. She pointed to the silent grave and
said : " Your father lies there, my child ; his last words were for

A R^CH LEGACY. 247
you : ' Tell our child that an honest man is the noblest work of
God. Teach him not to tell a lie ' ; and then he died." Oh,
mother in heaven ! that message has been given to me a thou
sand times — in angel whisperings, upon the briny deep, upon
the mountain's side, in the turmoil of angry strife, in the silent
watches of the night, in the loving glances of your own dark,
honest eyes, in the far-off land where was our home and where your
ashes lie. My father left me lands, but those dying words watered
by a mother's tears, were a richer legacy than all the lands. They
have checked erring steps a thousand times, and have taught me
to hold that " there is no religion higher than truth."

CHAPTER XXIV.
ACROSS THE DECCAN— KARLI CAVES— BEAUTIFUL WOMEN— HY
DERABAD— OLD GOLCONDA— TITANIC ROCKS— ELEPHANT
RIDE— CHARMING HOSPITALITY.
Madras, February 24, 1888.
Old Sol was blazing down as if the very air was a great sun
glass, focusing ten times ten thousand burning rays upon our heads,
when we left our hotel at Bombay to commence the hot journey
across the Deccan for Madras, and thence by rail through extreme
southern India to Tuticorin, and over to Colombo, on the Cinna
mon isle. We felt some dread of this trip. Every one to whom
we had mentioned it told us we would suffer at this late period of
the season, and that the country was too barren of interest to
repay us for our discomfort. Few tourists make the journey, and
the few writers who have written of it seemed so anxious to get
over the great table-lands that their descriptions of the country-
have been meagre and uninstructive^ — all the greater reason for our
seeing it.
The effect of an Indian sun on a white man is simply marvel
lous. It seems to strike the very roots of his nerves. A native
will work or sit for hours with his bare head beneath the scorching
rays and feel no unpleasant sensation. But if the sun pours down
upon a white man's head or shoulders, or along the spine, he may
escape sunstroke, but will feel the ill-effect for days. The atmos
phere seems to be for him a convex lens and burns the heat into
a focus. This, too, is the case all over the land, even as far up as
in the Punjab, throughout Rajpootana, in Bengal, and down in the
Deccan ; indeed, it is said that the direct effect of the sun is more
powerful in the north than in the south. I have discussed the
matter with men who have been in every quarter of the globe —
commercial men and English officers, and all assert that they fear
an Indian sun more than that of any other quarter of the world.
In China and on the table-lands of central Asia the sun heat is
intense, and men almost melt and are sunstruck. Here quick sun
strokes are not usually the immediate effect of over-exposure,
though they occur ; — but a pain in the back of the head and about
the cervical joints, accompanied by depression and perhaps illness,
follows. Every railway carriage intended for Europeans has its
bathroom, and a tank in the roof always full of cool water, and on
248

BHORE GHAUTS. 249
the southern roads all have a double roof with an air chamber
between the two. We wear great pith sun-hats and carry um
brellas as regularly as did the " Iron Duke," and when forced to
go out in the sun take things coolly. We drink no "pegs" and
are abstemious of " whisky sodas." We are not afraid of the sun,
but we do not defy him, and I think we '11 go out of India with
invigorated health. The Europeans here take too many " pegs "
— i. e. glasses of whisky. They feel depressed and take a peg.
They continue depressed and take another and another till the
really beneficial effect of an occasional stimulant is lost.
The water, as a rule, throughout India is bad. It is taken from
rivers or from great tanks (artificial reservoirs), which catch and
hold the rains ; these are frequently of many acres in extent ; and
from wells. In every one of these sources of supply the water is
more or less contaminated. The natives all bathe or pour water
over themselves a great deal. They wash themselves and their
clothing in the same tank from which they drink, and their cattle
and buffalo wallow with the people. A lot of tanks four to six
feet deep, and containing 10 to 20 acres altogether, furnish water
for a city of many thousands of people through long months of
dry weather. The air teems with organic life, especially during
the rainy season, when the tank's are being filled ; the water thus
becomes populous with organisms. Throughout the country
generally many Europeans boil or filter the water, and some do
both. "The natives do neither, and are yet a healthy people, for
they have no fear of their water. Faith is a mighty doctor ;
alarm breeds disease.
After leaving the islands of Bombay and Salsette, our railroad
ran for a short distance toward the Satpoora Mountains, which
extend up to Rajpootana, and is the water-shed between it and
central India. It then bent southward into the low spurs of the
Bhore Ghauts. This is a range of several distinctive names,
but bearing the general appellation of the Western Ghauts,
running close to the Arabian Sea all the way to Cape Cormorin.
Ghaut is the Indian word for step. These mountains are the
steps by which one climbs from the low coast up to the great table
land which stretches to the Eastern »Ghauts, close to the Bay of
Bengal. We are soon in narrow valleys, between rocky hills lift
ing 1,000 feet up, and having a rather sterile appearance, clothed
with scattered thorny trees. After running 60 miles we com
menced the ascent of the Ghauts, pulled by one and pushed by
another powerful engine, up grades of a foot in 30. In some 16
miles we climbed 2,000 feet through grand scenery, lofty ridges
lifted on each side, or on one, leaving beautiful broad valleys
with fields and villages on the other. The mountains are all vol
canic, showing great precipices of black hard tufa, or trap, hun
dreds of feet high, and piled one above the other. Between these
precipices, of which there are four or five tiers, each a hundred

250 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
feet behind the one next below, are steep slopes clothed in dense
woodland of emerald green.
The whole had the appearance of forest terraces supported by
black walls of great height stretching one or two miles or more in
length, and crowned above by embattled walls. Now we would
look below into a dark gorge, here 500, then 1,000, and once 1,200
to 1,500 feet deep, lying between us and the dark embattled walls
and precipices a short distance away ; then a tunnel or a curve
would open to us a smiling valley, running off for miles, yellow
with ripe, or green with growing, crops. Few places present more
awful and yet sweetly beautiful scenery. At Khamballa, 78 miles
from Bombay, we stopped for the night and spent an hour
of declining day in enjoyment of the charming surroundings,
seated upon the verge of a mighty precipice, and with heights
cutting the clear blue sky above us; the deep gorge lying, as it
grew more sombre in the approach of night, like a monster reptile
1,200 or 1,500 feet below us; our cheeks were fanned by a deli
cious breeze from the sea not many miles away. There was
nothing to mar our enjoyment. The valley gorge was wild and
savage. In its woods and among its titanic rocks was the lair of
the tiger, from which the stealthy brute creeps out at night in
quest of native food, and lacks not so much love for the European
that he will eschew him as meat. Kites and eagles are saiHng
about the rocks above us. In the distance, far down the gorge,
a railway train was creeping up with what seemed snail-like pace.
Its whistle mingled with the eagle's scream ; crows, the intimate
if not the friend of man hereabouts, were cawing near by; some
sheep, all black as crows, were being driven homeward by their
shepherd. We sat and drank in the scene till one of us noticed
a worn little hole under a rock near our feet ; a cobra may have
made it his path. We left the beautiful scene. We were amused
by a shepherd holding a ewe while he made the lamb of another
draw borrowed nourishment. A nanny-goat kicked angrily when
finding a kid in sheep's clothing stealing her own darling's supper.
The next morning early we drove to the Karli caves, six miles
away. These are quite different from those at Elephanta, and
are in much better preservation. In the hard trap-rock a temple
150 feet deep, 30 to 50 wide, and more than half as high, was cut
long ages ago. Its roof is arched, and is more like the nave of a
Christian church than a Hindoo temple. On either side is a long
row of columns, a part of the original rock, with capitals orna
mented with images in the fixed stone of the gods and their
wives, for each has three, and in front are great elephants carved
from the rock. In the hill-sides to the right and left are many
cave chambers, the homes of the priesthood of the past. To
reach the caves we had to cross afoot over a plain of rough
ground, with tufa masses protruding and covered with little peb
bles of coarse cornelian, jasper, and agate. It was from spots

o o

o

HINDOO BEAUTY. 251
like these the stones came which made the inlaid beauties of the
tombs and palaces of the moguls. We picked up some quite
pretty enough for seal rings.
After tiffin (lunch) we were again speeding toward the south
east through plains, brown generally, but now and then green
with wheat-fields. The most of the fields, however, were ripe,
and some already harvested. The grain was light, and, with us,
would scarcely repay the reaper. Low ridges of bare mountains
were always in view, but not enough to take away the general
characteristics of plane land. Large flocks of black sheep and
goats were constantly in sight, but few flocks could boast a white
one. Cattle were abundant. In two hours we reached Poonah,
the old capital of the Mahrattas, and still the principal English
station of that quarter of the country. It is a fine town, and
gave to us a revelation. We had not often enjoyed seeing ex
quisite female Hindoo beauty. Some ladies were having a pic
nic in the public garden. Their bourkas, or light shawls, were
thrown off, showing their faces in full. I think they fully appre
ciated our admiration, for they did not cover when we sat on a
bench close by to read our guide-book, but rather turned towards
us, either to show us their jewels or their faces. It is not often
one sees uncovered Hindoo ladies. These were evidently of opu
lent houses. Never had I seen a purer type of face or more
aristocratic features. All were pretty, three very beautiful, and
one of a perfection of style which began to make me unhappy.
A wonderfully beautiful woman always makes me feel thus. I do
not know why. I see a beautiful horse : I do not wish to ride or
drive it. I see a splendid house : I do not wish to possess it or
live in it. I see sparkling gems: I never wish to wear them. I
do sincerely enjoy a prosperous man's happiness. I do not envy
a man his beautiful wife. But I cannot realize that any man is
good enough to be the possessor of a perfectly beautiful woman.
She is something which instinctively I feel should be beyond the
reach of any man, and yet she is not ; very probably she is not
beyond the reach of a very poor stick of a man. She may be
beautiful, but is always fool enough to give herself to a miserable
piece of masculine clay ; whereas she is something to me so per
fect that she should be enshrined in her own individuality. I do
not want her, but I do not want any one else to have her. Thus
I was beginning to feel when looking on this piece of dusky per
fection. There was growing about my heartstrings a sort of
contraction — a sort of paralysis. One of the little girls of the
party ran off a little distance. My beauty called to her. She did
not at once obey. The call became an angry screech. Presto !
The spell was broken. Thank heaven ! There was always some
thing to break such spells. What beautiful things would many
women be if they would only be silent ! The canary's throat is
never given to the bird of paradise. One should generally stuff

252 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
one's ears when one looks upon this kind of perfection, and should
listen blindfolded to a divine singer.
We lost 200 miles of country passing it at night. Indian rail
roads always do most of their train-running at night. They thus
avoid the burning heat of day. But the night was clear, and till
late the moon enabled us to comprehend the country we were
traversing. The next morning showed us great stretches of doura
fields. As far as the eye could reach this seemed the prevailing
winter crop. Hundreds of thousands of acres. The surface of
the land was slightly undulating. The doura — a kind of millet —
was from four to eight feet high The fields looked as our prairies
of Indian corn would if cut off just above the ears, except there
was not quite the stiffness. Imagine thousands of acres of com
with rather small ears stuck where the tassels grow. The heads
are too compact to resemble broom corn or sorghum. In fields
where the growth was short there was, every three or more rows,
a row of saffron or of dahl. The Indian farmer delights to have
two kinds of crops growing together. He is so poor that a failure
would bring starvation. He plants two things on the same field;
if one fails he may save the other. Fields of saffron just being
harvested looked like plains of old gold.
At Wadi, and for some miles before, we were in the dominions
of the Nizam of Hyderabad ; I thought the evidences of pros
perity were greater than in the English governed states. The
Nizam is one of the many princes who yet govern one third of
India. His dominions comprise 80,000 square miles, with a popu
lation of 12,000,000 or 13,000,000. He owns the railroads and
runs things as he pleases, provided always he pleases the Eng
lish government at the same time. The crops in his state were
much better than those beyond the lines. The houses were no
longer of mud, but of stone — this, however, because it is cheaper.
There is a wonderful building stone along the railroad in layers
so smooth that it has not to be hammered to make first-class
ashler work. The houses, or huts, are built of this laid loose, and
often covered with thin flags. We saw many picturesque-looking
villages, many walled in, and all with round towers 40 or 50 feet
in diameter, and two to three stories in height. These were once
necessary when wars among neighboring states were so frequent ;
now useless, for England surrounds the land and there can be no
more such wars.
Before reaching the capital, which is reached by a road at right
angles to the main road to Madras, we passed through some wild
jungle, a part of it in low forest, where tigers and panthers
abound. The country became broken into low granite hills. The
soil being disintegrated granite or of syenite, generally gray but
occasionally red, about Hyderabad ; the granite hills have been
worn down through past ages, leaving huge masses 100 feet high,
smooth and blackened by time, great heaps of rock piled one upon

NATIVE HOSPITALITY. 253
another in monster heaps. Huge rocks weighing from 10 to 100
tons were heaped upon each other, often so loosely that they
looked as if a child could make them tumble over. Here they
looked like castles and embattled walls of loose stone ; there they
were thrown in wild confusion. Sometimes a stone three or four
times as large as a railroad carriage would be poised high up upon
a slender base. Some of the hills composed of such stones were
200 or more feet high. When the Creator finished building the
world he dropped the debris here. These hills form a cordon
about the city, which has a population of 400,000.
We went to the travellers' bungalow, where we could get but one
room and one bed, the others being full. Two of us had to sleep
upon the hard stone floor. We went at once to the British Resi
dent for a permit to visit the fort at the old ruins of Golconda.
He was out of town, so was his deputy. The assistant deputy
was not at home. By the way, here, as at Jeypore, the Resident
lives in a very palace. I determined to go directly to the Ni
zam's (king's) palace, and try the strength of my American citi
zenship. We drove up, with no other guide than our coachman,
who spoke a dozen or so words of English. Our very inability
to communicate with the guards enabled our cards and Mr. Bay
ard's letter to get through the palace gates. They did not know
how to tell us to go away in English, and we would not under
stand their assertions in flindoostanee that we could not get in.
We found ourselves before a sort of open portico, the office of
some dignitary, inside the outer wall but just outside the inner
palace gate. Our cards went in. Presently an elegant official
came from the palace gate, surrounded by subalterns and soldiers ;
as he passed he looked at me inquiringly. I said: "You speak
English?" He said he did, and asked us to enter, and after get
ting through some pressing business turned to me. We got into
conversation, and took tea. The result was not only did we get
a permit for Golconda, but a captain was ordered to accompany
us on horseback to the Char-Mahal, the palace of the " four
houses," and to show us through. And, furthermore, we were
most cordially invited to be his guests during our stay in Hydera
bad. On my hesitating, Mirza Mqhammed Afsur Jungsai^:
" You are not comfortable at the bungalow, and I mean it when
I say I really wish you to be my guests. It will be as agreeable
to me as it will be comfortable to you." The invitation so gra
ciously given was accepted.
Accompanied by Capt. Abdular mounted on a superb Arab,
we went to the beautiful palace of the " four houses," and were
shown the splendid rooms, the state carriages and stables, with
some superb horses. We then drove to old Golconda, six miles
off. This was once a great city and the capital of the Deccan.
Its name has been the synonym for boundless treasures of gold,
and diamonds in countless numbers. It is the land where Arabian

254 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
fancy revelled in gorgeous imaginings, and the scene where a part
of the " Thousand and One Nights " was laid. It was from the
crests of these huge mountains of granite boulders that Sindbad
the Sailor looked down into the valley whose floor was a mass of
shining diamonds, and from which he was borne away on the
wing of the monster roc. The jungle around has been for count
less ages the home of monster tigers. Cities have been for thou
sands of years nestled among these savage scenes, and their mon
archs have been possessed of diamonds beyond count. Here the
Koh-i-noor was found. The tale of " Sindbad," I suspect, was an
allegory, " the Valley of Jewels " meaning a city into which for
eigners were not permitted to enter. Sindbad got in, and having
acquired some wealth, was spirited away to a distant quarter.
The old fort at Golconda was once an impregnable fortress
built upon and on the sides of a hill 400 feet high, the great stones
heaped up by nature being the strongest parts of its walls. The
sun was blazing down when we climbed it, but the breeze on its
top, under the shade of an ancient pleasure-house, was delicious.
The scene around was unique. The great hills of mighty loose
stones piled about, some crowned by fortresses and palaces, and
others desolate and bleak. The dusty plains stretched around,
with some dozen or more tanks shining in the noonday sun, and
the young rice-fields in the low places below the tanks as green
as emeralds ; the mosques and minarets of the capital in the dis
tance, and the English cantonment of Secunderabad embowered
in trees ; the old walls in strong battlements climbing from the
plain below to the heights we were sitting upon ; and the stately
tombs of the kings whose line had been extinct for a couple of
centuries, but still kept in good repair, and surrounded with gar
dens of mango and palms, just outside of the old city walls ; and
around all the titanic walls of monster rocks piled into low moun
tains. These made a picture nowhere else seen in India, and no
where else surpassed in weird and romantic effect.
We got back to the capital in time for tiffin at 2:30. We were
just getting through with it, when an elegant drag with outriders,
drove up to take us to the residence of a Mirza Mohammed, Ali
Beg Badupur, Afsur-Jung, aid to his highness the nizam of Hy
derabad. We were received by the nawab with great courtesy
in one of the prettiest of drawing-rooms ; nothing flashy or
tawdry, but every thing in exquisite taste — a mingling of Orien
talism and Western elegance. Our rooms were comfortable, with
desks covered with bric-a-brac and provided with stationery and
some books. Before we had washed, iced whiskey and soda was
brought to us, and shortly after we were mounted in a fine drag
drawn by four elegant horses driven by the nawab himself, who is
a fine whip, along the pretty road which skirts the great tank or
artificial lake. Our dinner was finely served with wine and several
delicious Persian dishes, the nawab and a couple of his friends in-

AN ELEPHANT RIDE. 255
vited to dine with us not taking wine, for we were in a Moham
medan city, and our host was a follower of Islam. The people of
this kingdom speak four native languages, but the language of the
court is Persian and Persian style is the form. The Persian
sweetmeats served at this and successive meals were simply
perfect. The next day we had several nawabs (noblemen) to breakfast
with us, all polished gentlemen. One had been of the suite sent
to the queen's jubilee last year. At four in the afternoon we
were driven to the palace and presented to the nizam's private
secretary, Col. Marshall. Queer, is it not, that the confidential
secretary of this independent prince should belong to the English
army ? We would probably have been presented to the Nizam
himself but for the fact that he had just lost one of his children
and is " in zenana " — /. e., locked up in the women's quarter for a
moon. This is a part of the religious custom of Islamism.
Then we were mounted upon a huge elephant and ridden
through the city. From the vantage-ground of his lofty back we
had a splendid panorama of the great crowds of people of several
nationalities on the streets and in their many brilliant costumes.
Our huge beast picked his way quietly among the pedestrians,
now and then blowing a loud whistle — for what reason I could not
divine, unless it was simply because he could. There were two
wedding processions on the streets we traversed — one of a nawab,
with at least lOO mounted soldiers. I was much surprised that the
horses of some of these took fright at our leviathan, and cavorted
at a fearful rate. His elephantship paid no attention whatever to
them and never for a moment paused although the horses were
tumbling about the narrow street. The city is a pretty one and has
many fine residences and quite nice-looking private houses. From
our elevated position we could look into their second stories.
Within there was nothing that looked inviting and the window-
sills were dirty and squalid. After being shown the private
armory of the nizam — his splendid collection of tiger, elephant,
and small-game guns, — we parted with our charming host. He
was on duty for the night. He sent a gentleman home with us to
entertain us at dinner and to see us off that evening.
Afsur Jung, our host, is said to be the most powerful noble
of the land. He is the favorite friend of the nizam and his
companion in his sports and in his hunts. He is the real com
mander of the army, though nominally only at the head of the
regiment of the body-guard ; is said to be a fine shot — his parlor
floor is covered with the tiger-skins of his own shooting. One of
his exploits in that line is much spoken of as being an act of
wonderful daring. He is a fine horseman, skilled polo-player, and
speaks several languages fluently, and withal is a man of courtly
manners. It was a singular thing to go about his beautiful house,
furnished with such pure taste, and to see such evidences of a

256 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
high refinement, then to dine at his table both when he was there
and when he was away, knowing that his wife — he has but one — was
separated from us only by a wall, and not only never seeing her,
but even learning that she probably has been into the front part
of the residence but a few times. Her taste had nothing to do
with its embellishment, but his alone, and she never enjoys its
pleasures. Afsur Jung has about him a retinue of servants, not
one of whom has ever seen his wife's unveiled face. He is himself
very liberal and I doubt not would be glad to be freed from such
restraints, but they are a part of his religion as well as a part of
the customs of his country. When we parted I think he really
regretted our leaving so soon. He invited us to come back in the
tiger-shooting season, when he would give us the best guns and
the best elephants in the dominions.
From Hyderabad more than half of the journey onward we
made by daylight. The same characteristics were seen which be
longed to the country traversed in reaching Wadi, except that
there was a large growth of cotton. The plant was very low,
frequently not reaching six inches. The farm people became yet
blacker, the majority being almost as dark as negroes. They are
a much finer race than those of either Bengal or the neighborhood
of Bombay. Their features are finely cut, delicate and oftentimes
very handsome. Many are quite tall and better proportioned in
the lower limbs than in northern India. Many a man nearly as
black as a crow is seen whose features would compare favorably
with the best-visaged European, and women are often very
pretty. If our beauties could only see their feet they would envy
them. When shoes were introduced one of the handsomest parts
of the human frame became deformed. The nizam's people are
entirely wanting in the servile demeanor of the Bengalese. We
crossed several rivers broad and capable of carrying vast streams,
but now only with small ones coursing along their rocky beds. All
the streams south of Bombay rise in the Ghauts close to the west
coast and flow eastward into the Bay of Bengal. The granite hills
seen about Hyderabad extend far south and cross the railroad at
greater altitudes. They make the trip decidedly picturesque. A
hundred and odd miles from Madras we passed through fine bare
mountain scenery, and saw some old fortified cities and fortresses
perched high upon lofty hills, as bold and picturesque as any
thing on the Rhine or Danube.
Arriving at Madras we found every hotel filled. We even
tried several whose filthy appearance repelled us — dirty dens
kept by Portuguese who are ignorant of the fact that cleanliness
is next to godliness. A native had fastened himself upon us at
the station, determined to be our guide and servant. When we
were about to return to the station to go off on the next train,
he said he thought he could get us a room at the " Bidden
Home " on the beach. This turned out to be a charitable home

NATIVE CHRISTIANITY. 257
for seamen, now rarely used since the commerce by sea of the
place has so fallen off. Few sailing vessels touch here. The
harbor is open, and permits no sail craft to lie safely before the
city, and the steamers stay so short a time that a sailors' home is
hardly needed. Thinking our stay under the circumstances
would be very short, we at once ordered a carriage and drove about
the city. We found it as hot as we had been told it would be. Its
public buildings are quite fine, and Fort George is a grand military
establishment. The esplanade and military grounds for drilling
are large, with handsome shaded drives crossing them in different
directions. An outer harbor now being erected may, when
finished, bring back to Madras some of her lost commerce.
Hot and dusty we returned to our refuge, and, to our delight,
found we had won victory from defeat. A delightful breeze, a
sort of undertow, was coming in from the sea, so invigorating
that we determined to stop here for a rest, instead of going to
the Nilgherri hills, where we had expected to spend two or three
days. Muni Sami, the butler of the establishment, gets us
delightful meals, and is making our stay really charming. I asked
him if he were a Christian. There are a great many native Chris
tians in this locality. He said no ; " that Christians got drunk too
much ; that it was the best religion to die in, but it was better to
be a heathen until one got old ; he intended turning Christian
before he died." I am sorry to say that our limited experience,
so far, corroborates this statement. At Lahore and Jeypore we
had native Christians for guides, and both took more stimulants
than was healthy. The fellow who attached himself to us here
was not able to bear prosperity. Our pay overcame him, and
yesterday I discharged him for being drunk. We have now been
here three days, and find the early mornings and cool afternoons
profitably employed driving through the large city, which has a
population of 350,000. But it is only at the Bidden Home that
we find the freshness of the undertow sea-breeze, I suppose, be
cause of its immediate proximity to the surf, which breaks not
100 feet from my bedroom. We spend all the heat of the day
lying in easy chairs in our colonnaded second story, drinking in
enjoyment and sea air. We have been much on the sea during
the past seven months, but we were then the sport of the waves.
Here we have sea-baths, and watch the snowy surf without any
of the discomforts of too great intimacy with the monster ocean.
We would like to enjoy the glorious surf, but dare not, for
ground-sharks abound here, and are fond of Europeans. Two
English soldiers went into the surf not long since ; they were
attacked, and although assistance was close at hand, yet the poor
fellows were never seen again. The deeply-dyed sea told how
sharp were the fishes' teeth. I shall always remember the Bid
den Home with pleasure, and bless its charitable founder. We
arrived on the 22d. We spent the afternoon watching the surf

258 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
breaking almost under our feet. Natives were fishing a little
way out on tiny catamarans, which are simply a couple of
sticks of timber from 15 to 30 feet long, turned up at one end
like sled-runners, and lashed together with thongs. It furnishes
a keel two or three feet wide; on this a couple of fishermen will
boldly enter the surf which no other boat would attempt. Stand
ing erect upon the tiny craft, with a light paddle, they will ride
over or through a crest which looks as if it would surely swallow
them up. They pass over it like a duck or through it as a fish,
their black bodies shining in the sun and resembling animate
polished ebony. The breeze was not fresh enough to raise any
white caps, but a fine ground-swell was coming in from two to
five or six feet high. In solemn order the waves would round
up and break below us, making now a gentle murmur and then a
deep-toned thud. After a loud crash the aeolia of the sea would
roll away, dying in a wail or sinking into a sigh ; now in the wild
shriek of a madman, and then in a murmer as soft as a mother's
blessing. Washington's birthday I watched the waves marching in order
one after the other, the free soldiers of the sea, and thought of
the day and of the man of whose birth it was the anniversary. He
was born and lived that a mighty people might be free. I was
now in a land whose civilization dates from thousands of years
ago, and yet there is no tradition that freedom here for one day
even has ever had a home. There is no tradition that any man
living among the countless millions of this land ever knew what
freedom was. There has always been the master and the minion.
The master might be one man, or he might be many, but the
mighty mass has been a mass of willing slaves. There have been
fierce wars to free one nation from another nation, or a prince
from another prince, but not a single struggle to free man.
Washington's name is a very synonym for freedom. Will the
people whom he fought for always be firm to the principles he
taught, or will madness of party some day cause them to for
get his lessons, and make them bow to a people's idol, and all
too readily permit his foot to rest upon their necks? Such seems
ever to have been the tendency of human movements, and
sooner or later America will do as other peoples have done be
fore. No statesmanship can ward off the action of human law.
Among the countless billions who have lived there has been but
one Washington. He alone of all could resist that sweetest of
all incense, the breath of real admiration, and could forego that
sweetest of all morsels, power, freely granted by a free people.
Kings have stepped down from thrones, but their thrones were
not built upon freemen's hearts. Countless ages may pass before
another Washington shall be born. The American statesman
should study to retard as long as possible the coming of the day
when a Washington shall again be necessary to freedom.

THE TWENTY-SECOND OF FEBRUARY. 259
Reclining upon an easy chair in the mid-afternoon beneath the
corridor of the " Home" I watched the waves coming in from
the east, and thought of my own native land and of the dear
ones on the other side of the world. The waxing moon was
climbing half-way up to the zenith, a dim, silvery spectre upon
the hot, blue sky. It had been shining upon my own land, but a
few short short hours before, perhaps had lighted up the faces
of some of those who were so dear to me. As I looked, I almost
fancied I could see them photographed upon its pale silvered
plate. There, in my west-side snow-mantled home in Chicago were
my children — my laughing little girl — a father's heart went out
to enfold them. There were my good neighbors and true friends
from all over the city. One by one they walked across the pol
ished plate, and bent upon me a kindly look. Friends of every
nationality. Teuton and Hibernian, Frenchman and Norseman,
Bohemian and Dane, Italian and Swede, Christian and Jew, rich
and poor. Ah ! How I wished I could bid yon pale moon bear
to them my own picture, looking, as I felt, brimful of good-will,
and running over with kindly fellowship. To one and all I drink
in a cup as full as yon sea— a cup brimming over with affection.

CHAPTER XXV.
TUTICORIN— PONDICHERRY— TANJORE — TRICHINOPOLY AND MA-
DURA— HINDOO TEMPLES— A CHARMING RIDE-
NATIVES AND THEIR DRESS.
Tuticorin, March i, r888.
I COMMENCE this letter on the second story of Jack's Hotel at
half-past one o'clock. Our ship lies five miles off, just in view.
Thb place has no harbor, and the water near the shore is so
shoal that vessels of any considerable size do not approach
nearer to the town. Before night we must go off on a launch
and quit India forever. I leave it with regret, and at the same
time with a feeling of relief, for our travel over its vast distances
has been one of labor and fatigue as well as of pleasure. We
entered it at the mouth of the Hooghly two months ago. We went
400 miles due north of Calcutta to Darjeeling and back ; then in
a northwesterly direction, through many cities and districts, 1,600
miles, to the boundary of Afghanistan ; thence southerly, through
the heart of northern India, over 1,600 miles, to Bombay; then
across the Deccan, via Madras, to this point, 1,180 miles. Besides,
we travelled on branch roads about 150 miles — in all nearly 5,000
miles, and are somewhat fatigued. We have travelled faithfully,
observing and noting every thing as well and as intelligently as
could be done in a land of many languages, and all of them un
known to us, and have consciences quite at rest.
Just now I am feeling so good-natured that, like Uncle Toby,
I could hardly kill a fly, for, in addition to ease of conscience, we
have that further inducement to kindliness — the fact that we have
just disposed of a delicious breakfast of fried prawns, juicy teal,
fresh eggs, and shrimp-curry, washed down with a good whiskey
soda and followed by fragrant tea. A balmj' sea breeze fans the
cheek, and I now and then look out at cheerful coolies with
shining backs, carrying jagghery, the coarge sugar made from the
palm, to the lighters for cargoes for the ships out on the roadstead.
Formerly they made their living diving for pearls, for which
this place was famous. Many an angel's tear has been congealed
in the oyster's home near yonder small islands to deck woman's
beauty and to add to the state of lordly rulers. Many a fair
bride has stood before the altar in far western lands with pearls
upon her brow and neck, won from the briny deep by the fore-
260

CHARACTERISTICS OF SOUTHERN INDIA. 261
fathers of yonder poor men and women, who are now bearing
huge burdens upon their heads, sweating in the blazing sun for a
daily wage which an American laborer would not hesitate to pay
for a single cigar ; and yet they are cheerful and bright and are
quite as contented in their ignorance and poverty as are our own
favored, well-paifl, and educated working people. After all, was
it not a mistake of the poet when he wrote, " If ignorance be
bliss," or was the little " if " really meant for a synonym of
" since ? " The philosopher has not yet discovered the secret of
how to make men happy. Preachers may preach, poets may
sing, and the learned may philosophize, but Robby was right
when he said that " man was made to mourn."
It was quaint Lawrence Sterne, I think, who said " I pity the
man who can travel from Dan to Beersheba and cry, ' 'T is all
barren.' " Our last trip in India more than ever convinced me he
he was right, so many having said that southern India was barren of
interest. The thistle on the arid plain bears a flower of exquisite
beauty ; the edelweiss blooms in the edge of eternal snows ; the
desert has sands of crystal clearness. There is no country which
does not repay an observant traveller. " There are sermons in
stones and good in all things." Southern India is full of beauty
and running over in things of interest. Take Agra and Delhi
out, and northern and central India fall below the southern in
that which is really charming to travellers from all temperate
zones. One should give a full share of time to that part south of
a line drawn from Bombay to Calcutta. Yet this part is scarcely
touched by tourists, and when touched at all is done as hurriedly
as if disease and discomfort were everywhere to be found.
It was not until we left Madras behind us that we really saw
the India of dreams — a land with tropical vegetation in profusion
and Hindoo temples in grandeur. It was in this section that the
Dutch, Portuguese, and English first saw the country, and gave
the pictures of India, both of brush and pen, which were seen by
us in school-books, and gave those ideas of the whole land which
only a visit to it can eradicate. Few people in America can
realize that the great bulk of this country is a brown, dry, and
apparently half-desert land during ftflly three fourths of the year,
that only during the wet season does it wear a livery of green.
Trees and shrubs are, it is true, green at all times, but the grass is
brown and dry during fully nine months of the year. Shortly after
leaving Madras we entered a region abounding in plantations of
palms and rice, which made green the dominant color of the land
scape. We were for 200 and odd miles between the sea and the east
ern Ghauts and within the influence of ocean atmosphere.
Here the cocoa-nut and other palms- have their true homes, and
give the landscape that tropical appearance which has so wonder
ful a charm. Here villages of natives are hidden in the shade of

262 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
stately trees, and the broad spreading banyan is rarely out of
sight, many of them fit to stand for specimen pictures. At Ma
dura is one that may be called perfect. I stepped it around
carefully and found an almost true circle of 660 feet, or 220 feet
diameter. This tree from every point of view presented the
appearance of a flattened dome, with regular arid even branches
and regularly distributed aerial roots. There are several varieties
of trees which send down such roots, and have all the appearance
of the true banyan, and all being of the ficus or fig family. Small
fibrous rootlets drop from a branch and grow downward through
the air like long moss. If not disturbed, they ultimately reach
the earth and at once take hold. The sap then runs up in them
and they commence to support the parent tree. If a rootlet
reaches a lower limb or the body of the tree before it does the
earth, it not unfrequently attaches itself and takes hold like a
parasite, and grows into the limb or trunk as if it had been an
original part of it. The sap then passes from the roots of the
tree indiscriminately through the main body and through this
new attachment. Not unfrequently these aerial attachments
become as large as the main body, and when they grow large or
so thickly together as to touch laterally the main trunk, the whole
will cohere and become a solid mass. This is particularly observed
in the sacred banyan. We saw one specimen where a mass of
aerial rootlets from branches close to the main trunk had met
and matted together some eight or nine feet from the ground,
then, becoming attached to the main body, had so grown into and
become a part of it that the tree was fully ten times as large
above the point of union as it was below. Oftentimes these trees
are very grotesque in appearance, and when of any considerable
size have interested us very much.
In northern and central India the principal railroad trains run
at night, so as to give the foreign population the cool air instead
of hot day to travel in ; but in the south, the best trains being
supported mainly by natives, are by day. We so timed our trip
that we did the whole by daylight. Our first stop was at Pon
dicherry, the little French possession. I wanted to be for a few
hours under some other flag than that of Britain, and besides,
here a great deal of genuine French heroism was shown in the
fights with England— acts of gallantry which should cause every
Frenchman to feel proud of his flag. The district has only a
little over 100 square miles of territory, and a population of less
than 140,000, but supports the dignity of the French republic in
a respectable manner. The town has 30,000 people, 700 of them
being white, and is decidedly pretty. There are no pretensions
to grandeur, but the streets are wide and beautifully shaded, the
trees running east and west being palms, on the cross streets of
other woods. Every thing looks clean, and wears an air of quiet,
old, respectable dignity. We regretted our stay was too limited

GOPURAS OF HINDOO TEMPLE, MADURA.

TRUE HINDOO TEMPLES. 263
to permit us to pay our respects to the Governor, but at dinner
we drank good French wine to the toast of " Vive la Republique."
We saw the daily parade of the 200 native zouaves in pretty uni
forms. They showed good drilling, and were a handsome body
of men.
A hundred and odd miles brought us to Tanjore, through the
most densely populated part of India, and the most productive.
The land is low and flat, thoroughly watered, and growing an
enormous amount of rice and cocoa-nuts. Rice was in every stage,
from emerald green, just covering the paddy fields with young
shoots, to the yellow ripe. Troops of men and women were in
the water-soaked patches putting down the fresh plants, and
troops were bearing great loads on their heads to the threshing-
grounds. These threshing plats are artificially raised, and
apparently each village owns one in common. I was informed
that three crops a year are grown in the district. At Tanjore we
saw our first grand Hindoo temple, and afterwards others at
Trichinopoly and Madura.
These temples are rather great walled forts, with temple
attachments, than mere religious edifices, and during many wars,
and particularly those of the French and English, were occupied
and defended as forts. That at Tanjore is of the highest order
architecturally. The two at Trichinopoly are the largest, and
the one at Madura is in the best condition. Hundreds of
thousands of pilgrims from all over India visit them every year,
and during the April festivals in such masses that disastrous
accidents are not unusual, now and then causing hundreds to be
crushed by the excited multitudes. They are dedicated to Vishnu
or Shiva.
The largest is almost a half mile square, and consists of seven
different concentric enclosures, each surrounded by lofty, solid
masonary walls, 20 to 30 feet high and four feet thick, the one
enclosure being each within the next outer one, and each
separated from the next by several hundred feet of space, with a
street lined with houses. In the centre of each wall, and facing
the four cardinal points of the compass, are massive tapering
buildings, from five to eight stories in height. They are 50 to
100 and over, feet high, with the entire exteriors a mass of figures
representing the various incarnations of the God and his attend
ants. The loftiest is about 150 feet in height. These buildings.
(Gopuras), 28 in all, are the gateways leading through the several
enclo.sures to the centre of the -ivhole. Between the first and
second there is a large population regardless of caste. Between
each of the other walls the population is regulated as to caste
until the fifth is reached. In this only Brahmins can live. In the
sixth there are certain offices and temple adjuncts which only
Brahmins can enter. In the central, or seventh inclosure, are the
sacred precincts of the God ; and into it only the priesthood caa

264 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
enter, and they only for the performance of certain sacred rites.
It answers to the " Holy of Holies " of Solomon's temple. It is
said that the Prince of Wales intimated a desire to view within
this sacred inclosure. He was earnestly asked by the priests not
to press the request, as it would cost at least I0,000 rupees to
purify it if it should become contaminated by his presence. This
whole thing is called a temple, and is filled by temple buildings
and houses occupied by people more or less connected with the
temple service or employed on their estates outside. It would
require weeks and months to study them in detail, and would
repay only those who wish to study the mysteries of Hindoo
religion. There are several other places in southern India where
such temples exist. At the old palace at Tanjore reside several
of the begums (widows) of the last rajah, who died some 50 years
ago. They did not ascend the burning pyre, and have lived here
in seclusion and are gradually dying out and relieving England of
the expense of supporting them. Thirty miles of run brought us
to Trichinopoly, a large town, now famous for its cigar manufac
tories. I purchased from a manufacturer 500 well-made weeds,
of " Henry Clay " size, for eight rupees — less than two thirds of a
cent apiece. They were really good, but rather low-flavored cigars.
Before reaching Trichinopoly we entered into the extension of
the granite or Sienite mountains, which run north into the
Deccan and furnish the peculiar mountain scenery about
Hyderabad. They had been a rugged background for the land
scape for many miles, and relieved it of its monotony. Here
they are hardly mountains, but have become high, loose, rocky
hills, or monster "rocks" protruding from the plains, frequently
several hundred feet high, often smooth and rounded like vast
domes, or jagged and broken into most grotesque shapes. The
Rock of Trichinopoly, crowned by a temple, and once walled
in by a fort, is several hundred feet high, its sides smooth and
precipitous, and climbed only by steps cut into the solid face. It
is not unlike a mighty elephant with its legs extended
forward and back, in the position the beast takes when he comes
down to permit one to mount his back. By the wa\', one of these
animals attached to the temple at the foot of the " Rock" met us
as wc came down. He had climbed up 100 steps to make
his salaam (bow) to us and to beg for backshish. It was a queer
sight when the awkward-looking monster descended again to his
stabling below. He went down, however, nearly as easily as we
¦did, and at the foot wheeled around with a twinkle in his eye, and
stretched out his snout in a way which plainly said : " Now Mr.
Yankee, don't you think I deserve more than you gave me
above?" I threw him a copper coin. He blew a loud whistle
and put his foot upon it in contempt. He then pointed to a
rupee which his wily mahout had laid on the flagging as a hint to
us. I told him " Beggars should not be choosers," and threw him

A CHARMING RIDE. 265
a small silver coin. Our guide translated what I said. For a
moment he paid no attention to the tiny silver, but, seeing he
would get no more, picked it up and gave it to his mahout, and
even condescended to take the copper. I then gave his proboscis
a rub and put on it another coin. He got down on his knees to
give us a profound good-by. At each of the temples we have
visited in these localities there are several elephants, which per
formed for us and got their rewards. They are more or less
sacred. The view from the " Rock " at sunrise, and for an hour or two
after, was superb. The great plain, with its rice-fields, the forest
of palms, the different rocky points scattered over the plain,
the river stretching like a great serpent of sand, for its bed
was nearly dry, and the city below and around us made a picture
as charming as it was unique.
The ride of 98 miles to Madura was delightful. Although we
started at noon, and the sun was blazing hot, the motion of the
train gave us a pleasant breeze. We had several green cocoa-nuts,
freshly plucked in the cool morning, and partly cut so that we
could open them with our pen-knives. The water (not yet milk)
is a delicious drink, and has been freely taken by us ever since we
reached Siam. The scenery was of paddy fields, green and vari-
gated ; dense thickets and jungles of cactus and prickly pear,
purple in bud and golden in flower ; small trees and bushes covered
with a mass of vines, deliciously green, and many glorious in bloom ;
about the hamlets and wells were great bushes and clumps of
oleander, of several tints, purple, pink, and delicate rose mottled
with white, and all a mass of the loveliest of flowers ; great
artificial tanks as large as lakes, where the water of the rainy
season, now past a couple of months, is stored for the dry season
coming; a fine range of mountains in front of us, lifting from
2,000 feet nearest us to 5,000 or more feet over, and beyond piled
in artistic confusion of range and peak, and all covered with
forests, not dense, but sufficiently so to make, what is so rare in
India at this season, verdure-covered mountain heights, slopes and
gorges. We entered this range by a handsome valley on a con
siderable grade. Mountains were on* each side clothed in forest,
the umbrella-tree predominating, with a crown of branches shaped
like a flat-spreading parasol. All was so green, and the fields were
so thrifty, that one could almost imagine himself in Japan, were it
not for the large troop of goats and sheep, the latter of a brown
color, almost red.
I have noticed that the sheep, and even some of the birds, take
to some extent the hue of the soil or rocks over which they range.
In the Deccan, where the volcanic tufa and trap rocks covering
the plains are black, the sheep are black, and the kites are gray,
like the crags in which they nest. Here the soil is red and the
granite hills reddish ; the sheep and the kites are of a reddish-

266 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
brown. We saw from the rail a remarkable sunset effect. To the
westward was a very broken range of mountains, rising in cones
and peaks piled in confused heaps. The atmosphere seemed
charged with a sort of mist, the rays of the sun hghtening it up
into a luminous medium. The light .seemed to come from below
and out of this, instead of from above. The mountains appeared
to be floating in a fluid all glowing with light. Here and there a
high peak cast a shadow, making great lines of sunlight, so dis
tinct and marked, that they seemed tranparent masses of gold-
tinted crystal stretching through the air. Immediately under the
declining sun the mountain masses were so bright and glowing
that we seemed to be looking upon the interior of a furnace.
The whole effect, I think, arose from the mountain atmosphere
being filled with dust — a sort of dust-mist. It lasted for a quarter of
an hour, and was so beautiful thatit brought to me a feeling almost
of pain, perhaps akin to the sensations of a refined blind person
when listening to delicious music. We spent an entire day at
Madura, in its fine temple and driving among the cocoa-nut and
the palm groves about it, and along roads bordered with gro
tesque old banyans.
The roads in southern, as in every part of India, are superb
(England has built such vast lines of splendid roads out here that
one of us could not resist the temptation of calling her the
"Colossus of Roads"), and are always shaded by fine trees; in
the south with palms, tamarinds, banyans, or mangoes, all of good
size and with lustrous foliage. In the south the railroads are
fenced in with hedges of aloes (century plants), noble plants from
four to eight feet high, and now with great flower-spikes 15 to 30
feet tall and as large at the base as a man's thigh. This plant is
used in Bengal for hedges as well as here, but there they do not
grow as large or as beautifully regular as in this quarter. The
fibre of the tall flower-stalk is being largely used in the manufac
ture of cordage, not only for domestic purposes but also for ships.
It is far more pliant and flexible than that made from hemp, or of
what we call sea-grass. For lines on a ship it can be handled
when new, while the other is stiff until after being used for some
time. Large quantities of this fibre is shipped to Tuticorin. I
think it is a rather newly discovered industry.
The run from Madura here, above 100 miles, did not afford as
green and fine scenery as that immediately beyond, but was not
wanting in these- conditions. Lofty mountains were always in
sight to the west. A large area is planted in millet or doura of
the small variety, about as high as wheat, and with heads but
little larger. I cannot give a better idea of the cheapness of labor
here than by stating that this grain is to a large extent harvested
by cutting off the heads by hand, leaving the straw to be after
ward cut for fodder, or to be fed down on the ground. There are
vast numbers of cattle, goats, and many sheep, which are fed

NATIVE WOMEN AND DRESS. 267
almost entirely on this straw, stacks and ricks being seen in every
direction. There is also in this section a great breadth of country
planted in cotton, here tall, vigorous plants, and beautifully green,
flecked with white bolls.
Thousands of cotton-pickers were in the fields, the women,
with their bright scarlet skirts and scarfs, making the green fields
look as if ornamented with huge red flowers. The dress of the
women is a cloth wrapped around the waist and faUing nearly to
the ankles, and then a scarf thrown over the left shoulder and
caught below the waist under the right arm, leaving the right
shoulder, arm, and part of the back free and uncovered. When
at work the skirt is caught up between the legs and fastened at
the waist, making a sort of loose, flowing hippen. The laboring
men and boys are nearly nude, with a short cloth around their
hips, and often with only a small clout not much larger than a
fig-leaf, a fig-leaf, too, of very dwarfed size. We have become so
accustomed to nearly naked people that we have grown to almost
admire it, and to consider the least dress the best dress. I have
grown quite used to that sort of thing, and quote Thomson con
amore : " Oh, fair undress, best dress ! It checks no vein,
But every flowing limb in pleasure drowns.
And heightens ease with grace.
Frequently as we passed near a lot of cotton-pickers the
younger ones would salute the passing cars. I noticed that my
two boys invariably took the salutations of the girls as being
made expressly for themselves. An oldish man relearns much
forgotten human nature by travelling with boys.
I must not forget to tell how water is generally drawn from
wells and deep tanks for irrigation in southern India. It is done
with the use of the old-fashioned sweep, identified among us with
" the old oaken bucket " of the song. Instead of liftingthe bucket
with the hand, aided by the sweep, one, two, and often four and
five men walk the lofty sweep out towards the large end, when
the huge skin bucket is filled, and by their weight lifting it from
the well or tank ; the walkers above 'pace towards the centre or
pivot until the bucket again descends into the well, much the
same as the " trick horse " plaj's "see-saw" or "teeter" in the
circus. The pole being small and very steep, when the bucket is
lifted causes the men above to look like shining, naked, black,
tight-rope walkers. The natives are very dark, and many of them
quite as black as negroes, but with symmetrical forms, delicate,
finely-chiseled features, beautiful feet and hands, ivory teeth,
unless stained, as is generally the case, with beetel-nut ; soft,
pretty eyes, and glossy black, silken hair. Many of the men and
boys are very handsome. The young women and girls are nearly
all pretty, and many really beautiful. My boys were constantly

268 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
calling out : " Look ! there 's a beauty ! " The men, when
dressed, generally wear white garments; the women nearly
always gay and bright colors.
The universal habit of carrying heavy loads on their head and
wearing the arms bare, untramelled, and swinging, gives the
women beautiful, free gaits. When will our women cease the
wretched habit of carrying the arms folded like the wings of a
trussed turkey? It is one of the abominations following the ugly,
ungainly, and health-destroying French fashions and costumes.
No woman wearing such costume can possibly have an artistically
easy motion. The vaunted swan-like swimming motion of some
of the queens of society is pretty simply because conventionalism
has made it so. It is not the motion given our grandmother
Eve when her Creator sent her tripping over Eden's hillsides and
leaping babbling brooks to gather rose leaves and sweet violets to
make soft her bridal bed. Her arms swung free, no stays bound
her willowy form, no high-heeled French boots made corns on her
rosy little toes ; " grace was in all her steps, heaven in her eye."
She did not swim, but bounded so lightly that the dew-drops
were hardly brushed away by her feet.
I commenced this at Tuticorin, whence we sailed last night. I
end it near noon as we approach Colombo, having finished India
proper which we entered the 2nd of January, two months ago
to-day.

oo

CHAPTER XXVI.
CEYLON— THE COCOA PALM THE PEOPLE'S FRIEND— TEA, COFFEE,
AND CINCHONAS— CHARMING MOUNTAIN RETREAT— ENGLISH
RULE IN INDIA— STRICTURES ON THE ENGLISHMAN'S MAN
NERS.
Colombo, March 13, 1888.
Ceylon is generally visited by tourists before they enter India,
and on their way thither. It gives them their first view of rich
tropical verdure, and following either Egypt or China wears by
comparison a most gorgeous mantle. It was from the writings of
such that we had built our expectations. While I can hardly say
we are disappointed, we are not carried off our feet as others seem
to have been. I think our course the preferable. We left the
best for the last, and up to it we were constantly growing. We
had not the wonderful -wealth of green of the Cinnamon Islands
constantly on memory's chart to make other places, by compari
son, seem sterile. We were not overwhelmed by its glories, yet
have those glories to linger with us as the last mise en scene of
our Oriental travels.
The island has an area of 24,000 miles, and is pear-shaped. Its
northern or stem end, bending toward India, is almost connected
thereto by a chain of rocky land called " Adam's Bridge."
Through the length of the island stretches a range of mountains,
apparently a prolongation of the granite and syenite ranges which
come down on either shore of the great peninsula. In Ceylon the
chain so widens out in the bulge of the pear as to form a great
mass of irregular piles thrown together in wild confusion, and
reaching its highest altitude of 8,200 feet in very nearly the centre
of this bulge, or from 60 to 70 miles from the sea, east, south, and
west ; along the whole coast stretches a low plain, varying from
two or three to ten or fifteen miles in width. This low land about
the northern neck of the island is largely planted in Palmyra
palms. For 120 miles along the western and southwestern shore
it is a fringe from one to seven miles deep of cocoa-nut trees.
These two kinds of trees support the bulk of the native popula
tion. They furnish the material from which they build and roof
their huts. The sap gives them their sugar and their intoxicants.
The green nut is their milk, and the ripe nut much of their solid
food. From the bark and leaves they make sheds, fans, and
matting; from the fibre, sails, cordage, fishing nets, etc. The
269

270 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
young leaves are their salads. The ripe fruit gives them oil for
their lamps, for their hair, and for cooking purposes. They wear
for clothing the net woven by nature about the footstalks of the
leaves ; plait hats and sunshades and baskets from the fronds,
and drink from the cup ; sail in boats constructed of the hard, old
wood, and when sick make medicine from the flowers. The uses
of the palm are said to run into several hundred, and are the
theme of native poems.
The interest, however, to me in these trees was not so much in
what or how many forms they are helpers of man, as in the long
aisles, with the thousand slender columns, the deep shade, and
the cool retreats they afforded from the burning rays of the
tropical sun. There is a wonderful charm in looking down the
long vistas of stately palms, through whose widespreading fronds
the sun can scarcely penetrate, and see hut after hut scattered
about in artistic confusion, with women sitting about the doors
spinning or plaiting, children romping, cocks crowing and
strutting, and squirrels chasing each other. It is so tropical, so
calm and home-Hke, and yet so strange and weird.
The mountain scenery of Ceylon is very beautiful. The peaks
are broken and jagged ; the slopes and gorges green and wooded.
The valleys are very tortuous, forcing the roads to mount the
heights by many windings and curves, through tunnels and over
frightful precipices. The entire island is covered with a network
of gravelled roads, laid out with great skill and built with care.
The entire length of the island is only 267 miles, by 140 in its great
est breadth. Yet there are something like 2,000 miles of well-
engineered roads, about 1,500 miles being metalled or graded.
These roads permeate every part of the island, and have brought
each and every part within easy access of every other. There are
two main railroads finished. One of 128 miles takes one from
Colombo, where the coolest nights rarely carrry the ther
mometer below 72 degrees, up to Nuwara Eliya, where, from
December to the middle of March, there is frost during clear
nights. This is a beautiful ride through scenery rarely surpassed
on any railroad. Now up steep grades, overlooking valleys
terraced for rice and lying i,ooo or more feet almost under you;
then under frowning peaks lifting their rocky crags 1,000, 2,000,
and 3,000 feet almost vertically over your head ; now along the
steep sides of a mountain, bending in and out of its gorges, and
darting through tunnels, with tea or coffee plantations making
the steep slopes far below you or opposite on the other side of
the valley, shine in brilliant, glos.sy green. It is a sad sight, how
ever, now and then, to see noble coffee estates of hundreds of
acres entirely abandoned because of the blight which threatened
a few years ago to drive this culture from the island, and nearly
ruined the planters. The coffee is a beautiful plant, growing
three to five feet high— the first when pruned so as to spread

COFFEE, TEA, AND CINCHONAS. 271
out like an umbrella, the latter when the suckers are permitted
to lift up. There were formerly nearly 200,000 acres in coffee,
but now about 100,000, and much of this is being rapidly replaced
by tea, which has been planted between the rows. These are cut
away when the tea plant, at two or three years old, is fit for
plucking. I conversed with very intelligent planters, who believed the
day for coffee-culture was not past, and that proper manuring
would enable the plant to outgrow the effects of the parasite, and
would still make the product sufficiently remunerative to repay
the extra care. There are in the island 150,000 acres in tea.
Most of this is yet young, and the plants do not make the pretty
fields which one sees so green and shapely in Japan. Here tea is
plucked continuously. In China and Japan only twice a year.
The Japs grow and gather their own crops, and care little for
return of interest on investments, — each having only a small
patch cultivated in conjunction with other crops. Here the
culture is entirely in the hands of Europeans, who have estates of
200 and up to 1,000 acres. These planters grow nothing for home
consumption. They buy every thing they eat or consume. Their
crops are tea and coffee and cinchonas — one, or perhaps all. If
the crop proves in any year a failure, then ruin or mortgage is the
lot of the planter. The coffee blights threatened absolute ruin.
But there was shown much pluck, and many of the estates were
rapidly turned to tea, and now there seems to be a general feeling
of hope for the future. There are 35,000 acres in cinchonas, 13,000
in cocoa (coco), and 35,000 in cinnamon. The latter is grown on
the plains or hot-lands, and is mostly in the hands of well-to-do
natives and Urasians. Cocoa takes a middle altitude. Coffee and
tea the more upper lands.
The hot months of Ceylon are February, March, and April.
These, too, are the dry months. Every one who can rushes to
the hills, where the nights, at least, are cool. On the tea estates
the rise and fall of the thermometer during the 24 hours of these
months is very great and very trying to those who are compelled
to expose themselves. At mid-day in the shade the temperature
rises to between 85 and 98 degrees, while it sinks at night to be
tween 32 and 40 degrees. The remaining nine months it does not
vary more than 10 or 15 degrees, or from 60 to 85. During these
nine months the heat at Colombo and on the coast is greater than
during the winter months, but considered more healthy. For in
the winter the breezes come from over the low lands back, and is
laden with fever, while from May to December the southwest
monsoon brings sea-air, healthy, and if not always cool in itself, yet
cooling. The charming railroad of 74 miles carries the traveller to Kandy,
the ancient Singalese capital. This is a picturesque place, with
some beautiful views, a residence of the governor, and a Buddhist

272 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
temple, where, in a wonderfully rich shrine, one of Gautama's
teeth is kept. This is one of the treasures of the " light of Asia,"
for which, it is said, the King of Siam offered a million not long
since, but in vain. The priests having it in their care are said to
be among the most intelligent and learned of the eastern craft,
and possess Buddhistic lore of great antiquity and value. One of
the attendants informed me with much pride that Edwin Arnold
worshipped at this shrine when last in Ceylon. I cannot say that
Edwin is a Buddhist, but his writings show him quite deeply im
bued with reverence for Siddartha (Gautama). One cannot talk
with the intelligent people at this temple without being impressed
with the fact that their creed rests with them upon enlightened
faith, and not upon blind superstition. The priests, too, wear an
expression of calm dignity utterly at variance with bigotry or
fanaticism. Near Kandy are the celebrated Paredeniya botanical gardens,
founded by the late king of Ceylon, but supported since i8i5,when
England determined she wanted all of the island, by the govern
ment. Here we found much that was interesting, but were, on
the whole, disappointed. We had read at such length of the gar
dens that we possibly expected too much. There is not so great a
variety of tropical plants as are seen at Singapore. They are
older, and make a finer show, but that is all. The fine old ficus
elasticae or india-rubber trees were very large and curious. They
are of the same family as the banyan, and send down aerial roots,
only more sparingly. Their surface roots are marvels, stretching
on the top of the ground to the same distance as the wide-
spreading branches above, and twisting and contorting hke thin
flukes of iron, six, eight, and on to twenty inches high. They look
like huge, thin reptiles, and cause the natives to name the tree the
" Snake tree." Many at home have seen the rubber tree in our
green-houses, with great leaves many inches long. They will be,
as I was, surprised to learn that as the tree grows older the leaves
contract until on the old ones they are not much larger than the
leaf of our cotton-wood or the balm of Gilead. Not only this, but
very many other, if not the majority of tropical trees, have very
much larger leaves when young than when old. The youngshoots
of teak and banyans have foliage nearly a foot long, while the full-
grown trees have leaves not more than three inches in length. I
called the attention of the intelligent Scotch superintendent to
this, and had from him the information I give above. The nut
meg, clove, and allspice, and many varieties of palms in this
garden, are very interesting. We saw a beautiful specimen of the
talipot palm in full bloom. This noble tree blooms but once, and
then dies, — blooms at from 40 to 60 years old, throwing out huge
feathers or plumes of flowers, six to eight feet in length, and
probably 18 inches in diameter. This one tree had 27 of
these huge plumes drooping like ostrich feathers. Well it may

INDIA-RUBBER TREES, PAREDENIYA GARDEN, CEYLON.

PAREDENIYA GARDEN. 273
die. Like the century plant, its one effort is worthy a long life,
and the glory of the performance is deserving the wonderful dec
oration which is spread over its death-scene. This, however, has
a privilege the aloe has not. The latter blooms, and its flower
dies, leaving an ashy dead stalk before the plant below dies. The
talipot blooms, and while its huge flowers are waving on its lofty
crest, the largest flower in the world, the fronds below droop and
die, and then the flower fades and turns to ripened seed on the
lofty stem, which to all appearances is dead and already dry. The
flower outlives its supporting tree.
One of the most interesting books on Ceylon I had read before
leaving home, was the little monograph of Prof. Haeckel. He
spoke of the giant bamboos of Paredeniya, as being two feet in
diameter. I looked in vain for them, but found none larger than
nine inches. Being unwilling to think that a German savant could
have made such a mistake, I asked for the monsters, and was in
formed by the superintendent that probably the largest bamboo
in Ceylon would not exceed ten inches. Detecting the worthy
scientist in this mistake made me feel less fearful of gainsaying
his assertion that Kandy is a stiff and ugly place. To me it has
several splendid views. By the way, he made us commit a most
ridiculous blunder. He speaks of the land-leeches of Ceylon as
being such disagreeable pests that we followed his advice and
brought from home, greatly to our inconvenience, huge, high rub
ber boots, coming up to the thigh. Willie long ago got tired of
his, and sold them to the captain of our ship in Siam. I held on
to mine, and have just as much need of them as of a pair of spurs
aboard ship. By a most singular coincidence, a few days after
we had searched these gardens for this huge bamboo, we read in
the daily paper of Colombo, a letter from a resident also taking
exceptions to the professor's grass story. Travellers tell huge
stories, the very exaggeration in them preventing belief, but
nearly all seize upon isolated facts, and so describe them that in
nocent readers think them rules, instead of exceptions. There
are land-leeches in Ceylon, and India, too, which are frequently
disagreeable, but they are not so prevalent that one should take
disagreeable precaution to avoid them. Haeckel, being out in
dews and rains, seeking specimens, suffered. The ordinary
traveller need not suffer much. Before we went to the north of
India I had an irritation about the ankles, which tempted a large
amount of scratching. It passed off during our three weeks in a
cool latitude, but returned again in the south, and still annoys me
somewhat — the result, I suppose, of some parasitic bite. It could
be removed at once by slight applications of carbolic. It is quite
amusing to read the guide-books, with their long lists of necessary
articles for travel. Many incumber themselves with these things.
One of the great annoyances in travelling is a large amount of
luggage. We brought much more than we have needed. From

274 ^ RACE WITH THE SUN.
the time one reaches Japan, travelling with the sun, every article
a traveller can need is to be had, and far cheaper than anywhere
in America ; clothing at less than half price.
We found Nuwara Eliya a charming place in which to rest. It
is in a pretty valley, nestled among high mountains, and has an
altitude of 6,200 feet. Mount Pedro lifts 2,ooo feet higher,
reached from Nuwara by a two hours' walk. From its summit,
about sun-rise, the view is superb. The whole of Ceylon may be
said to be mapped out around in most picturesque peaks and
deep valleys. Each country has a different cloud effect from
every other. In Ceylon it is varied and very beautiful, and
admirably seen from Mount Pedro. We started from our hotel
with the first streak of day, and while enjoying the wonderful
panorama about us on the summit, took our breakfast, which had
been sent to us. Full of our joys, we leisurely descended, gather
ing rare mosses and catching exquisite bits of views from openings
in the mountain forest, when a gleam of lightning told us a storm
was brewing. We were too late to escape, for it came upon us
very rapidly and in a very deluge. The trunk of a tree and an
umbrella partially screened us. Our mountain path soon became
the bed of a torrent, threatening to carry us down. The storm,
however, passed almost as rapidly as it had arisen, leaving us
thoroughly drenched, but hardly regretting it. It was one more
sensation and a new experience.
This place is a resort during the hot weather, from January to
May, and has a gubernatorial cottage. It abounds with beautiful
drives and walks, and has near by a botanical garden for trees
and plants fitted for high altitudes. It would seem that the old
boast of the Singalese, that their island was the original paradise
of man in his purer estate, was not without some foundation. Its
delicious clime certainly fitted it for man when he spUTT,'- not
and did not toil ; clothing was unnecessary ; its valleys abounded
in fruits, and its mountain forests were mighty parterres of blos
soms and flowers. For the white man it is too hot, and must
cause rapid deterioration, but for the dark-skinned, it furnishes a
congenial and beautiful home. It is as beautiful as Japan, and its
people are light and graceful, but have not the wonderful
versatility and cheerfulness which .makes the Japanese people so
charming. Ceylon has several distinct races living upon it. Long before
history began to be written, it had prosperous peoples, and con
tinued so for ages. It has old cities, deserted centuries ago, and
great tanks for gathering and holding water for irrigation pur
poses, which show that portions of the island, now wild in waste,
were once teeming with population. The ruins and the tanks are
all that is left as a record of the people who built them. Even
the descendants of these people have dwindled down to a little
over 2,000, and are wild, almost animal savages, shunning civil-

THE NATIVES. CATAMARANS. 275
ized men. The Singalese, who have Persian and Arab blood in
them, are rather fair, delicate in form and organization ; are ex
pert manipulators in jewelry, and other delicate work — all Bud
dhists, and number less than 2,000,000. They were, many gen
erations ago, overrun by Tamils — vigorous, hardy, nearly black
men from southern India — who, to-day, number about two thirds
of a million, and are the hard workers, and Hindoo in religion.
The mixed bloods — called Eurasians, or Burghers — are the de
scendants of the Portuguese, who held the island for nearly a cen
tury and a half ; and of the Dutch, who controlled it for a century
and a third, and number less than 20,000. These, with many
Singalese, are Catholics. Other people swell the population to
2,700,000, and are governed by less than 5,000 Europeans. These
latter are planters and officials. Eurasians and full natives have
cinnamon gardens.
By the way, this plant, when cultivated, is kept down to a small
shrub, not over eight feet high. In the forest it grows to a pretty
tree, as large as the pear. A cinnamon garden is pretty, the
foliage being very glossy, and of light, cheerful green. The bark
on the green stems, while spicy, has not the pungency of the
cured article. The sun, in curing, seems to bring this out. I will
here state that the growing tea-leaf has no more flavor than an
ordinary tasteless weed, and gives no promise to the uninitiated
of that wonderful quality which makes it the .sweetest friend and
kindest solace of so many countless millions of human beings. It
has its wonderful properties brought out by sun or fire-heat. A
few of the fine brands in China are sun-cured, but do not reach
the general markets, being confined to the larders of the very
rich Celestial connoisseurs. Cinnamon and rice-cultivation is
confined to the low, hot lands of this island, and is in the hands,
generally, of the old population. They and the Tamils are the
fishermen. The native boat is a queer thing. A log of wood from 10 to
20 feet long, turned upward at each end, is dug out into a shallow
trough, rarely over a foot wide. On top of this thea<?c/i is
carried with boards to a length twice as great as the solid keel
below, and, say, two feet high, and of about the same width.
From this craft springs two bent poles to a light log of wood, six
to ten feet off. This out-rigger makes the queer Singalese cata
maran, one of the safest small boats which run out into the sea.
The native sits with one foot in, and one outside, of the narrow
trough, and rows or sails far out on the deep, and can brave a
storm the ordinary long boat could not survive. They are rowed
rapidly and sail 8 to 12 knots an hour. Two small platforms,
say four feet square, are built on top. On these the boat
man carries his freight and the fisherman his nets. I am told
fishermen frequently go forty miles to sea. All along the coast
the natives are semi-amphibious. A number of half-grown boys

276 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
surround steamers, coming and going on queer little rafts built of
three buoyant sticks lo to 12 feet long and lashed together.
Upon this the half-naked fellows sit on their legs and paddle
very rapidly. So expert are they at diving that a silver coin
thrown 30 to 50 feet off, never reaches the bottom before it is
caught. Passengers get several of these boats around in a semi
circle off from the steamer, then drop a small coin close to the
ship. The boys spring toward it and swim up to the point, then
go headlong below, squirming like frogs after the shining metal.
They will even get a copper, but not very far off. They like the
whiteness of the purer metal. These boys are all quite dark, but
the bottoms of their feet are almost white. Why?
The Singalese are a comely looking race, with features quite
effeminate in their delicacy. This appearance is further increased
by their long hair, tied in a knot at the back of the head and held
smooth by a light tortoise-shell comb, such as young girls at home
wore when I was young. The dress is the universal band of
cloth, here left to fall like a skirt ; a jacket is worn in the cities^
in the country and villages only cotton cloth is thrown over the
shoulders. The women about cities have, to a great extent,
adopted a semi-European costume. At least, those I saw had.
The Tamil population dress as the southern Indian does. The
tea and coffee estates are worked and the heavy labor about cities
is done by coolies, brought annually from the coast of southern
India, from Malabar to Madras. That region furnishes coolie
labor west of Singapore, as China does east thereof. They are a
hardy, hard-working people, but not so steady and plodding as
the Chinese. Who is ? In the jinrickisha, however, he pulls and
runs nearly as well as the Jap. This pretty little carriage is much
used on the fine roads of Ceylon.
This leads me to speak of another mode of conveyance here
and in India — the bullock cart. The Indian bullocks all have the
hump, but in other respects they vary in form and appearances as
much as do the different breeds of our cattle — in some localities,
very tall and long horned. I have seen a yoke over 16 hands
high, and have seen horns over three feet in length. These horns,
in whole districts, point up and toward each other. In other
localities they spread and often bend downward. In Burmah the
ox is fair-sized, but his horns are very short. In Ceylon he is
very small, compactly built, and has little nubs for horns, and is
very pretty and very quick in motion. At Kalutara, near the
south end of the island, three of us rode in a little cart drawn by
a bullock 41 inches high, and not much longer from his horns to
the root of his tail. The brave little fellow trotted at a gait of
six miles per hour. When, after a steady pull he felt tired, he
would give a quick back motion, as much as to say, hold on. He
is an admirable beast for villages. He requires no harness. His
little yoke is fastened to the ends of the shafts ; drop it over his

BULLOCK CARTS. FRUITS. 277
neck, and tie a cord to keep him from throwing it off, and he is
ready. But the Englishman rarely deigns to use him. What a
queer compound John Bull is. He loves liberty and yet is a slave
to public opinion. He hates and abuses Hindoo caste, and yet
is a worshipper of his own caste. He must bein good form, or
his caste is lost. I said to a party : " Why do you not use the
pretty bullock cart? " " Oh, we can't do that. The natives use
it. We walk if we can't get a pony. It would not do." I could
not help saying: "Oh, you miserable humbug! You bully the
natives and wretched public opinion bullies you."
We have had both mangoes and mangostines here, but in
rather limited quantities. I was afraid we would see no more of
them, but at Kalutara we sat down to as many as we could get
away with. They were costly, but we wished and got a fill.
And what a fill ! If the Christians will get rid of the honey in
their idea of heaven and substitute mangostines it would be much
more inviting. The pine-apples, too, are splendid. We have had
bread-fruit cooked — fried like potatoes and boiled. I like the
latter very much — not unlike boiled chestnuts. It and the jack-
fruit are similar in appearance, only the former is as large as a
large watermelon ; the other, the size of two small cocoa-nuts put
end to end.
We have now finished that vast country, or these vast countries,
which we in America consider India, including India proper, the
Straits Settlements, Burmah and Ceylon ; these, taken together,
forming a mighty link in that cordon of England's dependencies
which stretch around the world, and upon which the sun never
sets. While making our three and a quarter months' journeyings in
these lands, I have not only observed the physical formation and
characteristics of the country and the manners and customs of the
people of the various sections run over, and their ethnological
habits and peculiarities, but I endeavored to study calmly and
dispassionately the relations existing between the conquering
masters from England and the conquered natives. I went to
these countries with every possible prejudice aroused in favor of
the dominant race and their manner of dealing with the subdued
people. I had read the books of several travellers from our own
land, who gave glowing accounts of what the Englishmen had
done for the vast El Dorado of all times. But now, after quitting,
I am forced to say that there is much in the relations existing
between the whites and the dark-skinned which is not satisfactory.
I am not prepared to say much which would be instructive, or
perhaps new, to the student and scholarly Oriental observer ; yet
I may, perhaps, be able to say something interesting to many who
have not the time nor the opportunity to give a close application
to the great questions involved in the march of conquest by
England over a great part of the mighty continent of Asia.

278 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
While I have seen much in India, and, indeed, throughout the
East, of the effects of English ascendency which pained me, yet
from a deep-seated love for Anglo-Saxon ideas of civil liberty, I
am convinced that in Anglo-Saxon or Teutonic lovers of freedom
will be found the true and real bulwark of liberty throughout
the world. The Anglo-Saxon has had opportunities for develop
ing on the sea-girt isle, the only genuine civil liberty which has
ever existed ; but there is in the strong, manly fibre, and true,
warm heart of the Teuton, the germ of the same love of freedom
and the courage to maintain it, which has borne such glorious
fruitage among their cousins and congeners among English-
speaking people. The tradition of ages, and the constant
pressure from external forces have, however, repressed that civil
liberty among continental Teutons, which has grown to so
grand proportions on the British island and has spread in America
as a mighty tree. Though there be, perhaps, but little civil
liberty, yet there exists another kind in Germany, which no
imperial mandate nor military heel can crush out — manly, hearty,
whole-souled personal liberty. Denied civil liberty by the force
of circumstances, and the inevitable pressure from without, the
Teuton bravely fights for fatherland, and permits imperial hands
to place the crown upon its own imperial brow, while refusing to
accept it as the gift of the people, but claiming it as a heaven-given
right. The Teuton bravely fights for fatherland and upholds his
kaiser, but says, in tones to which the imperial rulers dare not
turn a deaf ear : " Thus far shalt thou go, and no farther."
" My hand, my life 's my king's alone.
To prop and stay his rightful throne.
My person's liberty is mine own,
And from my heart can ne'er be torn."
Denied civil, he has given perhaps an undue weight to personal,
liberty. If party strife and love of office for gain do not poison
the very roots of liberty in America, the mingling of Anglo-Saxon
ideas with the Teutonic and the bold, dashing spirit of the
Irish, the French, the Slav, and the other people will produce a
homogeneous whole under our flag not yet dreamed of in the
past. The idea, the simple conception, of liberty in its purest and
truest sense is wholly exotic in Asia, and cannot for ages take
growing root. It is to England alone that the East must look for
the planting of the seed and watering the plant ; and if England
be the nation — can she, will she — be permitted to do it? Where
the English language goes there goes English literature. The
A B C's — the primer of this literature — inculcates a love for, and
ideas of, freedom. Its stories and romances ; its poetry and its
oratory ; its laws and its philosophy ; its very songs sung at the
cradle and at the banquet, all inculcate it. Where English rule

TREATMENT OF NATIVES BY ENGLISHMEN. 279
goes there goes material prosperity, or at least the material agencies
for increasing material prosperity. With this goes schools and
education ; schools and education beget a love of reading and the
acquirement of knowledge. The road to preferment in India is
through the English language. The result is, there is a greed
among the Indian boys to study English, and a pride in showing it
off. We never passed a group of school-boys with books in straps
or knapsacks going to or from school that they did not say some
thing to us in our language, and generally ending their fun by
shouting: " Hip ! hip ! hurrah ! "
These boys are learning English for the purpose of getting
lucrative employment ; but they are at the same time learning the
difference between the fat mastiff with the collar-marks on his
neck and the lean wolf who can sniff the free air on the mountain
side. This will prove dangerous unless properly guided. Men
who read English and ponder over the grand thoughts written in
it must become good citizens or dangerous slaves. Such slaves
cannot tamely submit. This fact the ordinary Englishman shuts
his eyes to. He cannot see it in Ireland, where it is written in
huge characters. He cannot see it in India, where the govern
ment is affording every encouragement to material prosperity, and
where the individual Briton delights to treat the native as a slave,
and takes pleasure in speaking of him as a " nigger." I do not
mean that all Englishmen do this, but many do, and they leaven
a mighty lump. There is something to me not only incongruous,
but dangerous in slavery, in form or in name, where English rule
goes. There exists the form, and it will sooner or later tell in
India. Let me give some facts which will illustrate my thoughts. At a
table d'hote in Calcutta one of a party of gentlemen opposite said
to me : " You are a stranger here, I see." " Yes, but how did you
know it ? " " Because," he replied, " you sdcy please to that servant
of your's, and thank him when he serves you. We never do that.
They can't understand it." I laughed and told him we had in
America a tradition that George Washington lifted his hat to a
poor negro because he could not be outdone in politeness by a
slave. He rejoined : " That will do in America, but not in India ;
it would soon ruin the servants. They are a lot of niggers, and have
to be treated as such." I told him these " niggers," as he called
them, were learning something, and were already demanding a
participation in the making of laws, and that the English ought to
try to elevate rather than to repress them into a lot of slaves.
The companions of this gentleman said nothing, but seemed to
approve of what he said. Again : I visited a merchant's office to
inspect shawls, to be shown us by some Hindoo merchants. I
bought a ring chudder, and, finding I had left my wallet in my
room, told the native he could go with me to the hotel for the
pay. The proprietor, an old resident, saw me to the door. I got

28o A RACE WITH THE SUN.
into the carriage, inviting the native to take a seat by my side.
This he was about to do, when my friend imperiously motioned
him to mount with the driver, .saying: "We never let those
fellows ride with us." Now, this Hindoo was a man of elegant
manners, clean, bright, and spoke good English. But it would
not do for him to ride inside with a white man. It would spoil
him and others. He had to be kept in his place.
I saw a man in uniform at Delhi kick a coolie from the car simply
because he had put the officer's package on, instead of under, the
seat. The native took the kick without a murmur. I could
name a dozen such illustrations, and from all over India. I did
not once, except at Lord Dufferin's and at a powerful commis
sioner's, ever hear any thing asked for by an Englishman, or even
ordered, in that tone which softens an order into a request. It
was always an order, and of the most dictatorial kind, an order
rarely used in old slave days in America, except on the cotton
plantations. I was speaking in Ceylon with some resident Eng
lish of the beautiful little bullocks and the pretty carts, and of
the ease with which they could be made ready, and expressed my
surprise that I had not seen them used by the foreign residents.
They all said that it was a pity that the foreigners could not use
them, they were so cheap, convenient, and pretty; but they were
used by the Singalese, and, therefore, it would not do for the gov
erning classes to be seen in them ; and yet the Singalese are a
neat, graceful, cheerful, and very bright people.
I did not while in India see a single instance of a free, friendly
mingling of white and native people, except among the high-born
natives and the rulers at grand entertainments. I saw no native
and Englishman in what might be called a friendly and equal in
tercourse, and from what I could learn from the English residents
themselves, there is no such thing as familiarity between them,
and the majority say it is right ; that the natives are a conquered
people, and should be treated as such.
Others say it is necessary that it be so, because if familiarity be
permitted it would breed a sort of contempt on the part of these
people ; that for countless ages they have been the slaves of their
superiors, and must be treated by all white men as they were
formerly treated by their superiors, their masters; that the whites
should assume and hold the position held in the past by the native
nobility ; that to the native every well-bred Englishman must be
a nobleman ; that to do otherwise would encourage hopes impos
sible of fruition, and thereby encourage mutiny. Others again
say the natives will not permit familiarity; that their religion
teaches that a non-Hindoo is a thing unclean, to be avoided as
much as possible ; to be used, but never to be touched, or allowed
to touch any thing used for food ; that if a foreigner drinks from
a high-caste cup the cup is defiled ; that a native will meet a for
eigner in business, be polite and courteous, but never or rarely

ENGLISH SERVILITY TO CASTE.

2Sr

invites him to his house or meets him in any social manner.
These latter acknowledge that the bullying manner of many Eng
lishmen is very unfortunate, but that it is the natural result of the
nature of the Hindoo and the relations necessarily existing be
tween their conquerors and themselves. A very intelligent editor
said : " I have met many of the most intelligent natives in Bom
bay. We are very friendly, but I believe that while they respect
and fear, they hate us in their hearts."
In no country in the world is more attention paid to caste than
among the English colonies throughout the East ; not religious,
as among the Hindoos, but social caste. No one engaged in re
tail business can enter the clique formed by the Hong, or whole
sale people. Officials enter it, but not the butcher and baker and
candlestick-maker. These latter complain. A foreigner will not,
if he can help it, ride in the same car with natives. I was told we
must always take first-class railway carriages, because in them we
would not meet the nasty Hindoos. If we went in a second-class,
in every respect as comfortable as the first, some native would be
with us. The objection urged was my reason for taking the lower
grade. I thus often met intelligent Indians who gave me an
insight into their characters and much information. But this
silent avoidance of the people is not all. Over some second and
third-class and intermediate cars on every train is written, not
only in English but in Hindoostanee, or other dialect of the
locality, " For Europeans only." One very intelligent man, who
spoke English, somewhat stilted, but with an elegance and purity
I could not equal, said this was an insult to the educated Hindoo.
When the Viceroy made his vice-regal inspection of the various
provinces just before our arrival, the doors of the native houses
in Delhi were ordered to be closed a'.,--; whiie the deputy of the
Empress passed in a sort of state promenade, and the natives were
not allowed in the street, but had to watch the ceremony from be
hind their closed portals and from their windows, and that, too,
while foreigners, none of whom resided on the particular street,
were filling the same with perfect freedom. An educated Hindoo,
speaking to us of this, said it was an-insult which they would not
soon forget. I mentioned these thingsito an intelligent English
man, and said : " The government as such is doing its part mag
nificently for this land ; it builds splendid roads, and is carrying
the rail into every quarter of India ; it builds canals and irrigating
ditches, but the English people, as individuals, are making a fearful
mistake. These people should be taught to be good citizens, and
to discard their old servility. It is no excuse that their old mas
ters treated them as slaves. England boasts no slave can tread
on British soil. These people are nominally free, but you treat
them as slaves, and no slave could be more servile and abject in
manner than are these dusky men. These Indians have the same
blood in them that courses through Caucasian veins. British

282 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
rule, from its constitution, must be a rule of freedom. In violat
ing such rule, you violate the very foundations of your bill of
rights ; a free government must not only have the respect of the
governed, but must have their love. Are you English people
helping your government?" "Ah, you talk like an American
democrat ! This is a conquered people, and must be governed as
a conquered people. They know they prosper under our rule, and
if war should break out between us and Russia, they will fight to
drive the Russian back to his frozen north."
The learned author of " The Light of Asia," with whom we had
an hour's interview, and who, by the way, is one of the most brill
iant talkers I ever met, said my strictures were to some extent
correct, but that no ill effect would come of these things. That
a mere handful, a few thousands at best, would acquire English
and become discontented, but that the vast millions of India were
grateful to England for the material benefits conferred ; that they
would sing and be content, or would plod and not think. That
they would not object to the bullying of Englishmen as long as
they got their little comforts. It may be so, but even that is sad.
Burke, in his attack upon slavery in America, said : " Its worst
feature was, that it taught the slave to love the chain that bound
him." I like the Indians ; I love them in the broad sense. They are
in many respects a charming people. They may be crafty and
deceitful. Their masters now and for countless ages make and
made them so. But they are poetical, polite, and caressing. The
courtesy of the common man is oftentimes almost princely in its
tone. They spring from the same stock with ourselves. I would
like them made happy, not as mere animals, but as men, free and
bold, and made so by the rule of the Anglo-Saxon. I do not want
Russia to go one foot farther south in Asia than she has gone.
But England is not sowing seeds to bear fruits of love in Indian
soil. She sends her people to govern, to fill their pockets, and
then to return home to enjoy their accumulations. No English
man goes to India to make it his home and the home of his chil
dren. They decry amalgamation, and look down upon and speak
of Eurasians, the descendants of mixed marriages, with a species
of contempt. A very bright lady, educated, with the soft charm
ing voice so common among the mixed bloods, speaking of her
husband's position, said he did tolerably well, but could not ad
vance. It was hard for a native-born to get a good place; that
her husband was educated in England, but that the many needy
Englishmen, with influence to back them, got the pick of every
thing. I said I thought civil-service competition governed all
such things. " Yes," she said, " in theory, but not in practice."
I saw and regretted these things when in India, but I supposed
that Russian sway was one of absolute despotism, crushing utterly
the native, and shutting out entirely every ray of liberty. I

ENGLAND GOOD COLONISTS. 283
thought it better that the people of the East should remain
as they were — steeped in ignorance and dark superstition — rather
than to let in a little light, and that of a doubtful character, which
would be more difficult to supplant by a better and purer light.
The English are the best colonists the world has ever known.
They are the worst amalgamationists or miscegenists. Theirs is
a strong fibre, which cannot yield a particle in mingling with
others ; which attracts and molds into itself all others, when not
met by a too great mass. In which latter case it refuses absorp
tion, and dies from mere inanition, from lack of food. It cannot
leaven a lump ; it demands to be and must be the lump. As
colonists the English carry all the good of the mother country, but
drop something of their overweening conservatism ; they catch
from a new land a tint of newness and an idea and love of prog
ress. America and Australia, from what I hear, not only permit,
but force, English ideas to grow and expand as they never could
have done on British soil. The French and Spanish lack fibre, and
soon become absorbed in the mass which surrounds them in their
colonies. But England does not colonize India. Its people go
not to stay, but to sojourn, to govern and to absorb the wealth of
the land for after-life in England ; they .squeeze to the uttermost
limit possible, restrained only when they find danger of lessening
the vitality of the squeezed so that it will yield nothing to their
children. They recognize the vast value of India to the home
race. They know that 120,000 to 200,000 Englishmen a year
must live on Indian pabulum, and must, sooner or later, take
home fat to keep bright the fireside of vast numbers. They
recognize the fact that India really supports the English army ;
that on its fields must be fed and drilled the soldiery to battle for
the supremacy of the sea-girt isle, against whose chalk cliffs the
jealousy of all Europe is ever beating in mighty and angry waves.
They give to India every means of increasing material wealth, be
cause they and their children will take tithes of that wealth.
They feed the sacred Hindoo cow because they know that they
take and must have the cream of her milk. But they will not mix
with the people ; they are unwilling to mingle their blood with
theirs, and when the blood does become mixed, they despise the
amalgam. They say a child of pure English blood cannot grow
to strong manhood in India. Therefore, while they remain to
battle for money on its soil, they send their children home to be
educated and to grow up with English prejudices and wrapped in
English conservatism. Thus the English will not — they say can
not — go to India to stay; will not — they say they cannot —
anglicize the Hindoo. They say the Hindoos differ too widely
from them ; that their religion necessarily keeps up this wide dif
ference ; that they cannot and will not become English ; and that
when there be an amalgamation, then the Eurasians lack stamina
and are not fit for a governing class. Yet I saw one of the hugest

284 ^ RACE WITH THE SUN.
ships commanded by a half-blood brought up in England, and
with very influential relatives at home, and on a river steamer a
stalwart Eurasian mate whose fist could strike a sledge-hammer
blow. The English cannot see these things.
The Indians in most parts of British India are a servile set.
They never address an employer as " mister," but always as
" master." There was something painful to me in this abject
servility, and I found a real relief in Jeypore and Hyderabad,
both governed by native princes, where the natives looked me
squarely in the face and seemed to feel they were men. They
were respectful, but it was the respect shown by the em
ployed to the employer, and not the servility of slaves to a
master. There are Eurasians in large numbers about Madras and
in southern India. They have not been taught to feel that they
belong to the governing classes. Their bearing, taught them by
the home Englishmen, is not manly. They have been too much
relegated to the homes and habits of their native mothers.
Yet many of them have much of those characteristics which
make the Creoles of Louisiana so attractive. There is no racial
structure among the Indians to prevent them making a first-class
admixture with the English. Such admixture fs not hybridization.

CHAPTER XXVII.
CITIES BENEATH THE INDIAN OCEAN — THE RED SEA AND ITS
SUGGESTIONS— SINGULAR WEATHER— SUEZ CANAL.
P. and O. Steamship "Rome," Red Sea, March 26, 1888.
We left Colombo the morning of the 15th. Our ship was large
and comfortable, of 5,011 tonnage, 5,000 horse-power, and makes
from 310 to 355 miles a day; sails regularly between Sydney and
London. We reached Aden, 2,093 miles, a little after midnight
on the morning of the 22d, and will make Suez, another 1,308
miles, on Monday morning, the 26th. We have, first and second
class, from 180 to 200 passengers — quite a nice lot of people.
The ladies dress for dinner, and some of the men. It is "good
foim," and there is no crime so great to the Briton as to be out of
" form." Passengers are split into coteries. I have tried to mix
in, but find it a hard job. You talk to a lady — she is sweet and
amiable and seems really glad you speak to her ; but as soon as
you get away she gets terribly alarmed lest she has made a mis
take and talked to the wrong fellow.
We have a few swells : A young peer who is very quiet and
gentlemanly. There is a "yV ne sais quoi " about many of these
men which is somehow or other almost offensive. A wild, brave
fellow, who died fighting during our late war, told me that when
abroad he constantly felt like whaling a live lord. When I asked
if they were not gentlemanly, he replied that " they were, but
that was what was the matter ; they were too  gentlemanly ;
that every gesture seemed to say : ' I am a gentleman, and to the
purple born.' " We have a lady — daughter of an Irish peer.
She is very bright. I repaid her for her politeness to me. On
the 17th I saw there was not a person aboard who had on a piece
of green. I determined there should be one at least to do honor
to St. Patrick. Not being able to raise a piece of green ribbon, I
put in my buttonhole a thin strip of pineapple leaf. A lady sit
ting next me at the table asked me how I could wear the green
on an English ship, and seemed to think me guilty of a great dis
courtesy. I replied the Queen had done the same when she
named one of her sons Patrick. It was a home thrust, but seeing
many people looking at me askant, I pushed it, and soon had' a
lot of young Australians following my example. I was not sure
their Hibernianism was not because it gave them a good excuse
285

286 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
for popping several champagne corks in honor of the green.
After dinner " Lady C." saw my favor, and asked what it meant.
The result was I pinned one on her. She confessed next morn
ing she had slept better for wearing her national color.
The big gun of our company is the governor of Ceylon. He is
here with his suite, consisting of his secretary and a yellow turn
spit dog. The governor is a thoroughly safe man. He will never
set his island afire. Our passage has been a smooth one; it is
delightful to be upon the deck and escape the hot cabin. At
night I have watched the southern hemisphere. It is so rich
with fine stars. I cannot tire of looking at the true cross rising
and chasing the false one in its short semi-circular track far down
south. On the vast waste of the Indian Ocean I could speculate
upon the mighty cities with their world of records of a high civili
zation lying beneath the blue waters ; cities which gave to Egypt,
which never had a childhood, the tradition which afterward
became the mine in which other peoples have delved for the
wisdom which became the nucleus for their modern learning.
Here, between India and Egypt, lies buried beneath the sea
depths, the people who gave to the land of " Brahma " and the
land of " Ra " the clear light, which, after a cataclysm had
changed the face of the world, and buried the fountains of science
and the home of learning, left traditions which were covered up
under a mass of superstition and supernatural phantasms.
Egypt's first day was its brightest. People cannot be great
and learned except after ages of working up. Where did the
Egyptians study? They left not a single footprint showing they
ever struggled upward. Their first appearance was upon a pin
nacle, from which every succeeding period shows them descending.
Not a single day of increasing light, not a moment of dawn.
Where did they come from ? What became of the school in which
they learned the knowledge which afterward became the secrets
of the priestcraft, and enabled Moses to be the mighty lawgiver?
I wonder if others feel as I do when finding themselves in
regions so mixed up with the misty past as the Red Sea. There
has always been a sort of vague idea that there would be some
things utterly different from things before seen. I look out upon
the blue waste of waters spread around me, just rippled by a light
wind, and ask myself, is it possible that there to my left lies
Africa, stretching in mighty hot wastes for thousands of miles, and
there to my right Arabia, the cradle of that strange people who
were never a nation, and yet have overrun so many lands and
have been the foundations of so many nations. I almost feel hurt
with myself that I do not see something to show that this sea is
different from other seas.
We have had warm weather — I may say hot — but as yet
nothing distressing until yesterday. After passing the Straits of
Bab-el-Manded we had a strong wind behind us. For a few hours
it was very hot, sultry, and humid, and felt as close as one expe-

THOUGHTS ON THE RED SEA. 287
riences in a hot room packed with people. I could almost fancy
Pharaoh's hosts were sweating and festering around me. Before
night the wind shifted, and the breeze caused by the motion of
the ship was pleasant. The Red Sea has lost for me all its horrors.
Aden is a striking-looking place — bold, wild, desolate rocks, from
which there will not be very unpleasant change when one takes
his trip into purgatory. A further shifting of the wind more
from the northward made the evening almost cool. Then
another turn, and we had a little attack never experienced else
where. The air became hazy, and before sundown the haze
settled upon the ship like a dew — a salt dew, as salt as light sea
spray. Breathing was almost a labor. The boatswain says he
never saw this thing except on the Red Sea, and there only rarely.
This queer weather did not prevent a ball coming off on Saturday
evening being a success. It was planned before the Rome reached
Colombo, where the passengers got up their toilets. Altogether
it was a creditable thing and prepared the company for the rest
which Sunday, the 25th, made necessary. We have some good
musicians aboard, and nearly a hundred good voices mingled in
praise of God here on the Red Sea. Jew and Christian on this
sea could meet on a common ground, and the Mohammedan sail
ors, who were playing cards under the windows of the reading-
room when the service was held, could too have joined in the
anthem. For Moses founded the law in the mountain whose
hoary head would be visible from where I write if the haze would
but pass away, the law which is the foundation rock of their
creeds. As the anthem swelled and rolled out over the waters, I
could not help asking myself if the Mighty Ruler of all would
utterly discard the " Allah il Allah " of the followers of Islam
uttered on Friday, their holy day, or of the Jews who bent in
solemn reverence on yesterday, their Sabbath, and would only
hearken to those who are worshipping to-day ? God is not only
a great God, but must be a good God. Has He written His laws
in such characters that these people, all of them earnest and sin
cere, could honestly draw from them such different lessons and
be punished for all eternity because of such honest difference of
opinion? Or does not the Mighty One listen to the earnest
appeal of the Jew who prays to Him directly without the aid of
any mediators, and to the honest supplication of the Moham
medan who asks the mediation of his prophet, or the Christian
who rests upon the promises of the Saviour ?
When we reached Suez we found, much to our satisfaction, that
the company had made arrangements thereafter to land their pas
sengers at Ismalia. This gave us an opportunity to pass through
half of the great canal, and thus to acquire an acquaintance with
De Lesseps' great triumph.
Mere reading cannot fully enable a man to comprehend the
vast benefits springing out of the Suez ditch. But when one sees
the mighty ships lying in Chinese and Indian harbors, and meets

288 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
them on the Indian Ocean and on the Red Sea by the dozen, then
the value of this great artery comes home to the understanding.
The Red Sea, only a few years ago, was almost as little known to
the world as the Arctic Ocean, but now its waters are ploughed
daily by ships of all kinds. Steamers of 6,500 tons are now ply
ing between London and Austraha. We entered the mouth of
the canal at three o'clock, and met three large steamers just coming
out, and before reaching Ismalia, less than 50 miles off, seven more.
Our forefathers turned their faces against public improvements
being done by government. Their policy grew out of State
jealousy. Politicians — call them statesmen if you will — feared that
certain States would get more than their share of public works,
and all dreading lest the building such works would tend to cen
tralize power. But times change, and aggregated man called
nations, as well as individual men, change with them. Public
works, for the benefit of the whole nation commercially, are as
much within the constitutional power of our nation as are forti
fications or armed ships for the protection of our seaboard.
The doctrine of strict construction is a good one, and was espe
cially so when statesmen were fighting against monarchical ten
dencies, but it has been the too fruitful source of a vast amount
of humbug and ignorant charlatanism.
Government should have built years ago a canal between Lake
Michigan and the Mississippi, but our solons at Washington
said it was all within a single State, and therefore not national.
That is a national work which benefits the American people and
is kept within the nation's control, whether it be within one State
or within a dozen. A railroad spanning the continent benefits
the whole people, but when it is controlled by a corporation it is
a private affair. The Portland Canal was only three miles long,
and all within one Kentucky county, but it was for the use of
those who used the 12,000 miles of navigable waters of the Mis
sissippi, and was national. The test of nationality should be
whether it benefits the whole people or a few, and not whether
it be located in one State or in many, and whether it be controlled
by a few or by the people.
We generally form our notions of an unseen thing by our
ideas of its importance. We were greatly surprised by the insig
nificant appearance of the Suez Canal. It had the appearance of
a ditch, rather than a mighty artery for the world's trade. Our
great ship almost filled it from side to side, and ploughed the
mud from its bottom with her huge screws, and washed its
banks with her swell. Even the wide sidings, where we had
to await other ships on meeting, were so narrow that the ves
sels almost touched. The prism has greatly changed, and
dredging is constantly necessary. It was a queer sight, the
trains of camels squatted along the bank to be loaded with the
silt taken from the bed, and then climbing the steep bank to
drop their sandy loads on the desert at the side.

CHAPTER XXVIII.
AN APRIL TRIP UP THE NILE— DELIGHTFUL CLIMATE— CAIRO OLD
AND NEW— ARABIC TOMBS— GOOD-FRIDAY— BOOLAK MUSEUM
—MOTHER AND BABE 3,000 YEARS OLD.
Luxor (Thebes), Egypt, April 9, 1888.
ThirtY-SIX years ago, the latter part of March, I sailed from
Naples to Egypt. Friends tried to dissuade me from going so
late in the season. They spoke of the plague and other Egyp
tian dangers, and bade me adieu with moist eyes, and my good
mother, when she learned in our Kentucky home what I had
attempted, prayed to God to preserve her child, even as He had
preserved His chosen children centuries before. I got through
Cairo then without any discomfort. This year I came again, simply
to look once more at old Cheops, and to see the shadows of 40 cen
turies clustering about his hoary brow, and to enable the boys to
get a peep at this storied land. We had no expectation what
ever of ascending the Nile, and learning from travellers whom
we met at Ismalia on landing, that the weather had been intensely
hot for some few days past at Cairo, we feared we would even
have to hurry away from that city. They told us that the fleas,
flies, heat, and mosquitos were simply intolerable ; that every one
was trying to get away. The wind, however, changed that very
day. We were really cold on the cars, at night, and on arriving
at Cairo found the hotels crowded, and Shepherd's hostelry had
the appearance of a gay watering-place.
Knowing I would have to see Karnak and Thebes now or
never, and trusting to my recollections of the khamsene winds,
that a few days of hot blows were apt to be followed by a week
or two, and probably more, of cool breezes, I determined to risk
a trip up the Nile to the First Cataract. Owing to the troubles
in Nubia, tourists have generally stopped at that point throughout
this season. We found that we could take rail to Assiout, and
thence on the Post steamers, two a week, could go to Assouan,
taking four days for the up trip, stopping at the different places
of interest long enough to see them, and remaining at the last
place nearly two days ; then, by quitting the down boat at Luxor,
we would have four full days for the grandest of Egyptian ruins
before the next boat would descend.
We have carried out so far the above programme. We have
had simply delicious weather, hot, it is true, at mid-day in the
289

290 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
sun, but with a steady breeze from the north all the time, and
the nights so cool that we have slept under blankets. We were
told the river was falling so rapidly that we would most probably
have much time to study the formation of sandbars. We have
bumped a dozen times, but have not been at all delayed. We are
now told we were lucky. What is luck ? She is the hand-maiden
of every man at one time or other, and in one form or another.
She is ever by one's side, ready to give help. The blind do not
see her, the timid or irresolute decline to take her outstretched
hand. The unlucky man is the man who neglects to strike when
the iron is hot. The lucky man is the one who takes advantage
of proffered fortune. Circumstances, it is to be confessed, throw
more of such proffers in the way of one than another. But if
one will follow the footprints of the lucky men of the world,
one will find at the points, where these seized fortune at the
flood, tracks of many faltering and hesitating ones near by, any
one of whom had within reach the same opportunities as the
fortunate ones had.
I am writing at " Cook's Luxor Hotel," as good a house as we
could wish. A large rambling building in a fine garden running
down to the river. It is embowered in noble palms and flow
ering trees and shrubs, and would be a charming retreat any
where, but here, contrasted with the hot mud-hovels which make
up an Egyptian village, with the burning sands and sterile moun
tains close by, it is simply delightful. We are the only occupants ;
have the whole house, do what we please, and shall leave it with
regret. Invalids in search of health could spend a month or two
here, not only delightfully, but in this wondrous dry atmosphere
most advantageously in many classes of complaints. I need
state only three facts to show the rapidity of evaporation in
Upper Egypt. Water, too warm to drink, is put into a porous
jar and placed in the wind, though in the sun ; an hour after it
is as cool as fair spring water. At night, exposed to a breeze,
even when the breeze is rather warm, before morning it becomes
almost ice-cold. The night of our arrival here I took a pouring
bath on a balcony. The wind was balmy but fresh. The rapid
evaporation so chilled me that I could not stay long enough for
a good bath. At the foot of the cataract we took a swim in the
Nile. We wore our underclothes for bathing-suits. We hung
them up before our state-rooms, and in ten minutes they were
dry enough to be worn. We have all heard of the habit of all
Africans to anoint themselves with oil, and travellers speak of it
as nasty. It is, however, necessary in very hot and very dry
climates to prevent the cracking of the skin. An English officer
told me that during the hot winds on the upper Nile his hands
and face chapped worse than they ever did in a cold cHmate —
chapped to bleeding badly. I have found fresh white butter
quite as pleasant on my hands as on my toast.

EG YP TIAN FLIES. 291
At Assouan we were in the sun during two days. We did not
use our umbrellas, our pith hats being quite comfortable, and yet
we were just on the edge of the tropics. It has been rather too
chilly to lie down on the top of our little steamer for any consid
erable time at night. We have had no mosquito curtains, and
have needed none, the breeze on the water making them unneces
sary. It takes a hard blow, however, to keep flies away. The
pertinacity of an Egyptian fly is beyond that of any other living
creature. The natives never brush them away. They deem it
bad luck to do so. Flies are never driven from a baby's face, and
it does not seem annoyed by them. Its face is rarely washed, and
is so dirty that it affords admirable forage ground for hundreds of
the little brutes. I watched a child of two and a half years old
enjoying a crust of bread. There was about it a swarm of
flies, and I do not exaggerate when I say dozens were on its
face at one time, and in patches as large as a half dollar about
the eyes and mouth. It would screw up. its eyes when they
threatened to go in. I thought some must have gone into its
mouth with the bread. It did not seem at all annoyed. We
have seen sleeping children on the streets whose faces were al
most black with the insects. They smiled as if angels were
whispering in their ears. I have seen men talking pleasantly to
gether while a dozen flies would be promenading about their
faces apparently unnoticed. I asked a man how he could stand
it. " Mashallah ! They don't bother me," was his reply. This
has made the fly bold, and he seems utterly unable to understand
what a foreigner means when he tries to drive him off. He has,
too, remarkably prehensile claws, and keeps them keen and sharp
when taking constitutional walks over European countenances.
It was probably the knowledge of this quality which made these
people pronounce it bad luck to drive them away. They found
it best to educate the masses to hear the infliction, and so get used
to it.
Nearly all the religious and semi-religious prohibitions and
usages of the peoples of the world probably had their origin in
some material benefit. The cow was hard to rear in India. She
was most necessary — so the wise priesthood made her sacred,
and thus preserved her. Hog's flesh was subject to diseases in
Egypt and Syria, so the hog was made religiously unclean, and be
came infested with devils. Pigeons and certain other birds fur
nish the best of manure, so they were made semi-sacred to insure
them in great numbers. Uncleanliness breeds disease, so the
priestcraft pronounced certain rivers and pools cleansing to the
soul, and thus insured at least a cleansing of the body. Taxes
were always obnoxious to men. Gifts to the gods to insure eter
nal welfare, however, were ever freely given. So priestly rulers
kept their exchequers full through the offerings upon the altars,
which were insured by the fears of unseen and unknowable dangers.

292 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
Moses would have had a hard time making both ends meet with
out the gifts to the Lord. Travellers are shocked by the inces
sant demand for backshish (gifts) throughout the mighty East.
The thing is not to be wondered at, for of all the beggars the
world ever knew, there are none equal to the gods of the Orient.
Their hands are everywhere represented extended. Their favor
was won by offerings ; their anger averted by sacrifices. Like the
proboscis of a celebrated elephant, their hands could pick up a
pin, or carry off a cart-load of good things. They could make a
lunch from a few grains of rice, the widow's mite, or they could
devour a hecatomb of bullocks, the gifts of a prince. The gods
took gifts and demanded them. The great and powerful, profit
ing by their example, took gifts and enforced the giving. The
poor took gifts and begged for them. The well-to-do, in the
whole region of the early sun, reach out the hand for commis
sions. The poor clamor like hungry curs for crumbs and bones,
and are not ashamed of their clamor.
I fear what I have said about Upper Egypt looks too much as
if I was seeing it through rose-colored glasses. When Bayard
Taylor and I travelled in the East together I suffered terribly
from fleas. The only pun I remember him to have made was
anent this little torment. He said Homer wrote the " Iliad,"
Virgil the " yEneid " ; that if ever I wrote an epic it would be the
" Flead." I had hoped that now we were about to escape this
Egyptian plague, but after lunching in one of the tombs of the
kings we lay down for a nap on the sands ; my donkey-boy, de
siring to please the old man, whom he flatters by calling him
" father," spread the blanket and saddle for me to have a nice
siesta. Ah ! moment of sad forgetfulness. I slept an hour, but
the Nemesis came. This particular tomb is now called the
"lunch tomb." Hundreds have lunched in it this season, and
though it is where no living thing is seen, and apparently nothing
can live, yet the sanded floor was full of my mortal enemies,
brought to it by the many donkey-boys who in its shade rest
while their employers are wandering among the mighty caves of
the dead. I have passed a good part of my time since then, as
a hen with one chick does in an empty chicken-yard — scratching.
I am like certain officials not far frorn the old court-house in
Chicago — only more so. They have itching palms. I am all
palm. I itch all over, and am raw in big patches.
This is Sunday, the 15th. I will resume my writing. We are
in Cairo ; got back Thursday night, having been just two weeks
going over the ground, which in olden time was done on a
" dahabeyah " (sailing-boat) in from seven to ten weeks. We have
not had the easy, restful life — a sort of dolce far niente — enjoyed
by the old dahabeyah voyageurs, but we have seen nearly all they
saw, and have seen some things better than they could. We
made 230 miles by rail, passing among the farms, observing the

THE DONKEY AND HIS MASTER. 293
modes of farm life, and have passed through the scene twice.
From the roof of our little steamboat we could look over the high
banks better than from a low sail-boat, and have, therefore, seen
the shore lands better. We have seen the mighty ruins ; have
seen them hastily, it is true, but in these days of Egpytology it
is waste of time for each traveller to attempt to study the ruins in
situ. He can see them, and then read them up intelligently
afterward if his taste lead him to it. We have seen all of these
things ; have seen the valley of the Nile from Cairo to Philae
above the First Cataract, 588 miles, and are still having pleasant
weather ; indeed, to-day it is rather too cool to go out without
one's vest. And now I shall attempt to tell you somewhat of
our trip, beginning at Ismalia, on Lake Timsah, on the Suez
Canal, and thence 80 odd miles to Cairo. We made this by night
and early morning: The moon being full, we saw almost as well
in the clear night as by day. The first 20 miles was almost desert,
but soon the country showed more of life, and at early daybreak
we were looking over fields green in wheat and other crops ; and
beautiful fields they were. The wheat, as in all Lower Egypt, had
a fine stand, the ground well covered, but with heads not over an
inch and a half in length. The farmers were out with the light,
much of the labor being done in the cool of the morning. Men
were lifting water by the "shadoof" — the pole and bucket — and
by the " sakeeyeh." This latter is a vertical wheel, with buckets
attached to a long, endless rope, which goes down into the well,
and is worked by an ox or camel, who turns a horizontal wheel
geared into the vertical wheel. It is here and there seen in Lower
Egypt. Its true home, however, is in the upper land. It is
never greased, and can be heard for a mile wheezing and groaning.
Upon its model, some think, the music of the Egyptians is
founded. In some localities these wheels go day and night, year
in and year out, the men and beasts working by relays, and when
heard from a tied-up boat in the small hours of the night sounds
very melancholy. Men were seen mounted upon donkeys, them
selves or the loads on which they rode nearly covering the patient
little brutes.
There are few roads in this land, and the paths followed in the
fields are frequently the little dikes between fields. On these
narrow treads the donkey was pacing along, his rider's feet
dangling down almost to the ground. Few things strike the
western man as being more droll on his arrival here than a
solemn-looking, turbaned man, in long, flowing garments, mounted
upon a little donkey three feet high. They look solemn alike,
and so dove-tailed together that one soon comes to feel they were
fashioned on the same day, the one for the other. They are
wonderfully intimate, and seem to understand each other per
fectly. The native Egyptians are rather cowardly. They quarrel
and vociferate fearfully, but one never sees a good bloody nose

294 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
growing out of any squabble. But word-fighting does not satisfy
the human heart. Here the donkey comes into full play. He
has a part of his anatomy always convenient for his master to
empty his wrath upon, and when a wordy war ends the solemn
brute takes the cudgel as his part of the fray. Like a boy, he has
a feature made for the rod, and finding his master angry, at once
turns this part to the stroke.
On arriving at Cairo we drove at once to Shepherd's hotel.
I thought it the same I had stayed in thirty-six years ago. I had
this idea from persons telling me it was the only hotel here at
that time. The name, however, did not sound familiar. The
landlord, to whom I mentioned my desire to stay in the same
house, and that his did not look right to me, explained that many
changes had been made. After breakfast we sallied out. There
was around me a beautiful city^ — tall houses and wide streets,
beautiful gardens and squares, flowers and trees, victorias and
landaus. Nothing seemed familiar until we were besieged by a
lot of donkey-boys. I almost fancied I saw the same little animal
which long ago carried me so bravely over the hot sands to the
pyramids ; I went up to him and called him " Saladin," and ca
ressed his ears. He did not smile nor look particularly pleased,
but he did not resent my familiarity. We proposed a ride, and
when I said I would ride " Saladin," his owner said that was not
his name, but " Mary Anderson " was. I insisted that he was
wrong, that I had ridden that donkey before he (the boy) was
born, aye, when his father was a boy. I asked him if his father
was not named " Mohammed." He said : " Oh, effendi, you are
right ! " I asked if his father -was not, when young, a donkey-
boy ; " Inshallah ! he was." I then asked if that particular don
key had not belonged to his father, and if he was not 40 years
old. He admitted he was. I am glad I did not fix the brute's
age at 4,000 years, for that boy would have agreed with any thing
I said. He was fascinated. When I got up he grinned to an
other boy, and, pointing at me, touched his head to indicate I
was daft. I was in the Cairo of old on that donkey's back, but
that was all that made it familiar.
We rode through the bazaars, narrow little streets nearly covered
overhead, with turbaned merchants sitting in their little stores
surrounded by their wealth. We passed a funeral procession — a
couple of dozen women howling their wail for the dead ; we met
a marriage procession, with a closed palanquin on two long poles
borne by two camels, one before and one behind, followed by
gay people singing in joy, and with drums beating like mad. We
stopped to see the two processions meet. The drums of the one
beat and the gay ones laughed and sang, while the mourners of
the others shrieked their sorrow. Both were shams, mere forms.
There was no real joy in the one nor grief in the other. Both
were mere pageants, and the actors were paid for the parts they.

THE PYRAMIDS AND AN OLD MEMORY. 295
played. I do not know that we should be shocked at such things.
I have seen the same in lands claiming a higher civilization. The
performers there, however, were paying a debt to fashion and
form, here they were earning bread.
We rode out toward the tombs of the Mamelukes, passing
through narrow lanes with long rows of nearly dead walls, doors
now and then cutting through them. Men, women, and children
were squatting up against the walls festering in the sun. Flies
were swarming about them, and gathered in knots around the
children's eyes, and all, old and young, held out their hands and
asked for " backshish." This was the Cairo of 1852. But, then,
there was one thing lacking — our little steeds were not compelled
to pick their way among sleeping pariah dogs, and there were no
troops of them about the tombs. The foreigners have done at
least this good by their " occupation." They have had nearly all
of these brutes killed off, and the streets are cleaned by regular
scavengers. There are 30,000 foreigners in Cairo, and it is really
governed by the English. The English dread cholera, and have
made this city, with its 500,000 Asiatics and Africans, nearly as
clean as any European capital.
We drove in the afternoon to the pyramids in a victoria, over
a beautiful road shaded by a double line of fine trees. Old Cheops
did not look natural. He seemed small from this avenue of civi
lization. Years ago I waded to him through deep sands. The
hot sun burned into my brain, and I wore a green veil to protect
my eyes from the glare and the driving sands. Now green fields
run nearly up to Geezah. Said and Ismail Pashas have left
Egypt covered with debt, but they did much to improve the
material of the land. As we drove up, the two pyramids lacked
hugeness, but before I reached the top of Cheops, though with
two stalwart Arabs to lift me up the rocky steeps, I reached the
conclusion that they were mighty mountains of stone, and that
over 210 pounds of solid flesh were a heavy load to carry up to
the summit where 40 odd centuries sit enthroned. I looked in
vain for two sets of initials coupled in brackets, which I cut in
the cold stone 36 years ago. They are lost among masses of
others. It is well. She is fat, and nearly 60 ; I am fat, and over
60. One flame burned out another's burning. She did not even
wait to learn from me if I fulfilled my promise to grave our names
upon the pyramid's highest stone. I wonder if, in these 36 years,
she has ever thought of that promifee made under the softest of
skies, and which one of us thought could never be forgotten ?
What a boon it is to man that his heart is made of malleable
material rather than of adamantine and brittle steel !
By the way, sensible men justly inveigh the habit of
" vanity " in carving its name upon monuments and thereby
defacing them. But there is sense in cutting one's name upon
imperishable rock without defacing it. Some may come after-

296 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
ward, and, seeing it, feel as if meeting an old friend. My heart
was warmed up here in Egypt when seeing the names of some
old acquaintance now dead. I felt we were living over again a
half-forgotten past. I saw " Jenny Lind's " name upon the pyra
mid. Did she have it cut, or did some of her lovers do it ? I do
not know. But for a moment there came from the West, over the
dead desert, a trill of perfected harmony which I never heard but
once, and will never hear again until an angel song shall come to
my ear from white-robed ones hovering around the throne of the
Eternal. I can almost fancy that Bayard Taylor had the name
cut. I have a vague recollection of his telling me of it. He
almost worshipped the Swedish Nightingale.
We watched the sun sink beneath the western sands on his tire
less voyage around the world. We were glad our path did not
carry us across those bleak sands. We have not abandoned our
race, but we have much to see before we can gird our loins for the
home-stretch. My old legs enabled me to descend Cheops' ribbed
sides quite rapidly, so as to look upon the Sphinx as the shades of
evening should gather around it. I wished the boys to see it first
when the broad glare of day should not too much reveal its de
facement. A garrulous fellah said his name was " Mark Twain,"
and that for a shilling he would mount and descend old Cheops in
eight minutes. With watch in hand I promised the shilling.
How he did climb ! How his nimble, half-naked legs did spring
up the huge steps ! He gained his shilling, and had a half minute
to spare.
We loitered about until the full moon came up from the east.
One should see the woman-faced monument first by moonlight.
Then there is one point from which it can be seen, when it is not
all fancy and sentiment which can pronounce it the calmest and
most dignified monument of the world. We were fortunate in
being here during the full moon. There is a quiet grandeur, too,
about the pyramids b}' moonlight which one cannot conceive who
sees them only in the broad glare of sunlight. We walked around
them so as to see them in deep shade, and then again in silvery
light. I think the boys will remember it as long as they live.
The next day we visited the citadel and the gorgeous mosque of
Mehemet Ali. It is the resting-place of a great man. He was
one of the men of the century. The exquisite alabaster walls and
pillars, with the pure grain and forms of the translucent stone fad
ing and dimming into opaque marble, well befit the tomb of a man
whose clear and transparent intellect faded and clouded before he
died. Near by we visited the Arabic cemetery and the tombs of
the khedives. The next day was to be Good-Friday — one of the
Moslem's holiest days. Thousands wended their way to the tombs
to spend the night among their loved dead ; the rich in carriages,
with servants bearing their food and gifts for the destitute, — the
poor on carts, on donkeys, or a-foot, with their loads on their heads.

RAMESSES II., NINETEENTH DYNASTY, KNOWN AS SESOSTRIS.

BOOLAK MUSEUM. A MOTHER AND BABE. 297
An Arabian tomb is a sort of house, more or less luxurious, ac
cording to the family means. There are halls and rooms, or open
courts. Mourners spend the night and part of Good-Friday in
religious exercises, and distribute gifts and food to the poor and
destitute. Many a lean devil gets then the only square meal of
his year. It was a queer sight, — the motley crowd. There were
rich ladies veiled, showing only their dark eyes and a little white
complexion — others veiled, too, but revealing the glimpse of a
face of almost ebon blackness. There were poor women with
faces only half covered, and fellaheen women with uncovered
countenances. There were rich men preceded by out-runners,
and poor men on donkeys and afoot. The alleys through the
tombs are only a few feet wide. This motley crowd met and jos
tled against each other, all intent upon their pious duties. The
old Coptic church, with subterranean chapel of Lady Mary, in old
Cairo, aroused in our hearts sentiments which our doubts as to the
truth of its tradition could not efface. Here for centuries the
Copts have knelt in holy fervor, for in the two niches in the chapel
wall they believe the Virgin Mary and her child with Joseph
rested after the flight to Egypt. There may be, and probably is,
no real foundation for the legend. But the belief and sentiment
of centuries have consecrated the place. To have sat upon one
of these marble slabs would have seemed to me a desecration.
On our return drive, through an open square abutting upon the
Esbekeeyeh garden, I casually glanced at the Hotel d' Orient.
" Eureka ! " I cried ; " there is my old hotel of 1852." I felt cer
tain of the recognition. I alighted, and was told that, though
much enlarged, a part of the house is the same it was nearly 40
years ago. I resolved to rest at it on our return from up the Nile.
And now I am writing, I think, in one of three rooms in which
Bayard Taylor and I first met. It may be fancy, but there
is pleasure in the thought. We find the Oriental a much bet
ter house than Shepherd's ; charges reasonable, and no disposi
tion to stick the traveller for every crust taken extra. The rooms
are good, and the attendance polite, and the table satisfactory.
Fashion has made " Shepherd's " extortionate and presumptuous.
We had there poor rooms and nasty srrtells and an impolite clerk.
I commend to Americans the old Orient. It is charmingly
situated. Since our return we have been busy seeing things. We spent
a day in the Boolak Museum most advantageously. In it the
student could profitably spend weeks. We saw the mummies of
mighty monarchs who ruled nearly 4,000 years ago, and monu
ments of others who have been dead 5,000 years. One queen,
who died over 3,000 years ago, was covered with garlands of
flowers, some of which were enough preserved to show their
petals and to enable us to recognize the flower. In one box was
a queen and her little babe. They have not been unrolled from

298 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
the linen in which they were wrapped over 3,000 years ago. I al
most hoped that it was a sense of propriety which had saved the
mother and child from the desecration of such exposure to the
gaze of the curious. I wondered if she had lived to look upon her
little one. If her maternal heart had heard that sweetest of all
sounds to a woman's ear — her babe's first faint cry. Had it been
laid upon her warm breast ? Had she felt its tiny hands upon her
cheek or dimpling her soft bosom ? Had she uttered that softest
and gentlest of all expressions — those two little words which con
vey a world of yearning and of love when a mother first says to
her newly-born — " My baby ! " The linen enfolding her was
clean and almost white. Her baby lay upon her feet. For 3,000
years mother and child have thus rested. Are the woman and
child yet mother and babe in the far-off spirit land? There
is another mother and babe in a distant grave — mother and babe
becoming one in dust, as they were one before it was born. If
human hands could but lift the veil which hides the inscrutable !
If human eyes could but pierce the measures of the unfathomable !
If human ears could but catch the tones uttered beyond illimitable
space ! Oh, if these things could but happen, what joy might sink
into the soul of the living.

CHAPTER XXIX.
the NILE— old and NEW EGYPT— EGYPTIAN HOUSES— THE
PLODDING DONKEY— FORBIDDEN FRUIT— EGYPTIAN
FARMS— HEADERS FROM AN ASS.
Cairo, Egypt, April i6, 1888.
On the 30th of March we took the train for Assyout, 250 miles
up the Nile, but only 200 by rail. The valley of the Nile, after
quitting the delta, is rarely over ten miles wide, and is frequently
much narrower. It is a depression in the mighty desert, which
stretches from the Red Sea to the Atlantic, a distance of over
3,000 miles. Probably in some mighty cataclysm attending the
cooling of the earth's crust this great valley, 1,800 miles long,
dropped down, leaving the desert above on either side. The
valley at the " Fayoom," some 50 miles above Cairo, widens to
15 and 40 miles, and spreads out in a great triangle at the delta,
with a wide plat of cultivable lands 80 or more miles across at
the widest point — from east to west. The entire area of culti
vable fields of this wonderful country is only 8,000 square miles,
or about one seventh of the State of Illinois. This small tract
has been called the granary of the world. A part of the valley
grows one good crop from the moisture left by the inundation,
which begins in July and ends in October ; other parts which can
grow nothing without irrigation in Lower Egypt, grow three,
and in Upper Egypt, two crops a year. A great part of the
inundated lands is sown immediately after the Nile's retirement,
and then, after being harvested, a second crop is put in and
ripened before the next. The river, when within its banks, is
called the Low, or Little Nile ; when full it is " The Nile." Large
canals debouch into it frequently, and carry its waters far back.
One of these begins at Assyout, and extends, with another name,
nearly 300 miles northward, with a lateral branch some 30 miles,
into the Fayoom. Another runs from Cairo to Ismalia and on
to Suez. These are all in parts navigable, but were built and
are used principally for irrigating purposes. The main ones are
full at all times. The others are perfectly dry except during
high Nile. From the river, from the canals, and from wells,
water for irrigation is taken. One feature of the country is that
water is found everywhere in wells at a depth of but a little,
if at all, lower than the surface of the river. The " shadoof " is
299

300 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
the old-fashioned pole with a weight at the large end ; generally
this weight is a mass of hard clay. The pole is a short one, lifting
eight to twelve feet. As the river falls an additional shadoof is
put in, then another. At this season, on the the Upper Nile,
there are three or four sets. The first one is worked by one man,
lifting the water in a closely-woven wicker or skin basket, four to
six feet, into a trench. This runs along or into the bank to the
next shadoof, commonly worked by two men with a pair of
poles, lifting eight or ten feet, and so on till the level of the land
is reached. Then the trenches lead back as far as required —
sometimes a mile or more. The " sakeeyeh " makes the lift at
once, the endless rope with buckets attached (described in my
last) being lengthened as the water falls. I have seen a wheel
in Upper Egypt lifting fully 50 feet. The flow into the wells is
large. I saw one ten feet in diameter, from which water was
being lifted by two large wheels at once, without lowering the
well surface. In Lower Egypt, particularly throughout the delta,
the level of the land is but little above the river, and there the
shadoof is rarely seen worked in sets, and the wheels have fre
quently the buckets attached to, or directly in, the rims of the
wheel. The depression of the valley of the Nile leaves a line
of hills or low mountains, running in a more or less broken
range on either side of the river, now quite close on one side,
and six or eight miles back on the other. Then, again, the river
seems nearly equally distant from the two ranges. The stream
shifts its bed more or less from year to year, and in the course
of centuries changes from near the hills on one side to those
on the other. Cities, or rather ruins of cities, known in ancient
times to have been on the river, are now miles back, and the
cutting into the banks by the stream reveals foundations of other
cities long buried, and frequently entirely forgotten.
The hills, or rather the desert cliffs, vary in height, from 200
or 300 feet in Lower Egypt, to 600 or 800 in Upper. I thought
some, which are rather bold mountains, were over 1,000 feet
high. These are all absolutely barren and desolate rocky bar
riers, now sloping towards the valley in steep inclines, then in
abrupt frowning precipices. In the latter, however, the falling
debris, through the ages, have left sloping inclines of pure sand,
more or less high up from the level land. The rocks compos
ing these mountains or hills are, for over 300 (perhaps 400) miles
above Cairo, a species of limestone, containing pebbles and cob
bles of rounded flintstone ; then on to the First Cataract they
are mostly a gray or yellow-gray sandstone ; at Assouan, a red
granite or syenite. (This name originates in the ancient city of
Syene, built about the First Cataract.) This stone has there burst
through the sandstone overlying. Looking from the valleys, one
would think the mountains were in a succession of ranges, one
behind the other, whereas in fact the desert runs back, rather on

THE OLD AND THE NEW IDENTICAL. 301
a level with what appears to be the top of the range — runs back,
not as a flat of table-land, but unevenly undulating, and fre
quently quite broken. From what I saw from the tops of the
heights we climbed, and what I could gather from others, there
is very little of the desert which approaches a flat table-land. It
is all in hollows and hillocks, and rolls often quite ruggedly. It
was news to me, and probably will be to others, that the oasis
of the deserts are depressions, as is the Nile Valley — depressions
in some cases, probably in all, even to a lower level than that of
the Nile Valley. In some of them, when a well is dug, the water
bubbles up and runs over the brim, giving irrigation without a
lift. Whence is the source of these springs in the desert? I
find there are occasional rains in those parts which margin the
valley, and some of them quite heavy, for they leave deep
water-worn marks in the torrent-beds running down the gorges.
I suspect the rains extend over a large part of the Sahara and
Arabian deserts. They sink into the sands, and enough remain
unevaporated below for the supply of the few springs existing,
and for the wells along the Nile Valley. These wells, by the
way, lie principally back from the river and near the hills.
Our run by rail to Assyout and back gave us a fine opportunity
for seeing many farming operations which river travel does not
afford, and our subsequent examinations of the picture-carvirtg
upon the walls of the tombs at Luxor and other places showed
us how little of change in the domestic and economic life of the
people, thousands of years have brought. The same wooden
plow, with its single handle, its simple share, and its manner of
attachment to the ox by a straight yoke without bows, is seen in
the sculptured chambers of the dead of 30 odd centuries ago, and
in the fields of the Fellaheen to-day. The working Arab, indeed
the whole country and village peasantry, is called " Fellaheen," or
" Fellahs," in contradistinction to the " Bedaween," or wandering
Arabs, of the desert. The same intimacy exists between the
peasantry and the domestic animals as seen in the painted relievos
on the tomb of the priest at Sakkara, as in the city and village of
to-day. A man drives his geese along the pictured limestone
rock in a deep cave, whose existence was hidden by 3,000 years of
accumulated sand. A man in flowing robe and heavy turban
drives through Cairo's streets a flock which might have sat as
models before the artist who died before Moses played his game
of hide and seek in the bullrushes. The fellah digs up the sand
for his melon-hill with a short wooden hoe, which can be dupli
cated in the Boolak Museum from a lot of implements dug up by
Mariette with its owner, whose mummy commenced gardening
before Joshua blew down Jericho's wall with the bass note of a
ram's horn. A woman gracefully carries, poised on her head, an
earthen jar, holding five or six gallons of water, just as her grand
mother of the hundred and eightieth generation is seen doing in a

302 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
tomb chiselled by vanity in the rock not long after the flood. A
brickmaker molds his brick in a single mold, which he places on
the smooth ground, then works up his mud with his hand,
sprinkles a little water over the dough, and claps it down into the
mold, lifts the mold up, and so proceeds to make others until his
row is finished. He is squatting on his haunches while he works,
and the bricks are then left to dry, and are built unburned into
the wall ; and if a large brick be needed, he mixes straw with the
mud, doing it all in the self-same manner shown in the tombs to
have been followed by that son of Israel whose idleness brought
on the blow from his master, which aroused Moses' Irish, and
caused him to do the smiting which made him escape a thrashing
by the flight into the wilderness. The result — the theology which
has regenerated the western world. The farm laborer squats,
now, as in the dead past, down on the ground to reap the ripe
wheat with a sickle not eight inches long, gathering it to him by
the handful. Full-robed Boaz is seen standing about in patri
archal dignity, while his laborers work, and Ruth gleans a few
fallen heads. Ruth, however, now rarely finds favor in Boaz's
sight, for, unlike her predecessor, she is not comely. All the
comely Ruths are picked up when they are lo to 12 years old.
The harvested grain is carried to the threshing-ground on camels,
obcen, and donkeys, and there it is threshed out by oxen drawing
a sort of sled with a roller between the runners. This was, and is,
drawn round and round, threshing out the kernel and breaking
the straw. The chaff is winnowed out by throwing it up to be
blown away by the breeze. The broken straw is then piled up
about the village until it is eaten by the cattle. There is no rain
to hurt it, though it lies in an uncovered pile for months. Three-
thousand-year-old Egyptians are doing the self-same things on the
walls of the sculptured tombs. A large number of the hired
laborers carry home on their heads, or their wives do, a certain
number of sheaves, the wages for the day's work. This they
thresh out carefully, and store it away in earthen jars. Each
household grinds its own corn or wheat on two millstones — the
under one about two feet across, the upper three or four inches
less. A woman squats by these, turns the upper on the lower one,
and feeds them by dropping a small handful of grain into a hole run
ning through the upper stone. She does this to-day precisely as the
contemporary of Pharoah's daughter is seen doing it on pictured
tomb walls. The flour or meal passes out upon the margin of the
lower stone, and is raked off with the hand. This is baked into
thin cakes of unleavened bread. Sculptured or painted pictures
in a tomb at Assouan, lately opened, showed all of these things
were done in selfsame manner ^,400, and over, years ago. The
oven in which the baking is done is heated by burning buffalo-
chips and cow-coal. One can occasionally see shreds of the coal
sticking into the under side of the cake. That happens when the

THE EGYPTIAN HOUSE. 303
cow failed to sufficiently masticate her fodder. It does not hurt
the bread, for fire is a purifier.
The people all live in villages. These are on eminences of
a few feet, made by the debris of towns which have melted
down. For countless ages unburnt brick has been used. As a
house tumbles it raises a foundation for the succeeding house.
Nothing can be more unattractive than an Egyptian village — a
mass of mud walls on narrow in-and-out, crooked alleys. A space
of 60 feet square is surrounded by a wall eight to ten feet high.
Cross-walls are built within, dividing the square into three, four,
or more compartments, with doorways opening one into another.
One or two of these comprise what may be called a house. Some
of these compartments are covered over with long millet or doura
straw, laid loosely — not laid to keep out rain, but for shade. In
the other compartments the cattle are housed or corralled, and
the little worldly wealth, consisting of a few farm implements and
large earthen jars for holding grain, are stored. An old broken
jar or a hole in the wall is the only cupboard. There are no bed
steads, tables, or chairs in the establishments. The people sleep
on the ground, either in the covered rooms or in the outer com
partments or little courts, or along the walls in the narrow streets
or alleys. The men seem to do this latter — the women and chil
dren being within. I refer of course, to the abodes of the poor
people. Some of the better off, even in villages, have their houses
covered with mud. On the side of all houses the refuse of animals
is dried in cakes about the size of dinner plates for fuel. Fodder
and fuel are stacked on the roof. Chickens, goats, and dogs are
constantly seen on the roof or walking along the walls of the
open courts.
The people are poor, but look neither sullen nor unhappy.
They like better to work with energy on odd jobs than to plod at
regular labor. The farms of individual owners are small — five to
twenty acres. There are great numbers of cattle, goats, and many
sheep and donkeys. Among the cattle are many buffalo. There
is no such thing as regular pastures for grazing. After the fields
have been harvested they are grazed over until the last straw and
almost the very roots of grasses and weedy plants have been
eaten out. Goats and sheep feed on the scant vegetation to be
found on the edge of the desert and about ruins. Cattle, how
ever, do not depend on this sort of grazing, but feed on clover,
vetch, beans, and peas, planted and cultivated for the purpose.
They are either tethered or are strictly watched, and forced to
graze small plats .close into the ground, and then moved to a new
plat. The donkey is seen everywhere. Camels are principally
used for carrying the bulk of the crop in middle and upper Egypt
from the fields to the farmyards, and bullocks and cows do the
plowing; the little, patient ass is the common drudge. He is like
the maid-of-all-work in an English hash boarding-house. There is

304 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
nothing he cannot be made to take a hand at. He is steed for
man and woman. As such he is generally ridden without bridle
or saddle, except in the cities, and then the spindle shanks of the
rider dangle down with rarely the foot in the stirrup, and the reins
lie loose, the animal being guided by a stick in the rider's hand,
or by the boy who runs behind. They carry huge loads of grass,
or monster bags of chaff, cut straw, or other light material, hiding
all but the ears and a little part of the rear anatomy, left for
cudgelling. The camel, when loaded with wheat, looks like a good-
sized stack of straw walking on stilts — all else is hidden, except
his bird-like head, which is always moving and peering from side
to side.
Of late years the Khedive has tried to introduce a large cultiva
tion of sugar-cane, and to encourage it, erected some 50 large
sugar manufactories along the Nile. More than half of them are
idle. One of the great features of the village are the tall pigeon
towers. These are turret-looking structures, 12 to 15 feet square,
and 20 to 30 high. They are the really aristocratic buildings of
the village. I counted 50 odd of them in a place of not over 400
population. The pigeons nest in and roost on and about them,
their droppings going through a grating to be gathered as guano.
They are kept for this purpose. I was told that one village we
saw had 293,000. It is a mooted question if they do not eat more
grain than they are worth. The wheat is left standing until dead-
ripe, and consequently much is shattered out. Wheat-straw is
very coarse, and nearly as hard and strong as reeds. In being
threshed under the roller-sled it is mashed, and thereby made
fitter for fodder.
When we left Cairo the wheat-fields were just yellowing, and
much was yet green. It, together with the clover and vetch and
peas, gave a variegated carpet to the plains. The clumps of stately
date trees are so frequent near Cairo that, together with the
occasional acacias, they frequently afford an almost wooded land
scape, looked at from the level. As we approached Upper Egpyt,
the fields were more yellow and the harvest was begun, and great
peripatetic stacks of straw were moving in different directions
along the narrow paths on camels and small ones on donkeys.
At Assyout we boarded, at night, a little flat-bottomed steam
boat, only 90 feet long, and drawing two and a half. When we
woke up in the morning we were upon the most famous river of
the world, and steaming toward that point which has been so
often inquired for and sought, but vainly sought, for thousands of
years — the source of " The Nile " (or " the river"). There were five
first-class passengers ; three enthusiastic young Americans — mag-
na pars fui — and two Englishmen, Col. Harrington-Bey and Maj.
Marrice-Bey, of the mounted police. The national police is a
military organization, officered by Englishmen, and is divided into
four departments, the head of each bearing the title of pasha, the

FORBIDDEN FRUIT. 305
next two being beys. Our little boat frequently bumped plump
against sand-bars, toppling us over, but only causing a laugh, all
the greater when once it emptied soup into a lap. An awning
covered the top of the boat, but the reflected sun was too fierce
to permit its shade to be a pleasant lounging-place after nine
o'clock. It, however, was a sufficient protection to enable us to
go up for a few minutes when passing any scenery or spot we
wished to carefully observe over the high banks.
The river cuts its way between banks 20 or so feet high ; is
from a little over a quarter of a mile to three quarters wide, and
flows steadily, with a current in low water of three miles an hour.
It shifts its bed gradually from one side to the other, now cutting
into the black, sandy loam on the one side, exposing now and
then the foundations of towns buried ages ago, and making sand
bars on the other, which are utilized by the natives for melon-
patches as the water recedes. Where these bars are of too clean
a sand for a growth, a little loam from the debris of villages and
ruins, full of nitre, is carried on the patient little donkey. The
winds pouring steadily up or down the river are so strong that the
sands are woven into pretty, wavy lines, and would cover the
plantations of melons. To prevent this, barriers are made by
sticking rows of doura-stalks or palm fronds, from a few inches to
two or three feet high, on the windward side of each row of
young plants. Near Cairo the seeds were being planted ; about
Assouan the melon hills were green and the plants in bloom. I
heaved many a sign when looking upon the yet fruitless vines, for
I am so fond of watermelons that I have a suspicion that if my
family tree were "closely scrutinized, down among its primitive
roots, would be found some Ethiopian kinks.
By the way, we had a family of natives in one of the rooms.
There were three ladies, closely veiled in flowing black silken
" bourkos," which were never removed outside of their own rooms.
Sweet is forbidden fruit! The boys were constantly on the watch
to catch a glimpse of these bundled-up houris. The rooms of the
little steamer open only on the guards. One day a gust of wind
blew a bourko aside. The boys saw within the pearly gate, and
lo ! the sweet vision was of a face as black as the ace of spades !
I read to my disappointed lads a lecture upon the folly — not to
say criminality — of attempting to rend a veil over which was
written " intrare non." We saw very many Arabian Rachels with
their flocks of goats about the river banks, or trudging over the
broad sand-bars with huge earthern jars of water on their heads,
wending their way toward the villages, most of which lie back
some distance from the river's edge, but never a Jacob assisting
them. The fact that Jacob did assist fair and lovely Rachel is
proof positive of direct divine interference. Abraham, Isaac, and
Jacob were Arabs of .the desert, and would never have given a
helping hand to a woman if the Lord had not directly com-

3o6 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
manded it. The woman of the East does not now pray to the
master, the Lord, but to the master, the man, and so the Lord has
deserted her, and the master man pays but little attention to her,
except when her comely face finds temporary favor in his sight.
Her beauty, too, is usually of such a character that it does not
shine forth until after the sun has gone down.
We had down below, among the general deck passengers, many
well-to-do natives returning from the city, where they had been
to purchase their stock of goods. It was interesting to watch
them when landing for some large town standing a mile or so
back. Prancing horses, some in velvet caparison, others in simple
cloth, some with partly gilded bridles, others plain ; donkeys in red
trappings, and donkeys without saddle or bridle, were on the high
bank to take the travellers home. Turbaned men in silken
robes, turbaned men in cotton robes, would climb steep banks
with their wealth. There would be clatter and noise enough for
the disembarkation of a western regiment. The rich would mount
their neighing steeds, the poorer would pile their plunder upon
the naked donkeys, and then perch themselves on top of all. Some
little brute would be slightly unruly; a blow would fall about his
ears; he would dodge and interpose his convenient rear. If in
turning he caught sight of a lady donkey, he would bray out one
of his most touching love songs. The gallantry of the donkey
cannot be tamed by cuffs or blows. Then the motley crowd would
start ; the steeds careering, the donkeys under saddle galloping,
those under loads single footing it, and off they would dash
through a cloud of dust, which would mark the well-worn path to
the village.
Sometimes on a landing barge there was a native soldier about
to depart after a furlough. Half-veiled women would gather
about him, perhaps his mother and sisters or wife. One would
press upon him a cake, another would brush some dirt from his
.uniform. The mother would lay her hand upon his shoulder.
Her dark eyes would melt beneath the openings of her bourko as
she looked lovingly upon her soldier-boy and poured words
¦of love into his ears. Ah, deeper far than Joseph's well at Cairo
is the unfathomable well of a mother's love. Its fountains flow
steadily, whether the mother be Hindoo or Buddhist, Mohamme-
-dan, Jew, or Christian. It flows from a fathomless fountain
beneath the throne of eternal love. Formerly an Egyptian bade
an adieu forever to his home when he was conscripted. Now,
under English control, the conscript has an occasional furlough,
and a mother's love lives in the reasonable hope of again seeing
her .boy. England is a hard taskmistress, but she is not savage.
About Assouan the granite was belched through the sandstone,
when the crust fell in to make the valley. This granite is red
syenite, but along the river it is blackened and in fantastic forms,
andJsin rounded, smooth, water-worn masses, thrown in amongthe

SHOOTING THE CATARACT. 307
many channels of the cataracts. It looks as if it had been black
ened with coal tar and then polished. The scenery about the
cataracts and just below is very wild, and yet very pretty. The
red and yellow-gray rocks above, the shining black, smooth, mon
ster rocks below, and rushing between them the wild waters in
frothy, hurrying rapids ; here in lifted but unbroken streams,
now in foaming cascade, then in whirling eddies. We came
down the cataract in a boat of six oars, with a cool-headed " reis"
at the helm. Now we shot down one fall, then, caught by an
eddy, would be carried sideways toward the next. With a hard
helm, however, and one range of oars pulled by quick, manly
energy, our prow would be pointed into the lifted channel. Down
it we shot like an arrow from a bow, and came out with a wild
yell. At one point we were very nearly forced sideways down.
The channel was not two feet wider than our boat was long. We
touched one rocky edge, the oarsmen were thrown from their
seats, and we missed a ducking by the skin of our teeth.
On our way up, when we reached Edfoo there were no saddled
donkeys for us to ride to the temple, two or three miles off, so we
mounted some barebacked fellows, and without bridles dashed
over the little paths like three wild boys. It was a jolly ride.
One of the brutes fell, and Johnny went tumbling over a bank.
Our laugh was turned upon us afterward. For on reaching
Luxor, at II o'clock at night, we took a moonlight run to Karnak
on illy-provided asses. Willie that night got a header. When
we returned from up-country my donkey fell flat at nearly the
same spot. Not only did I roll off over his head, but in the
tumble seassbew found myself lying somehow on one of the
brute's hind legs, while his other heel was giving fearful premoni
tions of his intention to give me a round of kicks. Honors were
thus even ; we each had a header from an Egyptian ass.

CHAPTER XXX.
DR. SCHLIEMANN— THEBES : ITS TEMPLES AND TOMBS— BEAUTI
FUL PICTURE-WRITING— A NATIVE FEAST.
Steamship ^'' Charkie," April 19, 1888.
We are aboard the Khedive's post-steamer, having sailed from
Alexandria yesterday, and will arrive at Athens to-morrow.
I would not attempt another letter about Egypt if I did not
feel it a duty to do so. It is not an agreeable thing to write in a
shaky boat, but, after all, those are not the most valuable occupa
tions which are most agreeable in the performance, unless the
mere doing a duty be of itself agreeable. I have come to regard
the noting down of what I see on my " race with the sun " as a
positive duty, and therefore productive of a real pleasure. We
have a pleasant company abroad, among them Dr. Schliemann,
the famous excavator, and Dr. Virchow, consulting physician of
the Emperor Frederick. The first is an active, fussy little man
of over 70, full of chat and energy, whose delight is to worm in
the ground in search of antiquities having not only archaeological
value, but also capable of bringing in good golden Napoleons.
He looks like an honest Deutcher who gains his living by digging
for mangel-wurzel rather than for dead men's bones and chiselled
dreams ; in fact, more like a gardener than a virtuoso. He walks
about the deck with Herodotus in the original under his arm ; is
proud of being a German by birth and yet an American citizen who
never went through the forms of being naturalized. He was in
California when it was annexed, and became a citizen by virtue
of the annexation. He and Virchow have been in Egypt in
search of the tomb of Alexander the Great, but did not find it.
He is ready to give information on any subject he knows of, and
will fight any one who doubts the individuality and identity of
Homer. He vowed he would not take a wife to his bosom until
he could find one who could recite the whole Iliad. His bright
young Greek wife does repeat it by the yard, and understands it,
but his boatman repeats for him at large, although he (the boat
man) does not comprehend any thing else than the euphony and
rhythm of the mighty bard. The doctor lives in a veritable
palace in Athens, surmounted with marble statues, and over
whose doors is carved in Greek : " The tent of Ilion."
30S

KARNAK BY MOONLIGHT. THEBES. 309
I said in my last that, as travellers in Egypt went up the Nile
only for the ruins, they had not prepared me for its rich scenery.
Although I showed my appeciation of this, yet I do not wish one
to think I was oblivious to the wonders left by art thousands of
years ago. We had not the time to study these wonders, b'ut
have prepared ourselves for studying them hereafter more intelli
gently from books. We first looked upon massive Karnak by the
full light of the moon. It seemed a fitting thing to wander
among those vast stones almost as massive as mountain ribs ; to
roam among the huge columns, vast yet rich in architectural
form ; to lose one's self in the deep shadows of the old temple ;
to lean against the lofty obelisks, whose points seem to pierce the
deep-blue sky, — it seemed fitting, I say, to be in this home of
gray antiquity in the hour of midnight, when the world was
asleep ; when the self-same stars were peeping through clefts in
cornice and crevasse in architrave, which had looked silently down
upon the mass when it was new and fresh, over 30 centuries ago ;
when the queen of night was bathing all in silvery light, and yet
leaving the ravages of man, time, and the Nile somewhat con
cealed. Karnak is a ruin, — not a half-destroyed temple, as most
pictures portray it. It was once a group of noble temples, cover
ing, with their long avenues of colossal sphinxes, many hundred
acres. Parts of several of them still exist, massive and grand, but
simply fragments, which enable the archaeologist alone to trace
out from them the foundations of the buildings of which they
formed only small parts. All of these massive fragments, consist
ing of propyl^a (outer gates), of massive walls and fallen columns,
architraves and cornices, are richly adorned in sculptured relief,
deep-cut into the huge stones in figures of gods and kings, and
sharp-cut hieroglyphics commemorative of the deeds of those whose
figures are shown. From these figures and hieroglyphic surround
ings the scientist unfolds the pages of a long-dead history, and
enables us to know what men and kings did long before history
was born. On our downward voyage on the Nile we visited them
twice again, spending long hours by day among the ruins. Much
of the walls and many of the mighty columns of the great temple
of Rameses, with the vast stones abovic forming roof and entabla
ture, still exist in more or less tumbled-down condition. This
huge structure, all in elaborate and massive art, covered with its
outer wall a space not far from a mile and a half round, with a
height of over 70 feet, and walls of vast thickness. Here were
hundreds of huge columns, from 8 to 12 feet in diameter
and 40 to 60 feet high, richly carved. Some of them have
been thrown so as to lean over against others, the vast hanging
stones of the architraves looking like the rocks of a toppling
precipice. Two obelisks, nearly 100 feet high, of solid granite,
stand as if their roots were deep in the earth, but one, lying
broken, shows that the Nile in its annual washing finds no foun
dation too firm for it to undermine.

3IO A RACE WITH THE SUN.
No other ruins in Egypt are so massive as these of Karnak,
though there are others in a better condition. The Nile has done
more to bring the mighty temples of old Thebes (Luxor) down
than has the hand of man. But religious fanaticism, both Chris
tian, under the Eastern empire, and Mohammedan, within i,ooo
years, has done its best to deface all that was purely artistic.
Modern taste would find little to admire in the beautiful sculptures
on any of the old temples if the rock had not been too hard for
the hand of the fanatic hammerer or the elevation too great for a
lazy priesthood to reach, or if the massiveness and multitude of
the sculptures had not been too great for indolent muscle to pick
away. The Nile, too, while a destroyer, has also been a preserver
by filling up the lower parts of many temples. This accumulated
soil being removed discloses the covered parts in almost original
form. The temple of Luxor, close to the river, is a grand one,
but less impressive than Karnak. The ruins of Medeenet Aboo,
across the river on the west bank, however, in many respects
pleased me more. But it would be a waste of space to attempt to
describe this, or even any more of them. Thebes was a mighty
city, and left many ruins to attest its grandeur.
Back of the old city, in gorges in the mountains on the west
bank, are the " tombs of the kings," whose mummies and papyrus
rolls have been so valuable to the world of letters. These tombs
are cut into the solid rock, all sloping downward and running under
the mountains from loo to 500 feet, in long galleries 12 to 20 odd
feet wide and 9 to 12 feet deep. In different parts of them are
large chambers whose walls, as well as those of the long galleries,
are covered with sculptures in deep relief, and with hieroglyyhic
writing beautifully sharp. The sculptures are the figures of the
king for whom the tomb was built, of the kings and peoples whom
he conquered, of his battles and victories, of the spoils of war, of
captives and beasts and treasures brought back and offered to the
gods, and of the gods themselves receiving the gifts. Many of
these sculptures are beautifully wrought of high art (Egyptian),
and when not defaced are bright in color as when first painted.
There is shown everywhere evidence that the artists of the vast
past did not trust entirely to the chisel to show form, to exhibit
beauty, or to express action. Sculptures within doors and with
out seem all to have been painted. Those in the tombs were
fresh when exhumed, and many are still bright. On the exposed
temples time and the few rains of Egypt through thousands of
years have only left traces of the old colors. The smoke of
torches, and even the pencil of vanity, have tarnished most of the
paintings in the tombs, but enough yet remains to delight the
student and please the curious man.
In some tombs, discovered opposite Assouan two years ago,
there are picture-writings of exquisite finish and perfect preserva
tion. I have rarely seen forms, especially of birds, drawn with a

THE TOMBS AND THEIR ADORNMENTS. 311
freer hand, or showing more grace or ease of pose. One can al
most say they are the living links connecting the dead past with
the present. They seem to step and move, and step and move
with stately gravity, and are as fresh as the things of yesterday.
They have not been injured as yet, and perhaps will not be, for
now the government preserves, more or less carefully, all antiq
uities. These tombs were boarded up when we visited them, and
it being after the visiting season, the guardians were not about.
We hoisted each other over the boarding on each other's shoul
ders, and then pulled up the last. There were masses of bones of
mummies, mummy boxes, and these beautiful picture-paintings,
which amply repaid us for some bruised shins and torn fingers.
We brought away a jaw-bone or two without cost, but were too
honest to bring away a whole figure or mummy box, though
sorely tempted. These caves were the last opened, and are not
yet mentioned in the guide-books. Brugsch Bey, whom I after
ward met in the Boolak Museum, told me they were the oldest
yet found, being at least of the fifth dynasty. Dr. Schliemann
says they are of the second, — that is, 4,000 years before Christ.
The sands which fell ages ago from the upper heights of the cliffs
in which the tombs were cut covered their mouths and kept man
out, and thus preserved these valuable relics until now, when they
are so highly appreciated.
The cliffs along the valley in some localities are honeycombed
with tombs, and I doubt not that there are many yet uncovered,
and possibly unsuspected. Some will yet be found, perhaps, of
great value, for the government has one or two fine steamers on
the river devoted entirely to archaeology. I am told that Marri-
ette's successor is an able and industrious man. It seems some
what droll that there should be in this active age a governmental
department whose sole duty is to stir up dead men's bones. The
ancient Egyptian had a solemn cast of thought, and a sombre
taste, but I think he knew the true resting-places for the dead.
He selected spots which death would naturally choose for his
court— wild, desolate gorges — cliffs in which no life is seen, where
not an ivy or a desert-thorn could live. Of all dead spots I have
ever visited none seem so absolutely dead and desolate as the
gorge in which are the tombs of the kings at old Thebes. Modern
sentimentality makes a cemetery a park or garden in which lovers
wander to gather flowers when the keepers are out of sight, and
to flirt with a tombstone for a trysting-place, and vanity stalks
with more dashing step in a graveyard and in funeral trappings
than it does at a birth or a marriage. There was a reason for the
pomp of the Egyptian's tomb. They believed the spirit of the
dead lived in and about its preserved mummy, and that the loved
one gone appreciated and enjoyed the pomps of its surroundings.
Not to deck it out in splendor was to leave it in neglect which it
would feel in sorrow, and, perhaps, resent in anger. But they

312 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
favored gloomy splendor and awful pomp, and believed the dead
revelled in such. We, however, believe that the spirit of our
dead quits this miserable dust forever — dust which has been a
charnel-house for the imprisoned spirit, — and wings its flight far
beyond the stars ; that the sufferings and griefs of those left be
hind cannot ruffie the sweet tranquillity of the far-off happy new
life, and yet we grieve in sackcloth and ashes, and peep from be
hind our trappings of woe to see if the world fully discovers the
depth of our sorrow. We deck the tomb of the dead as if the
spirit nightly sate upon its own head-stone and delighted in nose
gays. Much of this is to feed the vanity of the living. But real
and sincere grief is often selfish, as is joy, and gloats upon the
thought that the world witnesses its agony.
At Assyout we climbed, on our return from above, the high hill
which is so full of tombs that, at a long distance, it almost re
sembles a titanic dove-cote. Skulls lay about, and mummy-cloth
was sticking in the sands. Old tombs, long since stripped of their
occupants and devoid of architecture, were being broken up to
roll down below to be burned into lime. Under us was the Arab
cemetery of to day, a regular stiff, cemented city of the dead, with
white domes and courts for the family or hired mourners to stay
in when grieving periodically. On our way out we had passed a
troop of women howling on their way to the tombs. We knew
they -were mourning for some well-to-do person. The intensity
of their grief could only come from gold-distilling tears, and
showed that they were well paid for it. Some persons in the far
west are occasionally met who would find mourning by proxy
most charming. The boys ascended to the highest points to look
over the desert behind, leaving me alone among the old vaults.
As I sat at nearly sunset among these old homes of the dead,
deserted now even by their ghastly tenants, I saw a hyena come
out of one. He looked down upon the modern cemetery, from
which came up faintly the voices of the howling women, gave a
sort of chuckle, and trotted off. I wondered if he and his race
had not contracted the habit of laughing from living about tombs
and seeing the hollow vanity of man. This was the only one of
the laughing brutes I saw in Egypt.
By the way, another of the old acquaintances of the Nile trav
eller, the crocodile, has entirely disappeared below the first cata
ract, and almost entirely up to the second or third. The keen
love of sport of the Englishman has been too much for him. I
thought I saw one just below Phylas, at the upper end of the
cataract, but it turned out to be a woman swimming the river
with a baby in her arms. She was on one of the little floats used
SO much on the Upper Nile — a stick of wood, say eight inches in
diameter, five feet long, and turned up slightly at one end like a
sled-runner. A woman will slip off her robes, putting them in a
flat basket, poise it upon her head, hold her baby in her arms,

WOMEN SWIMMING THE NILE. 313
and on this little float go back and forth. As she emerges from
the water she puts her garments on, and goes forth at least cleaner
than she went in. I saw one thus swimming with a basket of
vegetables on her head and a baby in her arms. She was taking
her little truck to market. It is, from what I could learn, the
only bath she takes. The Bedouin never washes all over, and
his face rarely. A fellah back from the river washes his feet and
face, but his odor shows that this is all. I suppose it is a relic of
his desert antecedents, where water is scarce.
The great majority of the present Egyptian population is Arab.
The Copts, about 500,000, claim descent from the ancient people
of the Pharaohs, but they more resemble the Arabs than the pic
tures on the walls. It will interest our boys to learn that, on the
Nile, as - in Ceylon and on the Red Sea, when natives swim
rapidly they invariably go hand over hand. When desirous of
swimming particularly fast they dive as far as possible. They are
expert divers, and catch water-fowl by going under them. At
Luxor Hotel we saw some droll pet pelicans caught in this way.
Of these, as of other water birds, there are great numbers on the
Nile. I saw a flock of several hundred pelicans ranged very curi
ously in files on a sand-bar. About half were in rows, one behind
the other, all with heads turned toward our steamer coming from
below. The other half were in files looking up stream. I no
ticed, I thought, five or six which seemed an exception to this
order, but on close scrutiny with my glass I found these were
storks along the outer edge of the flock, and not a pelican was
looking out of line. The carvings and paintings in the tombs
show that, in the time of the Pharaohs, the same birds were to
be found in Egypt that are found there to-day. Some animals
are no longer frequenters of the land that were there 4,000 years
ago. Crocodiles and hippopotami were as far north as the Delta,
but not within the range of written history. Wild geese, cranes,
herons, and snipe of several varieties were constantly seen, both
on the wall-carving and to-day along the river.
I spoke of the damage done the old temples by the Nile.
Nearly all of them stand on inundated land. The water has
gradually eaten into the foundations and lower members, and so
causes the superstructure to tumble. In olden time the water
was excluded by dykes. In some temples the Nile deposit has been
several feet deep. In all, the debris of towns and villages has filled
them often to the roof. These have been, or are now being, exca
vated. There seems to be a law of nature that where there is growth
there is life, and, e converse, where there is life there is growth.
Wherever there is found either animal or vegetable life, there the
very earth grows. Old things everywhere lie covered beneath
new things. Where men have lived, their cities or their founda
tions are found buried ; where vegetable nature alone holds high
court, there trees and their debris are found far below the surface.

314 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
In the mountain heights and in desert places where there is no
life, there denudation is constantly going on. The earth itself
does not grow in such localities. Most of -it', I suppose, is car
ried off by rivers into the deep seas. Whence comes the mass of
matter which covers and is yet covering deeper year by year the
mighty plains and tablelands ? Perhaps from meteoric dust,
which is said to fall in millions of tons every year. Perhaps,
also, from the impalpable powder which makes up the comet's
transparent tail. If care be not used at the dump of these
mighty dirt carriers, there will some day be brought about a lack
of equillibrium on our globe, and a turning over in its bed, and
then some of our fine cities will be wrapped in mountains of ice,
and a torrid equator may run within the Arctic circle.
At Luxor we took a long camel ride on our last day. The
beasts were not dromedaries, but were well gaited, and carried us
in good trots. We had none of the trying twist in the back, as if
one were a dish-rag being wrung out by a lusty cook, such as one
gets on the ordinary swing-walking camel. We saw all the ruins
near the river from Phylse down, — Edfoo, Denderah, etc.,^but
were most pleased by the tombs about Sakkarah, near the ruins
of old Memphis, some miles above Cairo. There was an immense
cave cemetery in the olden days of Egypt ; some of them were
as old or older than the pyramids. The tombs cover a space
nearly five miles long and run back into the high desert plateau a
quarter of a mile to a mile. Many of them have been opened by
archffiologists, but only a few are kept so, for the blowing sands
fill the mouth of the tomb almost as fast as they can be carried
away. We had a blizzard of sand the day we visited them. The
wind came up with great speed from the desert, driving the sand
into our faces with the force of small shot. Our eyes burned and
our cheeks smarted. The sun grew dim, and when yet three
hours high we looked into his face without a blink. He was
hardly as bright as one often sees the moon in a mid-afternoon.
There was no redness whatever about him, but a cold dimness,
and when we looked at him on the west bank, far away from the
desert, when he was yet an hour high, he -was a miserably pale
orb, and was lost entirely a half hour before his time for setting.
The Serapeum, or tomb of the sacred bulls, at Sakkarah, is a
huge thing, several galleries of great size hewn from the solid
rock, with side chambers or deep recesses in which are monster
sarcophagi of granite 13 feet long, 8 wide, and 11 high, with
monster lids of several tons weight. One of these galleries is
nearly 1,200 feet long, and about 30 sarcophagi yet sit where
they were placed 2,000 to 2,500 years ago. The older galleries,
of over 3,000 years ago, have so fallen in since their exhumation
as not to be easily visited. The walls of the tombs are richly
carved, and the long galleries are lined with votive tablets placed
there by individual worshippers. These vast vaults cut into the

WE HAVE A NATIVE FEAST. 315
solid limestone and these huge coffins of granite are the last rest
ing places of mummied bulls. Oh, religion ! what antics thy
votaries have cut as the ages have rolled along ! Nothing in
nature too revolting to be worshipped, nothing in imagination
too cruel and bloodthirsty or too selfish to be adored.
When we awoke in the morning, after boarding the downward
steamer at Luxor, we found Harrington-Bey and Marrice-Bey
aboard. We had left them at Assouan. Colonel Harrington in
formed us he had received by wire an invitation for us to dine
with a rich native, cl la Turk, at Gurgeh, where we would tie up
for the night. Unfortunately, we went plump upon a sand bar in
sight of the town, and were detained over three hours, getting
into port at nearly midnight. But we found our host and ser
vants with lanterns ready to conduct us to his hospitable
mansion. It was furnished after European style, with fine
carpets, curtains, and brilliant chandeliers. After cigarettes, we
were invited into the dining-room, where a table was loaded with
bottles of wine and cordials, but with no plates. In the centre
was a large bowl containing a kind of soup. There were seven
of us. Each had a spoon, and bread with seed worked into the
crust. I was placed at the host's right, and informed in tolerably
fair French that the house was ours, and the repast begun. Re
ceiving a hint from the Colonel that I, as the chief guest, was to
be the leader, as if the house was mine, I commenced my soup
from the bowl. Each followed suit, dipping his spoon into the
common tureen. When we had sufficiently partaken of the fluid,
still instructed by my military friend, I motioned the servants to
remove it. Then followed a large roast, a whole lamb stuffed. I
pulled off a piece of lamb with my fingers. There were no knives
or forks. The better informed followed the example, but went
further and pulled out the inside stuffing with their fists ; getting
dry and no one offering wine, I felt I was again at fault, so I took
a bottle of claret and directed the servants to draw the cork.
The host then got up and poured our glasses full. There were
small plates of sweetmeats of several kinds near each guest.
Between courses we eat of these and drank champagne. A large
platter full of stuffed vegetable marrow, whole roasted stuffed
onions and artichokes, and some smaller vegetables made the
second course. These found their way to our mouths without
spoons or fork. Talk was gay. The host apologized for having
the feast served native fashion, with the statement that it had
been the Colonel's request. Roast turkey came next ; afterward
followed pigeons, sausages, etc., with vegetables intervening.
When the fourteenth course was reached, one of the boys was
forced to loosen up his waistband, and Marrice-Bey declared he
was a good feeder, but his father and mother had not intended
him for a barrel. I cried halt. We were, however, forced to
attack the fifteenth course, consisting of nicely-stuffed quail.

3x6 A RACE WITH THE SUN. .
With several more courses in sight in the side room, I arose, when
all followed. In the parlor were served delicious coffee and
cigarettes. The host regretted that he had not known sooner
that we would honor him, so that he could have made a better
preparation. He was a wealthy Copt, but drank very lightly.
He accompanied us to the little boat, where we found our ship
berths fitted us closer than they had done the night before.
The following evening, at Assyout, we had a delightful informal
dinner at Col. Harrington's, in good English style, and spent the
evening with his charming wife, and Johnson Pasha and his bright
lady. The Pasha is the head of the mounted police in that depart
ment. The dinner was prepared in thorough English style, and was
a real treat to us. Many months had passed since we had par
taken of a home-like meal.
With the statement that Cairo is a beautiful city, fairly to
be called the Paris of the East, the people in their gay attendance
at the bright street caf6s reminding one constantly of the French
capital, and that the new part of Alexandria is very handsome, I
will end this chapter.

CHAPTER XXXI.
GRECIAN SKY COLORING— FEELINGS AWAKENED BY ATHENS— RICH
ART TREASURES CONSTANTLY EXHUMED— THE FUTURE OF
GREECE— CORINTH— EARTHQUAKES— A WONDERFUL SUNSET
—FAREWELL GREECE.
Athens, April 26, 1888.
Visiting Greece many years ago, I approached it from Con
stantinople, passing through the many islands of the .^Egean Sea
in the hot month of August. I was delighted with the constantly
varying pictures presented by the lofty island heights — broken,
yet graceful, with deep gorges so clothed in verdure, that they
seemed smiling dimples on the mountain sides. The rich dyes
distilled from a burning sun were showered over land and sea,
clothing both in softest colorings, changing from hour to hour as
the sun climbed to the zenith and then sank toward the west.
At one time the mountains, hills, and valleys were wrapped in a
bluish haze ; then changed to a purple ; then to a violet, over
which a pink bloom would spread as delicate as the blush on an
opal's cheek, and in the sunset glow a mantle of violet-orange was
thrown over the graceful shoulders of the hills. The sea would
now catch the blue from the skies, and then the colorings of the
hills, and throw them back with an added beauty all its own ; and
as the sun sank to its rest, land and sea, melting clouds, and trans
lucent sky were a mighty canvas, over which the very spirit of
beauty spread rainbow tints in exuberant revelry. The memory
of these glorious pictures has always lived with me, and has been
the; inspiration of many a dream of the past.
When we started on our " race with the sun," I began at once to
look forward to a renewal of my former pleasure in going through
the Grecian isles. When coming from Egypt, now, I was up be
fore the sun on our second day out to watch his first kiss upon
Milo's conical peak. I watched the first ray caught by the island
cone, and then later saw him lighting up Sephanto and Thermia,
and the graceful sky-lines of .^gina, and the highlands of Argolis.
But the glorious tints were not there. Was it owing to the cooler
months that they were lacking, or had my eyes grown dim and
my marrow become cold, since I was here in the hey-day of youth ?
I felt disappointed, and mostly so with myself. I whispered that
I would touch Attic soil, and then my boyish enthusiasm would re
turn. We landed at Piraeus, and drove up to Athens. There, to
317

3i8 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
my right, was Hymettus, on whose rocky sides grows the yellow
flower from whose cups the bee sips a nectar tasted nowhere un
less in the garden of the gods. There, to my left, was low-lying
Parnes, and over beyond, Pentelicus, whose cold marble blushes
in the unequalled beauty of the Venus and the Psyche, and stands
in God-like glory in the Apollo ; and there, with Lycabettus for
a background, was the Acropolis, crowned by the Parthenon —
the architect's dream in ruins. There below, in massive Pelasgic
blocks, was the Pnyx, where Demosthenes maddened men by his
burning tongue, and, nearby, was the theatre of Dionysius, where
.^schylus and Sophocles sang in perfected measure.
These things were all before me as they were 36 years ago,
and clustering among them were the same old memories, but
the young dream of the traveller was grown cold. He had long
ago left old Yale's classic halls redolent of the historic past ; he
had lately come from a buzzing hive, where to-day and yesterday
and to-morrow are worth whole ages of the long ago. Instead of
having lately lived in a dreamland with dead heroes, he had been
jostling against active, noisy men, in whose ears a rise in the mar
ket was more eloquent than any Demosthenic phillippic, and the
electric tick, telling of a crash in stocks, was far more touching
than a thousand farewells from Alceste's lips ; he had come from a
throbbing world, which whispered : " Let the dead past bury its
dead," and with exultant cry demands action in the living present.
I could not work up the spirit of the past.
But I have now been here a week ; I have walked among the
old ruins ; I have talked with speaking marbles, lately exhumed
from soil in which they had lain through silent ages; I have
breathed an atmosphere of classic purity ; I have driven beneath
old olives, which may have furnished the oil to anoint an Al-
cibiades when girding his loins for Olympian triumphs ; I have
watched the waves, to whose murmur Demosthenes may have
attuned his thrilling words ; I have drank at fountains, which
may have cooled the ruby lips that made Aspasia irresistible ; I
have climbed to the lofty quarries, whence Phidias anxiously cut
the block that was to render the fame of his genius immortal ; I
have sat upon the lofty pinnacle which looks down upon Mara
thon, and upon which heroes gave a parting glance when they
rushed in unequal struggle upon the Persian host, and made
Marathon a synonym for victory ; I have bathed my hands in the
cool waves of the strait of Salamis, where was crushed forever
Asia's strength, and western civilization was made possible ; I have
watched the full moon as she climbed the Doric column of im
mortal Parthenon, and seen her sit in silvered glory upon its grand
pediment, and have looked down upon beautiful Athens, bathed
in a very flood of silvery light ; I have sat for long hours upon the
balcony of the Grand Bretagne Hotel, inhaling the perfume of
orange and jasmine coming from bowers in which the nightingale

ATHENS AND THE ACROPOLIS. 319
was pouring out its. bursting heart in delicious song, while I
watched the splendid pile upon Acropolis in the distance, lighted
up by the midnight moon. These things, and others of a kindred
kind, have found the chord deep down in the soul and touched it,
till " my heart can sing, as of yore it sang before they called me
old." Once more I am in Greece and am again a Greek.
Few Americans are so ignorant as not to have heard of and
thought of Athens ; few school children so cold as not to have
been deeply interested in its wonderful history. I shall, there
fore, I think, not err if I try to give a pen-picture of this most
classic of all cities. It lies in a sort of recess between three
ranges of mountains — an amphitheatre, if I may be permitted
to use that word to designate a thing not circular but oblong.
Two short ranges of mountains, Hymettus and Parnes, 1,500 to
2,000 feet high, rocky but not absolutely desert, spring from the
sea on the west, run in almost parallel lines about eight miles
apart, and meet loftier Pentelicus 15 to 20 miles back. Piraeus
is built upon a small, absolutely land-locked bay, in the centre of
the base. Pericles and Themistocles made this the Athenian
walled harbor, and it has so remained ever since. I must not be
held too closely to accuracy when I give dates, dimensions, or,
indeed, any statistical or historical data. I write for the general
reader, that he or she may see somewhat as I see, and not for
the information of the student; for that I have not the time, if
I possessed the ability. Four to five miles back, and some two
or three miles north of Hymettus, stands modern Athens, nearly
on the site of the old city.
Few cities outside the new world have grown and improved as
much as this, since I was here in 1852. Let me draw you a plan
of the city, as then, and as now seen. Imagine a bold rock near
400 yards long by 150 in its centre and widest part, lifting 250
to 300 feet from a somewhat uneven plain. The sides of this
rock, which is shaped not unlike an oak-leaf, are in some parts
precipices over 100 feet high, and everywhere else in steep,
almost precipitous slopes. Where there were gorges, and too-
easily accessible inclines, lofty walls were erected and filled from
within, rendering the citadel unapproachable, except through its
internal entrance on its western point. This is the Acropolis,
on whose platform stands the Parthenon, whose great doric
columns, and massive architraves are in such perfect proportions
that they seem almost light and airy. There is the beautiful
Erectheum, whose Ionic columns and friezes have been, and are,
the models of graceful architecture ; and the gem in marble, little
" Nike," the temple of wing-ffssvictory, which the Athenians
claimed had here made her home. Around and about this hill
are the remains of other classic edifices.
Ancient Athens lay around and under the citadel, but was
mainly to the southward, southwest and southeast. There, scat-

320 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
tered from the east to the west are the Stadium, on the extreme
east ; then the majestic columns of the great temple of Jupiter
Olympus, and, following in succession, more or less distant one
from the other, come the Theatre of Dionysius, the Odeum, the
Pnyx, or ancient forum ; the Areopagus, where the people met
in civic power, the almost complete temple of Theseus, perfect
in style, if it had not in contrast, near by the Parthenon ; and
finally on the extreme west, the ancient cemetery, Ceramicus.
Modern Athens lies to the north, commencing on the slope of
Acropolis, and running from the westward near Ceramicus,
around and under lofty Lycabettus, with its sharp rock peak 900
feet high, to the Stadium on the east. From east to west the
diameter is over two miles, and from north to south, a little over
a mile. In 1852 the city had a population of 8,000 to 11,000, and
offered nothing of beauty except the coloring of Hymettus,
which it was, and is yet claimed, decks itself in a distinct varying
hue for each hour of the afternoon ; beginning with a warm
gray at- noon and running to blue and purple, pink and violet,
and salmon-violet at sunset, to a cold gray before twilight
ends. The town was then compact, irregular and inartistic,
and covering a small space north and near the Acropolis. The
Ilissus, a small stream in dry weather, but a rushing torrent
after heavy rains, runs along the eastern edge of the town inside
of the Stadium. Between it and the town in '52, there was a
waste of sand and rough, desolate, uneven ground fully three-
quarters of a mile wide. In the centre of this stood the great,
quadrangular, ugly, ilew palace, with stuccoed walls. I remem
ber my surprise that a king would build such a residence, in
such a desolate place, and Vv-ondered why his brother. Bavarian
Ludwig,'who possessed taste, had not given some to Otho. They
were both wiser than I. The city has grown up to and beyond
the palace square, which now lies between an exquisite garden,
and New Athens, and is filled with beautiful houses of artistic
design. Few cities in the world are prettier than the capital of
Greece. It possesses no magnificent public or private buildings,
but many which are pretty and some really beautiful.
Otho, I remember, was not an attractive-looking man. He
was heavy in feature and expression, and of clumsy form, which
his Albinian-Greek costume, the prettiest and most artistic in the
world, could not hide. Indeed, it seemed cruel to put such a
costiime on so uncouth a figure. But his queen, Amelia of
Oldenburg, was one of the handsomest women in Europe. That
she had fine taste is proven by the exquisite garden, about a
quarter of a mile square, adjoining the palace, which she designed
and laid out — and, perhaps, planted, on the sands. There is in it
none of the stiffness and formality so characteristic of royal gar
dens in Europe. Large palms and pretty forest trees and shrubs

THE KINGS OF GREECE. NIGHTINGALES. 321
are growing with a careless grace, one would think, belonging
only to a native woods. Climbing creepers and trailing vines
hang as if set by lavish nature. Winding walks run here and
there as if trying to avoid some natural impediments. Oranger
ies and lemon groves are so planted among forest trees, that
some of the latter look as if they had been cut down to make
room for them. The walks are neither wide enough to look
stiff or too narrow to prevent free circulation. I wandered for a
couple of hours one afternoon in this charming garden all alone, by
the special permission of the guard, and when the general public
was not allowed to enter. So quiet was the whole, and so shaded,
that several nightingales were singing, not so gushingly, however,
as at night. They are very shy, but by exercising much caution,
I was able to keep one under my glasses for a few moments. It
is wonderful how small a thing it is to give out such a volume of
sound. It is long and tapering, but not much larger in girth
than a plump sparrow, and carried its head, when watching me,
so low, that the line from its beak to the end of the tail seemed
straight. Its song has much more melody than that of our
mocking-bird, but not so varied nor so continuous. To me it is
not so charming a singer as the little skylark. We have frequently
watched one of these latter mounting in small spirals higher and
higher until he was a mere speck upon the blue sky, all the time
singing, and there, hanging on fluttering wing far above us, he
would pour out his heart in a love-song so rollicking and joyous,
yet so sweet, that one could not imagine a lady-lark enough
prudish to say him nay. Why cannot some one get these gay
little fellows to America ? I could even forgive the sparrow-
importing fiend if he would teach the skylark to live and sing in
our land.
King George is even more democratic than was his deposed
predecessor. He walks the streets like a simple citizen. We saw
him and two of his children walking from the Acropolis. From
what I could learn he is neither popular nor the opposite. The
people feel for him absolute indifference. He and Queen Olga
passed us on going to the station when departing for Corfu, where
he has a residence. He touched his hat to every one ; all lifted
theirs, but then passed on as carelessly as if they cared not if he
should prolong his absence of three months to as many years.
He has the air of being a polished gentleman. I asked an intel
ligent man if the people liked his majesty. He shrugged his
shoulders and rephed : " They do not care a lepta for him. (The
lepta is the tenth of a cent.) But they," he continued, " like his
son, for he was born in Greece, and is a Greek in religion ; but to
them the king is a Dane. We call him the ' Twirier.' " " Why ? "
" Oh, because he is always twirling his cane." He is very youth
ful-looking, and the queen, though far inferior to charming Queen
Amelia, is a fine-looking woman.

32 2 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
Athens is a delightful place for a winter and spring residence,
and will ere long attract many students of Grecian literature and
art. Already the American school is prosperous. When I was
here before there was little or nothing of art except the ruins, but
now, to my surprise, there is nearly as much of the fine and pure
antique as in Rome. These have all been found by excavating
within a few years, and are being added to constantly. Some
good things have been found since we arrived. The Hermes of
the museum, said to be a copy of that of Praxiteles, found and
now at Olympia, is almost equal to the Apollo Belvidere. There
are some relievos of life size found in the old cemetery, which show
the ancient Greeks not only to have been heroes, but loving
fathers and husbands. The favorite funeral memorial seems to
have been a parting scene between the dead and his or her friends.
The warm grasp of the hand, the sorrowful expression of the face,
and many little gestures of affection, show that in old Athens
there was love about the hearthstone, and trusting confidence be
tween husband and wife which was never hinted at in their
writings. There seems to have been a sort of reserve, which pre
vented the old Greek from exposing his home to the gaze of any
but the most intimate. This feeling exists to-day in many parts
of the East. Only the most intimate friendship permits a hint
from one to another that either has a wife. A veil was, and is,
spread over the fireside, which was only lifted by the angel of
death. The question has been for ages asked : Was the art of the Gre
cian all his own, or did he borrow from another and improve upon
it ? And if a borrower, whence ? His pride or vanity never con
fessed his indebtedness. He acknowledged only the gods as his
creditors, and never seemed to feel to them any very weighty
load of obligation. Jove was little more than an exalted Grecian,
and had Apollo appeared as a contestant in the Stadium, some
Athenian would have entered the ring against him, and would
have striven manfully to win the leafy crown. As we walked up
to the Acropolis, we passed a clear little running fountain of
never-failing pure water half-way up its sides. Whence came this
water ? Where is its real source ? This rock, with its many fis
sures, does not look as if it had any veins connecting with distant
hills, and the platform above cannot catch and hold rain to supply
a perennial spring. I asked these questions, and thought them
kindred to the one : " Where was the source of Hellenic art?"
When I went into the museum above, not yet finished, in which
are all antiquities excavated from the ruins on the Acropolis, I
found the last question had been answered, by statues and sculp
tures lately exhumed. There were figures so thoroughly Egyp
tian that they would not cause surprise if seen in the oldest tomb
on the Nile. There were others of the earlier archaic period,
showing an advancement — a sort of marriage of Pharaohonic with

ART TREASURES AND CHARMING EXCURSIONS. 323
Grecian art. These statues are of the very earliest period of
Hellenic antiquities. The late finds have been veritable treasures
to the archaeologist. Some of the figures show, perhaps, the ear
liest attempt at sculpture in the land, when but little more was
hoped for, or, perhaps, desired, than to portray the human form.
As yet there was no conception that marble could portray thought
except by the movements of the limbs. Almost step by step one
can see in this museum the advance from the simple figure, until
the brain, and finally the soul, was shown through the features,
and the marble not only thought, but felt, and then the highest
art was reached.
About the time of my first visit here a German savant made
the assertion that there were now no Greeks, but only Slavs.
Full assent was given to the proposition, and men of letters have
mourned that the blood of the heroes no longer flowed in man's
veins. An opposite opinion is now taking strong hold here.
Possibly the wish is father to the thought ; but it is not confined
to the natives. Learned foreigners have adopted it, and adduce
as proof of the proposition the theory of the survival of the fit
test. Whenever mind rubs against mind, and subtlety meets
subtlety, they assert, the Greek wins. Throughout the Levant
they say the Greek shows himself superior to others. They are
the keenest traders and the most successful commercial men, and
they confidently predict a renaissance in arts and letters under
the glorious sun of this beautiful land. May it be so. I would
like to live in the hope and die with the belief.
This letter was dated at Athens, but I am finishing it at Con
stantinople. We had not the time to make any extended excur
sions, but did make some charming ones in the neighborhood of
the city. We drove through large .vineyards to Pentelicus, and
then climbed its heights. I carried myself up with ease, but felt
handicapped by my dead extra load of nearly forty pounds of fat.
Though somewhat out of wind, I had enough left to revel in the
glorious views. Marathon lay below us ; Eubcea and the other
islands of the .iCgean Sea lifted in splendid visions to the
east and south. Attica, the sea, and Corinth in lofty heights,
stretched to the east, while Boeotia and snow-clad Parnassus, in
magnificent piles, towered at the north. We drove out to the
beautiful bay of Eleusis, and wandered among its ruins, once the
scene of the sacred mysteries, in company with a charming
daughter of the spotless confederate hero. We saw the Albanian
peasant women, with ruddy fair cheeks, and sturdy forms clad in
coarsely embroidered sacks, reaping their little harvests. Flocks
of sheep and goats, with tinkling bells, made the mountain-sides
musical, while they filled the air with sweet perfume as they
lightly tripped through the wild thyme clothing the lower slopes
in a mantle of green. In no land of the world does the wild red
poppy take so deep a dye or grow in such masses as in Greece.

324 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
Often there are seen whole acres as thickly covered as a tulip
parterre with flowers of intensest crimson, so deep arid yet so
bright that they seemed to hold imprisoned sunlight, which flashes
from their blood-red cups. The people claim that this intense
hue comes from the blood of heroes which has moistened every
foot of Grecian soil.
We rode on the narrow-gauge railroad that winds in and out
over lofty precipices, overhanging the Saronic Gulf, with the deep
blue sea in gentle ripples far below us, and bold mountains high
above us, to the little Isthmus of Corinth, which barely divorces
the waters of the Italian Adriatic from the Grecian seas of the
East. There we drove through rich vineyards of the grape
which is called currant in commerce, to the oldest temple in the
land, at the foot of the towering rock 1,900 feet high, on which is
perched the Acro-Corinthus, the loftiest, and next to Gibraltar,
the most impregnable fortified height in the world. Then we
mounted sure-footed little horses, panoplied with pack-saddles,
and rode up the giddy height. I had two, a light little mare and
a yearling colt, which trotted and played by my side. The Alba
nian owner said that I was very heavy, and so he gave me the
two. It was an odd joke, but I doubt if he saw it; We spent
long hours on the summit. Flocks of long-wooled sheep and
giddy goats grazed upon the sweet herbs about us, and wise-
looking donkeys plucked thistles from the ruined walls. The
huge cisterns, holding pure water enough for a small army, makes
this spot a favorite pasturage for a hundred sheep and goats and
a dozen or more cattle and donkeys. They come and go through
strong gateway, in which hangs the old door armed with mas
sive nail-heads, once swinging to let in and out armed warriors,
but now opening and shutting daily for gentle sheep and stolid
asses — the variest step from the sublime to the ridiculous.
The view from this famous hill is almost unequaled. To the
north and south lay lofty mountains, pile upon pile — the most
distant yet white with the winter's snows. Fifty odd miles to the
east, over the blue Gulf, Pentelicus ended the vision, with Acro
polis distinct under the glass. The two mountain-girded gulfs
came up and tried to meet in a kiss below us. Memories of long
ago crowded upon us. Mountain and gorge, hill and steep
slopes, little plains and blue seas were woven together in a web
and a woof of story and of song — a song of heroic fortitude and
glory, and a story of Moslem fanaticism and modern treachery.
Nothing but memory and the old stone and mortar about us to
remind us that this was the centre of a heroic past. I wondered
if the canal, loo feet deep and four miles long, now being cut
across the isthmus, will again quicken the dead into life. That
night, in the little town of New Corinth, I dreamed of battle and
carnage, and woke to find myself in a very den of fleas. These
brutes make me their chosen victim. Sometimes when they

THE FUTURE OF GREECE. 325
attack me where a brave man should never be struck, — in the
broad back, where my finger-nails cannot reach — I am almost
maddened. I shall carry scars for weeks. The pleasure of my
journeyings in Egypt and Greece has been much lessened by the
pests. It is singular that I should suffer so much while others
scarcely feel them. I gained something that night, however, by
their attack, for I felt the sharp shake of an earthquake, which I
would have lost in sleep. I afterwards learned that they are of
frequent occurrence along the Gulf of Corinth. The one I felt
was a sharp, rapid, vibratory motion, and more distinct than any I
ever felt before. Not a house in this locality but is cracked more
or less. I think I should prefer to live where the Titans do not
make their underground bed.
Rome has revived into the strong kingdom of Italy. Can
Greece follow her example ? Though we may wish it, I fear I
was wrong when I said I hoped for it. Is there a ground for that
reasonable belief which constitutes hope ? She was once mighty,
and controlled a large part of the world. But her power was
not built upon labor. She won her wealth, if not her bread,
with the sword. The reap-hook and the plow, the merchant ship
and the workshop, man's labor kneaded into mother earth —
these, not heroic actions, on the battle-field, are the foundation
of power and wealth in these piping days of peace None of
these are, or can be, within the grasp of a new Greece. Her
mountains and sieep valleys, and her pure air may make men of
iron muscle ; her wonderful sky-lines and dimpled hill-sides ;
her violet seas and purple heights, panoplied by golden clouds
floating on opalescent skies — these may be the food of genius
and foster poetry and art, but it is the spreading meadow, the
great prairie, and the rich river valley waving in corn or golden
in cotton bloom, the mountain heart, crystallized into iron or
black in solid carbon ; the deep harbors leading into boundless
seas which wash the shores of near and distant lands, — the nations
which possess these, and they alone, can feed the world and
clothe it, and be its carriers. Greece can barely feed herself, and
from her own resources can weave for her people but scanty
clothing. She cannot find in her iqountains the ribs of mighty
ships, nor the food for their hungry stomachs, nor do mighty oceans
wash her shores, inviting her to trade with the world, now 100
times larger than it was 20 odd centuries ago. A comparatively
very small part of her area of 20,000 square miles is at all cultiva
ble, and of this a still smaller proportion is highly productive.
The wheat is rather light, and the olive crop somewhat uncertain.
The grape is of good quality, and of fair average yield, but often
fails. The vine which produces the Zante currant, so valuable in com
merce, will fruit only in the neighborhood of the Gulf of Corinth.
Transplanted elsewhere, it changes its nature, and produces a com-

326 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
mon grape of inferior quality. It looks like the ordinary grape
vine, and is, like the vine in all regular grape-growing countries,
not permitted to run, but is cut in at about two and one half feet
highi. Generally the wine-producing vine is trimmed to half this
height. I saw some of these latter near Athens, of great age and
nearly a foot in diameter. Some of the olive trees, too, are very
old — said to be over 2,000 years. They are ordinarily cut in,
leaving the main trunk eight to ten feet high, and furnishing
a smaller head than younger trees. The branches, however, being
very thick, are productive. No other tree carries the appearance
of old age so much as a gnarled old olive. It is twisted and
deeply indented, has gnarled and tortuous branches, and, with its
ash-colored leaf, is the very embodiment of hoary old age. From
its trunk, indented and twisted as if in pain, the artist borrowed
the idea of the old tree trunk for funeral monuments. Like the
hills in this land of atmospheric effects, the olive foliage adapts
its coloring to the character of the day, and to barometrical
influence. One sees it now with a green, almost cheerful and
bright, and then more sad, and again as if strewn with the ashes
of despair. I suppose the condition of the air causes it now to
show the top of the leaf, which is of pleasant green, and then the
under side, which is almost white, or to blend them together. It
is a pretty idea, however, that this tree, which in every land
bathed by the Mediterranean is counted man's intimate and
peculiar friend should, like the human heart, feel sad or cheerful,
as the weather may be bright or sombre. In this land, as in so
many we have lately visited, the woman and the ass or cow do
more than their full share of peasant labors and drudgery.
Although the wheat has not yet begun to yellow, it is being
harvested. I was told it is because hired labor is scarce in Greece,
and, therefore, the little farmers have to take time by the fore
lock. I suspect, however, it is to make the straw, the only fodder
or hay here, more nourishing. In the villages the harvest is
spread on the houses to dry. The reap-hook is very long, yet
many of the reapers, both men and women, half squat when using
it. The Albanians furnish quite a large percentage of the field-
peasantry, and the Bulgarians the shepherds. All Grecians evince
the old characteristics observed by St. Paul : " They run about to
hear something new." In passing field or other laborers, they
invariably paused to look at us, and when a train whirled by, all
would stand up and watch it until out of sight. I like this. A
rushing train of cars is a grand sight, and seems always to present
a new form. The man who can let one pass and not give it a
glance must be a slave to his work or akin to the ox of the field.
I took a pleasure in India in the fact that the queer buffalo had a
mind sufficiently inquiring always to look up with interest at a
passing train. If a young one tossed its head I felt amused, but
when one a hundred yards off deliberately turned and kicked
squarely at us, he aroused a fellow-feeling in my breast.

AN EXQUISITE FAREWELL SCENE. 327
The wine of this country, while somewhat rough, is fruity and
rich. The natives, however, do not drink it in its normal state.
They put into their white-wine, resin from the Isthmian pine
giving to the liquid a taste of sealing-wax. It is called " resinatta,"
and is drunk in large quantities. If I be not mistaken, the
ancients had a like taste, which was mentioned in the/rgrand
poejns. They use olive-oil largely, but I believe it is not of good
quality. Their manner of curing the olive I like much better
than the Spanish. The fruit is gathered ripe, and is cured in oil.
It looks black and unsightly, but has a delightful flavor, and is
¦decidedly health-giving. Being desirous of going up the Danube,
and yet of reaching Italy before it becomes too warm, we were
forced to leave Athens much sooner than we would have liked,
and on the afternoon of the 29th, took the Khedive steamer for
this place. We had a marvellous sunset, as we passed the fine
old temple ruin of Sunium, at Cape Colonnna, the southernmost
point of Attica.
A beautiful thing nearly always so impresses me that I
am inclined to think it more beautiful than any thing before seen.
I think I have seen a hundred sunsets finer than any preceding
one. But the memory of this will always live with me as the
paragon of all. The mountains to the west furnished a perfect
outline. The sky was beautifully blue above, running down
through the whole range of opalescent tints to a brilliant gold.
Short banks of clouds of purple, fringed with flame, stretched
here and there near the sun, flanked by others, more or less cumu-
lous, of purple bordered with orange-violet with pink borders,
and of red-violet ; floating about, and between the drawn-out
bands, were fleecy flecks of fire-clouds, almost dazzling, but dis
solving and melting away while the eye was trying to take them
in. These cloud-forms and their colorings on the mother-of-pearl
tinted sky, dissolved and took new shapes and tones so rapidly
that the eye could scarcely take note of them before they were
gone and were followed by others differing from, but not less
beautiful than those preceding. The western sky was a vast in
verted opal, as if one were at the heart of the gem, and were
looking upon the fickle, magical hues of its cheek from within
instead of from without. On a lofty rock promontory, projected
¦over the sea, were the columns in white marble (all that is left) of
the old ruins of Sunium, Parthena's most southern Attic home,
reaching nearly up to the mountain's sky-line, and resting upon its
purple-gray side as a background directly below the point where
the sun had gone under. Old memories were woven into the
living picture, which was beautiful beyond description — -painfully
beautiful. Thus, one is often affected, when looking upon a
thing of beauty so transcendant that the brain seems powerless to
grasp it and speak of it to the heart, or when the heart becomes
so full that the head is unable to give it full sympathy. This
sunset under old Sunium was full of deep pathos, fitting picture

328 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
for memory to recall as the parting scene of this storied land ;
this land so little yet so grand, whose men walked the ground in
the form of gods ; whose genius was plucked from the eternal
stars ; where poetry was a living thing and art hovered over the
every-day home. Wonderful land ! A speck upon the earth, yet
the story of its deeds will roll over the world's plains, and be echoed
from its hills, until history shall turn to tradition and tradition
itself shall become dumb.
We stood upon the deck of our little ship, and looked long
toward the west. The sun went down over the mountains and
sank to his rest. Shadows gathered over the hills and night fell
upon the sea. With a sigh, I bade a long farewell, a final good-
by to Greece.

CHAPTER XXXII.
COSMOPOLITAN CONSTANTINOPLE— BEAUTIFUL APPROACH— CUS
TOM HOUSE— SOLOMON AND HIS TRIBE— DOGS— ST. SOPHIA-
BAZAARS— THE SALAAM-LICK— THE TIMID SULTAN— DER
VISHES— THE BOSPHORUS— WONDERFUL PANORAMA.
Constantinople, May lo, 1888.
If one will spread before him a map of the eastern hemisphere
he will observe that nearly all the land lies in the northern half,
and that it is one mighty continent, divided arbitrarily by
geographers into three divisions, but by nature into only two.
Cut out from the map this vast continent, and try to balance it on a
pin for a pivot. The centre of gravity will we found to be not far
from the southern end of the Caspian Sea. If the card-board map
be as hard there as the land of that region is sterile, the pin will not
enter it, just as the plow and the hoe cannot penetrate the surface
of those desert regions of Persia. If the paper partakes of the
character of the country delineated upon it, the nearest point the
pin will enter will be in Western Asia Minor ; for there the near
est cultivable land will be found, and there, too, is approximately
the centre of the productiveness of the hemisphere. There,
moreover, will be found the centre of a mighty system of water
which permeates throughout this vast tripartite continent. It is
not too fanciful to call this the arterial system of the old world,
with Byzantium the heart and the Bosphorus the aorta, which
flows out into the Mediterranean, along the western shore of
Asia, along and into northern and central Africa ; along and up
into the gardens and vineyards of Europe ; over the sandy
reach of the Suez into the Red Sea and the world of water, and
the lands of fabled treasures beyorKi ; and through the Black
Sea, and splashing over into the Caspian and upon the Aral, up
into the vast grain and cattle regions watered by the rivers flow
ing into these seas.
If there be a spot in Europe, Asia, or Africa, designed by nature
for the imperial heart of the old world, it would seem that the
Byzantium-Constantinople is the one. A cursory view of the
map and a very slight knowledge of the productiveness of the
lands into whose fibres the pulsations of the Bosphorus can
throw the quickening blood and draw back repayment, will con
vince any one of this fact. A walk through this city — meeting
peoples from all these regions, here domiciled as if to the manor
329

330 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
born, is only a sharp emphasis of the evidence given by the map.
The untravelled American sees people drawn from many climes,
but they have become almost immediately Americans. One who
traverses the streets of New York or London, where are men of all
lands retaining their native characteristics, and sees them all only
as sojourners. But here one meets people in colonies, in squads
and groups, each group differing from all others, yet all seem
ingly at home and evidently feeling that this city belongs to them
and they to it. Here one jostles against groups of Englishmen as
thoroughly English as if living within the sound of Bow bells ;
Frenchmen, who look as if they sipped their coffee and absinthe
every evening on the boulevards ; Germans who have just blown
the cream from their lager ; Italians, who are happy on a frugal
meal of macaroni ; Levantine Greeks, noisy and full of swagger
and bad wine ; Arabs, stately and dignified, conscious that they
alone have the right to cry " Illaha-il Allah " ; Armenians with
long noses patterned after a vulture's beak, who can give a Jew two
in five and win every time ; Albanians, whose bed-fellows are their
swords and daggers, and who think a fight in the dark more agree
able than a feast ; Tripolitans, who wear green turbans, claiming
to be the real descendants of the prophet, and pining for battle
in his cause ; Turkomans and Kurds, who claim for their country
the land they can see beneath the vault of the sky; Africans
from south of the Sahara and about the springs of the Nile, who
wear slashes and gashes for jewels, and consider long scars on
their cheeks their gems ; Bulgarians, heavy and stupid, whose
every breath is a hurricane of garlic, and Russians, whose dream
is that the Greek cross may supplant the cresent on St. Sophia's
dome. All these various peoples are met with in other cities, but one
meeting them at once recognizes the fact that they are in them,
but not of them ; here, however, they seem at home and as much
of the place as are the Turks themselves. No distinctions are
made among men because of race, previous condition, or color.
A German is at the head of the army, and Woods Pasha, an
Englishman, will probably fill the place of Hobart Pasha at the
head of the navy. A Greek is the Sultan's physician, and is said
to wield vast influence over him. An African, whose blue-black
face has three broad gashes on each cheek, is in command of a
regiment, and the army is of every hue, from fairest white to
sooty black. The locality teaches that all men are akin, and a
prayer uttered with the face turned toward Mecca smooths down
the steps leading to the most exalted positions.
Mutterings are constantly heard throughout Europe to-day,
beneath the ground and over it, threatening war and the dread
carnage which must follow, and men and women are kept in con
stant fear. When the great emperor, whose fiat crystallized so
many petty German states into one mighty Teutonic empire,

GLORIOUS, IGNOBLE STAMBOUL. 331
was lying upon his iron bedstead listening bravely for the tap of
the drum which was to call him to the ranks of the mighty dead,
men instead of thinking of his glorious career and preparing to
drop a tear upon his casket, were looking toward San Remo and
watching the horizon to see whether a bright sky laden with
peace was to come up from Italy, or a lurid cloud reeking with
war was to roll over Europe ; and all because of Constantinople
and the Bosphorus.
Wise statesmen are closeted with each other studying the
world's map, and with heads bent close together, fix their eyes
all in one little focus — Seraglio Point, where the Golden Horn
brings down the " sweet waters of Europe," to pour them into
the wonderful salt river rushing between Stamboul and Scutari.
Shallow-pated wiseacres discuss in flowing periods that all-talked-
of and little-understood problem, " the Eastern Question," and
glibly declare who should own Constantinople. For 2,500
years the eyes of all civilization have been turned upon
this spot, and yet not a single deed was ever performed here
which was fairly entitled to be spread upon the page of history.
Here, close by, the searchers for the Golden Fleece moored their
ships when Greece was the home of mythical demi-gods. Here
the dread Macedonian monarch was forced to cry halt. Here,
over 2,000 years ago, the vast hordes of Asia were compelled
to bend aside their steps, and long centuries afterward the
crescent was baffied, on its world-conquering march by the
green waters of a stream but little over a half-mile wide. Here
100,000 old men, women, and children, begged for bread, when
they could go no farther on their weary pilgrimage to the holy
sepulchre. Here soldiers under the banner of the cross, slaugh
tered the followers of Christ, and again, after a few centuries,
Christian blood flowed in rivers, and Christian women and chil
dren by the thousands marched mournfully into slavery, when
Mohammed II., stained with his bloody hand St. Sophia's alabas
ter column. Toward this spot, and for this spot, mighty armies
have marched and vast fleets have sailed, within the present half
century, and fought great battles, but not upon its waters or
near its limits. Within a few hundred acres, not far from where
I write, crimes, silent, dark, and bloody, in vast numbers, but all
unrecorded, have been perpetrated, enough to make the very
name of man a stench in the nostrils of angels, and yet not a
single act of individual heroism, no sublime performance by
masses, was ever recorded as done within or under Stamboul's
-walls. Beautiful city, the heart of the third of the world, with
an existence of nearly 3,000 years, the seat of empire for 15 cen
turies, the witness of untold crimes, and with chronicles without
number, and yet having no history, for her deeds have not been
worthy of record, a city whose name is " linked with no virtue
and ten thousand crimes " !

332 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
Under Sunium's old ruin we bade adieu to Greece, on our way
here. The next morning's dawn found us under " the home of
the blind old man of Scio's rocky isle," the island an earthquake
so fearfully desolated four or five years ago. We then steamed
up Smyrna's gulf, with pretty mountains on our right, and to our
left a plain flecked with huge pyramids of salt — salt enough to
make a sea briny. Here this necessary article is manufactured by
a Turkish monopoly and is piled in mountains, from which ships
load from year to year, without apparently lessening the heaps.
Smyrna is a thoroughly Oriental city of 200,000 population, has a
fine bazaar, and a magnificent view from a castle, an old ruin
perched on a hill, just back of the town. So insecure is the
country, however, owing to brigandage, that we were warned not
to go beyond the hill. Foreigners are not infrequently picked up
and held for ransom.
Early morning found us nearly into the Dardanelles. The view
was pretty. High hills or low mountains prettily clothed in their
spring garments of green were on either hand. There was a sweet
freshness in this we had not seen for a year. For many months
the green of all plants has been often rich, but lacking that fresh
tint which so cheers the eye in the early offerings of the year.
The day was cold and damp. Perhaps it was this which prevented
much enthusiasm when we looked upon the great mounds mark
ing the graves of Achilles and Ajax. I never could rave about
the mighty deeds under Ilium's walls. The whole thing always
appeared to me a sort of tempest in a tea-pot — a huge buffo-farce.
Achilles was a bragging, handsome Buffalo Bill, and Ajax an an
cient John Sullivan, who let out left-handers with sledge-hammer
force, and was the admiration of the heirs-apparent and of Helen
peeping from behind latticed windows. Homer was a blind old
Gilbert and Sullivan, singing from city to city, and begging back
shish in copper and half-done sheep's meat.
I did not catch now our first view of Stamboul with the en
thusiasm I felt 36 years ago. I recall how it then seemed to lift
from the sea as a fairy city — it had a cardboard lightness, with its
rounded domes and tall minarets and palaces perched on wooded
hills, all lighted by a sun coming up from the east warm and un
veiled by a single cloud. I had then been in the saddle for
months, on hot plains and under a burning midsummer sun, and
had sailed from the foot of Olympus under Broussa the evening
before in a caique of eight oars. We had slept soundly on our
rugs spread on its bottom all night, and found ourselves at day
break on an island, within sight of Constantinople. There we
breakfasted on sardines taken fresh from a fishing boat and broiled
on a mass of coals from burnt brush. It was a delicious breakfast
for us and the crew. Then, with our prow pointed towards St.
Sophia's dome, we rowed and revelled in the beautiful picture
growing out of the sea. I remember we looked and looked and

THE CUSTOM-HOUSE. MY CIGARS. 333
scarcely spoke, and when we did it was in short ejaculations or
murmurs of delight. Taylor and I were both young then,
and filled with hopes as swelling as the domes before us, and as
heaven-directed as the minarets in sight. He has g'one to mingle
with the eternal dead, and I am fast reaching the great shore line
dividing the land of the past from the trackless ocean of the
boundless hereafter. Then the sky was rosy bright, laughing in
triumph at yesternight. But now — it is the last day of April,
cold, drizzling, and dreary, fitting anniversary to me of one of the
dies irce of remorseless fate.
Though the day was to me so sad a one and so dreary, yet
Stamboul arose before us in a wondrous beauty all its own.
We have all seen the conception of the artist of " Excelsior,"
where the hopeful youth sees a city sitting in dreamy light in a
world of fleecy cloud. This gives a sort of idea of this city, seen
from the sea. Our ship bent into the Bosphorus — 300 and odd
feet of water so deeply green that most people call it blue. We
looked over upon the old gardens of the Serai, now a half wilder
ness of neglected trees and green vegetable plats. Shutting it
partly in, arose the lofty walls rising out of the water. There was
the gate through which many a beauty, tied in a sack, has been
quietly thrust, and silently sunken in her watery grave ! Steamers
were plying in great numbers on the stream, and light caiques
were darting about us by the hundreds. We turned into the
Golden Horn, among a dozen or more steamers, and were soon
surrounded by hotel runners and boatmen. Surrendering our
selves, we were quickly on Turkish soil, and very nasty soil it
is in this capital. The nastiness of her streets on rainy days is
superlative. At the custom-house I forgot to give backshish to the solemn
Turk who examined our traps. On the very top was my last box
of Trichy cigars. He informed me that I was fined 40 piasters
($2), for bringing in tobacco. With a rueful face I paid the fine,
and reached for my smokers. He quickly wrapped them in a red
handkerchief, and said they were forfeited. This was more than
my free Yankee blood could stand. I am afraid I forgot myself
and said "  it." I hope I did not,.for I have grown pious since
I quit associating with " newspaper fellers." But I know I
solemnly asseverated that I would not buy a pipeful of tobacco or
a rug in the Sultan's dominions, and would wipe his mud from my
feet as quickly as possible.
We found the great hotels full. We went to the Little Bellevue.
I mention it particularly, so that some one reading this may re
member it. The view from its windows over the deep valley, along
the Horn, and upon the picturesque-looking houses on the green
hills in the distance, was simply superb, and the cuisine capital.
Determined to quit the town as soon as possible, we commenced
our sight-seeing. We found ourselves upon the great broad, low

334 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
bridge leading from Pera over to Stamboul. This bridge is one of
the most interesting things in the city ; about a quarter of a mile
long and at least 60 feet wide, it is covered from early morn till
dark, with a moving mass of more various people than can be
seen together anywhere else on earth. Every nationality, every
color and complexion, every form and fashion of dress, men,
women, and children, speaking as many tongues as caused Babel's
tower to halt in its upward growth ; dashing officers in gold braids
and decorations ; European ladies in Parisian costumes ; Arabs in
burnoose, ;'. Armenians in caftans, fat, well-fed Turks ; and beg
gars so fearfully maimed and disfigured that they ceased to be ob
jects of pity, so horribly repulsive were they ; army horses career
ing, and patient donkeys plodding.
While we were trying to understand how much we were to pay
toll, an unkempt old chap took my money from my hand, paid the
toll, got back the change, and handed it to me, telling in fair
English that the toll was for each a quarter of a piaster. I noticed
that he had given a piaster and a quarter, whereas my party was
only four. He had paid for himself. This was our introduction
to Solomon, the Son of David, the brother of Abraham and of
Isaac and of Jacob, and the father of five sons. From that mo
ment the love of Solomon and of his family for us surpassed the
love of woman. It mattered not where we were, morning, noon,
or evening during our twelve days' stay, Solomon or some of his
family were sure to meet us, or to be somewhere near. If we
looked about inquiringly, as if seeking some unfound place, one
of the Solomon family was at our elbow to tell us where we ought
to go ; if we hailed a caique, Solomon's son arose from the salt
water to interpret for us, and to settle the price ; if we called a
horse boy to bargain for a ride, Abram rose from beneath a pav
ing-stone to make a good contract for us and to mount one of the
horses as our guide. When we were through with an excursion,
Solomon, or Solomon's brother, or Solomon's son, prevented us
from being cheated, and took whatever we offered for his services
with cheerful thanks. If we gave five francs for a half day's work
to one of them, he took it for his own. If we handed him a
franc, saying it was all we had, he thanked us without a murmur.
Among them they spoke all languages, — one good English, an
other good French, another good Russian, all good Turkish, and
all enough English to understand, and make us understand a lit
tle. The most remarkable peculiarity of these sons of Israel was
the extraordinary manner in which they accidently got into the
neighborhood of the shop of some Hebrew dealers in carpets or
some other things usually dear to the traveller's heart. They did
not lead us, or seemed to care that we should go into these
places. There was a sort of attraction between us when with
Solomon and the houses of his people. Ah ! Solomon, I shall
never forget you, nor Isaac, nor Abram, nor Jacob. You led our

SOLOMON AND HIS TRIBE. 335
feet into pleasant places, and your ways were ways of peace. But
you did not get a piece of any dollar we paid for rugs and em
broideries, for you helped us to bring down prices in every in
stance. You simply loved us, Solomon, because we were young
men so far from home ! Walking with Solomon, our feet got
over the threshold of the house of David — David Levy, and there
was the wealth of the whole land of the sheep and of the goat and
of the camel. I told David I had sworn not to buy a thing in
Turkey. It mattered not. He simply liked to show his goods,
and he did show them, and my heart yearned for the wool of the
sheep that Shdnd like the silk of the worm.
I told our consul of my trouble. He said he thought his drago
man might make the authorities undo the wrong done me, and, be
sides, the principle ought to be settled for future travellers, that
they may enter a limited number of foreign cigars on payment of
duty, and I also got the thanks of the consul for pressing the
matter. Result : I got back my cigars, and all of my money ex
cept one and a half francs duty, and I sent a box of David Levy's
rugs to Chicago ; and Solomon is the friend of David.
Solomon is an institution of Constantinople, — so are the dogs.
Fifty-three I counted on a narrow street in a walk of 1 10 yards,
and it was not a good day nor a good neighborhood for dogs.
They were everywhere,— in the gutters, in the middle of the
streets, against the house-walls, between our legs, and under our
horse's feet — and such dogs ! All fox-eyed, all dirty, all lean,
and nearly all mangy. Some have their tails on their backs, but
the majority carry -them low, almost between their legs. They
can sleep anywhere ; no noise awakes them ; but the crack of a
coachman's whip makes them even when asleep get two inches
beyond a carriage-wheel. They are either asleep in your way as
as you walk, or they are fighting between your legs. A dogtrots
along a street, he looks sheepish, as if he felt himself engaged in
a mean business ; another dog attacks him ; they snap and bite.
After a while one gets the other down, and looks as if he is about
to choke him to death. Just as the bottom dog is about to give
a last gasp, some third dog takes the top one by the leg, then a
fourth comes in, and a fifth takes a hand ; probably a dozen are
soon engaged. I have watched them, and it seemed every dog
was going for every other dog, — a regular Kentucky free fight.
I invariably saw it through. There is a fascination in a dog-fight.
The acknowledgment is shocking, I know, but the statement is
true. Sometimes all will be on one until he is limp, and then
those that had finished him go for each other. The cause of
nearly all the fights is that certain dogs claim a certain set of
streets or blocks, and another set have another locality. Woe to
the dog that goes beyond his bounds, even by the width of a nar
row street. When one does and gets into a fight, all the dogs of
the two adjoining colonies are apt to get into the row, and when

336 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
the battle grows fast and furious, and a dog feels teeth in his
haunches, he goes for the nearest, whether friend or foe. They
frequently get killed. We saw one behind the rail of St. Sophia's
yard laid out dead. He would have been torn to pieces but for a
" mullah " (priest) who drove the victor off. A dog always goes over
his bounds with a hang-dog look. He knows his danger. Yet, for
love or for a bone, he does what many a man does — takes a chance.
Blacque Bey, so many years Turkish Minister at Washington,
lives with his wife and beautiful daughter in the Bellevue. He is
president of the Pera municipality, — nearly the same thing as a
mayor. He is a great friend of the pariah dog, and declares that
all the dogs about the municipality recognized the fact when he
was made president ; that they at once paid him great deference,
and when heg<3«if toward the city building they follow hirii in
most respectful manner. Not long since a dog bit the Russian
Ambassador. He demanded that Blacque Bey should kill him. He
inquired into the matter, and found the Russian had trodden on
the dog's tail, and decided the dog was justified. I suggested that
it was evident the Turkish dog had more sympathy for a French
man than for a Russian. Blacque is of French blood. His wife
laughed, but her husband was silent. The Turks are wonderfully
guarded to say nothing of the Russians. I was told that the city
was full of Russian spies in every locality, and that the Turks were
in constant fear of them.
As in all other Levantine cities, the donkey plays his part and
performs more than his allotted work. He is the baker's wagon
and the itinerant peddler. Huge panniers are swung over his
back, and he faithfully trudges from house to house with the
staff of life. Each housekeeper who can purchase on weekly or
monthly payments has a square stick given her. On this the
bread-man cuts a notch for each loaf delivered. When the stick
is filled he simply cuts it down, taking "put the notches, and a
new bread-book is thus opened. The donkey, too, is the lumber-
wagon ; joists of all lengths, scantlings, and boards are loaded
upon the little fellow lengthwise, so that the forward ends meet
or cross over his head, and the diverging ends behind come close
to or drag, wide apart, on the ground. Often these rear ends are
six and eight feet apart, and as the donkey bends about the
crooked streets threaten the shins of the pedestrian in a fearful
manner. A train of 20 to 30 of these lumber-carriers coming
down grade, and forcing the people to hug closely the walls or
dodge into doorways, is an amusing sight. But one never sees
any one angry at the shifts they are put to to save themselves.
The living along narrow, crowded streets makes every one ready
for the " give and take in life," which may be called one of its
best philosophies.
Horses, too, are used for pack-carriers. They carry the grain
and flour from one part of the city to another. The donkeys are

THE BAZAAR. 337
co-laborers, however, in this. Flour is distributed from the mills
to the bakers in huge, square, curiously-tied bags. At certain
hours trains of horses and donkeys are seen in dozens, fifties, and
hundreds about the grain and flour bazaars. All parts of streets
devoted to special trades or to any vending purposes, are in the
East called bazaars. The " shoe bazaar," the " Greek bazaar,"
the " silk bazaar," and so on through the whole list of trades, and
of nationalities are spoken of constantly. But in Stamboul there
is one locality called " the bazaar." It is of great extent, cover
ing many acres, 25 upward. The bazaar consists of a large num
ber of narrow streets, with shallow shops on either side, supported
by columns or pillars, and covered overhead to a large extent by
successions of small domes generally glazed. When the sun is
high matting is more or less spread over the glazed portions of
the streets and over the roof and domes. These little streets are
thus shaded and tolerably well protected from rains, and being on
up-and-down ground, and having many columns, some in double
and others in triple rows, with the small shops displaying a great
variety of wares and goods — silks, calicoes, and carpets — running
largely to gaudy colors; the shopkeepers in various costumes,
bright girdles, and brilliant red fezes ; and crossing each other at
every kind of angle, with the soft light coming through domes
and queer roofs, are wonderfully picturesque. Here one can
purchase any thing and every thing, and get fairly cheated too.
Shopkeepers ply the foreigner with invitations to look at their
stuffs. " Come in, sir. This is the place you want." Another :
" Here, effendi, other fellows cheat you. I sell cheap. I cheap
John. Melkin all buy from me," and so on. A constant fire is
kept up as you stumble along, for your eyes are so attracted by
the bright, pretty shops — all open — that your feet get independ
ent and are apt to take an elevation. Generally, certain streets
or localities are devoted to particular trades. Now you are
among carpet dealers, then among silk and embroidery dealers.
Men do their work in the front of their cupboard-like shops,
working with their hands and steadying a part of their machinery
with their toes. The foot helps the hand throughout the East.
A whole: section is given to furniture dealers, and a table or chair
is being made on the edge of the street before the shop. Then
another locality is occupied by brass-workers. Men are hammer
ing brass into cups or plates, and close by others are heating the
plates or bowls and zincking or leading them so that they shine
like silver. A man who delights to watch men finds food for
many thoughts, and finds whiling-away places for many an
hour. The Turk, as an aggregation, is a very sick man, and but little
fitted for this age and for his position so close to western activity.
He cannot remain much longer on the Bosphorus. The world
wants it, the West demands it. The only question is wko shall

338 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
take it ; each people is afraid to let the other in. But for that
the Turk would be now packing up and moving eastward. When
he is gone the western traveller will have lost much of the pictu
resque, for the go-ahead ideas of the West cannot stop to preserve
it. I wish all nations could come to an agreement and make a
" free city on the Bosphorus," free to all the world. I would
even be wilhng that Uncle Sam should sail in his chip.
Under the auspices of our polite Secretary of Legation, Mr. King,
we went with several dozen others of our countrymen to witness
the Sultan's progress to his mosque. He performs this ceremony
every Friday as the head of the faithful. Travellers are given a
large room in a handsome building fronting Hamidie Mosque, close
to Yieldiz Kiosk, the palace in which the Sultan resides. There
were over lOO strangers present, some of them very distinguished
people, with the secretaries of their respective embassies. As our
minister was not present, Mr. King adroitly smuggled me into a
separate small room, reserved for the diplomats, in which there
were only a half dozen. There I had a fine view of the brilliant
ceremony. Regiment after regiment — 7,000 soldiers in all — came
with full bands and stationed themselves around the large square
enclosing the mosque. They were handsomely uniformed and
marched admirably, and were a splendid body of men. I never
saw any troops in any land surpass two regiments of cavalry, or,
perhaps, more properly called, mounted infantrj.'. The men were
fine, bold-looking fellows, and the horses very good, some of those
ridden by the officers being superb. The street from the palace,
200 yards off, and the court of the mosque were kept sanded and
raked down. Fully an hour was consumed in marching the vari
ous regiments into position and getting every thing ready for the
mighty head of the church throughout Mohammedan lands.
When all was in readiness a ringing shout went up from all the
soldiers, apparently most hearty, and a large number of ofificers,
in gorgeous uniforms, appeared on foot, followed by six superb,
pure-blooded Arabian horses, under saddle, led by splendid
grooms. Following the riderless horses came a victoria, drawn
by two noble white Arabian stallions. In this open carriage the
Sultan came from the palace in simple sable-lined caftan and red
fez. He saluted with a wave of his hand those at the windows
of the diplomatic room and the strangers in the large room. At
the steps of the mosque he alighted and ascended alone over a
rich carpet.
The Muezzim from the minaret called the faithful to prayer.
While the ruler remained in the mosque, which was near an hour,
delicious coffee, tea, and cigarettes were served to the hundred or
more strangers, and the soldiers stood at rest. Then a large and
finely drilled band mounted a terrace near the mosque, and one
by one, in quick step, the regiments passed before a window in
which the Sultan stood. This was a splendid pageant. When all

THE SULTAN OF TURKEY. 339
had passed, the Sultan's mother came out of the mosque, and as
her carriage drove by, she threw money to poor people who were
beyond one of the files of soldiery. Then the Sultan came and
entered an open vehicle, and taking the reins, drove himself back
to the palace surrounded by crowds of officers, running before and
about the carriage.
Again, in passing, the ruler gave a very cordial salute to our
windows. While the soldiers were marching before him a couple
of aides came to say that the Sultan sent his compliments to the
distinguished strangers who paid this mark of respect to the re
ligious ceremony of the " Salaam-lick." And sometime later
another aide-de-camp came into the room I was in and said that
" the Sultan had inquired who we were, and on learning our names,
thanked us for coming to thus honor this holy ceremony," or
something to that effect. I rather doubted that this latter special
message had been sent, but I afterwards met the aide and was in
formed that my card with my past position had been sent in to
the chamberlain by our Secretary of Legation ; that the sultan had
asked who occupied the diplomatic window ; that this and the
Earl of Clarendon's card had been handed him, and he then sent
the message.
The Sultan is a small, slight man, very thin, and wearing a care
worn, haggard look. He is said to be very timid, and, owing to
some prophecy, is in constant fear that he will be assassinated,
and by a stranger. He regulates his every action by the con
junctions of the planets ; keeps ambassadors frequently awaiting
an audience for weeks because of some baleful crossing of star-
lines. I heard of an amusing evidence of his nervous alarm when
Lew Wallace was our minister, and which the minister Of
course could not tell. It was when the British fleet was occu
pying a threatening position off Alexandria. The Sultan asked
him to induce the United States to propose to mediate, and thus
prevent bloodshed. The minister telegraphed to the govern
ment at Washington, got its consent, and then presented the
matter to Lord Dufferin, the English ambassador, who could not
decline. But the prevention of bloodshed was not what England
wanted. So the wily earl quietly cabled the British admiral that
he would do well to fire a shot, and thus set the ball in motion,
before his government could hear of the proposed mediation.
The shot was fired, and after midnight the Turkish ruler, hearing
of it, hurried an officer off to bring our minister post-haste to the
palace. Wallace rushed off, half dressed, brushing his hair as he
rode, and found the Sultan in a state of fearful trepidation. The
pallid ruler informed him of what had happened and asked him
what he was to do. The blunt Republican scratched his head a
moment and then replied : " There is but one thing to be done,
and that your majesty should do at once." The grateful Turk
asked what it was. " Your majesty should place yourself at the

340 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
head of the army in person, and proceed immediately to Egypt."
The poor monarch came very near swooning.
There are three regular Sundays in Constantinople — Friday for
the Mohammedans, Saturday for the Jews, who keep it in most
orthodox sacredness, and Sunday for the Chri-stians; of the latter
the Greeks and Armenians are the greatest in numbers ; I think,
over 400,000.
Travellers go on Friday to see the dancing and howling
Dervishes. The latter is an English misnomer. They are a sect
called Heurleurs. One of their ceremonies is a ritual by a mullah,
responded to by the brothers and worshippers, who, as they re
spond, sway themselves, while standing in line, from one side to
the other and jerking the head, all the while uttering the name
of Allah in some prayerful phrase. As their fervor increases the
sideway motion becomes more and more extended and the head-
jerking more and more rapid, until they appear to be almost in a
species of fit. This action is continued for nearly an hour. The
sweat pours from their faces, and their heads look as if they would
be jerked off. As the fervor increases one by one of the audience
join the line. When we were present a coal-black Ethiopian, an
officer of the army, put on the robe. He was a splendid specimen
of manhood, and threw his whole soul into the thing. Sweat
rolled from his ebon cheeks, and at times his head really looked
as if it would leave his shoulders. Each motion drew from him
the prayer to Allah in convulsive grunts. An American lady
present became quite excited. I thought I saw her features
twitch in involuntary nervous sympathy. After this ritual is over
many of the faithful, and many children who are more or less sick,
lie prone upon the floor, and the head mullah, or priest, walks over
them, treading upon each, and then one by one blows upon their
faces, when they go off happy, if not cured. Babies in arms are
simply blown upon and touched. The worshippers seem most
intense in their devotion, and solemn in its performance.
The dancing or whirling Dervishes, after praying for, say half
an hour with many prostrations, then range themselves around a
circular floor in the centre of the mosque and listen to a pecuHar
music performed by a part of their order, and to a litany read by
their high priest, all the time marching in single file around the
outer circle, each bowing low, when opposite and farthest from
the " mecca " of the mosque — that is, the part corresponding to
the altar in a Christian church, and always on the side of the
building pointing to the holy city of Mecca, and when on the
circle next to the mecca, each one with a peculiar step, turns and
faces the brother next following him, and each bowing low one to
the other ; as this part of the ceremony progresses, the music be
comes more fervid, when, one by one, the Dervishes will begin to
spin around as on a pivot, and at the same time circling around
the room. Each one spins more or less rapidly, as he may choose,

EASTER SUNDAY. 341
but all go around the room in the same period, and all extend their
arms straight out as they thus waltz. Their dress is a high, coni
cal cap, and a long, full skirt coming to the feet and bound in at
the waist. As they spin the skirt extends in proportion to the
speed of their motion — that of those moving very rapidly taking
the form of a widely extended funnel. I counted the revolutions
of one of the worshippers. It was 58 in the minute. This
motion he kept up for perhaps a half hour, and when stopping
showed no sign of dizziness. There were 30 odd on the floor at
once, but only one moved with this great rapidity. Two of
them were young novitiates, somewhere from ten to twelve years
of age. The whole thing proceeded with great solemnity and
decorum, and all seemed fervid and earnest.
On Easter Sunday we went to the fine ceremony in the Metro
politan Greek Church in Stamboul. The patriarch and bishops
marched in exquisite and very rich, robes, all with brilliant caps,
that of the patriarch being of wonderful richness and beauty.
The church was painfully packed, the people swaying back and
forth from the pressure and movement of the outer lines. The
ambassadors of the countries adhering to the Greek faith were
present in their full court dresses, in seats next the altar. One of
their dragomen, seeing us in the swaying mass, worked his way
to us, and, extricating us, got us prominent seats. A part of the
ceremony was the reading, in twelve different languages, the story
of the reappearance of Christ to his disciples and the doubts of
Thomas. After the ceremony was over the favored guests were
conducted to a hall in the Metropolitan building, adjoining the
church. Into this the patriarch and the bishops then came, and
his holiness, holding a golden cross, gave his hand to be kissed by
the believers, saying something to each as they did so, and giving
to each beautifully gilded and dyed Easter-eggs tied in a piece of
muslin. To the principal guests he gave four eggs, to all others
three. After the grandees and their ladies had kissed his hand, I
got to him and asked in French that an American might be per
mitted to-pay his respects. He had in his hand a bundle of three
eggs to give me, but he at once reached back and got one of
four, and gave them to me with some kindly spoken words, which
I could not understand, for they were in Greek.
I had some most agreeable interviews with our accomplished
minister, Mr. Straus, whose mugwump proclivities do not prevent
his being a most industrious representative of our government
and a most popular gentleman with all visiting Americans. Mrs.
Straus is greatly admired, and entertains beautifully. She honored
us by giving us a dinner, and afterward having us at an evening
reception. I have spoken of Constantinople as the imperial heart of a
mighty continent, but now I would, if I had the power, paint it
in its beauty — the jewel of the world. Nature was in high revelry

342 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
when she conceived its site, and the genius of beauty, drunken
with ravishing dreams, was handmaiden at its birth. All of
nature's treasures were ransacked for material to build it, and not
a color was lacking on the palette from which it was painted as it
grew. Mountains were dwarfed into hills for its foundations —
hills retaining all the bold outlines and picturesque contour of
mountains. Seas were spun into rivers and woven into its struc
ture — sea-rivers of vast depth and so darkly green that they look
like liquid emeralds thrown into deep shadow; while the hills are
so bright that they seem carpeted with emerald velvet bathed in
a flood of sunlight. Not exhausted by her work when the site of
the city was completed, nature scattered her surplus treasures and
built beautiful islands in the deep sea close by. She would leave
nothing undone to make this city imperial in beauty, so she
spread over it all a sky gloriously bright, yet tender and soft.
The Bosphorus is about 15 miles long, winding, twisting, and
bending, and swelling into rounded bays, between the Black Sea
and the Marmora. It varies from a half mile to perhaps a mile
and a half in width, and has a depth in some parts of 60 fathoms,
and everywhere deep enough for the largest ships. It has no
tide, but sweeps with majestic force from the Black Sea, in some
points with a current of nine miles an hour. Throughout its
length noble hills and mountains lift from the water's edge, and
spurs, divided by narrow valleys or gorges, running down in bold
ridges, with here and there coves or deep creeks shooting back
into the hills. The largest of these creeks is the Golden Horn,
near the Marmora, over a quarter of a mile wide at its mouth and
running back with diminishing width some three miles into
a small stream of fresh water, " the sweet waters of Europe."
The point lying between the Golden Horn, the Bosphorus, and
the sea contains the " Old Seraglio," now a waste of unused
palaces and unkempt gardens. This is called Seraglio Point, and
rises rather rapidly from the water to 200 or more feet, and,
though neglected, is most picturesque when seen from the sea and
from the Bosphorus. The gardens and old palaces cov.er 100 to
200 acres, and are surrounded by a high wall, which, on the water
side, is massive and dingy with age. Within these walls have
been committed more silent deeds of intrigue and crime than on
any other spot of its size on earth. Many a disgraced favorite
and many a suspected wife and concubine has been silently
slipped into the river, whose vast depths never told the tale.
Many a rightful heir, and not a few emperors and sultans them
selves, have here met their doom, and no living mortal dared ask
whither they had gone. Here crime has held high court under
Roman and Christian emperors, and under Moslem sultans, and
knew no relenting until fire drove the rulers to other quarters.
On the highest elevatiou of the point, and immediately behind
tjie garden and palace walls, stands the Mosque of St. Sophia,.

ST. SOPHIA. 343
with its mighty flattened dome, lifting out of and over other and
smaller domes, whose arches support the grander one, and
lightened by four beautiful and lofty minarets. This is the noblest
edifice ever erected for the worship of the one living God, and is
the oldest of His churches, which has always and continuously
been used for worship. For over i,ooo years it was the most
holy of Christian temples, and when the Cross was removed
the Crescent immediately took its place, and the building became
the most exalted of Islam mosques. The minarets do not deface,
but rather add to the architectural perfections of the original
design. They are to me the perfect complement of the swelling
dome for a place of worship. I cannot calmly look upon a noble
mosque without a feeling of religious sentiment filling my heart.
Were there no associations connected with the grandest of gothic
cathedrals, I would look upon them only with cold admiration.
The " Taj " for awhile almost sanctified the bad woman who
sleeps beneath its rounded vault. I have to recall the effects of
Islamism to prevent the cold marble in dome and minaret in a
fine mosque arousing a feeling of reverence for the Koran. It is
the " cause " of Christ which makes me venerate even the grandest
gothic church. It is, however, not until after entering St. Sophia
and walking around its vast interior, and then standing beneath
the overhanging vault that the wonderful perfections of the edifice
sink into the soul. At first one is disappointed ; the proportions
are so fine that it looks small ; but it grows and grows until the
effect is almost painfully impressive. Perhaps the associations
have much to do with this. The centuries which rolled along
while the worship of the true God was held there — th« memory
of the thousands of old men, women, and children who were
packed within its walls for sanctuary, when the blood-stained
Turks rushed in and gorged themselves with slaughter. The
recollection of the cry of " Illaha il Allah, Mohammed resoul
Allah ! " uttered by Mohammed II., when he tore down the Cross
with his blood-dyed hands and planted the Cresent in its place.
These memories rushed upon me as I stood under the mighty
dome, and filled me with a sentiment of admiration and awe no
other church ever caused.
A mullah was sitting upon his cushions preaching to some
30 or 40 men squatted about him. I could now and then
catch some long ago familiar Arabic word, but could not under
stand a thing he was saying ; but never in my life have I listened
to such perfect declamation — now in plain colloquial tone, telling
them of something connected with their religion or their duty,
then in winning persuasion drawing them to him ; then, with
almost fierce invective telling them of some wrong or sin, with
gestures all the while suited precisely to the tone, and, I felt, to
the words. I did not understand a single word spoken, yet I felt
sure I knew what he was saying. I stood and listened spell-

344 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
bound for a quarter of an hour, and could have stayed longer
with pleasure. Ah ! there is an oratory which is born of nature.
It is not in phrase nor in flowing words; it comes from the heart.
Heart and brain speak to heart and brain. The rapt attention
and the occasional ejaculations of this mullah's hearers proved to
me this man spoke from the heart and reached the heart ; that he
was one of nature's orators.
Close by St. Sophia is another noble mosque, Achmet, large
and with six minarets. Then, farther back, are many others, all
more or less patterned after St. Sophia, scattered throughout
Stamboul, as the city swells and widens, and the Golden Horn
and the sea diverge more and more, until some three miles
back, runs the grand old Roman wall of great height and vast
thickness, and relieved every few hundred yards by massive tow
ers. This wall commences in the ruins of a large fortress on the
sea, with seven towers, and stretches some three miles to the
Golden Horn. The wall and towers are broken and wrecked,
covered with ivy and hanging plants, with large shrubs lifting
from the top and broken sides, presenting a most picturesque
appearance. Within this wall and between the waters is a popu
lation of some 700,000 ; Turks, Jews, Greeks, and Armenians,
each nationality living in its separate quarter.
Across the Golden Horn come Pera, . Gallatta, and other towns,
now grown into one. The highest part of this is perhaps 400 or
500 feet. Through these towns, or parts of towns, run deep
narrow valleys, the bottoms beautiful in gardens of trees, vines,
and vegetables. The steep sides of the hills which enclose
these gorges, and along their ridges, are covered by houses of
several stories on the lower fronts, but running into the hillside
on the other. In some localities the buildings are all white in
stucco, and many of them palatial in size and architecture ; in
others, weather-stained wooden buildings, leaning against the
hills, with their fronts of three to five stories, bold and yet pretty,
covered by latticed balconies or projecting windows, resting upon
long brackets and jutting far over the narrow streets. These
never knew glaring paint, but are tinted by time and the weather
in artistic tone. The streets are narrow and very crooked, having
never been laid out, but the first houses being erected to suit the
convenience of the owners, the streets adapted themselves to those
built, and others sprang up along the bending ways. Although
from the streets and the crooked alleys and lanes leading into
them the ground seems covered with structures, yet when viewed
from an elevation or from a distance it is seen that in little courts
among the houses there are so many trees — fruit or flowering — so
many that the city seems half embowered in shade. Besides,
about many of the imposing structures, hidden behind lofty
walls, are charming gardens, some of considerable extent. These
add greatly to the bower-like tone of the town.

oo

A WONDROUS PICTURE. 345
Across the Bo.sphorus, opposite Stamboul and Pera, lies the
old city of Scutari, for centuries held by the Turks before they
won the European shore. This town, with one above and
another below, has a population of 300,000 to 400,000, grows out
of the water and climbs the steep high hills, and is dominated
by a mountain over 2,000 feet high. From this, one gets
the finest view of human life combined with nature's beauties in
the world. Almost under it hes the old tumble-down Turkish
town, with cemeteries of large size, in several localities quite in
the town, densely shaded by tall spire-like cypress trees in som
bre funereal green. Then farther, yet apparently almost under
one, the grand Bosphorus, bending and doubling between lofty
mountains, on whose steep sides are many villages or suburbs
springing out of the river's edge and climbing high up on the
steep slopes or far into the gorges which bore into the hills ; sev
eral magnificent palaces of sultan and pashas, with long, beautiful
facades laved in the emerald floods, line the two shores, but more
especially the European opposite. There lies Stamboul and
Pera, with their mosques, with domes in masses and minarets
pointing towards the sky, and with bright palaces and white
houses and softly-tinted old wooden buildings, all embowered in
green, and softened and toned to a delicious coloring, the whole
having the appearance of having been laid out and built less for
use than for picturesque effect ; over and beyond Pera are the
hills or mountains with their nearer sides covered with cypress
groves, in which with the glass are seen the turbaned headstones
of the Turks, or dotted with Arab graveyards resembling in the
distance rock- and boulder-covered slopes all glaring in the sun
light ; and still beyond, stretch the soft outline of the hills car
peted in velvety green. The cities and towns below are so
large that they are the homes of 1,500,000 souls.
Running back and through these are gorges or narrow valleys,
with their bottoms green in trees and gardens, and at this sea
son of the year brilliant in blooming acacia and other flowering
trees and shrubs. Looking to the right are the broken hills and
deep waters climbing towards the Black Sea ; looking to the left,
is the smooth Marmora, with hilly islands close by, studded with
villas and villages, and over and beyond, lofty Olympus, wrapped
in a sheet of purest snow, and all overhead spans a soft, pearly
blue sky with fleecy clouds lightly swimming upon the vaulted,
ethereal blue. As we sate and took in this wondrous picture, or,
rather, succession of pictures, a little skylark rising close by com
menced its love song ; up it chmbed in spirals, now to the right,
then turned to the left ; higher and higher, singing all the while,
until it was a mere speck against the sky. There it fluttered
and poured out its heart in pleading, loving agony, and, overcome
by its own passion, fell, singing as it fell, as if afraid that the
spell of its carol would be lost to its mate, until within 10 to

346 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
20 feet of the ground it sang as if its heart was bursting
with song. I bent my eyes and walked slowly down the hill to
our horses, unwilling to take another look. I wanted to carry
away the picture crystallized in one perfect instant, and shall try
to retain it until one boundless vision of perfected beauty shall
fill my soul and one endless carol shall fill my heart throughout
an eternal morning.

CHAPTER XXXIIL
THE BOSPHORUS— ACROSS BULGARIA — BUCHAREST — ROUMANIA,
ITS PEOPLE— APPEARANCE AND PRODUCTIONS.
Buda-Pesth, May 19, 1888.
At four o'clock on the afternoon of the 12th, we weighed
anchor and steamed out of the Golden Horn, and up the Bos
phorus for the Black Sea, on our way to Varna. Travellers often
write that one of the drawbacks to the pleasure of travelling is
the necessity of parting so frequently with friends made en
voyage. To me this is not the case; I am so occupied with the
things I see that I do not make many such friends, but I do make
friendship with the places we visit, and there are few I do not
quit with regret. This has been more the case in this our " race
with the sun," than on any previous journeying. There is so much
in such a voyage around the world that seems typical of the
voyage of life that there comes over me an irresistible feeling
that I, too, will finish my course with the end of the trip. I
believe I never have now what are called the " blues," and rarely
get low-spirited, but as we pass around this globe of ours, the
spot on which we stand is to us the highest of the rounded world,
and to it we have been climbing ; and each day a part of the
world is left behind, and still fewer heights are to be gained.
When we stood upon east longitude 92^° we were almost oppo
site the starting-point of our course, and day by day afterwards
the mile posts behind became more than the posts before us, and
day by day the miles to be cleared became fewer and fewer, and
the distance looked back upon grew ift magnitude. So with the
voyage of life. With our eyes looking aloft, the climb to the
meridional zenith of our days is slow, and with the quick pulsa
tions of active energy, our hearts swell and teem with hope. But
ah ! Rapidly pass the days when the down grade is reached.
Then comes the solace of true philosophy — that philosophy
which teaches the necessity of quickened action and steady
exertion, and a calm resignation to the inevitable. Then more
than even before, is valuable that best of all rules for life, " Do
all that is possible to-day and hope for the morrow."
While I did not wish to stay longer in Constantinople, yet
when I looked back upon the glorious picture it made, and passed
347

348 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
up the Bosphorus and drank in its unequaled beauties, I could
not repress a deep sigh that I at least could never again behold
them. The sun was dropping over the hills, now entirely hid
den, then bursting out in all of his glory as some gorge would
open or valley would carry the sky line farther toward the west ;
now we were sailing over the deep green water rolling along
in majestic sweeps ; then we would round some projecting prom-
onotory where the currents rush in rapid fury. Now a palace
would dip its feet into the cool depths, and beautiful gardens
and green woods would mantle the hills above it ; and then a
village would steal down some deep gorge in modest beauty,
and come to the river as if half ashamed of its assurance ; here
an old castle perched itself upon a high rock, and sent massive
walls zigzagging about steep precipices, as if the only idea of
the builder was to attain the very extreme of the picturesque ;
and there a mountain would run gently back with easy slope, and
some rich man's house would crown its distant height, and fields
would wave in swaying crops. Passing the earthworks of the
Turk, we entered the Black Sea just as the sun sank behind the
reddened horizon of the west ; lowering clouds hung upon the
north, where the Russian bear was about to prowl around his
Arctic home, and to hug to his heart his one fond, never-dying
hope of building his lair among the hills of Stamboul.
The Black Sea was dark and calm when the night gathered
about us, and early in the morning we entered the little rounded,
but not well-protected harbor of Varna, the only sea-coast town
of Bulgaria. This, from the water, is a pretty-looking place of
25,000 population, but, I was told, is dirty and unattractive within.
Surrounding it and the little bay in front, are high hills of 600
or 800 feet in height, standing some distance from the water.
Along the crests of the ridges are seen numbers of earthworks.
One was pointed out as having been thrown up by the first
Napoleon. It was drizzling and rainy when we were rowed
ashore. Here, as nearly everywhere in the East, there are no
piers for ships to tie to, but all lie pretty well out. The bad
weather prevented us stopping to witness the review promised to
be held by Ferdinand, Prince of Bulgaria, on the day of our
arrival. I wished to see how the people looked upon their exotic
ruler. I am rather down on the whole system of such transplant
ing, and I have an idea the several peoples feel the same way.
You know the old song :
" Some -wicked men in olden times
Threw Daniel in the den of the lions.
The lions for Daniel did n't care a 
And Daniel did n't care a  for the lions."
George and the people of Greece evidently look upon each
other as Daniel and the lions did, and I am told the same feeling

SOLDIERS, SOLDIERS EVERYWHERE. 349
exists in all these principalities, whose princes were drawn from
the royal stables of Denmark and Germany.
The streets of Varna, where we could see them, were, however,
bannered and decorated in honor of the prince's coming;
flowers and garlands hung about all the stations along our road
to Rostchuk, and the people looked as if they were pleased with
the show about to be given them. What a trick it is of kings
and " sich " to tickle the people with shows and pastimes, and
what "fools we mortals be "to be so tickled; but we are. I
sometimes think that all of the sympathy we feel for the oppressed
is hardly deserved by them, so willingly, or at least so tamely,
do the majority yield the neck to the yoke. Pageants and shows,
too, are so cheap. A few thousand spent in amusing the masses
go farther than a great many thousands paid to murder them.
But over here even the bullet is gilded, and the spear has a
pretty banner attached to it. I was in Fisher's huge magazine
the other day at Buda-Pesth, admiring his exquisite majolicas.
His salesman stopped me while bargaining, that we might go to
the door to listen to a grand band, and to see several regiments
marching by. " Es ist schon, nicht wahr, meinherr?" "Yah
wohl," I replied. "Those fellows could kill a great many Rus
sians in a day, and a big crowd of unruly Hungarians in a min
ute." He understood me, and for a while seemed to be thinking.
He then asked me if we had many soldiers. I told him about
30,000, " but then we have a population of only 60,000,000." I
cannot help it, though it is none of my business, but I cannot
enjoy looking at a grand parade of men paid to kill, especially
in Europe, where kings pretend to be followers of Him whose
mission on earth was one of " love and peace." From Varna to
this place a soldier is rarely out of sight, and from our car
windows we saw regiments and battalions drilling on the out
skirts of every moderately-sized town. Officers covered with
lace are brighter in coloring than the butterfly-ladies at all high-
toned caf^s and gardens, and the clank of their sword-scabbards
on the stone flagging and asphalt walks, is always heard on
every corso and fashionable promenade. They loll back covered
with orders and cordons in the finest equipages on every after
noon drive, and their prancing steeds are constantly careering
along the bridle paths of every park. Splendid-looking fellows
they often are, and fill the eye and win the admiration of the
fairest of women, but there is something in their trade utterly ab
horrent to my Republican heart. More soldiers, twice over, are at
all times quartered at Buda-Pesth than our whole country possesses.
There is a Providence watching over men and nations, our good
people say. If this be true, I again exclaim : " How long, oh
Lord ! How long! "
The railroad leads through the hills at Varna up a very pretty
valley. We started at 7:30, and were soon in interesting scenery

3SC A RACE WITH THE SUN.
— nothing grand, but a succession of broad valleys well covered
with fields, and overiooked by tall, rugged hills, 600 to 800 feet
high, clothed now in small bushes, and then lifting in rocky preci
pices, often rendered very striking by their embattled-looking
walls, being deeply pierced by caves in great numbers, looking as
if cut by hand. Herds of gray cattle and large numbers of horses
were constantly seen, and several pretty villages, now all decked
in bunting and garlands. We climed to an upper plateau of
deeply rolling country; perhaps I am wrong in terming it a
plateau, so high, so rolling, and so deep are the depressions.
This up country is of very rich land, and highly productive. The
wheat, rye, and oats on it were all well set and finely green, and
the vineyards healthy looking. Trees are not wanting, and the
stretches of rolling country often seen for 10 to 15 miles were
exceedingly pretty. It looked farm-like, although no farm-houses
were ever seen, and sometimes for miles not a village or hamlet
was visible. The villages lie along the high road, which, at times,
was quite far from the railroad. The farms must often be two,
three, or more miles back from the houses of those who cultivate
them. We were running for three or four hours through this rich land,
and seven hours and a half from Varna to Rustchuk, where we
struck the Danube, here a broad and mighty stream of white,
muddy water. This is Europe's grandest river, for the Volga is
so far in eastern Russia that it can hardly be called European.
We crossed on a small steamer to Giurgievo, in Roumania, and
were soon on the great Oriental express on its way directly for
Paris. We ran rapidly through a fine farming country, low, roll
ing, green in wheat, oats, and rye, and with large acreage, now
being broken or just planted in Indian corn. The land was not so
rich nor so pretty as the part of Bulgaria we had traversed. Here
commences that vast wheat country, which stretches westward
and northward, and northeast, running into Hungary and far into
Russia, the so-called granary of Europe.
In two hours we were in Bucharest, the capital of the kingdom
of Roumania. It is an irregularly laid-out city of over 300,000
inhabitants, has some fine hotels, 120 churches, nearly all Greek,
and some good drives. The streets are all paved, partly in granite
block and partly in large cobble or small flat stones. The mistake
is being made of laying the blocks on a natural bed. The church
attached to the hospital and charities of Princess Balassa is pretty
without and elaborately rich within ; has a fine monument of the
princess, and is all gilded inside. The screen which separates the
altar end of the building from the main church and the whole rear
down, is one mass of gold, and shows that the people have much
of the Oriental in their taste. The Metropolitan Church, adjoin
ing the Bishop's palace, and the House of Parliament lying on a
hill along the. edge of the city, are interesting. In the church, in-

BUCHAREST. 351
cased in a silver covering fitting the form, are the remains of St.
Demetrius, who lived some 1,200 years ago. The remains were
miraculously preserved, and have the extraordinary quality of
effecting the cure of sick people, whose garments are laid in the
case containing the body and there left for a couple of weeks.
There were several bundles when the case was opened to our
view. I believe during the two weeks the garments are thus left
the sick one gets well, or — dies. The time is certainly ample for
a thorough change. The good priest who showed the relic had
entire confidence in the hygienic qualities of his corpse !
On the threshold and lower door-frame of the main entrance to
the House of Estates (Parliament) was scattered the blood of some
men killed here two weeks before. The papers claimed only two
or three were killed in all, but a quite intelligent man, who acted
as our guide, assured me it was generally believed the killed ran
into 200 or more. This was what may be termed a party fight,
and was a sort of revolution. The party of the outs demanded
the right to be heard by the ministry. This was refused. It tried
to force itself into the Hall of the Estates, shots were fired, men
were killed. But the ministry was forced to resign, and the outs
got in. I do not know what the distinction is between the two
parties ; perhaps, as in other countries we know of, the ins were
in, and wanted to stay in ; the outs were cold, and wanted to
get in out of the cold. They charged that the ins were stealing.
The outs never steal ; they can't ; but wait till they get their
hands in, and then see.
We spent two days in Bucharest, and were pleased to see that
it is rapidly developing into the capital of a fine people, and
already begins to wear the dress of a thoroughly western European
city. That Roumania is a constitutional government is constantly
evidenced by the animated discussions had on political matters in
the railway carriages. In Europe I never take a first-class car
riage, if I can help it. In the second-class I meet the people,
land-owners, merchants, and well-to-do mechanics. They are
always willing to talk to an American, whereas, in a first-class
compartment, one never meets them. But for the language, I
could almost have thought myself in America when running 12
hours from Bucharest to Turnu Severin, at the western boundary
of the kingdom, for political talk was constant. In this run, to
gether with the one two days before, we passed through the cen
tre of nearly half of Roumania, a country with an area of over
48,000 square miles. A great part of it is very fertile, and on its
hills there is an abundance of timber. Its map shows it to be dog-
legged in shape, about half of it lying between the Carpathian
Mountains and Russia, the other half being between the Danube
and the same mountains, which have bended due west. The
northern limb of the leg, I was told, resembles Bulgaria — hilly, or
very high rolling, and a part quite mountainous. Fully a third of

352 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
the whole, being the part lying towards the Danube, is either
an almost dead flat, or a low, rolling country, running into hills as
the Carpathians are approached. These mountains appeared, in
the distance, before we had left the capital an hour, in a long
range with a sheet of snow spread over the crest. This is of the
winter's fall, and disappears before July.
For hours we were upon a vast plain, perfectly flat, except
where some creek or river ran through it in a depression. The
soil was good. Trees were growing about the plains, in lines here
and there, in good-sized copses frequently, nearly all trimmed high
up, the twigs being used for fuel. The railroad stations were
good and fairly ornamental, and railroad construction-workers, in
their garments of white cotton — a sort of wide shirt gathered in
at the waist and confined by a broad girdle protecting the vital
parts of the body — looked cheerful and contented. Women are
largely field hands, and were frequently the drivers of the six-ox
plows. The land is well broken by good plows with a couple of
wheels in front. The oxen are not strong looking, nor are the
horses. A first-class team of two with us could do the work here
done by three. A proprietor who kindly gave me much informa
tion in German, interla(;ded with French, said the beasts were
weak because not well cared for, and with a sigh said he
wished they had some American energy with them. He laid the
blame upon the peasants. There is a constant agrarian fight
going on between the two classes. When the present constitu
tional government began its course, the land was divided to a
considerable extent among the people. At first it worked well,
but when a house or farm had to be divided among a man's kin,
the holdings became too small for their support ; they then to a
great extent surrendered themselves to the proprietary landlords
and became his laborers, and when, too, they held to their farms,
they became laborers for certain fixed periods. In this way the
landlord or proprietor gets the first work and reaps the crearn of
the season. This led to the late outbreak of two or three weeks
before — I do not refer to the one in the capital, which was purely
political. Several men intimated to me that Russian intrigue was
at the bottom of the thing, and one or two boldly asserted it.
The paws of the northern bear are a constant source of dread, if
not a menace, to all southeast Europe, as well as to central and
eastern Asia. Americans generally seem to have sympathy with
Russia. I can only account for it by the inherited dislike many
have for the land of the Georges, and by the hatred of the Irish
for every thing English. What a blessing it would be to the
United States if Ireland could be thoroughly pacified. It now
causes an outside strain to be constantly brought to bear directly
upon our English relations and directly upon our intercourse with
other lands. We cannot help giving our sympathies to the
oppressed sons and daughters of Erin, and to join with their kin
dred in America in an expression of that sympathy.

ROUMANIA AND ITS PRODUCTS. 353
Russia is a mighty colossus stalking across the world. Wher
ever she goes despotism and its attendant instrument, espionage,
follows. There ought not to be a single feeling of affinity
between the denizen of a free soil and this land of unlimited
monarchy. On the other hand, though England be grasping and
oppressive, yet where she goes a love of freedom goes, a real
comprehension of civil liberty goes. However much we may
dislike many of her manners, her bullying and domineering spirit ;
however much we may be disgusted by the supercilious demeanor
of so many of her people, yet we are forced to acknowledge that
Great Britain is to-day the very bulwark of the world's freedom.
In a charming interview I had the other day with Prof. Vimb6ry,
the celebrated Hungarian thinker and author, I gave expression
to this idea, when he bounced from his chair, and running to his
desk took a manuscript in which he was then writing, showed me
a page, and said : " Read that, sir ; your very language, almost in
exact words, sir. It makes me happy to find that our ideas are
thus echoes one of the other." Vdmb^ry is a patriot, a lover of
freedom and a hater of every form and fashion of tyranny ; he
thinks that England must overbalance Russia or the dial on the
face of the clock of progress will be set back indefinitely. Why
is it ? Simply England is forced to a line of freedom by the very
life-blood of her institutions. She is built upon a rock in which
liberty, civil rights, and independence are the composing ingredi
ents. She oppresses Ireland because of the cupidity of her land
holders, and in trying to do that which is repugnant to the very
genius of her institutions, the fight is inevitable and must go on
until freedom holds up its head on Irish as well as on English
soil. Roumania's plains produce a vast deal of small grain — wheat,
rye, oats, and good barley. All of these cover the ground well.
Much land is now being, or has just been broken-, for Indian corn,
some of which was just up. I visited the market-place in Bucha
rest and found few cereals, fruits or vegetables which seemed up
to our notion ; apples were poor in size, but well flavored ; vege
tables small, and the Indian corn, with little, rounded grains. It
is planted very close, and grows with short stalks and small ears.
The peasants lack good seed, I shodld think. It amazes me to
see how greatly com production has increased in the old world
since I was first abroad, from '51 to '53. Then maize was an
occasional crop, now it is almost universal. Tobacco, I think, is
in more universal use than any one other plant. Next comes
wheat, but corn is fast treading upon the latter. Wherever we
go and in every land I can hear from where it will grow it is
becoming one of the heavy crops. There is a large cattle herd
ing and horse growing business in Roumania. The horses, how
ever, are rather under sized, and the cattle not heavy, and beef
very thin. Great flocks of sheep and of goats — the former

354

A RACE WITH THE SUN.

generally brown — are seen. Cheese is mad'e from the milk of
both animals ; that from the sheep is sweet and rich, and can
be spread upon bread like firm butter. Bulgarians are often
seen as shepherds. They are rather a nomadic race, and
are the sheep tenders of all European countries once under
Turkish rule. Their letters and signs resemble the Russian
a little, and, I am told, their language too. In Roumania the
language is a mixture, a sort of Latin mixed with Italian, with
an infusion of the Oriental. I could always understand the sub
ject under discussion when hearing them talk, owing to the
familiar words, though I could catch nothing else. The language
is softer than French, but lacks the soft, flat sound of Italian,
caused by such large usage of vowels. The people are fairly
good looking, but we saw few pretty, and no beautiful, women.
The peasants wear shoes of sole or other heavy leather, bent up
around the foot and fastened by thongs over the instep, and
strapped about the ankle, with over the shoulders a sort of sack
made of woollen stuff almost as heavy as carpeting. This shoe
is common to Roumania, Bulgaria, and Servia, and a part of
Hungary. I was told that good water is everywhere to be had, either in
natural springs or moderately deep wells. The well-bucket is
hoisted on a horizontal spindle, with a cart-wheel in place of a
crank — apparently a worn and discarded wheel.
There were many pretty stretches of country, and, toward the
west, good scenery and very large vineyards, and orchards of
prunes and walnuts. We tried several varieties of wine. They all
seemed pure, very cheap, and good. A connoisseur would prob
ably not like them. I make it a rule to drink the wine of the
country, and like nearly all when pure. I can never be a prohi
bitionist so long as wine be inhibited. We drank a delightful red
wine at Turnu Severin, and a good white one, both of the neigh
borhood. Before reaching that place, a few miles eastward, we
began a very rapid descent to the Danube through a scene not
often surpassed, over wooded hills and across deep valleys ; the
great river lay like a mighty silvery band winding along the valley
below, and coming out of the Carpathian range, where it cuts
through the mountains in passes wild and grand. The grade is
very severe — perhaps one in 25 — and continues until the river
level is reached. The gorges down which we ran are heavily
wooded ; the sun was setting in a field of red ; the river was in
great ribbons of silver; and nightingales were gushingly carolling,
unable to restrain their love-making, until it grew dark. We got
our luggage on board the steamer on which we were to go as far
as Belgrade, went ashore for a supper and for a bottle of the best
native wine to be found. Then, being full of good things and
happy, we sat on the deck, watched the stars, listened to the
music of the night-loving bird, and thought of loved ones at home.

CHAPTER XXXIV.
SCENERY ON LOWER DANUBE— BUDA-PESTH— BEAUTIFUL WOMEN
—MARGUERITE ISLAND— HUNGARIAN DERBY.
Vienna, May 24, 1888.
The lower Danube, from Vienna down, is not, taken as a
whole, an interesting river to travel upon. It runs frequently
through great plains or low hills. There are a few points, how
ever, where it is fine, and between Turnu Severin up to Bazias it
is surpassed by few rivers anywhere. Between these points it
breaks through the Carpathian Mountains and the foot-hills flank
ing them. At the highest point the mountains rise above the
water 800 or 1,000 feet, are very steep, and in many places lift
by sheer precipices several hundred feet. This is a part of the
renowned " Iron Gate " and Kazan Pass. Nearly the whole dis
tance run during some six to seven hours was through these. In
some places the river is contracted to a width of 300 to 500 feet,
and then widens into gulfs of nearly a mile in width, with eddies
whirling in them. In the Kazan Pass the fall in the stream is 16
feet in a mile, and during low river, steamers drawing very
little water find the passage dangerous, and passengers are landed
and carried over the high-road which has been cut along the
precipice. This is the great Hungarian road running from Pres-
burg to Orsova, the frontier town, where it is met by a fine
national road traversing Roumania to the Black Sea. In the rock
on the south side of the river through these gorges or river passes
are yet seen the remains of the Roman road built by the Emperor
Trajan. It lies near the water's edge, and was carried around
some of the sharp bends on scaffolding hanging over the rushing
river. Deep holes, about a foot square, show how joists were let
in for the hanging road to rest upon. In a tablet cut into the
face of one of the precipices is an inscription yet partially legible,
in honor of "Trajanus Pontifex Maximus," and to commemorate
his building the road. It was only a few feet wide, and intended
for men and horses, and possibly as a sort of tow-path. It has
been many years since I passed along the Danube from Regens-
burg to Vienna, and 14 since I again ascended it as far as Lintz,
and I may have forgotten some of its grandest scenery. But I
think there is none on it to compare in grandeur to this part of
the lower Danube. 355

356 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
We were considerably annoyed by a small fly — a brown-headed
large gnat, said to be very injurious to cattle and horses, for 50
or more miles around, and which, the people believe, are all
hatched in a deep cavern partially filled with water, hollowed far
up into one of the precipices at the upper end of the pass. They
are peculiar to this locality, and take their name from the old
castle of " Golubaez," which is perched on a crag below the
cavern. This castle, and one on the opposite cliff, were destroyed
in the Turkish wars. The souls of some of the old blood-letting
warriors may have gotten into these little brutes, and they are
avenging themselves upon men and their four-footed servants.
That, at least, would be the Buddhistic tradition if such were in
vogue here. Two or three hours before reaching Belgrade the
rapids of the river entirely ceased, and the country becomes mOre
or less a plain, much of which is now under water, owing to the
great flood which, a few weeks ago, exceeded any before known
in the memory of man. Many thousand acres of farm lands are
flooded. We were often upon what appeared to be a wide
placid lake, 8 to 12 miles across. These wide stretches of
water contain many pieces of wood, now islands, which were very
pretty, and were filled with singing birds whose carols we con
stantly heard.
We had during the day Hungary on our right and Servia on
the left, the Hungarian side generally a plain, stretching far back
from the river ; on the Servian side a few small plains, but
generally broken, and in the distance mountainous. The same
character of crops we had seen in Roumania ruled — wheat, oats,
rye, and corn just up or being planted, and potatoes. There is
evidently quite a fruit crop, plums or prunes being most abundant,
and walnut trees were scattered everywhere. We could see, when
the water had not driven them entirely back, many cattle and
sheep. Belgrade disappointed us. Having so often heard of it as the
outer fortress of the Turks, and that battles had been frequently
fought for its possession, I expected to find a commanding strong
hold. It was quite tame. Its population is about 25,000, and the
Turkish people having entirely disappeared, their mosques and
Oriental buildings are going into ruin. Here we took the train
for Buda-Pesth. Cars good, and the road in fair condition ; time,
seven hours, over an almost flat plain of more than average soll;
not what our prairie people would call rich, but yet capable of
producing large quantities of cereals. The country presents
much the appearance of some of our flat prairie lands, only trees
are more abundant. There are evidently many large individual
proprietors. These are all ranked as nobles and have estates of
1,000 to 4,000 acres, and some of them several such. Their farm
houses are extensive, long, one story brick or stone buildings,
some of them several hundred feet long and enclosing an inner

OUTLOOK AND PRODUCTS OF HUNGARY. 357
quadrangle. About these are huge ricks of straw. Near some of
the estates are villages of peasant houses in rows, with spaces of
a hundred to two hundred feet between them. The peasant
farmers have small holdings. Horses as well as oxen are used on
the farm, and a pair of either is of size and strength sufficient to
break the ground. Indeed, the horses are large, not of the French
or Flanders kind, but tall, well-formed, and well-muscled roadsters.
The cattle are of a uniform color, a sort of dark, tawny gray, with
long, upturned horns. We saw very large herds of both horned
cattle and horses, and flocks containing many hundred sheep.
Much land in Hungary is in grape culture. The vines have been
greatly damaged by the almost unprecedented severity of the
past winter, and its very deep and long-lasting snow. The Hun
garian wines are good, rather heavy, much more so than those of
either the Rhine or Bordeaux. One notices this, not while drink
ing them, but a half hour afterward. It is very cheap, yet a large
amount of beer is drunk. It is wonderful how the taste for this
is growing throughout the world. In every land we have visited
beer is the favorite drink of all people of European antecedents.
Breweries are being built in Japan and in India, and the importa
tion from Europe and Australia is very large. Gambrinus, not
Bacchus, bids fair to rule the thirsty world. Prohibitionists
should understand this. If they will only bend their energies
towards keeping impurities and bad alcohol out of beer, and
cultivate a taste for light wines, their efforts will be of lasting
benefit to mankind. While they continue to class beer and wine
with whiskey and alcoholic poisons, they make an opposition
which is apt, from a spirit of supposed independence, to run to
the very extreme of favoring every thing they oppose. The
beer and wine man steps into the ranks of the whiskey men
sim.ply because the temperance man is determined to force him
into line.
The Christian, as such, fights every, form of wrong-doing, for
his lessons are that sin is sin and cannot be weighed ; none so
small that it can pass unobserved ; none so great that it cannot
be forgiven. Not so, however, with the philosopher, the states
man, or the human reformer ; they- duty is to overlook or to be
blind to the small frailties of humanity, frailties inherent in man's
nature, or to use these very frailties as a means of steering men
away from crimes and of winning them to higher virtues. Tem
perance in the sense of total abstinence, cannot, consistently with
the life of Christ, be preached as an abstract and obligatory
Christian duty. It certainly cannot be enunciated by the philos
opher or statesman as an abstract ethical or civil duty. To them
it is not the use, but the abuse, of alcohol that makes the crime.
To the majority of the world — the overwhelming majority — it is
only in the abuse that sin begins. The teacher loses the force of
his argument against real abstract sin when he preaches that to

358 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
be a sin which his hearer absolutely denies being, such. Ergo,
they make a mistake, a mistake which many good and wise men
believe to be a crime against true religion, when they spend their
time and energies in trying to exclude beer and wine from the
stomachs of the world. But as long as the profession of prohibi
tion is a trade no advice can help the thing.
From Buda-Pesth to Presburg the country is not so flat as be
yond ; it is often rolling, and is quite pretty now when it wears
its bright spring garments, and it shows a fair state of culti
vation. The proprietary estates are numerous. The straw ricks,
large and abundant, and the quadrangular farm houses extensive.
Taken as a whole, the trip from Varna to Vienna is an interesting
one and one which Americans should make far more than they
do for the scenery ; and when they do travel over the line they
should not do as the majority of tourists do — rush through
night and day on the great Oriental express. Too many Ameri
cans think a tour in Europe is satisfactorily made by visiting its
cities and great mountains, and run from place to place in through
trains, too often doing so by night. The country through which
we passed, as seen by day from the more moderately moving cars
we occupied, is a printed page from which much can be learned
if carefully studied.
The whole land from the Black Sea to this place has been not
only full of matters suggesting thought, but most charming to
the eye. Instead of being wearied by a twenty- to twenty-five
mile-an-hour pace, I could wish the speed diminished by at least
ten miles. In Buda-Pesth I met Prof. Vdmb^ry, the Hungarian
thinker and writer. After an hour spent with him he took me to
the National Club, a magnificent establishment, to which all the
first men belong — even though residents of distant parts of the
kingdom — and of which he is honorary librarian. He spends two
hours each day in it reading. He is a man of great vitality and
of most charming, naive enthusiasm and simplicity. He invited
me to tea, informally, saying that others visited him because he
was a sort of lion, but that I talked with him as a man and
freshened up his ideas. He understands twelve languages and
can write, I think, in ten, and is the highest authority on
Orientalism. One of the Professor's chiefest charms is that he
does not know too much. Poor human nature rebels in the
presence of a man who knows it all. Vdmb^ry is modest with
all of his knowledge. We had a common personal bond. We
were friends of Bayard Taylor. He thinks that Asia will be re
generated by a light coming from the west, and that this light
will be bright while the sun of England shines throughout the
Orient. I suggested that as the sun moved on westward, per
haps, it was through the long closed doors of Japan that the
vivifying rays were to get into Asia. With that he bounded up
like a boy and said : " If it does, Asia will be indebted to that

BUDA-PESTH— A BEAUTIFUL CITY. 359
glorious land of the free which had the pluck to send that grand
man. Perry, to draw back the bolts which had locked up Japan.
That America and England should march hand in hand in the
mighty cause." Ah, why does not England let her light shine on
the Irishman as she does on the far away lands ! England cannot
help playing the bully, even when she does good to the bullied.
The Indian bends his neck, receives the good, and licks the hand,
if it strikes, all the while in his heart hating the man who wields
the hand. The Englishman cannot or will not understand the
Irish character. His faults alone are seen, while his high-mettled
spirit is ignored or misnamed.
I said the trip from Varna here was a most charming one, but
the portion of it which would be most pleasing to many people
was spent at Buda-Pesth. This is a really very beautiful and most
charming city, prettily situated, finely built, with good theatres,
handsome public buildings, imposing churches, artistic monu
ments, elegant hotels, handsome promenades and drives, bright
and airy caf^s, galleries and museums, cheerful looking and gay
people, and the prettiest women in the world, nearly every class
dressing in good taste. A noble river runs through it, spanned by
bridges of fine architectural proportions, with keen, darting
steamers constantly plying its waters, and picturesque views and
charming parks and environs. There is here every concomitant
necessary to make it one of the most attractive cities in Europe
for strangers to visit. It is formed of the two old towns, Buda,
which until captured by the Turks, was the residence of the Hun
garian kings, and Pesth, across the river, both Roman cities, and
at different times during the decadence of the empire prominent
to-wns. They are now united as one, and are the capital of
the kingdom, with a palace for its king, and good though not
magnificent buildings for public offices. It has a population of
about 500,000, a large grain trade, manufactories of very elegant
porcelain, excelling in majolica ware and now claiming that its
glassware is equal to that of Bohemia. The streets are bending
and broken (which, however, to me, but adds fo their beauty), are
well paved in granite block (consequently noisy), clean, and lined
with a generally tasteful style of hoiises, but in the newer .parts
very fine residence and business structures. In several quarters
there are bits of street view equal to any thing in Vienna, and
the great residence street, Andrassy .Strasse, about a mile and a
quarter long and a hundred feet wide, straight and running from
the centre of the town to the park at its outer end is not sur
passed, and hardly equalled, in beauty and elegance by any
thoroughfare I can recall. The inner half of this noble street is
solidly built, but in so artistic and varied architecture as not to
look stiff. The other half has detached residences with grounds
and plats, not large enough to give a suburban appearance, but
yet enough to soften the picture and to appeal to the love of home

36o A RACE WITH THE SUN.
taste. It is paved in closely laid wooden block, either new or
kept in perfect repair.
I am more than ever convinced that the excellence of street
pavements depends more upon constant and methodical repair
than upon the character and material of the work. It should be
well planned, both as to the material used and the manner of
doing, but a sleepless eye should be kept upon it, and disintegra
tion or yielding in any — even the smallest — part should at once
be prevented. A small indenture, a slight unevenness is an enter
ing wedge for destruction. It should be an axiom that a bad
pavement is no pavement. It may be costly to live up to this,
but cities are costly luxuries at best. They are either cities or
mere hives. Modern civilization is unwilling to live in hives; it
must therefore submit to the necessity of paying for cities, or go
to the village or country. The pavements of the capitals of
Hungary and Austria are noisy models. People soon cease to
hear the noise, so wonderfully adaptable are the human senses. A
miller can listen to and enjoy sweet music undisturbed by the
clatter of his machinery. The denizen of a city " hears the
silence " in the deep vaults of Mammoth Cave. The square
Belgian block is here used instead of the long one, and the
cleaning is so constant that one scarcely ever sees the sweeper.
In the narrow, central street asphalt is much in vogue. It is,
however, genuine, and not the contractors' darling — coal-tar.
Pesth lies on a plain on the east side of the Danube, which some
20 odd miles north bends from its long easterly course and
runs due south for about 150 miles. The stream is confined
between finely built stone walls, or quays, upon which lighting
barges and small steamers, sharp pointed at both ends, and with
rudders at each extremity, discharge their cargoes. Along this
quay on the east bank runs a team and wagon road, under a
second wall ; upon the upper level of this is the plateau of the town,
and along its edge is the corso, a beautiful asphalted promenade
exclusively for pedestrians. Along this corso are magnificent
buildings of five stories, with considerable pretensions to archi
tectural excellence. Some of them are very fine. The corso has
the full benefit of a fine water front, and yet, being elevated so
much above the river, the unsightliness arising from the river
commerce is not observed. On the corso are some handsome
monuments, kiosk caf6s, and costly restaurants. Towards sun
down and during the long twilights, the promenade is filled with
handsome people, gaily uniformed officers, ladies in their best
walking costumes, business men and nobles. In one large square
made by a public building standing back, is a pretty kiosk caf6,
about which we saw seated perhaps 1,000 to 2,000 of the dlite. I
have never seen anywhere so many pretty out-door toilettes and
so many beautiful women. Beauty was the rule instead of the
exception ; some of it of so rare and delicate a type that my boys
looked on with wide-eyed admiration.

MARGUERITE ISLAND. 36 r
On the opposite bank, or Buda side, are also fine buildings, but
upon a narrow bank, from which lifts a hill varying from 150 to
200 feet in height, crowned by a long line of public buildings,
including the royal palace, and extending nearly a half mile on the
steep slope of the hill are the palace gardens, terraced, with
broad, zigzag walks, climbing by easy grade to the upper terrace,
on which the palace stands. This hill is a long, narrow ridge,
dropping to the river on one side and to the main town of (Ofen)
old Buda on the other. Across a narrow valley, at one end of this
ridge, running back from the river, under the end of the palace,
rises a high eminence, perhaps 500 feet high, crowned by a pictur
esque fortress of large extent, and beyond the upper end of the
public buildings and a mile or so away, lifts a yet much higher
mountain, covered with villas and vineyards. These heights and
their fortresses, palaces and distant villa residences make a
beautiful picture from the corso, aided, too, by a couple of the
prettiest bridges one can conceive of, the lower one with a single
suspension span and the upper one with six long, elliptical, airy
arches and above this a wooded island dividing the river into two
broad arms. The picture from the palace berg is of another kind,
for it lies below the beholder and is the beautiful city of Pesth,
with its long row of superb houses bordering the water, on which
pretty steamers and rowboats are constantly plying, and behind
these the white-walled town and dark-tiled roofs, with enough
trees intermixed to relieve the appearance of coldness and glare,
and over beyond a sweeping country, framed in a long line of low
hills. We visited our polite consul, Mr. Black, at his villa on the sum
mit of Schwabenberg, the high hill or low mountain I mentioned
as lying above Buda. This we reached by a cog-wheeled railroad,
running up a handsome wooded gorge, and, as we climbed, over
looking pretty valleys, with vineyards, villas, and wooded copses.
From this elevation we had a grander tableau, the two — or, rather,
twin — cities ; the river, with its islands stretching far to the south ;
the wide country and low hills, all making a rare view. The
island mentioned as being above one of the bridges is a long, nar
row, low-lying piece of ground belonging to the Archduke Joseph,
who has spent vast sums in making it one of the most charming
retreats imaginable. It is nearly a mile long, has beautiful old
and many thrifty young trees, handsome shrubberies, with flower
beds and velvety lawns, a fine hotel, and one of the costliest baths
of modern times. This is a long, architectural building, with
lofty domes and frescoed roofs, and 50 odd commodious baths,
constructed of marble, porcelain, and mosaic. Some of these are
good-sized pools. In one of the larger ones I had a luxurious
bath in hot mineral water, at a temperature of nearly 100 degrees
Fahrenheit. The water comes in a copious stream from an arte
sian well, flowing 30 feet above the surface, and making a cascade
over rock, looking as if made by time into heavy stalagmites.

362 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
This fall is 30 or 40 feet wide, for so large is the stream. It is
said to be highly beneficial in many diseases. At the upper end
of the island, near the sanitarium, hotel, and baths, is a handsome
caf6, where a large gypsy band plays; at the other end another
caf^ with a military band. The island is the veritable home of
singing-birds ; just at sundown it was simply alive with nightin
gales, and in its deeper shades at this season they were singing
early in the afternoon. This island is named after Marguerite,
the daughter of King Bela, and a celebrated saint in the calendar.
It is certainly a delicious place, and, with its pure, river-cooled
atmosphere, has a right to wear the purest of names. Other
baths are on the mainland, and the remains of sumptuous ones
erected by the Romans.
I spoke of a gypsy band. There are about 50,000 of these
people in Hungary. They are said to be natural musicians, play
ing on many instruments, and on all without note. We have
heard several bands, one of them with 20 or 30 members ; all the
instruments, except two or three, being stringed, chiefly violins,
and always with a zither, or by a larger thing of the kind played
upon by two wooden hammers. No notes whatever are used, and
yet medleys were played where the changes seemed most intricate,
all simply following the leader. I heard that very few ever know
a note. Whistle a tune, and immediately they will all play it
fairly. Their potpouris were a singular mixture of the airs of all
nations. Left to their own choice, the music is wild, and some of
it filled with a weird pathos. They have a tendency to too great
loudness. I was told these bands are all over the kingdom, and
are a sort of pets with the nobility, who have a queer way of get
ting a great deal out of them. They will cut a loo-florin note in
half, give the leader one, and promise the other when the feast is
over. The halves are worthless apart. In this way the wild fel
lows will play for two or three days at a time, barely stopping for
food. The Hungarians keep up their feast, night and day, for two
or more days.
On Sunday I attended the Hungarian Derby. I am cosmopoli
tan or nothing, and in Rome do as the Romans do. There were
some 20,000 people on the ground, a gay and bright set. Lager
beer flowed freely, but not a drunken man was seen. The betting
was frightful, not as to the amount wagered, but in its universal
ity. Everybody bought pools, and nothing was heard except talk
of " gulden." I was amused by a party of clericals, two priests
and two I took to be professors, in semi-clerical garb. They
studied the programme with keen interest, and at the end of each
race one of them went off to the pool-stand and bought his
tickets. I think they were winners, for just as the steeple-chase
began they were full of smiles and satisfaction. No one seemed
to care for the speed of the racers, and watched them simply to
see which came in ahead, so as to determine bets. The horses

BEAUTIFUL WOMEN. 363
were large and strong, not far from 16 hands, I thought, and too
heavy in the withers for good speeders. It would be a good idea
if light and otherwise worthless horses were excluded from the
turf, for then races would certainly improve stock by encouraging
breeding for size as well as action. After the races, behind a
handsome pair of horses, we drove up and down the drive in the
park near the race course, and saw the turnouts. There were
some fine four-in-hands, and some capital roadsters. The two
most dashing young ladies were a couple of German actresses,
whom I had seen on the grand-stand of the dite. I heard it was
in connection with one of these that a petty scandal lately arose
concerning Servia's king, Milan. To get rid of it he gave out that
he " meant no harm." It is strange that the Lord's anointed can
be naughty, and still stranger that the Lord so frequently makes
such sad mistakes in His selections. Poor, weak human nature is
liable to fearful temptations in Hungary, without the aid of Ger
many in sending down any of its sirens. I would advise Ameri
can ladies who visit Pesth with their husbands to be very loving
to their liege lords while in this land of beauty. A loving wife or
old age helps greatly to make a saint of a man. The beautiful
women of Pesth are certainly no detraction from Hungary's other
charms. But I will have to admit they lace most fearfully. It is
strange that a woman will so mar nature's mold of beauty. A
very small waist is a deformity, not a beauty. And yet women
ruin their health to reach a perfection of deformity.

CHAPTER XXXV.
VIENNA— TAXES— THE VICE OF LOTTERY— AUSTRIAN DERBY— TIPS
—RING STRASSE— MUSEUMS— ENVIRONS.
Vienna, May 30, r888.
A FEW weeks ago Francis Joseph, Emperor of Austria, cele
brated the 40th anniversary of the commencement of his reign. If
the success of his regime were to be measured by the growth of
population and the splendor of the improvements of his capital, he
certainly should have felt proudly satisfied as he rode along its
streets on the 13th of May. When he lifted the veil from the
pile of bronze and marble which so fittingly commemorates the
glorious reign of the immortal Maria Theresa, and, looking about
him, saw the magnificent public and private buildings in the
vicinity, which are but a part — an epitome — of the whole of this
beautiful city, he certainly could have had the right to expect
that a grateful posterity would hereafter erect a grand monument
to commemorate his own reign. I have not the ability to say
whether such measurement would be correct or not. " No one,"
said the wise man of the long past, " can be called fortunate till
after his death." A contemporary can call his king a great con
queror, but he cannot pronounce him a wise ruler. Time alone can
apply the true touchstone and enable one to pass such judgment.
A people may accumulate wealth and build noble edifices under a
king ; they may be gay and happy, free and independent in their
daily movements, and yet may be nursing the viper of poisonous
immorality ; may be cultivating the noxious plant, national
luxury, and effeminate love of ease, while accumulating wealth
and building monuments. Government may encourage these
vices while giving apparent prosperity.
The reign of the Mogul Aurungzebe was one of gorgeous
splendor, but his kingdom was splitting into fragments while
revelling. Pericles made Athens the seat of the world's art, but
the Athenians, while all becoming connoisseurs, were losing their
hardy manhood. Lycurgus was a harsh tyrant, and made Spar
tans use coarse food for luxuries and hard stones for beds ; but
their muscles became iron, and their bravery was turned into
heroism. Austria's emperor has built a wonderful capital and en
rolls a huge army, but the hated, plodding Jews are accumulating
364

A RAGE FOR GAMBLING. 365
all the wealth, and the people are taught at the thresholds of
churches to gamble. Pressed for means to exhibit grandeur,
government has its lottery " cassas " everywhere — near cathe
drals, in museums, at austellungen, at railway stations — with
placards displaying the tempting prizes to be won, and sells lottery
tickets for five and ten kreutzers — that is, two and a quarter and
four and a half cents. Every class buys tickets, and all are taught
that it is a good thing to do. The porter stops at a corner, lays
down his heavy burden for a moment, and buys a five-kreutzer
carte ; a poor sewing-woman, trudging wearily home with her
little daily wages, bends her steps aside to invest a part of her
little earnings in tickets ; a beggar shows his bruised limbs and
with his alms buys a ticket ; mothers going to St. Stephen's with
their white-robed daughters, purely clad, to be united to holy
church on confirmation day, pause in Stephen's place and pur
chase a billet with five kreutzers saved from the cost of flowers.
Gambling is a rage. On Sunday I was at the Austrian Derby.
There were 40,000 in attendance. All seemed intent as they
were the Sunday before at Buda-Pesth on purchasing pools. No
one cared a particle for the character of the horses or the beauty
of their movements ; all were bent simply upon winning a prize
or a place. I walked again and again through the surging mass ;
I heard but one familiar word — " gulden," " gulden " — everywhere
" gulden." All are intent upon getting something for nothing.
Men and women pawn their clothes, pawn their cooking utensils,
pawn any thing that a pawn-shop will take to get money to buy
lottery tickets and racing pools. Suicides are, I am told, of fre
quent occurrence, because every thing, the last cent, has been
spent in the vain hope of winning a prize, and when all is gone
the grave is the dismal prize. The emperor's great-grandfather's
monument has, in deep-cut letters, the enconium that he united
the empire and preserved the church. I think it was the great
grandfather. Is the church being upheld by this fearful mode of
raising money ? Maria Theresa sits on yonder square in all the
majesty of blazing bronze. She is surrounded by her wise coun
sellors and heroic generals ; she herself is in colossal proportions ;
the others are of heroic mould. If the spirit of the great empress
hovers over her metallic brow and looks over this gorgeous city,
is it satisfied when seeing her empire upheld by a system of rais
ing money which tends to uphold gambling ? Twenty odd mill
ions of lottery tickets were sold last year. Some say a vast deal
more. The bulk of it is taken from the masses, and the govern
ment pocketed about $10,000,000 as its profits. Time will tell
whether his majesty's reign will be a good one or not. " No man
can be called fortunate until after he be dead."
Thirty-six years ago I spent a month or so in Vienna. It had
400,000 people, and was a charming place for a young man to live
in. A gulden would purchase more of comfort and pleasure than

366 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
a dollar would in America. There were a few good buildings,
and around the " city " a picturesque old wall. Beyond this was
a broad esplanade in trees and grass, marking where were once
the fortifications which Napoleon had destroyed. Beyond this
esplanade (glacis it was then called) were the vorstadten, or su
burbs, in which dwelt four fifths of the whole population. At or
about sundown, the workshops principally in the " city," i. e.,
within the old walls, would pour out their thousands of toilers.
I used to walk and talk with these (I was trying to learn German)
when they crossed the broad esplanade going to their homes.
The people seemed to be industrious, frugal, good-humored, and
fairly contented.. It was only when, after finding I was an Amer
ican, that a spirit of discontent would occasionally crop out, and
it would then be shown that the memory of '48 was yet alive, and
that Kossuth was considered something more than a rebel. There
was luxury among the elite and nobility, but as a general thing
there was not an air among the people of extravagance. The
emperor was young and pale, and in his Austrian uniform of
pure white, looked very youthful and slender, and with his blonde
hair had almost a girlish appearance. He drove by the other day
in the blue uniform of a general officer, and his beard and hair
seemed perfectly white. He, too, has changed, but not more
than the city he has so beautified. The old wall has gone, and
in its place is a broad street 180 feet wide, with bridle-path, grass
plats, and wide sidewalks with quadruple rows of trees, and over
looked by great buildings, nearly every one of palatial splendor.
This, the celebrated Ring Strasse, is not a circular ring about
the inner city, but is a succession of short, straight streets or
boulevards, running into and meeting each other at very obtuse
angles and making the inner city a great polygon. The lines of
great structures are often separated by the width of a block, or
somewhat less, leaving fine squares surrounded by palaces, muse
ums, and picture-galleries, by Parliament house, rathhaus, and
churches, all erected by able architects and replete with architec
tural ornamentations. Some of the squares have in their centres
monuments in high art, others are laid out in gardens, with fine
trees and exquisite flower parterres and fountains. Back from
the Ring Strasse on the outer side are streets more or less paral
lel with it, and bisected with narrower streets called alleys, in
contradistinction to the lateral ones called streets. These streets
and alleys, which cover the old esplanade, are lined with buildings
little inferior to those on the Ring. The suburbs, with perhaps
nine tenths of the population, and lying outside of these, have
struggled to tear down the old and rebuild new houses, vying with
those of the new Ring city. The city, inside of the old walls, is
not much improved, and I can see many landmarks not wholly for
gotten. The new city is, however, unique in its manner of being
laid out, and is unequalled in beauty anywhere else in the world.

FRANCES JOSEPH AND HIS IMPROVEMENTS. 367
All of this has been brought about since Francis Joseph as
cended the throne 40 years ago. Are the people better off?
They are polite and kindly, and elegant in their manners, and
seem cheerful. But, if I be not misinformed, their home life
lacks nearly every concomitant necessary to make a real home.
Taxed, probably in excess of any other people, they cannot have
the house necessary for a home, and cannot afford to purchase the
food needful for health or enjoyment.
I have spoken of the frightful encouragement government gives
to a spirit of gambling. Men cannot be made moral directly
by law, or prepared for heaven by legal enactments. Laws
cannot make men good, but laws can make men bad. That
is the best law which leaves man as free as is possible for
the safety of society ; which protects him in his life, liberty,
and property, and leaves him free and able to cultivate ethics
and religion. But when those in high places lead vicious
lives the people are apt to catch the disease ; or when gov
ernment encourages immoral practices for its own gain, then
government undermines the very life of its people. There are
certain classes of vices which no law can prevent ; these may be
controlled by government ; and to do so many of the best states
men think a judicious license system the wisest course. But
when the powers that be encourage these vices for the purpose of
gaining revenue, then they are as criminal as the participants in
the vicious acts. Gambling grows out of a universal yearning in
man for excitement, and the equally universal desire to gain
something for nothing ; to eat, drink, and be merry without work.
Woe to the government which feeds this human weakness ! It
may gain revenue to-day, but it saps the very foundation of soci
ety by making plodding industry unpopular, and alluring men to
cultivate those desires which should be subdued.
The Emperor of Austria has one of the most difficult of empires
to govern. It is composed of many nationalities and many peoples
speaking different languages, each jealous of the other, and some
of them absolutely hating some of the others. Each of these
strives for ascendency. The result is, there is the German party,
the Bohemian party, the Slavonic pasty, the Hungarian, and half
a dozen other parties. These heterogeneous peoples are hard to
hold in hand ; and Austria has a constant danger in a war which
may arouse the separate nationalities. For ages the Austrians
have shown an unconquerable hostility to the Jews. Some time
since it was proclaimed that this was about to end; that the
Austrian Rothschild had been admitted to court and now had
the right of entree into Hof circles. It seems, however, that this
did not arise from any liberal change of heart on the part of the
people. The government saw a speck of war on the horizon, and
was looking around to find where it could raise some millions.
The wily Jew saw a chance. He let it be known that if he and

368 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
his family were not good enough to enter the palace his money
was not good enough to go into the treasury. He received his
card and now Hof doors open to him. But ever since then a
bitterer feeling exists among the people towards the Jew than
ever before. The Jews, however, are at the top of the heap.
They own the finest buildings and the richest property in Buda-
Pesth and many here. They own many of the mines. They own
some of the petroleum wells of Russia, that is, Rothschild does,
and therefore gets the Russian oil in here on terms very unfriendly
to the American product. They own all, or nearly all, the print
ing establishments in Vienna and run the papers. The Austrians
are like the rat gnawing the file — they can swear and grit their
teeth, but the file yields up none of its hardness.
An anti-Jew party exists and openly proclaims itself in Parlia
ment. When the old German Kaiser lay on his last bed a paper
here announced his death before the fact. The anti-Semitic
leader in Parliament tried to bring the newspaper men to their
knees — and he lies in prison for his rashness. When the Maria
Theresa statue was about to be unveiled many thousands — all
Germans, I am told — sang one night near the monument the
" Wacht am Rhein." Some of the leaders were arrested. The
government encouraged the idea that this was a purely anti-
Semitic proceeding ; that the meeting was simply in honor of the
man who is in prison and whose house is near by ; and I hear
that Germany's chancellor encouraged this belief and advised the
rulers here to take that position and to punish the singers.
Shrewd men, however, assert that the thing was, in fact, a Ger
man meeting, as such. But it will not do for the people to think
there is such a feeling existing among the many million Germans
who are subjects of this empire ; and although the chancellor
knows that there is a strong German party here, he also knows
that Germany does not want any German complications in
Austria ; he knows that Francis Joseph's kingdom is the strong
est wall which can possibly be kept between the Russian and the
Prussian ; that if Austria should be destroyed a huge part of its
people are more in sympathy with Russia than with Germany,
and would in all probability side with the bear. Therefore he
advised that the trouble near the great empress' statue should
be treated purely as an anti-Semitic outburst. Queer if the
" Wacht am Rhein " has become a new watchword against the
Israelites. All of this I hear. I am only a voyageur, seeing as I
run, and claim the inestimable right of changing my mind when
I learn better.
I said this was one of the most heavily taxed of all people.
There is no real-estate tax, as understood by us. A house is
taxed either on its rental or on its number of habitable rooms, or
on both. A rich man's house of a dozen magnificent rooms pays
the same tax as a poorly built boarding-house with a like number

THE JEWS OF VIENNA. TAXES. 369
of rooms. A man pointed out to me a large building with a huge
restaurant on the ground floor and flats overhead, and told me
that 32 per cent, of its rents were paid to government — municipal
and national — in taxes. I have taken some pains to learn what
are the rates paid here. It would be tedious to write them down.
But it is enough to say that the average tax paid in the large
cities which levy an octroi duty is 45 per cent, of the individual
incomes. An octroi duty is levied in some eight to ten (I think)
cities on every article of food or drink which comes into them.
There is but one edible which gets into Vienna without this pay
ment, and that is the eggs which pigeons lay on St. Stephen's
noble tower. The owner of buildings directly pays the tax, but,
of course, the occupants are really the ultimate tax-payers. The
result is that few people here have flats large enough to entertain
their friends. Their social life is consequently in the caf6s,
restaurants, and beer-halls. They eat a frugal meal at home, and
spend their evenings in some establishment with friends, taking
lager and nibbling bread and cheese, with, when they can, a dish
of meat. Families, who appear in public well dressed, elegant,
and well-to-do people, have not, frequently, sleeping-rooms for the
daughter and son of the house. The young lady sleeps on a sofa
in the parlor and the brother on a sofa in the hall. And why ? Be
cause the taxes on the house-rooms, the taxes on their business,
are so high that they cannot afford rooms for all. A genuine
home life is the highest encourager of virtue and economy. What
with the house tax, the income tax, the farm tax, and others use
less to name, it is a struggle for the people to get through the
year, and true home life is hardly known.
A man's business is taxed as a manufacturing one, even if he
carries it on in his own house and employs no other laborers than
himself and his children. I was given an instance of the weight
of this burden. A man carried on his business in a flat, say 30 by
50 feet, a part of it being cut off for his family living rooms. The
entire income from his business was about 3,200 gulden, of this
he paid over 1,000 for his manufacturers' tax. But this was only
a part of his burden. His landlord paid nearly 50 per cent, of
his rental as a house tax. This the tenant partly paid. He paid
taxes on the bread and coffee he had for his breakfast, on the
lean beef and potatoes he had for his dinner, on the beer and
bread he and his family enjoyed when they went to a garden or
caf6 for evening society.
The taxes in the octroi paying cities are, as far as I can learn,
between 44 and 46 per cent, on houses; in other towns and in the
country about 30 to 35 per cent. ; that is, upon the available pro
ceeds of the several properties and upon industries of every kind ;
manufacturing, farming, etc., from 30 to 50 per cent, upon a man's
entire earnings. These data I have not taken from public docu
ments, but from informed persons. The whole system of taxes.

37°

A RACE WITH THE SUN.

seems to be laid so as to touch as little as possible the rich and
the noble. A grand park, a great shooting forest pays no tax.
A stable with its stud, or filled with costly .saddle and carriage
horses, pays no tax, nor does the farmer's ; but while the former
costs thousands and is an article de luxe, the latter is of lattice or
boards and is for industrial purposes. The palace, with courts,
porticoes, and halls, pays only a tax upon the rooms fitted for
habitation ; and such rooms, which are possibly larger than the
ordinary man's whole house, pays no more than the little sleeping-
rooms of the laborer. A village hotel with 20 rooms pays the
same tax as the grand chateau on a hill with 20 living rooms and
a park of 500 acres.
A single man or, indeed, a man of small means, can live here
very cheaply and have a great many charming amusements,
equalled nowhere else excepting Paris. He must be satisfied,
however, with a light breakfast of coffee and simple bread. He
must not expect even to taste soup in which a shin bone has
taken a bath — perhaps there may be a suspicion of a scrap in the
pot. But, usually, if any thing is seen resembling grease on the
soup plate it was simply put on for show. He must not expect
much variety in his meats. He will do well if several eat to
gether, each one taking a dish and then dividing up. His beer
costs nearly as much as in Chicago. Wine is cheap and good.
But generous livers, or fat livers, as our laboring people are,
will have to pay more here for subsistence than in America,
and, while so living, will receive less than one third of the wages.
And yet, with all of this true, we find that the man who most
loudly inveighs against American laws ; the man who says that
laws are all a curse, and that no government is better than any
government, and that in America the poor man is but the rich
man's unwilling slave ; the man who talks most of this stuff, will
be found to have come from some part of Austria. It seems as
if the oppression of the government under which he was boni
and has grown up has so embittered his soul that he hates the
very name of government. I hope this feeling lies in the heart
-of only a few who seek asylum on our shores. It would be a sad
iday, should America have to shut her doors against the oppressed
.of other lands, and the down-trodden.
Vienna is not only a beautiful city, but is a most charming one
to the tourist. Here he has beautiful drives and delightful
promenades ; a magnificent opera-house in which the opera is
generally well rendered ; fine theatres, one just finished most
elegant ; fine hotels and in large numbers, and the best of all
garden music.
The Prater is a park of 4,000 odd acres ; on one avenue in it,
and all close together, are some six or eight beer and coffee
gardens, with tables and seats under fine trees, with the fragrance
of flowers .filling the air, and with bands of music, military and

THE PRATER. TIPS. 371
stringed, of so good a character that they can satisfy the most cul
tivated ear. Here are accommodations for many thousands, and
on afternoons and evenings of summer days, thousands of the
nicest people are promenading or seated, taking their evening
meals, listening to the fine music and watching each other. The
dingy room is left behind, and here a man brings his family and
over his lager makes his home. In another avenue, not far off,
are cheap amusements of every kind — light theatres, games,
puppet shows, flying Dutchmen — in fact, every possible kind of
fun to be had for a few kreutzers. Here, too, are thousands of
those who seek much pleasure at little cost. Here a thoughtful
tourist can learn a vast deal of life and human nature in a short
time and at little expense. Vienna, one would think, is all on the
Prater in the late afternoon and early evening ; but Vienna is a
city which claims about 1,000,000 population and no one stays at
home up to ten o'clock. The town, however, seems to shut its
mighty jaws at ten and the streets are comparatively deserted, and
all because of the porter and his tip.
The tip (trink-geld) is as decided a feature in this city as is
backshish in the worst town in the Orient. You go into a caf6 ; a
waiter brings you coffee, another bread and a paper. Each
expects a tip. When you are through the head waiter comes for
the pay. He expects a tip. You go into a restaurant ; one
waiter brings you food, another your wine, a third your bread, and
a fourth collects the change. Each expects a tip, and they all
wear such nice full suits of black, and such white cravats that it is
hard to resist their polite smiles. But woe to the man, who,
failing to tip them, returns ! Their memories are wonderfully
tenacious and the forgetful man will find it out. When he sees
three or four near him waited upon who came after he had been
seated, and sees a nice, juicy piece of roast on the next table,
while he is wearing his teeth away on the toughest gristle of the
toughest beast that had roamed the fields, he will swear and
resolve to resist the villainous custom, but after a whilehe will do
as the Viennese do — pay and quarrel not. They all say it is an
outrageous custom ; but they shrug ,their shoulders and ask :
" What are we to do?" "Why, resist." "Ah! sir, life is too
short." Now, what has this to do with getting in early? This:
Every house with its flats has its porter, and this porter closes the
front door at ten, and the lodger who is then out stays out, or pays
the porter a half gulden to let him in. In cheaper houses a
quarter gulden. Now a half gulden or a quarter gulden is a great
deal to a man whose daily wage is only one or two gulden, and
that one or two has been left at the theatre, the garden or a ca.i€.
Ergo, he goes home before ten.
Besides the gardens in the parks, the city abounds in large and
elegant coffee houses, places capable each - of seating at little
tables several hundred. They are in amazing numbers and in

372 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
every locality and to suit every purse. Vienna possesses several
fine picture galleries and museums. In .them there are none of
those chefs d'wuvre which constitute the great gems of art and
the world's wonders; but there is in them an evenness of excel
lence surpassed by few galleries in other cities. The treasury
contains jewels, crowns, diamonds, rubies, all exquisite gems,
highly chased works in gold and silver, and goblets and tankards
in ivory and crystal of surpassing excellence, and the collection
of antiquities is rich and valuable. In the galleries, museums, and
collections the student, the lover of art and the searcher after the
beautiful, can profitably spend weeks. Close by the city there are
fine excursions, delicious valleys, cloistered gardens and high
eminences. From the summit of Carlenberg, reached in an hour
by street and steam rail, and by a cog-wheel road, is presented a
picture of deliciously wooded mountains, villas and vineyards,
spreading, cultivated country, with broad, meandering waters and
vast city life, second only to that from the mountain above
Scutari, overlooking Constantinople and the Bosphorus. There
are, however, many other which pleased me more, which sank into
my very soul. They were simple scenes which others, perhaps,
might not admire, but which suggested to me a world of thought
and dreams of delight. The grand view, however, made no such
impression. There is too much of man's work in the great city
mapped out below me in the centre of the vast amphitheatre of
20 miles across and fringed by the high, wooded hills and distant
mountains ; too much which is suggestive of toil and ambition to
suit my taste, but still, as a cold picture it is -wonderful. I like to
look upon a landscape, natural or on canvas, which points out
some half hidden nook, into which I would like to steal and
dream away an hour ; or a mountain crag, near which I would love
to climb and utter a shout, and then listen to my voice as it rolls
among deep caverns or is caught and hurled from bold precipice
back to me in musical echo.
If one loves to live among holy men of the past and to hear
their heart-felt prayers uttered to a pitying Redeemer, he can be
gratified here in the solemn chapels and lofty nave of St.
Stephen's church, — into which the sunlight steals through deep
windows of richly stained glass — surrounded by holy pictures,
deeply moved by the tones of the old organ, and awed into
solemn thoughts ; he can then go out and look up to the noble
tower whose spire points to heaven 470 feet above where he
stands. A Gothic church, however, vainly appeals to my imagi
nation ; it is too cold, too vault-like, too fitting for a tomb and for
dead men's bones. The mighty dome, with its rounded vault,
resembling heaven's high, sunlit arch, with the light of heaven
coming in from far above — this and these make the church which
arouses my heart and touches it with religious feeling. I care not
for the Gothic church ; it was the invention of ascetic monks and

VOLKS-GARTEN. ' 373
lately enslaved Christians, who had not learned to regard religion
as a thing of love, but simply as a matter of hard justice.
To-day has been one of Vienna's great holidays. I do not
know how it is called, but it follows the May confirmations.
Stephen's platz and the streets leading to it were packed by
thousands coming to see the procession, the eight-in-hand of the
kaiser, and the six and four horse carriages of other members of
the imperial family going to high service in the old cathedral.
These evidences of pomp are pleasing to the people, but to an
American it is yet more pleasing to see the plain carriage drawn
by a handsome pair, with the ruler of the nation riding as a
simple officer unattended by out-riders or guards, as he so often
does. It is a pleasing thing to us simple folks to see the graceful
young crown princess driving along the crowded Prater Haupt-
allee and returning with cordial bow the generous respect
shown by the people, and the prince, heir to the Austrian
diadem, with the ribbons guiding a blooded team on the Ring
Strasse. Poor Stephanie! it still looks as if the Austrian crown
would have to shine on the head of a daughter of the house of
Hapsburg instead of a son.
For the benefit of some of my fair friends I will say, that at the
races on Sunday the princess occupied the front of the royal
pavilion. She was attended by two ladies. I could not catch the
style of her dress, but her hat was so covered by a mass of red
ostrich feathers that it resembled a high crimson helmet. Her
attendant ladies wore pretty bonnets, ornamented only with lace,
ribbons, and a few flowers. In the grounds about the grand
stand for the elite were very many pretty ladies, dressed in ex
quisite out-door costumes, — silks of bright styles on the married
ones ; white and more simple robes adorned the young ladies.
One of the most charming places in Vienna is the Volks-garten,
especially on the Strauss evenings. Three times a week Edward
Strauss, with his wonderful orchestra, delights the lovers of music.
Nearly 30 years ago Johann and Joseph started these summer con
certs. Then Edward came into the trio. The first two are gone
where there is an endless choir, but the brother keeps up the rep-
¦ utation of the garden, and fills it with delighted listeners, who
drink, eat, talk, and possibly flirt to a music nowhere else equalled.
Alternately pieces are given by the great leader and by a military
band of highly finished artists. Here one can pass a summer's
evening listening and dreaming, dreaming and listening. I like
opera, but am not educated up to the mark ; I can take in all of
Strauss. When he played Chopin's funeral march a few evenings
since I felt one could go to his own funeral without a sigh if he
had this band to accompany his bier. Willie and I go from this
to Russia. Johnie, prefering a tour through Germany, here quits
us. I hope the paws of the bear will be soft.

CHAPTER XXXVI.
RUN TO MOSCOW— WARSAW— THE POLES— SOBIESKI'S PALACE-
PEASANTS.
Moscow, June 6th {or May 25, old style), 1888.
From Vienna to Moscow, through Warsaw, is about 1,250
miles by rail ; that is, to Graniza, on the Polish frontier, 250, and
thence onward 1,511 versts, or 1,007^ miles; time to the Polish
capital, 18 hours ; thence on here 34^ hours. We left Vienna at
noon on the ist of June, and had a very pretty run till the close of
twilight, which was not until considerably past nine o'clock, for we
were already nearly in latitude 51 degrees. From Vienna, which
lies in a sort of basin, the country was for some two hours rather
flat, or low undulating, well cultivated, and quite rich. We then
entered low hills, and turning the western end of the little Car
pathian Mountains had charming scenery ; valleys with villages of
comfortable houses ; fields bright and green, often bordered with
trees ; scattered copses of wood, and low mountains from 400 to
500 feet high, clothed with forest, and now and then crowned by
a castle or old keep ; some of the large villages, with their white
plastered houses, roofed in red tile, surrounding a tasteful church,
with orchards and scattered fruit trees, were really pretty. Other
villages were of thatched roofs, and were picturesque. The whole
of Moravia, through which we ran for some six hours, seemed to
have a cheerful population, if one could judge by looking at the
crowds collected about the stations. I noticed everywhere signs
or names which showed that there was little difference between
the Bohemian and Moravian language, and the general appearance
of the people proved them to be Czechs. At one point we were
for some time within sight of tall chimneys, from which poured
long lines of smoke. This is the principal mining district of
Austria, or, as a gentleman informed me, the Birmingham and
Sheffield region of the empire.
Our run carried us near two famous points in the history of
Napoleon — Wagram and Austerlitz — and not far off was another
name, which, when I was a boy, always awoke in my heart a feel
ing of indignation — Olmutz, where the friend of America, La
fayette, was so long imprisoned. I felt disposed to stop and make
a pilgrimage to its old donjon keep, but could not break thejour-
374

RUSSIAN TIME. 375
neyonmy ticket. How certain impressions of childhood last, and
what hold they often take upon the imagination ! When La
fayette was in Lexington, Ky., in 1825, I was a babe in arms.
My mother, living in the country, could not leave me behind when
she went to town to see the great French republican. Standing
in a crowd when he passed near, she held her child towards him.
He laid his hand upon its head. I have never been able to rid
myself of the feeling that I remembered his appearance, and that
his touch had almost hallowed my brow. One of the early books
given me was a life of Lafayette. My blood almost tingled when
I read of Olmutz' dungeon, and its name has ever since been
readily brought to mind. Napoleon's name awakens the French
man to a love of glory ; but Lafayette's lies close to the spot
whence spring the heart-beats in an American's breast.
I said in my last that I hoped to find the p'aw of the Russian
bear lined with velvet. Its first touch upon our shoulders was
certainly not unkind. The officers of the custom-house at Graniza
were courteous, and passed our little baggage through with only
perfunctory examination, and the conductors and servants of the
railroad have been polite and attentive, and, seeing our entire
ignorance of the langauge, have invariably put themselves to some
trouble to enable us to get over difliculties. This they have done,
too, without any apparent expectation of reward. Our first night
was short, and an early daybreak enabled us to see the country for
two hours before reaching Warsaw at six A.M. The railway car
riages are good, and so fashioned that we did not find it necessary
to take the sleeper. The sleeper has only one window to each
compartment, and, there being already one occupant in each, we
found our opportunity for looking out to be limited. The ordi
nary car gave us full facilities for drawing out the seats and making
a very comfortable bed. The country traversed in Poland after
daybreak was flat, but very productive, and the waving rye, al
ready headed, was bending under the breeze ; the winter wheat is
not yet in head, and the spring crop is now being sown. I asked
a gentleman if it was not very late to be putting in this crop. His
reply was that " We always do this in May." " But," I said,
"this is June." " O no ! It is only^ the 20th of May." Then I
found I was 12 days younger than I was the day before. We had
left Austria on June 1st; we entered Russia May 21st. I shall
stick to the old style as long as possible. How readily an old man
catches at any straw which seems to float him back, even in fancy,
towards his youth !
So intent was I in looking out upon the land of Kosciusko^
another name dear to the American — so carried back into the
past with the tales of heroism and the legends of daring which-
cluster about the name of Poland ; so filled with its love of free
dom — often misplaced, but never dying — sorrowing over its sor
rows, and sighing over its woes, that I did not notice that we were

376 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
even approaching its capital until our fellow passengers began to
prepare for leaving the car, and then I found we were already in
Warsaw. Warsaw ! The home of John Sobieski, who hurled the
Turk back from the walls of Vienna as a ball thrown from a bat,
and near which Kosciusko fought his last fight in 1794, and, bleed
ing, fell into the hands of his country's conqueror.
The capital of Poland for the last four centuries, lies upon the
Vistula. The Prague suburb, upon a low, flat plain upon the
right bank, of scattered houses, with gardens and cattle-yards,
and railroad depots, was once closely built and had a considera
ble population, but the bloody Suvaroff burnt it in 1794, and
butchered in indiscriminate slaughter its 15,000 to 20,000 people.
A fine and most solidly sustained bridge connects it with the
main city lying on quite an elevation, which, viewed from this
suburb, presents, with its fine palace, citadel, parks, and many
churches, a very pleasing appearance. It cannot be called a
handsome city, but is interesting, with some fine public buildings,
a large park, squatted down in its very centre, and adorned with
fountains, fish-ponds, and summer theatres, fine old trees, mostly
horse-chestnuts ; with fairly broad streets in the newer city lined
with good houses, and quaint tall old houses, three to four cen
turies old, jutting in and out upon the narrow, crooked streets of
the old city. These, coupled with historic associations and Polish
legends running back far into the dim past, make the place inter
esting, at least to an American in whose mind patriotic devotion,
bold deeds, and long suffering are always suggested by the very
name of Poland.
Warszawa (Polish) has a population of perhaps 425,000 and a
garrison at this time amounting to 25,000. There are a great
many Jews, who, I learn, are industrious, persevering, and provi
dent, and in large proportion thoroughly orthodox. Their large
quarter on Saturday was all shut up, and the people — men, women,
and children, — were thoroughly attendant at the synagogues.
One of these places of worship is full of interest, containing many
treasures of the past. The Jews of Poland number about 1,000,-
000, and are distinguishable wherever seen by their marked cast
of features, long, ungainly coats, ugly top-boots, low, drooping
caps, and solemn faces. I have never seen in any country any
thing even approaching the solemn visages shown by the Hebrews
of Poland. They are not stern and somewhat contemptuous, as
are the faces of the Arabs, nor proud and fanatic, as are those of
the Turks in the interior towns of Asia Minor, nor searching and
grasping as those of the Armenians. Their solemnity is of a
melancholy type, and arises, I suspect, from ages of endurance,
forbearance, and persecution, and looks as if it were taught in
their homes and studied at all times.
The Jews of Holland are rather cringing in manner, but always
keen in appearance. Those of Germany, London, and perhaps

THE JEWS. POLISH LANGUAGE. 377
of America, are rather self-assertive, confident, and pu.shing.
Those of Poland look as if they desired to escape attention and
wish simply to be let alone. Remember, I write mere impres
sions, and do not wish to assert. But to me one of the important
factors of the present world are the descendants of Abraham.
Many of them I like, a liking grown out of close companionship.
They have their faults, and grave ones ; many of their manner
isms are unattractive but are eradicable, and therefore to be over
looked in an examination of their characteristics and a forecast of
their future. They measure their ethics too much by the rule of
law ; they too often think what is lawful is therefore honorable ;
they are too prone to stand by the bond though it be wet with
tears or gory with the pound of flesh. These things are welded
into their nature by their theology, and then tempered into the
hardness of steel by ages of contumely from all the world. With
out a government of their own for nearly twenty centuries, with
out a land they can claim for themselves during all this vast
period, they have had an autonomy of territory thoroughly
marked, a territory bounded by the limits marked on the earth's
crust by the rays of a warming sun. Despised, they are self-
reliant ; robbed, they have accumulated the exchangeable gov
erning valuables of the world ; debarred the salons of rulers,
kings are their puppets, and imperial governments are their in
struments, whose stops they manipulate as the musician manipu
lates his flute. They are a book whose pages the thoughtful man
should study wherever he can part the leaves. Who can tell
what the last page, yet unwritten, may reveal ?
The Poles tell me with pride that theirs is a kingdom., and that
the Czar rules it as king of Poland ; that they elect their own
mayors and speak their own language ; and yet one sees over
every shop the name and business of the proprietor in Russian as
well as Polish, and all law-court proceedings, and all official com
munications, however small, are in the language of the ruler, and
that by law. All means possible are being used to russianize the
country. This may, perhaps, seem harsh to its 7,000,000 of people,
who have a rich and copious language of their own, a language
which has had the sanction of a t^iousand years, and in which
able universities taught for centuries ; but it is the part of wise
statesmanship. A nation should be homogeneous, and to be this
requires a common language. One of the causes of weakness of
Austria is the several languages spoken by its different peoples.
As an admirer of the Pole I would regret much to see his language
proscribed, but I must admit that I cannot blame Russia's em
peror for his endeavor to have his every subject speak Russian.
A common language helps to develop common thought. Com
mon thought develops homogeneity of character. The Czar
wishes to rule a nation, not a system of separate and distinct
nations. To wipe out these separate nationalities and to weld

378 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
them into one must burn into many a racial nerve and give in
tense agony. We may regret the necessity and hate the doer,
but we are forced to acknowledge his wisdom. The Lord put an
end to the growth of heaven's insult, " the Tower of Babel,"
by introducing a babel of tongues.
While the Hebrews of Poland struck me as so solemn a people,
the Poles themselves seem cheerful. Not with the insouciant
cheerfulness of the Frenchman, nor the ea.sy, cheerful manner of
the Austrian, who seems almost as much a seeker after pleasure
as the Gaul, but with a rather bright demeanor and with chatty,
agreeable manners.
The present rulers are determined to hold Warsaw. Not only
have they made their language necessary in the courts, but all the
old universities have been destroyed, and the people, after the
trouble of 1830, were forced to erect, at their own cost, a huge
citadel, or rather fortifications, in the city, to be used, if neces
sary, against it, about and around which the very earth, I am
informed, is mined and countermined, so that an uprising attempt
ing to carry it can be hurled into ruin. Here state prisoners are
confined, and sometimes executed. Our intelligent guide, who
lived a while in America, pointed out the prison in which Nihil
ists have been, and some now are, confined. Some of the prisons
are entirely underground. The whole thing is certainly a dan
gerous neighbor for a city disposed to be rebellious. This, how
ever, I was fold, the Warsaw people are no longer inclined to be.
No better evidence can be given of the emperor's confidence in
the good intentions of the people than the fact that when he
visits Warsaw he drives about in an unostentatious manner,
wholly unattended b)'^ guards. This certainly is wise. A king
cannot better win the good feeling of his people than by showing
his trust in them. The great emperor whose remains are yet
mouldering in Germany, was fired upon, yet he showed the Ger
mans that he trusted them by constantly exposing himself, and
the last drop of German blood was his to command.
Besides the " Saxon " garden in the heart of Warsaw, there is a
large and very beautiful park close by, once the property of
Poniatowski, and in which is a pretty summer palace upon a fine
sheet of water, and a unique open theatre ; the uncovered amphi
theatre is in imitation of an ancient structure, with a stage on a
little island in an apparent semicircular ruin of handsome
columns, a sheet of water thus lying between the performers and
the audience. This is a veritable gem, and must be an exquisite
place for a play on a moonlight night. Our proud guide pointed
to it with enthusiasm as he said : " Gen. Sherman, when here,
could not help crying out : ' Why, this is a perfect fairy scene.' "
I can readily believe the grim, yet enthusiastic, old soldier might
have so spoken. Leading to this park is a broad boulevard, a
mile long, shaded by old lime trees and bordered by palaces of
noble and elegant residences of rich citizens.

VILLANOV. SOBIESKI. 379
There are quite a number of fine statues of public men in
different parts of the city, but the one which held our attention
most was that of Copernicus, by Thorwaldsen, sitting in an easy
attitude and holding the globe in his hand. The Poles should be
proud of their warrior, Sobieski ; of their patriot, Kosciusko, but
even yet prouder of their great philosopher and astronomer. He
sits here in quiet but deep meditation. The world most admires
its men of deeds ; but after all he does most whose deeds are
mighty thoughts. A drive of an hour through waving fields of
rye on the estates of the Countess Potoscka brought us to the
palace of Villanov, her property, built by Sobieski, his last home
and where he died. It is a beautiful building in a fine garden or
park of old trees, pretty lakelets, and wonderful lilac trees, whose
rounded heads were a simple mass of bloom, filling the air with
delicious fragrance. I will here remark that for weeks we have
been journeying with the spring and its flowers, and now the
cherry and lilac are barely in full bloom. They have kept with
us since we left Egypt, and the acacia or locust, which had
partially dropped its flower in Greece, was perfection in Con
stantinople and Roumania, well out in Vienna, is now hardly
white, and the air in orchards is just now redolent of apple-
blossoms. Villanov possesses fine paintings, some of them very valuable,
a good collection of china and Etruscan ware, and is, in fact, a
charming museum, but yet more interesting are the rooms occu
pied by the great Pole, still just as they were when he last
tenanted them, even the bed on which he died. Here are his old
clocks and arms, the garments he wore, his saddles, horse-harness,
and sword, his rich presents, given by the pope and others after
his glorious victories over the Turks ; his plate, gifts from dis
tinguished men, and on the walls hang the tapestry and paintings
on which he rested his eyes after his hard-fought campaigns. It
is said he built the house through the labor of Turks he had taken
as prisoners of war. This palace and its contents are all the more
interesting from the fact that the galleries of Warsaw were robbed
of their fine royal portraits, which were taken to adorn the walls
of the treasure-house at Moscow. ^My young friends will not feel
any less interest in this beautiful place when I tell them that here
was laid a part of the scene of much of that charming love story,
" Thaddeus of Warsaw." Boys and girls, how many of you have
read its thrilling love passages and failed to weep over its touch
ing pathos? If any, then you were not as I, for I am not ashamed
to confess that I not only wept over the book, but sobbed as if
my heart would break, and I was over 12 years old, too, when I
did it. Here in this palace are pointed out the rooms in which
Thaddeus played and loved. He was great to you and me, girls,
when we did not care a fig for John, the warrior. Here is his
picture, and a pretty face was pointed out to us as hers he so
loved. He was a pretty boy, and his hair was cut like John

38o A RACE WITH THE SUN.
Sobieski's, but it was not all shaven back from his temples and
around over his ears and on the back of his neck as the warrior's
was. I do not remember the book well. I only know that it
made me shed many a tear, and I thought Jane Porter the
paragon of historians.
The ride from the capital of Poland to Moscow was interesting
simply because it was in Russia. A large part of it was through
low, flat, half-swamp plains, covered with birch and small pines ;
then over low, flat lands, partially cultivated, and many of the
fields promising crops which we in America would scarcely think
worth harvesting. As in Poland, rye was the main growth until
during the latter half of the last day, when spring wheat pre
dominated. I suspect the crops suffer much from want of deep
plowing. In Roumania I wrote that they break the ground with
six oxen and plow deep and well. Here this work is done with
a single horse, and the plow does not enter the soil over two
inches. They use a queer, old-fashioned tool with two light
shares, and the horse draws between a pair of shafts which lie on
a level ; the beam, of which the plowshare makes the point — or
rather the two beams lying close together — are from four to five
feet high, and morticed into the cross-bar at the rear of the
shafts. It will not make our eight-hour people love this country
when I tell them I saw people working in the fields a little after
four in the morning and until nine o'clock in the evening. Women
seem to do the bulk of the farm work, and sturdy, hardy-looking
women they are. They wear coarse clothes and live on rye bread.
In Moscow I have seen street pavers, men and women, stop for
their breakfast, which was simple rye bread washed down with
water. From light to dark is the term of a day's labor, with poor
pay and poor food. My laboring friends at home, give warm
thanks to the Giver of all good that your lots are cast in a land
of freedom, where men work, not fight ; where women are rosy
companions, and not mere beasts of burden ; where you can do a
fair day's work and get a fair day's wage ; where your children
can read and write, and are not compelled to watch flocks all day
in the fields, and be constantly the companions of sheep and of
swine ; where, if you are industrious, sober, and economical, you
can, if in health, always lay by enough to keep the wolf away in
your old age.
From Minsk to Moscow we were continuously near the line of
march of the French in 1812, and of their subsequent disastrous
retreat ; through Kresnoe, where Ney left 26,000 prisoners and
nearly all of his guns and his vast train of stores ; through
Smolensk, famous in many an old war, and where the example
was set, in 18 12, for Moscow to follow, in fighting the irresistible
invading army with fire. Here the destruction of the French
was so great when on their retreat, that the then successful
Russians burned the dead in vast trenches over a third of a mile in

FRENCH RETREAT. 38 r
length ; and through Borodino, where Ney was created " Prince
of Moscow" for his gallantry, and where, after slaughter of fifty
odd thousand men and 30,000 horses, the road was laid open for
the advancing army to enter Moscow.
Thank God, Americans do not have to immolate themselves for
the glory of kings. Our rulers may often be foolish, and perhaps
sometimes untrue to their trusts, and many laws may be unwise,
but we do not have to appeal to the cannon to repeal the laws, or
to bombs to unseat the rulers. We have the freeman's weapon to
right all evils — an untrammelled ballot.

CHAPTER xxxvn.
MOSCOW— THE RUSSO-GREEK CHURCH— DEVOTION OF THE PEO
PLE—RUSSIAN TEA— RESTAURANTS— THE KREMLII^—
BELLS— PALACES.
Moscow, June 12, 1888.
I INTENDED to stick as long as possible to old style of dates
because it was so agreeable to feel that I was still in the spring
time of my life, and had not yet entered the summer of ripe age.
You see, however, that I have already jumped into June. This is
from sheer indignation and disgust. A long while ago, when
Peter the Great was making boots and hewing ship timbers — it
is, by the way, to be hoped he wielded the adze better than he
did the awl, for the boots shown in the treasury made by his-
hands for himself, are rough specimens of the cobbler's art, — at
that day there lived in Russia an astronomer under him named
Bruce, who made weather calculations for centuries to come.
These prophecies are still noted down in the almanacs. He fore
told that May of this year (1888) would be very cold. He was
right. I am writing in my overcoat, and have not been able to
go without one since we have been here. Bruce was so wise that
Peter got alarmed, thinking him a sorcerer, and ordered him to
depart the country. Being asked whither, the autocrat said any
where, so he got away ; but moved by curiosity, ordered men to
watch the twelve roads leaving the city. Imagine the feelings of
superstitious Peter when the reports came in that Bruce was seen
at the self-same hour some versts from the city fleeing on each of
the twelve different roads ! It is a pity the sorcerer had not been
knocked on the head before he fixed May, 1888, as a very cold
month, or that Peter had changed the style, for then this would
be June I2th, with warm, genial weather.
The hotel we are in, the Slavianski Bazaar, recalls another
legend of superstition oxt the part of the people of olden days. In
1553 the first printing-office in Russia was built, and yet stands
in a rear court of this house. The original starter of the thing
was a victim of his knowledge, for he was threatened with death
as a necromancer, and probably was maltreated by the mob. The
business, however, got into the hands of the government, and has
been run by it ever since. The little old house, yet preserved
with great care, became the nucleus of a large establishment un-
382

THE RUSSO-GREEK CHURCH. i^i
der the control of the church, which prints all of the books,
musical as well as others, for not only the Russian establishment,
but for the Greek church in other countries. It is under the con
trol of able directors, who employ learned men, and thus give its
books authoritj' with all followers of the Eastern Church. It is
very rich ; owns this big hotel, and much other valuable property.
The managers wished to have here not only a hotel, but a concert-
hall, theatre, and mercantile bazaar, all under one roof. The
bazaar did not succeed. It is now a beautiful hall, large and finely
vaulted, and is the restaurant or dining-room of the hotel.
The manager of the printing-house yesterday kindly explained
to us many things in connection with the Greek or Russian
church not before understood by us, and showed us some very
rare old works, and exquisitely illumined music-books — which,
however, being in Hebrew, Greek, or Russian, I could only ad
mire from the outside. The Greek church here acknowledges no
head other than the conclave or synod of the archbishops, who are
held to be the successors of the twelve apostles, and all being co
equal one with another. The emperor is simply the political head
of the Russian church. The archbishops, bishops, and the people
elect the archbishops when a vacancy occurs ; the elected's name
is then presented to the emperor for his consent, which, when
once given, removes all right of further control from the czar.
The emperor is very earnest in his observance of the rites of
the church, and in religious matters pays great respect to the
prejudices and religious opinions of the people. At one of the
gates of the " Kitai-gorod," or citadel, is a little chapel or shrine
dedicated to the " Iberian mother of God," in which the image of
the Virgin is beautifully jewelled, and brings about many miracles.
Here the emperor dismounts when he visits Moscow, and worships
in the presence of the image before entering the Kremlin. From
morning till night there is a stream of people going into and
coming from the chapel, and toward evening this becomes a
column. People of all ages and all degrees, the wealthy and the
beggar, each buys one or more candles from the man selling them
just within the door, and places them lighted near the altar. The
' revenues thus obtained are said to* be very large. No one passes
under the gate without lifting his hat and crossing himself at least
three times. The gate is a great thoroughfare, and the lifting of
hats by gentlemen and laborers, teamsters and drivers, people in
carriages, and people afoot, all crossing themselves so earnestly,
and many dropping on their knees, presents a curious spectacle.
One day we saw two drunken men, with locked arms, stagger
ing along the broad square, nearly lOO yards from the chapel.
When in front of it, down they went to their knees. When they
attempted to rise, one could not succeed until helped up by a
passer-by. The shrines and images along the streets are innum
erable. Many kneel before them, and the great majority cross

384 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
themselves. We took a long ride on the top of a street-car. The
passengers on this deck sit with their backs to each other on a
long seat running from front to rear. By my side were two roughly-
dressed laborers. They removed their hats and crossed them
selves whenever passing the churches and shrines. We must have
passed, in the ride, over 20 on the side we were facing. Some
merchants were on the other side ; they did the same when op
posite a holy place on their side of the street. I have followed
people to see if they would not pass some shrine unnoticed. A
very few do, but poor women seem never to omit the ceremony.
At a church service the crossing and genuflections are as numer
ous and as continually kept up as are the bowings and prostrations
at a Constantinople mosque of dancing dervishes. Here, too,
many of the worshippers when kneeling bend the forehead down
to the floor.
Each church we have visited has one or more special " Ikons"
(holy images). People are always seen before them, and all kiss
the image before leaving. I asked our guide how often he
thought these people crossed themselves each day. He replied
that he did not doubt some who are much on the street do so
more than 100 times each day of the year. People hurry past a
church on a railroad train, and lift their hats and cross themselves.
I think, from what I saw, that this is only done when an image is
in view. But these are on the front of most churches. So far I
have not seen a single sculptured effigy of Christ nailed to the
cross. It is evident that the Greek church uses principally the
painted images, in preference to the carved ones. I was told that
this is considered the proper thing, in contradistinction to the
carved effigies of the Latin church. It is said that the opposition
to the church of Rome here is greater than that felt for the
Protestants. I have never seen in any country among the masses
greater evidences of religious devotion, at least in its outward
forms, than are shown in Moscow. The Mohammedan of Cairo
is not more so. This is considered one of the holy cities of the
Russo-Greek church, Kieff alone ranking as high. Here every ap
peal possible is made to the religious heart. There are 360
churches, many old, and possessing the most sacred relics — one of "
the nails which fastened Christ to the cross, locks of his hair, a
part of the true cross, bodies of saints incased in gilded shrines,
pictures of the Saviour and of the Virgin, covered with gold and
decked with jewels. Avoiding as they do carved images, the
pictures which adorn the walls are very often covered over with
garments of gilded silver, the garments taking the form of the
body in raised relief, and showing the face of the painted picture
with here a hand and perhaps there a foot. The interior walls of
many of the churches are almost covered with pictures of life-size.
These being clad in garments of gold in high relief make the walls
look as if built of gold, and give the interiors of such churches a
massive richness vieing with any thing seen in Oriental lands.

THE DEVOTION OF THE PEOPLE. 385
" Mothers of God," painted in no mean manner, are on the
front of nearly all churches, and little chapels and shrines, with
the Virgin and Child, are on the sides of the streets in vast num
bers. The Child is rarely represented as a baby, but is usually
apparently from 6 to 12 years old, and with the thoughtful ex
pression of even a greater age, and yet it sits in its mother's lap.
Lamps are suspended before all of these images, and are lighted
long before dark. These things all appeal to the ignorant and to
the devotional, and keeps constantly alive a feeling of religious
fervor. All churches have domes : the better ones five — one large
and four smaller ones about it. Many of these are gilded, and
glisten under the rays of the sun. Rising high over every dome
is a beautiful Greek cross with crescent below — appealing not
only to religion through the symbol of Christ's sufferings, but
also through the debased crescent to the national hatred of the
Turk and of Islamism. I am told, however, this was not the in
tention, but simply to represent the idea of the growth of the
doctrine of the cross. But some at least of the common people
understand it as showing the domination of the Christian cross
over the crescent of Islam.
Many believe that the Russian aims at a spread of his govern
ment over the continent. If he can keep alive in his soldiers a
desire to make his religion universal he will succeed in making
himself almost invincible. It was the crescent at the head of his
columns which enabled Timour to win his enormous victories.
Men can conquer or die when taught that death in battle opens
the gates of Paradise. The Czar of Russia has erected the cross.
Who knows how far it may lead him ? On one of the boulevards
of Moscow a large pyramidal monument was lately erected ; on
its four sides, in bold alto relievo, are life-sized representations in
bronze of episodes of the late war with Turkey. One represents
a Bulgarian mother and child being cut down by a Turk ; the
next shows a Russian soldier slaying the Mohammedan and sav
ing the woman. Then follows one with a priest pointing the
wounded soldier to a higher land. Such things must feed in the
hearts of the people a desire to drive Islamism from Stamboul.
The rushing floods of this great land flow not more eagerly
toward the Black Sea than do the yearnings of the Russian toward
the Bosphorus.
Many of the churches here are fine, some very interesting, and
one is simply magnificent. This is the Temple of the Saviour,
the metropolitan church of the Moscow archbishopric. It is
large, holds 7,000 people, and cost $10,000,000. It is built in the
form of an equal-armed Greek cross, of whitish stone, on a base
of dark^ranite highly polished. The outer walls have, in high
relief, in heroic size, representations of Biblical stories, and above
is a central grand dome, with four others, over the arms of the
cross. These domes are of brilliantly-gilded copper. The grand

386 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
portico, with its 36 columns, is very imposing. The interior walls
have bases of a curious black marble, with glistening veins and
wonderfully polished, from Finland ; above this base are the
usual rows of pictures in gold garments, raised in relief, and above
them, in rows one over the other, are Hfe-sized pictures of Bibli
cal and other saints, finely executed, covering the walls up to the
lofty galleries, which run entirely around the edifice. These gal
leries have many pictures of great size and in high art, depicting
stories in the lives of Russian saints. The architecture through
out is very fine, and the paintings are all beautiful, and, to me,
seem masterly works. One thing, and only one, helps to mar the
whole. In the vault of the majestic dome, which is 90 feet in
diameter, is a picture of God with the child Christ on his lap, and
the Holy Ghost as a dove on his breast. This picture is a grand
one ; but it always shocks me to see an attempt to represent the
mighty, unknown, and unknowable God as a man — as a figured
being. Human ken cannot fathom the dimensions of Him who
holds countless worlds in the hollow of His hand ; human thought
cannot conceive the form of Him who created and set in motion
ten thousand thousand suns, on whose rounded sides this world
of ours in flames would scarcely be a flashing spark ; set them in
motion so true and perfect that no mathematical science can cal
culate the far-off aeon when the first vibration will occur in their
onward roll ! Human imagination cannot even dream of the
brightness of His eye, which can look into a blazing sun and
cause the burning flame to dim into darkness. Ah, no ! God is
unknown and unknowable — never conceived and inconceivable.
No created thing can imagine what and how He is, whose thought
created the vastness of space, and who, by His will, filled it with
the boundless universe ! Next to St. Sophia, and, perhaps, St.
Paul, I remember no church which has so impressed me as this
Temple of the Saviour. Standing within it and looking up into
its dome, over 300 feet high, I was warmed as I could be in no
Gothic church, though its columns and pillars were as the trees
of the forest. I do not like the profusion of gilt in the Greek
church, but, in the form adopted, it has been more successful
than the church of the West.
About an hour's drive from the city is the only considerable
elevation in its neighborhood — Sparrow Hill, on the banks of the
river. It is only 200 or 300 feet high, but affords a very fine
view of the town and its domes, the Kremlin and its crenelated
walls and palaces. It was from this spot that the victorious
Napoleon looked for the first time upon the doomed city he had
so long yearned to enter, and which proved his ruin. The French
soldiers, as they climbed from behind up to the top of this hill,
are said, one after another, to have shouted " Moscow ! " Poor
fellows ! Little dreamed they of the burning hand which was to
grasp theirs in welcome, or of the cold winding sheet which was

PICTURESQUE MOSCOW. 387
so soon to enfold so many of their comrades. A map of this city
looks so like that of Vienna that I mistook it the first time I saw
one in a window. The river runs through it much as the canal
does in the other, and the streets of the town, accommodating
themselves to the form of the Kremlin and the Katai-Gorod, both
walled in, assume a somewhat circling form, as does the Ring
Strasse. There are very few streets which are straight for any
considerable distance. There is probably no city in Christendom
laid out with more absolute irregularity than Moscow. Looking
at the map one could believe this irregularity was studied.
Streets bend and wind in every direction, with no apparent pur
pose, except that the inhabitants of the central old walled town
should reach the country in every direction. Streets lead from
the Kremlin, or centre, for this purpose to the outskirts in all
quarters, but with no attempt to preserve direct lines. They
bend and wind and run sometimes into each other, and are of no
fixed width. Here they are narrow, then they double their width,
now they are lost in open spaces of irregular forms into which
two or more streets may debouch. Cutting these country-seek
ing roads is a system of streets attempting to preserve to some
extent the form of the Kremlin and Katai-Gorod, or central-walled
ancient city, and seeking to make themselves a system somewhat
circular and concentric. One of these is the grand boulevard
occupying the location of an old fortification. This is of various
widths — now 100 feet, and then spreading tO two, three, or even
more hundred, and encloses a somewhat circular space, not quite
three miles in diameter. In the centre of this space, averaging a
tract equal to a mile square, is the irregularly-formed walled old
town, comprising the Kremlin and Katai-Gorod. Just outside of
their Walls is another boulevard system, occupying the once old
moat. Between these two boulevards is a faint attempt to pre
serve a somewhat circular concentric system of streets. Outside
the outer boulevard there seems to be no sort of system. The
boulevards are well planted with trees, and have well-kept promen
ades in the centre, the driveway being on the outer sides.
It will thus be seen that Moscow possesses much to make it
pretty. The old Kremlin, famdus in history during several
centuries, with its crenelated walls, its palaces, and quaint
churches, all perched upon an elevation sufficient to make them
land-marks ; the Katai-Gorod, or walled citadel, with bending, tor
tuous streets, and old and yet handsome houses ; the queerly
laid-out, irregular city outside, with gardens and well-planted
boulevards — these things give much that is necessary for the
picturesque. Yet I am compelled to admit that a week's stay
here did not, to me, make it interesting. The Kremlin and its
contents, and some of the churches are interesting, but they are
rather lions in the city. The city itself lacks something to warm
up the traveller. Perhaps this has been only for us, and may

388 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
be somewhat owing to the continued cold, drizzly, damp weather.
This may have kept the people more within ; at least, when on
the streets, within themselves. They all have such an air of
apathy, or of selfish indifference ; each seems listless, or if in
earnest then bent on something belonging only to himself.
People are crowding the narrow sidewalks, forcing one to get
on the roadway, and then to dodge off to keep from being run
over by the drojkies, which rattle, as fast as a trot will carry
them, over the cobble-paved streets. Porters are hurrying along ;
women in queer peasant garbs, with bundles over their backs,
and basket-sandals on their feet, are trudging on their pilgrimage
from church to church, crossing themselves and kneeling at every
little chapel, and before every image. They look tired and
weary, for they are perhaps from very distant provinces, and are
making a pilgrimage which will take in Kiev — 700 or 800 miles
away. There are men in rough coats dozing in doorways, and
drojky drivers, with flowing skirts reaching to their ankles,
asleep in the vehicles, or importuning you to ride. There is all
of this, yet there is nothing which I can call street life, which
makes other cities of fewer people interesting.
The crowds are on the street, but every one is wrapped up in
a sort of self-hiding reserve. I love to watch new people. I
visit cities more to look at and into their people than at and into
their edifices and shows. I never wearied when walking the
streets of London, or Paris, or Berhn, or Vienna, and above
all, of the far-off cities of the Orient. But here there seems to
be nothing offered by the people to make them attractive. The
better classes are polite and courteous. The masses, however,
are not looking about as if ready to be amused. They have
something to do, and nothing else enters their brain. ?These
are the impressions I received. I have gone into restaurants at
the two o'clock hour of the principal meal. Here the same air
is worn. A well-patronized caf6 or restaurant in most cities pre
sents an epitome of life, and one can spend hours in them simply
as a looker-on. Yesterday, next to our table, three young men
sat down, having first looked over the counter on which comestibles
are spread. A small bottle with a sort of schnapps — and wine
glasses, a plate of dark bread, and another of radishes and but
ter, with a small dish of smoking-hot veal, were placed before
them. They ate some radishes and a mouthful of veal, then
filling their glasses tipped them and, opening their mouths wide,
emptied the white liquor down their throats at a gulp. They
then talked and eat more radishes, and a few more mouthfuls of
veal, and then poured down each another glassful, throwing their
heads back as if to enable the stuff to reach the right place at
once. They then lit cigarettes. By this time they had become
voluble, and after the third glass, which emptied the bottle, they
commenced to talk German as if to prevent others from under-

RESTAURANTS. RUSSIAN TEA. 389
standing them. A second bottle was brought, and a bowl of
soup, and another dish or two of meat. They took a few mouth
fuls, and dropped another glassful of vodky or schnapps down
into their waistbands. The topic of conversation became very
sad, for one of them shed tears, which poured down his cheek,
the other two giving him warm sympathy. They were all young.
Perhaps it was a tale of blighted love. We left them before the
second bottle was emptied, and before they had eaten much of
their dinner. Their conversation had become low-toned and sad.
The cuisine in our hotel, and in good restaurants, is very fine,
and comfortably good in the cheaper houses we have tried.
Nowhere is living dear. Tea, most delicious, with nice bread
and enough for two, cost 80 kopecks, and a trink-gelt to the
waiter of say ten — in all about 40 cents. Chocolate, two tumblers
full, and bread or cake for two, same price. A good dinner of
soup, two kinds of meat and vegetables, with a compote and
glass of beer, costs in the best places, for two, about $1.10
of our money. This same at a cheap, respectable place, but not
so well prepared, yet good enough, about 35 cents a person, of
our money. We make it a rule to try all kinds of places where
food is clean and respectable. Russian tea is very fine. It is
served thus : A tea-pot large enough to hold one large cup full,
is placed before two persons, with another large pot of boiling
water. We half fill our cups from the tea-pot, and fill up with
water, and if desired with cream or with milk, at the same time
filling the tea-pot with hot water. In this way we can have as
much as we can possibly desire. I noticed Russians drinking
and refilling until the decoction coming from the pot was barely
colored. We, however, refill only once, getting thus two large
cups of delicious tea. The third cup is strong enough for table
use. For each portion 12 lumps of sugar are furnished, and
bread enough for a fair breakfast. I noticed Russians putting
the sugar in their mouths and supping the tea through it, or eat
ing it after swallowing some tea. This, however, was when tea is
taken simply as a beverage, and with a slice of lemon. One
disgusting habit is common here in the better class of restaurants.
A glass of water is served after the-meal with a finger-bowl. The
mouth is washed and the water poured out of it into the finger-
bowl. I have heretofore seen this done at many tables d'hote on
the continent, but here, so far, it seems universal. There is
nothing in this really filthy, but it is suggestive of nastiness. I
have seen it among travelled swells in America. It is a habit I
hope will not take deep root even in our swelldom. To wash
the mouth before smoking is a luxury. But there are some
things that are better done behind a screen than in full view. I
have not yet seen a single cigar smoked except my own. All
smoke cigarettes. The result is, I am forced, when talking to
any one to avoid his breath as much as possible. The smoke

390 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
from the cigarette is inhaled, and makes the lungs fetid and must
injure health. May not this, to some extent, increase the dread
disease, consumption, which I am told is rather common in this
land ? At the hotel, meals are served in the rooms, with no addi
tion to the cost, and judging from the tea-trays being carried
along the corridors, I would think that neariy all of its large
population take their morning meals and late suppers in their
private rooms. Indeed, the manager to whom I complained that
I could not find any thing ready in the restaurant until nearly
nine, informed me that he would rather I took the early meal in
my room, and that it could be had as early as seven. The people
here are very late risers. Twilight lasts in summer very late, and
in winter the day is so short that one has to live much in the
dark. The people retire very late, and shops are all closed till
after nine in the morning.
To nibble at something seems to be a human characteristic,
and every country has its particular nibble. In America the boys
eat peanuts and the girls chew gum ; in Japan they eat a small
seed ; in China and India they chew sugar-cane ; in Siam, Burmah,
and southern India and Ceylon, betel nuts ; in Egypt and
Turkey, pumpkin seeds ; in Greece, watermelon seed ; here they
crack sunflower seed. In the street cars, at the gardens, and
along the streets people are seen eating this seed, and at every
corner, women or boys are selling them. Every one has read of
the Kremlin of Moscow, and every one desires to see it or know
of it. It is a nearly triangular old fortress on the river which
runs through Moscow in the shape of the letter S. The base of
the Kremlin triangle rests on the lower curve of the letter, where
the site of the fortress lifts some 50 or more feet. The whole
length of the wall is over a mile and a third, through which one
may enter by five gates, some of which are of historic interest,
and two are very sacred passages. Over the Gate of the Re
deemer is a picture, " Christ the Redeemer," highly venerated,
and believed to possess miraculous powers. It is a thoroughfare,
but no one ever passes through it covered. In olden days, any one
omitting to remove his hat was punished by being forced to make
a large number of prostrations. Now all do it, either from venera
tion or out of respect to the prejudices of the people. This form
is observed by the highest and the lowest, the native and the
foreigner. The Gate of St. Nicholas is nearly as venerable.
Here in ancient times oaths were administered to such as the ab
solute truth was demanded from, and litigants in court were
expected to swear to their cases in the presence of the mosaic
picture of the saint which hangs over the arch. This holy image
has witnessed many a battle and helped to withstand more than
one siege. Napoleon is said to have ordered the toftver over it to
be blown up. The massive masonry split from the top down
toward the earth, but the rent stopped at the frame of the pic-

GREAT BELLS. 391
ture. The glass covering it, and the lamp which illuminated it,
and the picture were unscathed. Such is the statement of an in
scription placed over the gate by Alexander I. Through another
gate the victorious French entered this fortress — the goal so
eagerly sought through so many weary leagues of march, and
over so many bloody battlefields. Within the Kremlin walls are
the real historic spots of this old capital.
Here is the odd old tower of Ivan the Great, claimed by the Rus
sians to have been founded by that old ruler six and a half centu
ries ago. From its gallery, reached by a climb of 450 steps, a
splendid view of the city is had. It lies mapped around, with
its houses and palaces in confused piles, its boulevards and parks
green with trees, its green painted roofs giving, with the trees, a
garden-like appearance to the whole city. Four fifths, perhaps
seven eighths, of all roofs are green, the few patches of red roof
ing heightening the effects of its complemental color. Bend
ing like a great serpent the little river winds into the town, and
by a couple of graceful curves lies for a moment at one's feet, and
then glides off by another easy curve and seeks the outward plain.
Here, close to one, hang 30 odd beautiful bells, two of them be
ing of solid silver. One of these bears upon its rim the tell-tale
inscription that it is 338 years old. Woe to the tympanum of
one's ears if he happens to be in the gallery at the hour when
the great bell of the Assumption clangs. For its mighty tongue
is larger than a man, and its weight is 64 tons. If, however, the
hearer be a few hundred yards removed, this old bell peals a tone
singularly rich and mellow. From the height one can count 360
churches, many of them with gilded domes, dazzling and bright.
At the foot of the tower, upon the pedestal of stone, stands the
¦" King of Bells." Who of us in early childhood has not heard
of it ? I remember seeing a picture of it when I was a small
boy. It was half buried, but the earth was dug away from before
a break in it, and one or two men were standing in the orifice.
When I was 1 1 years old the emperor had it lifted and placed
¦upon its present pedestal. To do this was no ea.sy task, for the
'' king " is a monster, over 26 feet high and 68 feet in circumfer
ence, or nearly 23 feet in diameter at' the rim. It weighs nearly
200 tons, and the little piece broken out of it leaves an opening
seven feet high.
Within the precincts of the Kremlin are the great palace, the
armory and arsenal, and two or three churches. In the Church
of the Assumption are vast riches and valuable relics. Here the
czars of Russia are crowned. It is said the French took from its
ornaments five tons of silver and five hundred-weight of gold. In
it is a solid silver chandelier weighing 900 pounds, given by the
Cossacks after recapturing the precious metal from the destroyed
French army. This church has six massive pillars supporting
its five domes, and so large that they resemble those of an

392 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
Egyptian temple more than a modern church. It, however, is
not so very modern, for it was built some 700 years ago. Here
the emperor worships, and places upon his own head the crown,
and receives the sacrament as emperor of all the Russias.
In front of the arsenal, in long, compact rows, ornamentally
placed, are 875 bronzed cannon, taken from the French army on
its fearful retreat. They represent not only the French, but, also.
Napoleon's subject crowns, for over a fourth are Austrian, a sev
enth Prussian, a twelfth Italian, others being Saxon, Bavarian,
Neapolitan, Dutch, and Spanish. Many of them have Napole
on's initial " N." cut into them, and a great many are named.
The names are sometimes not over dignified. But these hun
dreds of cannon were deeply impressive. Monsters brought over
such vast distances to slay ! I looked into their mouths and
wondered how many death warrants they had uttered ; how
many brave men they had torn to pieces ; how many women and
children they had caused to mourn. And then I thought of the
men who had been forced to abandon them, of their terrible suf
ferings, of their longing looks towards the west when all was lost,
and how sweet to them was the thought of the balmy air on the
banks of the Elbe and the Danube, the Moselle, the Rhine, the
Seine and the Rhone, where their loved ones were. I could
almost see them, as hungry and footsore they tottered over the
frozen plain, and at last sank to their knees, and with prayers to
God and with one more thought of home, yielded themselves to
their winding sheet of snow. " How long, how long, O Lord,
wilt thou permit man's inhumanity to man^ake countless mil
lions mourn ! "
The great palace is not very handsome without, but within
there is much magnificence. Vast halls of noble proportions, and
with a richness of decoration almost fabulous. Here Oriental
exuberance has been married to Western taste ; Asiatic dreams
of gold blended with the finest touches of European art. From
floors in many beautiful woods marvellously designed and exqui
sitely laid, up along walls rich and apparently cut from massive
gold, up to the vaulted ceilings, beautifully frescoed — all was rich
beyond any thing I had conceived, and yet all in beautiful taste.
Nothing was tawdry ; it was rich. Nothing was simply luxuri
ous ; it was artistic. These are the parts of the palace of
the present line of czars. In another part are those of the
rulers of long ago, rich but quaint, and lacking so many of
those things a modern house would consider sirnple comforts.
The counterpane, embroidered, by the daughter of a monarch of
three centuries ago was pretty, but a few roubles would purchase
a prettier one now, and a couple of roubles would buy a much
lighter and far warmer coverlet than the old king slept under.
The treasury is a plain building, but its contents are of fabulous
value. Case after case containing cart loads of solid silver and

A TREASURE OF ART AND RICH CURIOSITIES. 393
gold plate ; platters big enough to hold a half sheep, or upon
which to spread a bushel of fruit ; great goblets which a Titan
could scarcely use to drink from, so large are they, and yet rich ;
case after case of Sevres china, complete sets, the gift of Napoleon
to Alexander, all painted so beautifully that they are works of
high art ; great vases from the same works ; dozens of state car
riages in which czars and czarinas rode to their coronation, nearly
as large as Barnums band wagon, all gilded and burnished. They
were very rich, but of what clumsy workmanship ! A first-class
wagon maker in America would not let a wagon go out of his
shop with such rough wood and ironwork as composed some of
these carriages in which old rulers rode a few centuries ago to
be anointed in the name of the Lord, as the kings of men. One
of the grandest of carriages was a present from England's virgin
queen. The carriage in which that strange compound of human
vice and human greatness, Catharine II. , rode, was there, and by
it the stuffed skin of the horse she used to ride " straddle " when
she reviewed her troops. The picture close by of the empress
dressed as a general officer astride of a fine horse is a fine one.
Under it is the saddle she rode, and her bridle, studded with
jewels and pearls of great value, the gift of the Emperor of China
or Shah of Persia. In one room are crowns and sceptres, a mass
of jewels and gold, some of the uncut gems as large as pigeon
eggs. I said to a Russian, also a visitor, that the emperor might
sell these things and pay the debt of the crown. His reply was,
the crown would not be worth much to him if he were to attempt
the thing. The treasury consists of two great suites of rooms,
one on the first and the other on the second story. It seems a
little odd that downstairs, in a most prominent place, is a grand
picture of Napoleon (I think it is by David) and his iron bed ;
and at the head of the suite on the second floor is a splendid
statue in marble of the same wonderful man. What a beautiful
face his was, and yet what a strong one !
There are very many interesting portraits in these rooms, all of
the Russian emperors and all of the Polish kings, and many
of its nobles. I had hoped that Kosciusko's might possibly be
among them. Perhaps if they had it they would not hang it
here. The museum is in another part of the town. It has life-
size figures in every pose, wearing the costumes of every province
of this vast land. "The picture gallery in the same building has
some fine works, all arranged according to schools. Some of them
are of high order. I have written to our minister at St. Peters
burg for a permit to go to Samarcand, and that I hoped he would
get it in four days. He replied that he would get it, but that
four days is a short time to get any thing from the officials in
Russia.

CHAPTER XXXVin.
PRINCELY KINDNESS— RICH PRAIRIE LANDS— VERONIJ— NECESSITY
FOR FOREST PROTECTION— THE COSSACKS— BRA-VE CHILDREN
—SUNFLOWER THE RUSSIAN NIBBLE— ROSTOF ON THE DON.
Vladikavkas, June 19, 1888.
Fearing that Mr. Lothrop, our minister, might not get our
Transcaspian permit in time, I resolved again to avail myself of
my high position as an " American sovereign." Armed with our
etedentials we called upon Prince Vladimir Dolgoroukoff, a
member of the council of the empire and governor-general
of Moscow, at one o'clock, his hour of reception. We were
detained in the ante-chamber, with quite a number of other
visitors, for fully an hour. The prince was evidently having a
good appetite for his lunch. Finally he appeared in the grand
inner room, preceded by a few aides, who backed out in front of
him. A committee of a financial company was shown in first.
Its chairman bowed up to the prince, kissed him on either cheek,
and presented him with a copy of some handsomely-bound pro
ceedings of the company, which had just celebrated its jubilee.
Some speeches were made in a low voice, the chairman and com
mitteemen frequently bowing. The prince evidently received
them very graciously. Cards were then presented, ours among
them, and an aide soon bade us enter. I introduced myself, ask
ing if his excellency spoke English. He replied in the negative.
I then proceeded in the best French I could command. He bade
us most cordially to be seated, and asked what I wished and what
he could do for us. To explain this I had to mention our ex
tended journeyings, and why I desired to visit Turkestan, to see
if Russia was carrying there the light of the West. He at once
got us into conversation, and said that Willie was having a grand
opportunity in thus voyaging so far under the tutelage of an ex
perienced man. I remarked that this was almost the exact ex
pression of the King of Siam, when he honored us with an
audience. His Excellency at once became decidedly interested,
and kept me telling him of the king and his manners, etc. I then
showed him my credentials. He said Gen. Annenkoff, the
builder of the new road to Samarcand, had just arrived on his
way to render his account to the emperor, and was to be with
him that afternoon, and that he thought he and the general could
394

PRINCELY KINDNESS. 395
arrange for us. He kept us fully 25 minutes, when, remember
ing that others were waiting, he bade us good-by, saying he
would send his secretary to us that evening with such papers as
he could give us. The secretary came at nine o'clock with the
information that as the matter was already in the hands of our
minister, the prince preferred not to intervene, but, advisi?^' us to
proceed to Tiflis, and to write at once to our minister to have the
permit telegraphed to the governor-general of Transcaucasia. I
felt dished and so expressed myself, saying that I could not risk
going so far and then probably finding no means of making the
trip I so much desired. The aide assured me that the governor-
general said there was no doubt I would receive the dispatch. I
sent my thanks to his excellency, etc., etc. The next day, being
the day we left, on our return to the hotel after a walk, we found
the prince had honored us by a call in person, but, finding us out,
sent us a message that before our train should depart, he would
send his secretary with some letters which would help us through,
and urged me to go on to Tiflis. The aide did come, and
brought a beautifully engrossed letter of introduction to Prince
Dondoukoff Korsakoff, governor-general of Transcaucasia, intro
ducing me and asking such aid as we may need to get through to
central Asia. In other words American sovereignty is in the
ascendant — at least for a while.
We have passed over a magnificent farming country on our way
here, it being a part of the mighty grain-producing plain of Russia.
We left Moscow at 1 1 at night, but at 2:30 it was already light ;
from that time until seven in the evening the road ran through a
country almost a counterpart of our best prairie land, a great
rolling plain as far as the eye could reach, except when appeared
intervening copses of young trees or growth along streams and
little rivulets, the whole covered with rye in head, wheat sprout
ing or already up, and, towards Veronij, nearly a foot high ; oats
just planted ; potatoes four or five inches up ; small patches of
beautiful hemp ; here and there plowed land not yet showing any
green, and with broad pastures interspersed, on which great herds of
horses and cattle and flocks of sheep were grazing. Rye was at first
the predominating growth. With its greenish-gray heads waving
in the gentle breeze, with the young wheat gleaming in emerald
green in the sunshine, the brown plowed fields and other growths
of slightly varying hues, with copses of wood and long lines of
trees here and there, with the herds now in hundreds near by and
then cut against the sky on the ridge of some distant rolling ele
vation, the whole presented a charming view to one who delights
in fields and farming prospects. Near Moscow, and, perhaps, for
over 100 miles, the rye was light and the soil apparently thin ;
then the rye became heavy, and the young wheat had large
healthy heads. Altogether, this prairie surpasses any of ours,
except, perhaps, a part of Kansas. The .soil is deeper, running

396 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
from two and one half to four feet, and the substratum is better, a
clay not cold aird stiff like that overlying our hard-pan, but inter
mixed with sand and red oxides, something like the subsoil of the
blue-grass regions of Kentucky, whereas the bulk of our prairies
have an underbed of gravel or sand, or a stiff, worthless clay.
This land has more recuperative powers than ours. The crops
are by no means so good as our average, but it is, I suspect, ow
ing to bad cultivation. The plowing is very shallow, and there
seems to be no rotation. Ever since we first entered Poland I
have noticed that land seems to have but one means of rest, and
that is by leaving it fallow for a greater or less time. In the
north two seasons of crops and then one or two of fallow is the
rule. This fallow land affords pasturage for vast herds of horses
and cattle. The herds help greatly to keep up the quality of the
soil. I also remarked that all manures for lOO or 200 miles
south of Moscow are spread upon the land. Straw is not burned,
but the animals being so numerous and nearly all under cover at
night and fed with straw, the crop of manure is large and utilized.
Thus far these people are good farmers, but they plow so lightly
that the roots of crops must depend too much upon the mere
surface, and the weeds all sprout and grow as fast as the grain.
This makes hand-weeding necessary. Cheap labor makes this
possible, but deep plowing would save many a backache to the
poor field-laboring women. I know I am writing with considera
ble assurance for one who sees from railroad cars. But I was
bred a farmer, and have always closely observed its modes. This
enables me to see and to ask questions of every one who can un
derstand me. I will stick to second-class carriages, where I meet
the people. In every train I find some one who speaks a little
French or German and acts as interpreter for me when he himself
cannot give me information.
Here I must bring in one of my dissertations. I am opposed
to all sumptuary laws, but am in favor of, and would warmly
urge, a certain kind of legislation which would interfere somewhat
with private rights. The land of a country may be in the owner
ship of individuals, but its preservation belongs to the State and
to posterity. A man has, and should have, the right to crop his
land as he wishes, but he has not the right to destroy it. Mother
Earth yields of her bounties. Man should return something of
her rich yields whenever she gives him a superabundance. He
has no right to destroy the forests, which keep up a healthy rain
fall. He should use the wood, but a scientific oversight should
be exercised by government to determine when such use by the
individual becomes detrimental to the masses — that mass which,
aggregated, makes the State. Every State should have forest
laws, which should watch over a man's woods and restrain him
from destroying them. Government restrains the hand of the
man who would commit self-slaughter. An acre of good woods

STATE INTERFERENCE TO PRESERVE TREES. 397
is oftentimes worth more to a large district than a half-dozen such
men as would be fools enough to cut their own throats. Again,
we have in our Western States a virgin soil, and the people of the
older States who have worn out their old lands are filling up the
new, and are doing their level best to see how quickly they can
make them unproductive. Every thing which the farmer cannot
use or sell is burned. Our Western prairies of virgin soil are now
feeding the world, but it will not be many generations before they
will be exhausted, as are the lands of the older States. Nothing
fitted for manure should be burned, unless when it be unavoida
ble. If our people have not forethought to keep them from
destroying the woods and from wasting manure the government
should take the thing in hand. We pass laws to protect game
because a few sportsmen have taken the thing in hand, and to
protect fish, which was also inaugurated by the followers of
Izaak Walton. Who will take the initiative and preach a crusade
against the other far more injurious waste ? Nearly every European
country, I believe, has inaugurated forestry laws, and vast benefits
have accrued therefrom. A political convention that would put in
a plank of that sort would find it much more easily floated than
some of their tariff platforms which forces the candidate to play
the great modern game of " mum " until the election be over.
Toward seven o'clock we entered and took an hour or two in
passing through a fine tract of wood — oak, birch, and some pine.
Birch seems here almost a national tree. I have seen more of it
since I crossed the Polish frontier than before in my life. Be
tween Warsaw and Moscow, and then for some distance on the
road south, we have passed very many miles through forests
which looked as if the trees were whitewashed, and vast wood
piles — thousands upon thousands of cords— which Willie thought
had frost on them.
We passed through many fine towns, and in sight of hundreds
of peasant villages, looking like collections of old straw-stacks.
I shall, however, not say any thing of them, or of peasant life
and outlook until I shall have seen more. Veronij _, on the
Don, 367 miles south of Moscow, is a broad-streeted city of
50,000 people, spread over a large surface, the bulk of the houses
being of one story; it has some fine churches. The city is on a
high bluff, which lies on one side of the river, and affords a
fine prospect over the vast plain, on the opposite side, with a
dozen or two large villages in sight, and great farming-lands
spread out as on a map. The town seems a thriving one, and
its market-place was an interesting study, filled as it was with
country people, with their clumsy costumes, of which, too, anon.
As an illustration of the necessity of forest protection, I will
state that Peter the Great built at Veronij a large fleet of deep-
draught ships, with which he suddenly covered the Black Sea,
and thereby gained vastly over the Turks. The timber and masts

398 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
for these craft grew in the neighborhood, for forests abounded
along the river. Growing population soon levelled the forests,
and the Don, which had floated for i,ooo miles armed ships,
became so shallow that only light flats can now navigate it. The
disappearance of trees dissipated the rain-giving clouds to a great
extent, and now there are often injurious droughts. The steppe
or prairie south of Veronij is wonderfully rich. A very intelli
gent man, educated in German and Swiss agricultural schools, was
our fellow-passenger for two days, and gave me great assistance
in studying the country passed. The black-soil Russian steppe
is of vast extent, stretching from the Hungarian frontier nearly
to the Ural Mountains, east and west, and from less than loo
miles south of Moscow to the Black Sea, north and south, with
occasional breaks into it of sandy lands, and covering an area of
perhaps 1,000,000 square miles. This is sometimes flat and some
what cold ; but is generally more or less rolling, and often has
high undulations. Some, over which we ran, were as high rolling
as western Iowa. I saw much land with fully four feet of dark
soil, and below that a mass of fine reddish clay ; for several hun
dred miles scarcely a stone was in sight, even in deep railway
cuts, and nowhere did I see any shale or shingle underlying the
soil. Oftentimes as far as we could see there were fields of rye
swaying and bending in the wind. It for the first half of our
way, seemed to cover the country, and magnificent rye, too,
heavy-headed and with tall, fine stalks. As we came south the
wheat became taller and more abundant, and was, before reaching
Rostof, in head and a good and the predominant crop.
South of Rostof, on ourway to Vladikavkas, we passed through
a great flat plain, all covered with very fine wheat, or with grass
now being cut and in hay-cocks. The wheat -fields were of vast
extent, a sea of green, and the hay-lands, though of spontaneously-
growing grass, were as thickly-covered with cocks as our best
timothy-meadows. At one time a somewhat distant tract of
6,000 to 10,000 acres had so many that I thought them thickly-
strewn bushes until the glass brought the hay-cocks out. Russia,
generally I am told, follows the three-field system — two years of
grain, then a fallow. In the south the fallow lies for years, with
no fixed rule, and produces fine pasturage and splendid hay.
Sometimes we saw, all along from Veronij to this place, herds of
cattle of several hundred head. Each village has its individually
owned cattle grazed in a common herd. The flocks of sheep,
too, were very large. All railway-stations had sheds filled with
wheat in bags, and huge bales of wool. The sheep are frequently
dark and black-spotted or brown, and mostly of the broad-tailed
variety. This side of Rostof we saw many thousands in droves,
being driven from the great western plains to be slaughtered near
the Black Sea. They were in bands of 500 to i ,000 each, an ox-cart
with a hugh hogshead of water accompanying each band. This
for the shepherds who were driving.

THE COSSACKS AND THEIR CHILDREN. 399
Nothing has so far so surprised me as the Cossacks. I had
supposed them a half-civilized set of rough people. We have
constantly had Cossack -officers on our trains, polite and nice men,
and their wives pleasant ladies. From Veronij to Rostof we
came on a very slow train, taking 36 hours to make about 400
miles. It made stoppages of from a half-hour upward at several
stations near which were large villages. In this way I was enabled
to go out and see how the Don Cossacks were and how they
lived. Their houses were more comfortable than those before
seen in Russian villages. Generally there was grass about them
and little gardens and flowers in pots in the windows of nearly
half of the houses, and even in the huts of the poorest. I have
always found I can enter a peasant's cot by talking to and caress
ing the children. I tried it here with success. I spoke to fully 20
squads of children of all ages, from the toddler up to seven or
eight-year-old ones. For the first time I found children who had
no sort of fear of foreigners. An unknown language generally
alarms a peasant child. Here it did not. Whether the child
was alone or with others, hardly able to walk, or a frollicking girl
or boy, when I would speak to it and hold out my hand, it invari
ably gave me its own with a grin. I thought at first I must be
mistaken, but I tried the thing at a dozen villages, back some
distance from the stationj^where the children could not have been
familiar with foreigners. In every instance the little ones would
look me squarely in the face with frank, uncowed eyes, and would
then scamper off to tell their companion something of the man
who did not know how to talk. In some instances this little
attempt of mine would win a rose or other flower from the
mother, who probably was at work near by. Generally, how
ever, most of the cottages were locked up — mother and father
being far off at hard labor in distant fields, and the youngsters
left to take care of themselves ; or possibly the children of sev
eral families are left in charge of some woman, who, for that day,
stays at home. In this way at least I accounted for the fact that
many youngsters were about cottages where the woman I saw
could not have been the mother of them all.
I saw people mowing grass at a little after four in the morning.
I saw people, too, raking up grass as late as 9:30 at evening. I saw
hundreds trudging along the roads and others on our train going
to mow in distant districts. I am told they will go several hundred
miles to work in the mowing season.' Fifty or more would be
seen making hay at one time. In this way each farmer gets
his grass down at once. Men and women walk 100 miles for the
privilege of working for 60 to 80 cents a day. And yet there are
men with us who rave at our government and talk of themselves
as being wage-slaves ! But such will say the purchasing power of
money in cheap labor countries evens things up. This is a grpat
mistake. Articles representing labor are cheap, but these are lux
uries. But staple articles of food and material cost not much less

400 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
in other lands than in our interior States. Our laborers live on
the fat of the land and wear good clothes. These consume no fat
and precious little lean, and their clothes are cheap and well
patched — never wear out.
After leaving Veronij a half day's distance we saw little or no
timber, and then came to a country where manure is almost the
only fuel. It is mixed up with straw and made into cakes as in
the other Oriental countries we have seen, or, what is more usual
here, made into large bricks a foot long and four inches wide and
thick. This fuel was everywhere to be seen. Very often the door-
yard was fenced in with this stuff, to be used when needed. I
spoke of the Russian people eating sunflower seeds. I have tried
them now, and when baked or roasted they are nearly, if not quite,
as agreeable as the peanut. The amount thus used here is enor
mous. One will sometimes see little patches of street and of
parks gray with the hulls, and there is rarely a spot about a depot
or place of resort where the ground is not thickly strewn with
them. We have seen thousands of acres growing the plant. At
one place I saw a field of over lOO acres, and a smaller field was
rarely out of sight. It furnishes a large amount of oil much used,
especially about their feast days. I have often wondered they
were not utilized with us, and have myself given them to my
chickens. Who will start the cracking them into fashion at
home? They are better than peanuts, in that they are so small
that they do not fill up, and in that way a little eating keeps one
a long while in occupation. I will say for the benefit of our
youngsters, there is an art in eating them ; they are put endwise
between the front teeth and then cracked ; with the tongue the
hull is thrown out and the kernel retained, somewhat as seeds are
eaten by canaries. Roast some sunflower seed, my young reader
— not till burned, but simply done — then watch a canary eat, and
thank me for a new experience. I am told they are perfectly
healthy, and keep lots of people out of mischief. There is nothing
like a pleasant, easy occupation. Peanuts satiate ; these do not.
We spent some hours at Novocherkask, the capital of the Don
Cossacks. It was early in the morning, giving us an opportunity
of seeing the peasants with their produce in the different markets.
Little wagons were ranged along the market places, loaded with
vegetables or with earthen and wooden jars, holding from a quart
up to several gallons, and filled with sour milk — not skimmed, but
thick and creamy. It was not the bonny-clabber of our Southern
States — one of God's best gifts to man — for clabber will not bear
shaking, the whey at once separates from the curd and spoils it.
Our Northern people call it spoilt milk, and lose a great luxury.
The Cossack sour milk is probably turned with rennet, as is the
" lubbin " of the Turkman in Asia Minor. The buyers taste be
fore purchasing. A few old women tasted so often that we con
cluded they were getting a cheap breakfast.

VERY RICH LAND. 401
In these, as in other Eastern markets, every thing is sold from
a pin to a harrow ; from a yard of tatting to a bolt of cotton ; from
a dried minnow to a sturgeon. By the way, the Don is the veri
table home of this magnificent and dehcious fish. He resembles
somewhat our sturgeon in appearance, but far surpasses him in
flavor. It is from the egg of this fish the celebrated caviar is
made. Great factories are devoted to it in all towns along the *
river. Of a certain small size the sturgeon is a great delicacy, and
is carried alive in tanks to Moscow and St. Petersburg for the
tables of the rich. In the dining-hall of the hotel (Slavianski
Bazaar) at Moscow there is a large tank or fountain of running
water, in which fish are constantly kept, being renewed from day
to day. A guest picks out his fish — it is at once scooped up, and
in a few minutes is a tempting dish on the table. Twenty-five
thousand tons of fish are taken from the Don annually, and over
150 tons of caviar are made along its banks. The fishing is ex
clusively the property of the Don Cossacks, who, like the Finns,
are a people to themselves, are quasi free, and have privileges
other provinces do not possess. The heir apparent to the Russian
throne is made " Hetman " of the province, and is considered by
the Cossacks their own. They serve only three years in the army,
while other Russians serve five. My prejudices against the
Russians are being rubbed off, for I can call the Cossacks a splen
did lot of fellows.
Rostof is a thriving business city of 70,000 to 80,000 people,
situated on a high bluff, has broad streets, and is fairly well built.
Along the river it shows a busy scene, two or three miles of piers
lined with warehouses on a narrow strip under the bluff on which
the city stands, and the water covered with steamers, barges, and
light craft. The railroad runs along this pier, and vast piles of
grain in sacks, and wool in bales, and cotton in black woollen bag
ging from Transcaucasia, show the amount of commerce done in
this Russian seaport. Coal, too, is seen in great quantities. Very
rich 'coal-fields lie not far up the Don, and I was told a good qual
ity of anthracite exists in exhaustless supply.
From Rostof to Vladikavkas, a distance of 416 miles, is at first
through an almost flat plain, on which wheat, stretching for miles
and miles, was superb. I have never seen such fields — so large,
and at the same time so heavy in head. On the plain, too, is an
enormous crop of hay. The hay land, I was informed, is let, not
by the acre, but by the verst. Along this plain are many mounds
from four to ten or more feet high, said to be the tombs of chief
tains of old, who were buried there during inroads of the Tartars
and others from Asia into Europe. This was their highway after
they had passed the Caucasian range. Some few miles back from
this place on the road we lost the bulk of our passengers, who
alighted for the mineral springs which abound about the neigh
borhood, and which the Russian government is endeavoring to
make the Saratoga of Russia.

402 A .RACE WITH THE SUN.
Up to that time we had a gay company, mostly Petersburgers.
Nearly all spoke either German or French, and many both. All
were jolly, and the ladies easily becoming acquainted with. In
deed, in every instance they made the first advances towards us.
It had become known we were Americans, and all seemed anxious
to be of service to us or to make our time pleasant. Some of
them were students off for their vacation, young men of a very
high order of intelligence. I find that German is becoming very
popular, and is studied more than French among the masses.
The news of the death of the Emperor Frederick, which reached
us at Rostof, was deeply lamented, and all seemed to fear the
consequence. Just before reaching the mineral springs Mount
Elbruz came magnificently in sight. He presents a glorious head,
lifting above the clouds. He is 18,500 to 18,600 feet high, and is
one of the monarchs of the world. It is a pleasant thing to look
upon these mighty snow-clads, a sensation for which one can
make many miles of hard travel. Few mountains present so
noble a sight as this sovereign of Europe — for he is more on that
continent than on Asia, and stands 3,000 feet above Mount Blanc.

CHAPTER XXXIX.
VLADIKAVKAS— GRAND VIEWS OF THE CAUCASUS— A GLORIOUS
TRIP— FLOWERS— FRUIT— TIFLIS PRETTY AND INTERESTING.
Georgia Wayside Station in the Caucasus Mountains,
June 26, 1888.
Again I write from Asia, and from a locality which in my
wildest dreams I never thought to visit, in the very heart of the
Caucasus Mountains, near which we have supposed our race was
cradled. The roar of a rushing stream, whose fountain-head .is
near by in a glaciered peak, separating Asia from Europe, fills my
ear. The odor of a lime-tree comes through my window — an odor
as sweet as in my youth I dreamed was the breath of the Circas
sian maiden, whose home was in the deep valleys of these moun
tains about me. All around me are lofty heights clothed in won
drous green. They encircle a little basin not a half mile long and
under 400 yards wide, a basin which seems to have been scooped
deep down among mountains several thousand feet high, and all
densely covered with trees, and having no apparent outlet in any
direction. Last night we slept among the clouds. Coming down
to-day a few miles we found this spot so pretty that we both said
at once: "Let us rest."
Just at nightfall yesterday a wild storm caught us upon the
summit or dividing line between the two continents, 7,977 feet
above the sea. Hail-stones rattled about us, the lightning flashed,
and the thunder rolled as if in anger that two Yankees should at
tempt to visit this, its lofty home. Below us all was cloud ; about
us all was cloud — a bright streak, however, seen through a cloud-
rift illumined old Kazbek's dome, on which Prometheus was bound
and suffered. A dashing run soon brought us down to the high
est station, where we spent our first night in the Caucasus
Mountains. But I must go back to make my start into these mountains
regularly. I was unprepared for the beauties which are the main
features of Vladikavkas. It is a town of some thirty odd thousand
population, including a considerable military force always stationed
in or about it. It stands on the edge of the plain, extending
along the banks of the Terek River, here running off to the north.
This river is a rushing stream, so darkly muddy and thick that it
looks like liquid muck. So rapidly does it run through the town
that its roar is constantly heard as if it were a cascade. A broad
403

404 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
boulevard, with promenade in the centre, shaded by quadruple
rows of lime-trees, now deliciously fragrant, runs a mile long
through the town, near to and parallel with the river. On this at
evening was a crowd of promenaders, well dressed and gay. The
uniforms of the officers and the costumes of the Georgians and
Caucasians, of some bright color, the men with long knives and
pistols, the gay handkerchiefs over many of the ladies' heads, gave
the walks a very bright appearance. Stretching behind the town
is the great upper chain of the Caucasus, which commences on the
north side of the Black Sea, east of the Azof, and runs 700 miles
southeasterly into a deep notch it makes in the Caspian. These
mountains rise very rapidly by a few tall foot-hills on the north or
European side, and spread far to the south, covering a large
country lyingbetween the two great inland seas. The real backbone
of the whole range lifts immediately from the European side.
Vladikavkas looks at this mighty backbone, and sees it through
out a length of 75 miles, for on its northern line the range is al
most straight, with no spurs. First there are a succession of foot
hills in range, beautifully wooded and green, which look as if
mantles of emerald velvet, soft and smooth, were spread over
them. These foot-hills have prettily undulating crests, and are
broken and uneven, but softened and toned down by the small
trees and bushes which cover them. They stand generally in a
single row, a sort of ornamental bodyguard in front of the mon
archs. Behind these advanced foot-hills are, in mighty column,
the real guard — tall, rugged rocky mountains — broken, full of
precipices and deep gorges, and crested with massive, sharp rocks,
lifting in horns and jagged teeth. These, if they were the main
range, would be grand mountains. But they are overtopped by
the great snow-capped peaks which cut the sky over and beyond
them. In many features these mountains are among the finest
in the world, and, viewed from the north, present a noble out
line. For hundreds of miles they lift up boldly to an average
height of nearly 11,000 feet. Elbruz and Kazbek, respectively
18,500 and 16,500 and odd feet, occupying the centre of the vast
line — themselves, however, perhaps not far from 120 miles apart.
Kazbek, until comparatively lately supposed the taller of the
two, stands behind Vladikavkas, his lofty, steep dome of bur
nished silver, flanked by other peaks to the east and west, reminds
one somewhat of the view had at Interlaken in the Swiss ober-
land. The different peaks here, however, do not apparently run
along in snowy heights from Kazbek, but lift at intervals, this ap
pearance owing probably to parts of them being hidden by the
terrible rocky mountains in advance.
Unfortunately, there is no elevation in the town from which to
take in this whole view. At the rear door of a large store we
found a point from which to take in a large and the best part of
the picture. The proprietor, seeing us there for quite a while.

A LUNCH IN CAMP WITH RUSSIAN OFFICERS. 405
brought us chairs, so that at leisure we watched the huge moun
tains for much more than an hour as the sun sank to his rest. A
few fleecy clouds hung around the giddy heights, now veiling
them, then slowly passing off. Here a cone was lit up and glowed.
There another in shadow was cold and spectral. Now the snows
glistened white under the falling rays; then they became pink or
rose, and finally of a golden pink or delicate salmon. We looked
till the horizontal sunbeams painted the whole in mellow golden
tint. I turned away quickly that I might hold in memory the
glorious scene.
We took a long walk in the morning about the town. Standing
at a corner, doubtful which way to go, an intelligent man in
fairly good German asked if he could assist us. We got into con
versation. Learning whence we came, he asked if the Jews pros
pered there. On my telling him of their great thrift and success
in our town, he sighed and said he often dreamed of America, and
wondered if he might ever reach it, and inquired as to the probable
cost of reaching New York. We were in the Jewish quarter, and
were soon surroundad by quite a number — men, women, and
children, whose dark eyes and other marked features showed their
ancestry. They do not anywhere since we left Poland wear the
marked costume there seen, nor have they that studied, solemn
look so characteristic of the Polak sons of Israel. In the outskirts
of the town a Russian officer, seeing us again doubtful which way
to take, pointed to a road running into the country, and evidently
indicated that we should follow it. A half-mile's walk explained
his meaning. We came in sight of a military encampment. A
spot perhaps a quarter of a mile square had been planted in trees
in regular transverse rows, now old enough to make a nice shade.
In the squares made by the cross rows, and elevated on turfed
plats, were pitched the tents of a regiment. Passing in front, we
were ordered off by a sentinel. We walked down the side, and
seeing some officers on the porch of one of their quarters — com
fortable one-story houses in the rear of the tented camp — I ap
proached to apologize for our intrusion. We were invited to be
seated, and finding two or three who spoke some French were in
vited to the mess-tent to take a glass of wine. It was 12 o'clock,
and their dinner was nearly ready. After a glass of wine taken
and some jokes with the officers — there were by this time a dozen
present — we were pressed to remain and eat with them. We did
so, and had a right jolly good time. They were all young, for it
was a lieutenant mess, — and I, too, cannot realize, except when
climbing, that I am not a boy. Joke after joke passed in bad
French, helped out by worse German, and laughter was the rule.
We finally parted, and left behind us as nice a set of young fel
lows as I have ever met, bright, genial, polite, and finely mannerd
young men, who again showed us that the Russian bear can have
very velvety paws.

4o6 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
Our English guide-book had made us expect the hotels of
Vladikavkas to be bad, dirty, and buggy, and we intended to
hurry through. The hotels have improved, or the traveller who
gave Murray his ideas was over fastidious. We found the Hotel
de France quite comfortable for two nights, and its director most
kindly gave us much assistance in getting a carriage and provid
ing for post-horses over the mountains to Tiflis.
We took a " tarantas " — a sort of strong victoria — and engaged
relays of horses for the whole distance, three to each station, of
which there are 12, the run varying from 12 to 20 versts. The
distance to Tiflis is 201 versts, 134 miles. A " telega " or springless
wagon is generally used by officers, and costs less, and the dili
gences, two daily, still less. But we, for the time being, own our
carriage, and can take as many days for the trip as we may wish.
Horses are harnessed abreast up to four. On the steep parts of
the road the diligence uses as many as eight, four at the pole and
two and two in the lead, the two preceding spans having a pos
tilion to each.
We started from Vladikavkas before the sun had risen. An
hour's run brought us into the foot-hills along the banks of the
swift-rushing Terek. Not a single cloud or a cloudlet was to be
seen. The green hills were deliciously fresh in the cool morning
air. The rocky monsters behind were sullen, dark, and repellant
in their rugged grandeur ; their denticulated crests were cut clear
and exact upon the snowy masses rearing behind, white, cold,
and as bright as burnished silver. As we rode onward the sun
dipped into the valleys, warming up and lifting the moisture-
laden atmosphere, which reaching and touching the snowy
heights, was caught, and its invisible woof woven by icy fingers
into filmy clouds. Now a delicate cloud-spray rose and bent like
a wreath of pale smoke from the loftiest point ; then spray met
spray, thickened, and fell like gossamer-mantles over the mon
arch's shoulders, while above the snow-crowned brow caught up
and held the glowing sunbeams. Up the banks of the rushing
Terek we rode, our driver cracking his whip, and the bells on our
shaft-horse merrily jingling. On our right and on our left rose
near by the bush-covered hills, and then came the rocky, inner line
in massive and mighty precipices, broken and cleft, and revealing
bits of snow-clads beyond.
The scenery along the narrow pass was fine from the begin
ning, and, growing finer as we proceeded, became terrifically grand,
at the Dariel Gorge, which gives its name to the entire pass.
Through a cleft in the mountains, which lift thousands of feet
above, the rushing stream has cut its way. Roaring in a succes
sion of cascades, it whirls below. High above, the mountains
lift in point upon point — needles and teeth upon needles and
teeth. We entered a sort of vast pit, cut down in ragged, jag
ged masses of solid rock, the broken-pointed and denticulated

PORT.E CAUCASIA. GRAND SCENERY. 407
pinnacles of its rim reaching the blue sky, thousands of feet
above us. The cleft through which the river rushes is of solid
granite, which has here upheaved the mighty backbone of the
range, carrying the stratified rocks far aloft, bending and pitching
them into broken curves and vertical sections. These, through
the wash and melt of countless ages, have been split into pinnacles
and spires, horns and jagged teeth, rising one above the other, so
closely pitched as to seem perpendicular when viewed from below.
Passing through the cleft we were in a mighty rock-pit, the walls
of which at the lower cleft and at the one above so blending and
running into each other in their confusion, that there seemed
absolutely no exit. We seemed caged in a rocky crucible, whose
upper edges were thousands of feet above us, and up which no
human foot could climb. A sharp bend, however, brought us
through another cleft where there was a Russian fortress, and on
a rock, several hundred feet high, was perched an old ruin built
1,800 years ago, when Rome was mistress of the world. These
two clefts, in the granite ribs of the earth, are the celebrated
" Portae Caucasiae," locking the pass between the Roman empire
and the unconquerable Scythians, whose home was the boundless
steppes of the north. Not far from this, cut as a gallery high
upon the terrific precipice, we saw a narrow road far above us,
running along the dizzy crag. When and by whom built I know
not, for there is no mention of it in the guide-book, and no one
we met could tell any thing of it. Perhaps it was chiselled by
those hard Roman hands, whose iron grip knew no relenting,
when a senatus consultum had decreed a nation was to be de
stroyed, nor could we see any use for it, unless the pass below,
was, at the time that this was cut, a lake which has since broken
through. Passing through the Dariel Gorge, and soon ascending by easy
grade over the fine military road, Kazbek rose close by us, his
head shaped like a Georgian's cap, or a very steep dome. A
great glacier descended from his shoulders, now in deep fissures
clear and greenish under our glasses, then broken over some lofty
crags, it showed a mighty precipice of riven snow. This glacier
was not colored and stained by dust and debris, but was white,
pure and as undefiled as a snowflake just caught in its fall. Here
we found a well-built station, and close by a village of Circassian
mountaineers. Seated at a window looking out upon the snowy
mountain, we had a delicious meal of mountain-trout, and drank
to the health of old Kazbek in a bottle of Caucasian wine.
After dinner, finding a bench near the house, I lay down, and
breathing from a fragrant cigar, gave myself up to one of the
sweetest of all dehghts — a communion with undefiled nature. I
fear I am too much in love with nature and her creation to de
scribe her in her various haunts — each one is so beautiful that I
am apt to think the present one unequalled by any which has

4o8 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
gone before. A lot of men and boys gathered about us to sell
crystals and other specimens. Our opera-glasses made them for
get trade. These have been the delight of the ignorant in all
nations. We did not see many flocks on our upward trip, but in the
narrow valley there were small herds of roach-back hogs — queer,
plucky little fellows, with prodigious crops of bristles and little
meat. Now and then a flock of sheep could be seen on a steep
slope, looking as though they were hanging rather than walking
upon it. The mountains abound in game — chamois, roebuck,
and wild boar, bear, stags, and the ibex. We saw a pair of horns
from the latter, lately killed, which weighed 50 pounds. We met
many vehicles passing from Tiflis and beyond, where all Russians
who can, leave for the hot summer months. The stations are
government houses where change of horses is had, a slight buffet
is spread, and where a good many people can sleep in a large
common room by providing their own bedding ; each station has
also a room or two with comfortable beds. They are run on the
principle of the East Indian rest-houses. A traveller has a right
to stop two or three days on payment of a moderate fee for
lodging, and longer if no other traveller needs his place. We
spent two nights in them, and not at those recommended, but
where our convenience demanded, and were very comfortable.
The guide-book dwells upon the necessity of bug-powder, etc.,
in all of this country. We have not felt a flea or any other
nocturnal brute. The English are so particular that they keep
themselves miserable. They are like the avenue lady who insisted
that the mayor should keep nude boys from bathing off the break
water, admitting at the same time that she could see nothing
shocking except when she used her glasses.
Where the valley widened out after passing Kazbek station,
villages often perched upon the steep slopes, and queer two and
three story towers, sloping upward like an obelisk, and occasion
ally the ruin of a castle of considerable size and of picturesque
appearance. Some of these towers are seen dizzily roosting
upon steep and high rocks, where in the days of yore the Geor
gian chiefs could swoop down upon caravans passing from Europe
to Asia, or vice versa. I suspect, however, they were used
mainly as places of refuge for villagers when attacked by hostile
clans. The village houses are all little flat huts of stone, laid
without mortar, and roofed over with flags on which dirt arnd turf
is spread. I went into some of them, a few kopecks given to the
children winning the mother's heart. They were mere man-sta
bles. A bench or two and a shelf — dirty and smoky, and stink
ing from the smell of the cow-coal which is stacked in and about
them. They have no chimneys, the smoke from the stinking
fuel blacking the walls. From Dariel Gorge up to and for a sta
tion or two beyond the summit, there are no trees, and the other

OLD TOWERS. FINE ROCKS. 409
fuel cut into blocks or flattened in cakes is the only one. We
saw an old man carrying an armful of this, not over-dry, on his
left arm, while under his right were a couple of loaves of black
bread. I asked myself the question ; " After all, what is dirt ?
Is it not simply a sentiment or a conventionalism ? " At the sta
tion below the summit a side stream came down from quite a
valley. In the junction of the two streams, and quite among
the huts of the small village, is a little graveyard. There was a
peculiar smell in it. I was unable to decide whether it was from
a dead man or a dead rat. They to me are nearly the same.
Being curious, I looked closely, but could not see the rat ; there
was, however, a little, rough stone-pile over a grave not long
made, and a rat or a bad-smelling ghost may have been among
the loose stones.
Over the same village is an enormous precipice, hundreds of
feet high, and jutting over. The under half of it is composed of
basaltic columns, laid flat, the ends forming the wall. It resem
bled a vast pile of oddly-hewn timbers, seen at the ends ; over
some feet of it were the cow-cakes drying — a heroic filth-dryer.
The whole pass would be a charming place for a geologist to
study ; the rock formations are so peculiar and of so many vari
eties ; great cliffs, a mile long, looking like Titanic heaps of
chocolate ; trapite cliffs and basaltic colonnades, metamorphic
rocks in vertical sections, dark and shiny ; granite shoving into,
and now and then bursting through, the overlying rocks. The
gradations of heat through which these several rocks passed
is so distinct and marked that I should think a scientific man
would find them a valuable book to read. The distance between
the last northern station and the summit was made over a beau
tifully winding road, bending and doubling again and again over
itself. We were among snowdrifts of last winter, or of late slides,
and our road at one point was cut through a solid mass of white
"ice 10 to 15 feet deep, and the river, now a little mountain tor
rent, often ran through tunnels of its own cutting under acres of
hard snow which will not melt away yet for a month or more.
White Alpine roses and a purple flower, shaped like a hyacinth,
were spread over the upper somewhat level tracts. Sometimes
the rose of pale white, lying close to the upland meadows, made
them look as if covered with myriads of huge snowflakes. The
short grass wore that strange emerald green, more intense even
than the emerald itself, which is seen nowhere other than on lofty
places where the summer's sun carries the snow covering quickly
away. At a little under 8,000 feet we were on the line dividing
Europe and Asia. Suddenly the sky just over us darkened,
lightnings flashed, and thunder rolled, and great hail stones rat
tled on our lifted carriage-top and made our horses dash madly
on and down the steep grade for a short distance, where we halted
for the night.

410 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
Two clean beds and two cups of tea and bread in the morning
cost us one rouble and 35 kopecks, or say 60 odd cents. It rained
hard during the night, and a heavy fog enveloped our mountain
perch when we awoke. It, however, soon lifted, and our early
ride of ten miles to the next station was dehciously exhilarating.
We had to go down a narrow, treeless gorge, adown which start
ing from the narrow heights above a stream falls with great
rapidity. The roar of rushing waters came up from far below,
although the head of the stream was but a little way off above
us ; but it was snow-fed, and quickly filled. A bee could have
flown to the point we were to reach by a flight of a mile or less.
We ran over about eight to reach it, without using a break or
having our horse once bear upon the breeching. We used but
one horse on this stage ; his only duty was to guide the shafts.
Winding about a perfect grade, he trotted rapidly, while we saw
our road now a quarter of a mile to our right, then 100 or so feet
below, and then again away off to the left. At one point four
tracks lay visible below which we were to reach in succession after
many a beautiful bend. I have been over Swiss and Tyrolean
carriage-roads, but over none where so rapid a descent was made
by such easy and regular grade, and displaying so fine engineer
ing. We reached the Aragva River, down whose banks we were
to descend for a long -distance. Although separated by only a
few miles from the northern slope of the great backbone of the
Caucasus, we were not only on Asiatic soil but also in an Asiatic
clime. The difference was perceptible to the senses of feeling
and of sight. Vegetation took a ranker growth, and the little
mountain crops were far in advance of those at much lower heights
on the European side ; and the snows were much higher up the
mountain, and were soon seen only in the loftiest gorges. Many
flocks of sheep and herds of cattle hung upon the lofty, grassy
slopes, and wheat was at first green, and in a couple of hours
knee-high. The green, grassy mountains began to wear a few
trees, and before we reached this station, at ten o'clock, were cov
ered by dense woods almost as luxuriant as one sees in a tropical
land. The northern side of the mountains was of rocky gran
deur, and in the distance of snowy beauty. This is soft, verdant,
and flowery. The northern side held us in wondering awe ; this
lulls us into dreamy pleasure.
After a deHghtful day and a half at the station mentioned in
the beginning of this chapter, and where, thus far, it was written,
we resumed our drive, and at the station below left the river,
which made a long bend and ran up a beautiful little valley, cHmb-
ing the mountains through masses of wild roses — great clumps
10 to 15 feet high and of equal diameter, almost solidly covered
with flowers, mostly white, but some of a very pale pink, some of
them climbing 20 to 30 feet up the trees. The roses peering out
from among the glossy leaves of the wild pear were very pretty.

THE SOUTHERN SLOPE OF THE CAUCASUS. 411
I suspect this is the original home of the pear. The fruit, yet
green, is small and woody and very astringent. I tried to get our
postilion, by sign language, to tell us if they were eaten when
ripe. I understood his signs to be negative. There was also wild
hollyhock, bush dwarfed, flower large and yellow. Is not this
its original home ? Along the whole valley are wild plums resem
bling small greengages. There are many flowering shrubs, and
near and about Tiflis pomegranates are blooming in wild, unfre
quented spots. The flora of the whole pass is abundant, and
many of the specimens very fine.
Our road, after leaving the river, ran over a rounded, moun
tainous country, topped by a high-rolling farming land, of good
soil, red, but mixed with large gravel, making plowing very heavy.
In spite of this the ground was broken from six to ten inches.
To do this, eight yoke of oxen and buffalo were hitched to the
plow, which had a long wooden share fully three feet long, laying
the glebe so perfectly over that not a spear of grass or weed could
be seen. The farming on this upland was excellent, and the crops
of wheat and rye very heavy. In the centre of this upland of a
few miles' diameter is the old Armenian city, Duchet, six or eight
centuries old, and once the capital of the Georgian province.
Whether these Armenians are the farmers or not I could not
learn ; if so, they are as good farmers as traders. It was not until
lately they were allowed to acquire real estate. Rapidly, by pur
chase or mortgage, they are getting into their hands much of the
best land in the country. The Georgians save nothing. They
are vain, and love show and dress, and mortgages are easy things
to make. After regaining the river, having made some 16
versts across country, the valley was wider than when we left it,
and the stream spread in still rapid descent over a broad, shingly
bottom. Every half mile or so there were little mills along the
bank, queer structures, about 12 by 15 feet, and not over eight
feet high, with flat mud roofs. The wheel, not over six or eight
feet in diameter, turns horizontally, its centre beam being also
the spindle for the stone. The stone necessarily revolves rather
slowly. Fourteen miles from Tiflis the stream we had been descending
emptied into the Kur, a bold river which cuts its narrow chan
nel through a solid rock, and flows for a long distance in a canyon
30 to 40 or more feet deep. At the junction was once the capital
of Georgia — the rich city of Mtskete, now a little village. Tradi
tion carries its foundation back to a time not long after the flood,
and history tells of it in Roman times. We passed over a hand
some bridge, built upon the foundations of a structure erected by
great Pompey, at the feet of whose statue great Csesar fell ; then
running under lofty rocks or over a pretty valley, with some
vineyards of the grape of the Caucasus, we reached Tiflis, the
capital, where I now write. We have been more than usually

412 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
fortunate in our trip. We had beautiful weather, except for an
hour one evening — I am told an unusual thing, for it is rarely
clear two days at a time in these mountains. We have now been
here four days, and learned that just behind us was a fearful
storm, carrying away much of the road. Willie says it is all our
luck. He is almost justified in the assertion, for, excepting a few
days in Constantinople, we have not been interrupted by rain
since we left home.
We found no Transcaspian permit here, and no message from
St. Petersburg. The day after our arrival we presented ourselves
at the palace of Prince Dondoukoff-Korsakoff, governor-general
of Caucasia. We were told he could not be seen until the next
morning. I expressed my regret, and sent up our cards and the
letter of introduction from the governor-general of Moscow, and
asked the attendant to deliver them as soon as possible. Before
we had time to quit the palace he returned and motioned us to
ascend. We were ushered in without ceremony. There was no
retinue or aides. The governor was alone, seated at a working-
table. Rather gruffly he demanded our wishes. I explained.
He said the whole thing had to come from the war department.
and that no message had been sent him on the subject. I told
him in F'rench what our minister had written me at Moscow, and
that I had again written him to telegraph the permit to his excel
lency, and that I could account for the fact of none having
come only by the departure from St. Petersburg of Mr. Lothrop
the very day I had written. I told him that we in America saw
Russia and her advances into Asia to a great extent through
English mediums; that I had come to the country prejudiced
against it, and that already much of this prejudice had been re
moved. I spoke so rapidly that politeness forced the prince to
hsten. It was well, for his countenance softened, and in pretty
good English he said, when I showed a disposition to leave :
"Sit down, please," and then told me that up to lately the
Transcaspian country had been under his jurisdiction, but was
now no longer, but he would at once telegraph to the Minister
of War, Vanovsky, for a permit. He said he would like me to
go to Samarcand, but feared I would find it excessively hot; that
he had a sunstroke there years ago, from which he had never
entirely recovered. He then offered a cigarette, and when we
again rose to leave he got up, saying he wished to show us some
thing. He took us into his cabinet of curiosities, a very large
and valuable collection — arms of many sorts, old vases and an
tiquities picked up in the mountains ; exquisite rugs, beautifully
carved furniture, etc., — all of his own gathering during his many
years in this country— 40 odd, I think — and several while in
his present position. He told me he was 70. I said he
certainly had taken good care of himself. He laughed and
showed me his left hand, all crippled up with a wound, and

PRINCE DON DO UKOFF-KORSAKOFF. 413
pointed to his leg, which had been broken in battle, to a wound
in his shoulder and another in his side. In fact, the old general
was a weather-beaten and war-stricken soldier ; had fought in
many a battle, and assisted in all of the victories won by the
Russians for many years. He then carried us through all of the
state-rooms of this splendid palace, which was built by the Grand
Duke Michael when governor. The prince's particular hobby
just now is the founding of a historical, military museum of
the Caucasus country ; its arms through all ages, portraits, when
possible, of its great men, and all illustrated by very large battle-
pieces, in one or two of which he himself was a figure. These
latter are now around the large room in the palace, and were
really very good. Passing through the splendid rooms and upon
a balcony to look at the large, handsome garden, I remarked
he certainly had a splendid palace to live in. He answered with
a smile and a sigh ; " Yes, to show to travellers," adding that he
was alone, had lost his wife a year ago. His voice trembled and
won my sympathy. He kept us an hour, and was very kind,
several times laying his hand upon my shoulder when he wished
to direct my attention to some particular thing, and seeing Willie
examining some books with English titles on the Caucasus, he told
him to take some of them to the hotel to read and to bring them
back himself, thereby inviting him to return. When he gets an
answer to his telegram he promised to notify me. The weather-
stained old warrior has helped to rub down some more of my
anti-Russian prejudice.
Tiflis is an interesting city, with a population of largely over
100,000. Twenty-four thousand Georgians, 35,000 to 40,000
Armenians, 30,000 Russians, and several thousand Germans.
These latter settled here as refugees from Wurtemburg long ago,
to avoid religious persecution. They speak Russian and are loyal
to Russia, but the " colony," as the German quarter is called,
shows their Teutonic characteristics, namely : neatness, thrift,
and comfort about their homes. The long main street in their
colony is lined with shade-trees, mostly lindens, and now deli
ciously fragrant ; fine gardens, with a luxuriant growth of fruit-
trees and vineyards, give their residances a charming, home-like
aspect. Seeing a nice frau and fraulein promenading in one of
these grounds, we were sorely tempted to go in and introduce
ourselves. I understand that while thoroughly true to the gov
ernment these deutschen do not love the Russians. The Armen
ians are the real business men of the place, and control the bulk
of its wealth. They care not for nationality, but adhere strictly
to their religion and to their commercial avocations. They and
the Russians live and commingle in their residences and society.
There is little difference between them and their costumes. The
Georgians are all of the Greek church, and hold many offices, as,
I believe the Armenians do also. The wealth of the latter gives

414 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
them great influence in the country. They are beginning to own
its best farms and populate many of its best towns and villages.
The Georgians, to a great extent, wear their own picturesque
costume of conical astrachan caps, long robes gathered at the
waist by a silver belt, with a double row of cartridges on either
breast, and long dagger, and sometimes sword, with pistols at
their belts. The head-dress of a majority of the ladies seen on
the street is a small, stiff, round cap, somewhat lifting from the
crown, over which is thrown a large silk or lace handkerchief tied
under the chin, generally of heavy figured white^sometimes of
bright color — and under this a rather long lace veil hanging be
hind. It is very becoming, having much the same effect upon
the face as a Spanish mantilla. It is certainly far prettier than
the bonnet of French fashion worn by others.
Again I am forced to say that French fashions, while stylish,
are conventionally pretty, but are generally artistically damnable.
Of all the villainous tyrannies ever oppressing a cringing world,
the tyranny of French fashion is the most detestable. Statesmen
and patriots rail at the tyranny of kings, emperors, and sultans,
but I honestly believe that the tyranny of Queen Fashion is
to-day doing more harm in Christendom than all the sultans and
despots of the East do in their own lands. Its changing whims
breed extravagance and waste ; it destroys the health of women,
kills babies, and sends men into the world deformed and but half
made up.
One can, in a few hours walk in Tiflis, see as great contrasts in
nationalities as in any other city we have yet visited. One local
ity is modern European, with American open fronts and F'rench
styles ; another old German ; a third is thoroughly Persian a
fourth simply and purely Asiatic. In the latter two one sees
Tartars, Bulgarians, laboring Georgians, men in high Persian
caps, and men with sheepskin caps as big as half-bushel baskets.
In them men sit cross-legged or on their haunches in and before
their little shops, doing all sorts of mechanical labor, and the
streets are redolent with that peculiar odor which pervades the
mighty East. This odor is as peculiar and distinct as the smell
of a wet dog, and as indescribable. One recognizes it at once,
but no one can enable another by description to even guess how
it is, or what it is.
The city lies on either bank of the Kur River on a narrow,
sloping valley, with low mountains, barren, treeless, and generally
brown, but at this season moderately clothed with thin grass, be
hind the town on each side. The river runs through it in a narrow
channel cut deep down into the rock. At one point for half a
mile or more this rock lifts in a precipice over loo feet high. Back
of this is the old Asiatic city. On it the rear of houses rise sheer
with the cliff, some of them of two or three stories. Many of
them have balconies hanging several feet over the water rushing

TIFLIS A PRETTY CITY. 415
far below. From these one sees people emptying rubbish into
the river, and drawing water with a bucket and long rope. All
sorts of rubbish and filth are thrown into the river from the
banks, or from the several bridges which span the narrow stream.
The water is thickly muddy, and richly yellow in color ; it rushes
under its steep banks with great speed— boiling, eddying, and
tumbling — -reminding me much of the Frazer in its canyons. So
even and regular is its surging flow that it wears a rather majestic
look, though its width is sometimes under 100 feet, and nowhere
over 300. Mills are strung along under the bank in one quarter of
the town on a sort of floats or keels. Their large wheels are
rapidly turned by the natural current. I counted eleven of these,
one after another, before the stream bent and was hidden from
view. The city has a good street-railway and a water-supply,
with a very strong head at the street hydrants. There are fine,
hot mineral baths close by. I think the name of the town means
" bath place." But how we do revel in the delicious cherries, —
great, black, luscious and pulpy fruit, as solid as peach flesh ;
others are pink, sub-acid and delightful ; still others, equally
large, are of a slightly yellowish white. There are also good
apricots and plums. The Germans in the town and in some vil
lages near by are the gardeners. To them, too, is owed largely
the grape and its product, a really delightful, fruity, rich wine,
both white and deep red.
The Georgians claim a very early Christianity, from the time of
the earliest Christian emperors, when it was a Roman province.
They are a fine-looking race, very fair, straight, and slender.
They hate the Armenians, call them thieves, etc. They are them
selves very improvident, save nothing, are heavily mortgaged to
the Armenians, and hate them accordingly. I have seen nothing
yet to justify the reputation of the women for great beauty. A
peep in Constantinople under a Turkish yashmak and youthful
ardor and imagination have contributed more, I suspect, for
their great reputation than nature has done. A dark eye and
a white forehead seen from behind a veil enables a fervid imagi
nation to fashion a beauty which a fully revealed face would not
bear out. A French modiste knows this part of man's nature,
and she does more by permitting a peep or a glimpse to allure us
susceptible bipeds than Eve ever does in the East by adopting
nature's simple uncovering. The Russians have struggled hard to
stop the trade in girls for the Turkish harem, but an intelligent
Georgian told me it was still carried on to a limited extent, but
insisted it existed only upon the mountains near the Black Sea,
and not in his part of the country. But, after all, is the hatred of
the thing not sickly sentimentality ? A handsome girl is sold to
a Turk — she becomes his wife — and her parents from her price in
their old age have some comforts. Left here, she and they live
like pigs in a sty. The girls do not go as unwilling slaves, or.

4i6 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
at least, not more so than many a beauty at home, who marches
grandly up the church aisle to the wedding march, smothered in
orange blossoms and lace, and is given by prudent pater-familias
to some rich roud or half-made-up Dives. It is not in Georgia and
Circassia alone that warm young hearts are turned to stone for
the sweet privilege of treading on soft. Oriental carpets, and sip
ping tea in egg-shell china, and eating from silvered plate. Kings
and emperors would suppress the selling of slave girls, and yet
their own wives, daughters, and sisters are a species of princely
merchandise. Not far from the Baltic there are royal studs
where princesses are bred and regularly trotted out and right
royally sold. The thing is called state alliances. Following these
are those shining examples for common folks to follow, such as
Milan's platonic flirtations with actresses, crown princesses drink
ing many waters while their husbands dissipate in pastures green,
and imperial morganatic widows the leaders at Nice, etc., etc.
Bah ! the slave trade in girls has been partially suppressed under
these grand mountains, but it is still rife in princely palaces in
Belgravia, and possibly in fashionable American society, and is of
a beastly character in London purlieus.

CHAPTER XL.
THE CASPIAN SEA — BAKU AND ITS MARVELLOUS OIL WELLS —
PETROLEUM AS A FUEL— BALAKHANA— A BURNING
SEA— NATURAL GAS.
Steamship, Caspian Sea, June T,oth.
I COMMENCE this on the Caspian. There is a small sea coming
from the east ; still our ship of only 300 tons, lies directly in the
trough, and rocks like a cradle. Many of the deck passengers, of
whom there are about 100 — Persians, Tartars, Georgians, and
Russians — are paying their awful tribute to old Neptune, and our
only Oriental first class passenger, a fat, greasy, and in every way
disgusting looking Persian, is heaving and retching, as if he would
pull the sole of his foot up through his stomach, just at the
bottom of the gangway and under the deck cabin in which I, with
difficulty, write. Willie suggests that we throw the fat Persian
overboard as the Jonah that causes our ship to roll when there is
no wind blowing, but it is at once voted that he cannot be of the
family of the original live bait, and, therefore, would not, as the
one of old did, appease the god of waves, for no whale could keep
this greasy old chap down for a half-hour.
I look out of our windows upon this great inland sea. It is a
mass of rolling green — not the slightest tinge of blue in its deep
waters — and I am told that, even where it is400 fathoms deep, it
has the same grass-green hue as here. The Russian fathom has
seven feet. This mighty sea is about 700 miles long and about
200 in width. It lies in its isolated bed 89 to 90 feet below the
surface of the Black Sea. Its waters are dense and bitter, but
have only three per cent, of salt, whereas the Atlantic has about
five. We took a swim in it at Baku, and found the water very
soft, perhaps more so than elsewhere, for there millions of gal
lons of petroleum washings escape into it daily. It looked clean,.
however, with now and then some rainbow tints thrown off fromi
filmy patches of oil floating upon the surface. A sail is never out
of sight ; over 5,000 belong to this sea. Most of them are engaged'.
in fishing, for it teems with fish, — some of them of delicious flavor.
Twenty-two thousand men are employed in the business on this-
sea, exclusive of a still larger number on the Volga, and the catch
is over 350,000 tons, a large amount being taken for the roe alone,
for the manufacture of the celebrated caviar. This peculiar Rus-
417

4i8 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
sian food is exported to all parts of the world, but only those who
visit southern Russia and taste it when fresh can have any idea
of how delicious it is.
I look toward the left over wild Daghesten, and towering above
is the snow-clad range of the Caucasus, great masses of broken
mountains, some of them glistening with eternal snows, smooth
and burnished. Among these, more or less near the Caspian, are
the deep valleys and lofty fastnesses in which Schamyl so long bid
defiance to the Rus.sian power. Among the historic paintings now
being executed for Prince Dondoukoff-Korsakoff for his museum
is one representing the surrender of this great mountain chief.
The motive of the picture is peculiar, and, I believe, unique. The
Russian artist depicts Schamyl in sullen disgust, his face averted,
and holding a sword as if saying: " Here it is, hacked and worn.
I have fought you for years, for I hated you, and hate you still,
but my old weapon is no longer edged and sharp ; take it. I can
not hand it to you ! " I mentioned this to the prince. He re
plied : " It was historically true."
We were five days in Tiflis, and were not wearied of it. It is
really a charming city, has some very pretty gardens, and very
fine views, and presents decided and marked types of people.
In it one can study central Asiatic peoples most advantageously,
for, while in close juxtaposition, each maintains its tribal charac
teristics as thoroughly as if isolated by long distances. In one
quarter one is in Persia among men of a delicate type, wearing
rather long hair, soft as silk and black, but dyed with a slightly
logwood-tint, and covered by tall, straight caps. In another he
is surrounded by Tartars and Bucharians of strong features, of
wild Mongol cast, in rough, coarse garments, and wearing huge,
rounded caps, a foot to a foot and a half in diameter, of heavily-
wooUed sheepskin. In another Armenian thrift and sharpness
meet the view at every turn. In still others there is the light
and cheerful Georgian, living in the sunshine of to-day, and care
less of what the morrow may bring. Besides these there is the
clean and home-like German colony, and scattered everywhere
Russians, who mingle freely with all, and are slowly but surely
russianizing all. If they be as slow in every thing else, however,
as they are in their red-tape official actions, their progress will
not be rapid. For example, Mr. Lothrop, our Minister at St.
Petersburg, wrote me on the 8th of June that he had applied for
a permit for me to go to Samarcand. On the loth he wrote again
that the Minister of Foreign Affairs had applied to the War De
partment, where the matter belonged, and that I would receive
it in two or three days. The governor-general of Caucasus tele
graphed to the War Department for it, saying to me it would
certainly come in one or two days. I then received a letter from
our legation, dated the 15th, informing me that the War Depart
ment had promised to send it at once. On the 26th, 11 days

PARTING VISIT TO THE PRINCE. 419
after the date of that letter, and 18 after the first application,
nothing coming, I became disgusted and resolved to abandon the
trip, and drew money to carry us to Nijni Novgorod, by the
Volga route.
We then called upon the prince to thank him for his kindness,
and to pay our parting compliments. The brave old soldier re
ceived us most kindly, and seemed chagrined that he had received
no reply to his telegram. He was alone and entertained us for
more than an hour on a balcony overlooking the palace garden,
where tea and wine were served. His manner has the simplicity
of an old soldier, and his conversation is thoroughly free and
easy. I was enabled to learn something of Russian ideas and
management, looking through the eyes of one of the governing
powers, and not of the governed. For he is the governor of the
whole of Caucasus, is a member of the Imperial council, and has
a vice-regal power over the governors of the several Caucasian
provinces. He is a blunt, plain, and rather outspoken man, in
his manner very democratic, and, though 70, is active and full of
life. He gave me his photo, and to Willie the letter of Prince
Dolgoroukoff introducing us, with some kind words written
in it by himself. With the hope that we would see Russia as
thoroughly as possible, through our American eyes, and not
through those of the English, he wished us all good things, and
saw us to door of the outer hall. Thus, by the simple claim of
American sovereignty, we have received most kindly treatment
from two of the great rulers of this mighty land, and one of
them, at least, won from us a warm and kindly sympathy, I be
lieve not misplaced, though he be one of the lords of the earth.
Remarking that on our visits the prince was alone, I congratulated
him upon the apparent happiness of the people I had met in his
province, but that I feared he himself was somewhat isolated.
He said yes, that he felt he could not stand it much longer, that
he had lost his poor wife, and two of his closest friends within
a year ; that his eldest son was compelled to be with his regi
ment, and his other was in the navy. He was thus alone, and
could hardly stand it. The world thinks that all is bright and
gorgeous among the great ones of 'the earth, but there is as
much sadness and lonely-weariness in the gilded halls of a
palace as in the humblest cottage ; and, indeed, probably more,
for the comparison between the days of pampered indulgence
and luxury, and the moments of solitude and sorrow makes
the latter more bitter than is the sorrow of the lowly, who are
educated to endure.
At midnight we took the train for Baku, the great petroleum
centre of Russia. At daylight we were in a broad, flat valley,
lying between the greater and the lesser Caucasus mountains.
The latter, to our south, lifted, not far off, I2,000 or more feet,
and was clothed in snow. In the far distance over them

420 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
were others. I saw sharp, conical, burnished peaks in the far-
off which I took to be Ararat. His peaks are very precipitous
and difficult of climbing. I could not help thinking what a hard
time the mighty line of living things had when marching by
twos, male and female, from these cold, bleak heights down into
the plains below after the great flood had subsided ; and what a
time good old Noah must have had to keep some of his warm
blooded pets from freezing on that lofty 16,000 feet high pin
nacle. Noah's ark, with its countless denizens, was always to me
harder to swallow even than Jonah's three-days' sojourn in the
whale's belly. What a pity our theologians do not boldly preach
that the Bible is a mighty system of truth, but that its truths
come to us clothed in Oriental legend and fable — that the truth
is there, pure and undefiled, as the grain is pure and uncontam-
inated by the chaff in which it is housed — instead of trying to
make a reasoning world swallow the chaff for solid kernels. Then
many a thinking man, who, finding himself choked by the husks
and hulls, throws out the whole, grain and all, would learn to see
the grand truths abundant and rich, Hke the golden wheat in the
dun and dusty straw.
For countless ages God's truths were handed down from mouth
to mouth, and to enable memory more readily to hold them were
clothed in poetic figures and Oriental hyperbole. The Asiatic
husbandman holds his trodden harvest aloft, and as it falls the
clear wind of heaven blows away the chaff, and the grain falls
below as food for man. So the biblical husbandman should hold
aloft the mass which has come down through countless ages of tradi
tion, and let .the pure breath of reason fan away the broken
chaff, and leave the kernels of God's mighty truths to fall into
the mouths of hungry and famishing seekers for the veritable and
the pure. To one who runs with the sun and sees the myriads
of the vast East bowing down in earnest worship of their mani
fold conceptions of the great ruler of the destinies of man, and
studiously strives to peep through the crevices left by countless
superstitions, and to brush away the metaphors and figures of
Oriental poesy, there comes the dazzling brightness of the eter
nal — the one unknown and unknowable God, whose revelation
lives and burns in every man's heart, which can never lead him
widely astray, if he resolutely does unto others what he would
they should do unto him.
The valley of the Kur, below Tiflis, is settled principally by
Tartars. We saw many of their villages of low huts, and some
temporary villages of tents, where they live while gathering crops
distant from their permanent homes. They are a hardy set of
fellows, are first-class workers, and command one's respect by do
ing men's work by men, and not forcing women to do her own
and her lord's duty to boot. Thej' are all Mohammedans, and as
such the women's faces are concealed, even those of the humblest ;

TAR TARS. ST A TION REST A U RANTS. 42 1
but I am told there is a growing relaxation of the rule among
them when there are Russian neighbors, who become somewhat
intimate with the men. We saw a number of groups of women
with their little children squatted not far from the road, with a
band of cloth drawn across the upper face, and another on the
lower part, permitting the eyes alone to be seen. The men all
wear huge sheepskin caps, spreading very wide at the bottom,
and slightly tapering and rounding off at the top, and nearly as
large as a half-bushel measure. They wear these winter and sum
mer. They cut or shear the head, some, however, retaining, like
the Persians, a large lock about the ears. The face is full-bearded,
the beard often dyed to a rich red. The Persians, by the way, as
far as we have observed, or at least many do, dye the hair to a
soft reddish-black, and many of them shave the beard, but leave
a full mustache. The Tartars are not only the farmers of this
part of the world, but the hard day laborers and railroad workers.
We are informed they are steady and industrious. At Baku all
of the drosky drivers, teamsters, and the bulk of the laborers
generally are of these people. They seem cheerful, manly, good-
natured, and independent. They look a man fearlessly in the
face, and are not afraid to maintain their rights against even a
Russian officer, and would return a blow for a blow with any
man. The mountains, both north and south, as seen from the Kur
valley, are brown and nearly treeless, and before reaching the
sea, were as bleak and desolate as those of Egypt. The plain is
thin in soil, but I am told the wheat produced is of a very fine
quality. Irrigation is necessary for stead)' crops, for the rain is
not regular, and near the sea very rare. Much of the valley
plain is green with wild licorice, thousands of tons being annually
exported. It is a low-growing, weedy-looking shrub. This, too,
seems the original home of the asparagus, much of it, with its
spreading top of red berries, being seen indigenous along the
road. Along the banks of the Kur, where we crossed it, are
thickets of pomegranates, 15 feet high, bright with orange-
red flowers ; and the thick wood, covering the margin for a few
rods along the now overflowing stream, was vocal with glorious
feathered songsters, mostly an almost black thrush.
Even far off here, where we at home suppose every thing half
savage, nice lunches and delicious tea are to be had at many of
the railroad stations. Our railroad managers could gain much by
studying more the comfort of their passengers, and taking lessons
from Russia to bring it about. A Russian station buffet or
dining-room is an inviting and appetizing place — a long counter,
with cool-looking-glass, tumblers, and decanters, polished and
bright ; a great glistening urn of boiling water, and the daintiest
of teapots, all ready for a cup of fresh tea ; a long carving table,
with huge platters warmed by gas or oil burning below, and with

422 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
a whole roasted pig, a mutton roast, and sirloin of beef, cutlets
breaded clean and brown, chickens old and young — not swim
ming in nasty lard gravy, but with a sauce as tempting as one
could wish. You select your dishes, and sit down to a table cov
ered with a cloth as white as snow, a napkin fresh and clean,
which one does not have to wear out scrubbing fly-specked plates;
good beer and wine, and all at fixed and very reasonable prices,
and these, too, at small village stations.
Before reaching Baku, the broken low mountains by the sea
were absolutely devoid of every vestige of growth ; and I had
pointed out to me what appeared to be a tall sand-hill dotted over
with cones from 4 or 5 up to 20 feet high. These are little vol
canoes thrown up by escapes of gas form the mighty gasometer
underlying the whole country. These things, however, did not
win from us the attention which we gave when looking out upon
the great sea, that far-off, mighty sea of Central Asia. When
this race of ours with the sun shall have ended, I fear I shall have
lost one of my sources of previous enjoyment. There will be
but few spots where a visit can be possible which I can look for
ward to seeing with enthusiasm. There is an exquisite pleasure
in the first view of something much dreamed of but scarcely
hoped for. The Caspian Sea was one of those at the extremity
of my ultima thule. The sight of its calm, green waters was ex
hilarating to the heart as the cool, fresh sea breeze was invigorat
ing to the cheek. Immediately about Baku the hills were some
what cultivated. There could be seen several large Tartar villages
and large flocks of sheep, and herds of cattle were browsing on the
fields of lately-harvested, scanty grain. Good rains would make
the land productive, but there are no streams or hills to make
irrigation possible. Wells are scattered here and there — wells
into which one descends by long flights of steps to meagre pools
20 to 50 feet below the surface ; pools into which the water seems
to ooze, rather than flow, and so shallow that one can scarcely
dip a handful without stirring the bottom, yet these are the
sources of the slightly brackish water which serves for men and
beasts. The country has everywhere wastes and flats, white and
smooth with salt.
When we alighted at the station at Baku a uniformed officer
addressed me in Russian, asking if my name was " Garrison."
There is no Russian " H," and the first letter of my name is
always rendered with a " G." A bright German commercial
traveller, Mr. Zigenfus, a fellow-voyager, informed me that the
officer was the chief of police, who was directed by the governor
of Baku to meet us and to see that we were properly provided for.
Our good friend Prince Dondoukoff-Korsakoff had dispatched to
the governor a request that he tender us assistance in seeing what
was of interest during our stay. The aid was timely, for my
pocket had been picked the night before of a few roubles and the

A KINDL Y RECEPTION A T BAKU. 423
receipt for our baggage in the luggage-van. We would, but for
this, have had much red tape to unravel before getting our valises.
The telegram from " the governor-general of all Caucasus " to
the " governor of Baku " was, however, a talisman which soon
gave us our traps. Hardly were we in our hotel before the sec
retary of the governor appeared, saying he was delegated by the
governor to take charge of us, and regretting that his chief had
been compelled to leave town that morning, but had before
leaving, countersigned a permit for us to go to Samarcand. The
permit, it seems had that morning been sent the prince from the
War Department, and he had forwarded it, with the further re
quest that we be otherwise assisted. Am I to be blamed if I find
my prejudices against the Russians fast dissolving into thin air,
or for the warm feeling the good old soldier-prince had awakened
in my heart ?
It was, however, too late for us to take advantage of the per
mit. We had not funds for the trip, and to get them from Tiflis
would entail further delay. With the full conviction that the
very hot weather had soured the grapes, we left the permit unused.
But now we are rather regretful that we have lost our opportunity.
After all, what is, is right, and we are consoled, but we shall never
think of Vanovsky, Russian Minister of War, who gave us this
permit nineteen days after it was applied for without dwelling on
his dilatory action, and uttering a gentle anathema aimed at Rus
sian red tape. There was no sense in the delay, no inquiries were
made, but big bodies move slowly, and all official matters in this
land are big, and, therefore, must have a dignified gait. A com
mercial man whom we met at Tiflis had applied twenty days
before, and yet was living in hopes. He, however, had business
to do as he neared the Caspian and was not losing time. Mr.
Lothrop, in reply to my first request to get the permit in four
days, said : " Four days is a very short time to do any thing in
Russia." There are in the Greek Church an intolerable number
of fete-days — two hundred, I am told. On these days nothing is
done. We wished to give out our wash on Saturday. " No use,"
the hotel people said ; " to-morrow and next day are fete-days —
holidays : you must wait till Tuesday." Banks are closed, and, as
government studiously inculcates the dogmas of the church, the
officials scrupulously observe every holiday. There were several
holidays during the time we awaited our permit.
The polite secretary took us during the evening to the club in
the governor's garden (a public park and the only patch of trees
in the city) and early the next day accompanied us to Balakhana
the oil town, eight miles from the city. As we approached, it
presented the appearance of a Turkish cemetery, with tall, spire
like cypress trees close together. These were the black derricks
over the wells, in the neighborhood of 400 on a space about
a mile square. Here, on this little spot, come from below the

424 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
countless millions of gallons of naphtha (crude oil), which so
much interferes with the oil-kings of America. There are wells
in other localities about Baku, but the principal ones are at Bala
khana. Here some five or six or more years ago a firm struck
" ile " so furiously that they were ruined by the very vastness of
the product ; for weeks or months a million puds of oil poured
out daily, carrying vast quantities of sand, which ingulfed the
houses and works of neighboring firms, and made a great lake
near by and then flowed off to the sea. The damages wrought,
ruined the owners of the well, and their poor engineer, una
ble to chain the monster, died of a broken heart. The lake
has sunk down, but still its bed, around which we drove, was
soggy with oil. We saw a well, bored four or five months
ago. It belched forth for days 250,000 puds a day of oil and
sand, covering one-story houses around it on nearly a half acre of
land. The sand finally ceased to come up, and then for days
from 100,000 to 200,000 puds a day spouted 20 feet in the air.
It is now controlled, and over 50,000 puds flow off every 24 hours
to the tanks.
It is said the Russian oil-fields stretch over a length of nearly
1,000 miles, but have only a narrow breadth of six to ten
miles. At a short depth below the surface, at Balakhana, oil is
reached. At first it flows for a greater or less number of months;
then has to be pumped. If this diminishes too much the auger
is inserted, and at a lower depth again it spurts up. The wells
are close together, there being 400 on a mile square — and even
on this surface and quite in the middle there is a spot, a quarter of
a mile square, on which no oil has been obtained ; around it
stands the productive wells. The flow from one seems to be
entirely unaffected by that of another a few yards removed.
When the great well, bored a few months since to 130 fathoms,
poured forth its vast supply, no perceptible change was noticed
in that of its nearest neighbors. Though they were not near so
deep. A pud is 40 Russian pounds. This well, therefore, poured
out from 2,000 to 4,000 tons a day for a week, and now, under con
trol, gushes up 800 tons a day, and not a quickened or lessened pul
sation is observed in a dozen wells within 100 or 200 feet, some of
them not reaching a third of its depth, and others below its bot
tom. These wells about Baku are delivering annually about
120,000,000 puds, or say 2,000,000 of our tons. I may be largely
over or under the correct figures, but when one deals with such
vast numerals the ordinary reader is sufficiently informed, even
though an error of a few figures occurs.
A part of Baku is called the " black town," because of the
smoke which formerly arose from the great kerosene manufacto
ries therein situated. Twenty millions of puds of clarified, dis
tilled, burning oil are sent each year up the Volga to be dis
tributed throughout the north, and 10,000,000 over the railroad

WONDERFUL OIL WELLS. 425
to the Black Sea. These figures are, I think, correct. At a dozen
or more stations we met or passed great trains with 20 to 30
huge cistern cars, such as are used in America, only larger, filled
with kerosene. Five hundred ships ply in and out of the har
bor distributing this oil. It now burns as the head-lights, and
the residuum as the regular fuel of locomotives on daily trains
running 1,000 miles beyond the Caspian into Central Asia. Who
knows ? Perhaps this is the light from the west which is to illumine
the heart of the great continent ; material light, to bring in its wake
a purer spiritual light ! The oil of these regions is not so strong
as that of Pennsylvania and does not emit the same disagreeable
odor. While at Balakhana we walked upon a soil sodden with
oil, we skirted little lakes of oil, we crossed on little bridges over
flowing streams of oil ; streams large enough to turn good-sized
mill-wheels. There was a greasy smell about it, but not as much
of what we at home call petroleum smell as one catches from a
half dozen of our oil barrels. Only 25 per cent, of this oil can be
refined into kerosene. The Pennsylvania oil yields from 60 to 75.
While far less burning-fluid comes from this than from the same
amount of American oil, yet it is claimed here that the larger
refuse is much more valuable — more valuable for lubricating and
for heating purposes. It is used for heating in every way. Food
is. cooked with it, stoves in the houses have pipes over the grates
with a faucet. A man lights a fire and turns a faucet and keeps
his room warm. Manufactories use no other fuel, except to light
up with, for it does not burn well except over a high heat. Loco
motives burn it, and ships and steamboats have dispensed with
coal, and use only a few cords of wood a month to start up with.
The engineer ofa locomotive steps from his engine with a white
shirt-front, cleaner far than that of the first class passenger, who,
being behind, catches more or less dust. The fireman's clothes
are greasy from the oil he uses on the machine, but his face needs
no washing when he goes to his dinner. The fire roars in the fire
box, and the steam screams when the throttle is turned, and the
train rushes at the rate of 30 miles an hour, but the plates in
front of the fire-box are as clean as my lady's tiled hearth in the
parlor. We rushed up the river from the sea to Astrakhan at the
rate of 16 versts an hour on a steamer. I went down into the
boiler-room, and all was as clean as in a first-class kitchen, and
under each boiler there was less than a capful of ashes, made
early in the day when a few sticks of wood were burned to start
the flame.
The agent of the steamer company told me that one pound of
this fuel had as much evaporating power as a pound and a half
of the best coal. At Baku it costs one and one half kopecks
a pud, at Astrakhan about seven, and the average price thence
up to Nijni, 1,530 miles, is about 14 kopecks; the price increas
ing as the distance increases from the supply.

426 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
But the cost is far from being the only gauge of its superiority
as a fuel. There is no smoke from the smoke-pipes, and no
cinders to fill passengers' eyes. Fuel is run into the fuel-
tank in the locomotive tender as easily as water is, and the
stoker keeps up his fire by now and then turning a faucet. An
engineer turned off the oil at the faucet in the fire-box of a loco
motive, and the monster rushed along with only a tiny burning
jet under its boilers. A tap by a small gavel at the faucet set the
fire-box to roaring. On a large steamer, for my amusement, the
engineer shut off the fire entirely, and all was black in the furnace,
while the ship ploughed through the waves. A simple light tap
from a mallet not larger than a hen's egg filled the fire-box with
a seething infernal flame. The steam can be got up before a fire
can be made to burn with coal ; stoker's labor is saved for feeding
the grates, and entirely saved in emptying the ash-boxes. I have
not yet been able to find how far north this fuel is used on rail
roads, but in Caucasus and Transcaspia none other is employed,
and among the vast number of steamers for passengers and tow
ing on the Volga no other fuel is consumed. I am informed that
already a decided improvement is visible in the salvage of forests,
and possibly it will bring an increase in rainfall. The commerce
on the Volga is so vast, and on the railroads leading to it, and
the consequent destruction of forests was so great that the stream
was certainly losing its depth, owing to the lessened rains. For
ests are being saved, and the Volga will be deeper. This infor
mation, from the agent and one of the directors of the great Cau
casus Mercury Steamboat Company, a man of very decided
intelligence, ought to have weight. He said to me, when discussing
the matter, if there was no other benefit from naphtha fuel, this
alone would make it a national blessing.
After our return from Balakhana we received a call from the
Mayor of Baku, and an invitation to dine with him. Like my
self, he has served his city for eight years. His rule is said to
have been of great benefit to it, if not of pleasure to himself.
After an elegant dinner with some very agreeable gentlemen, Mr.
Despote Zenovitch, the mayor, took us in a steam-barge out
some miles to witness the wonderful spectacle of a burning sea.
We were fortunate in having a calm night, and thus in having a
fine exhibition of this unique phenomenon. Over quite a large
surface of the outer bay escaping gas from its hidden depths
boils up in the sea as if in a great cauldron. Some of these
boiling spots are only a few feet in diameter, while others are
several yards wide. They can be found at night b\' following the
odor of the gas. We got on the right track, and were proceeding
very quietly, when my attention was called to a seething sound,
as if from a monster mass of foaming champagne. Then I saw
the water boiling and rolling away. A piece of lighted tow was
thrown into the vortex, and immediately the whole surface of the

A BURNING SEA. 427
sea for some yards was in a blaze. Our little barge's course,
though slackened, carried her over the cauldron, and the flames
rolled up on her sides, but vanished as the barge passed over the
gas source. Then we changed our wheel, and when a jet came
from under her bow another bit of blazing tow was thrown in,
and again another fluid fire-works. Presently another barge,
brought out by the calm evening, approached, and added her
share to the spectacle. At one time, when she happened over a
very large cauldron of gas, her hull was enveloped in flame. I
was told that the heat evolved is so small that a wooden boat can
safely pass through a very considerable blaze. It was a rare
sight, and one which few see, and, I think, no others than those
who visit Baku.
Not far off, but on the other side of the bay, gas rises every
where from the sands. Push a cane deep down and draw it up
carefully so as not to destroy the hole it makes, then apply a
match, and a gaslight can be had sometimes several feet high.
The Tartars suspend their kettles over holes thus made and boil
their fish. They dig a small pit into the sand, fill it with lime
stone, set fire to the gas percolating the mass, and burn lime.
At Surakhani, a little farther off, is an old Persian temple,
where, until quite recently, a flame was burning, said to have
been lighted before Zoroaster gave his divine laws. It was
deemed by the fire-worshippers to have been ignited by God,
and to have been burning from the beginning, and that its ex
tinction would presage the destruction of the world. One can
readily comprehend the awe with which a superstitious people
would regard a flame burning for ages with no apparent fuel for its
food. They could readily believe it to be fed by the eternal
breath of the god of fire. Here Parsee priests attended the
burning shrine for thousands of years, and pilgrimages were made
to its sacred flames by fire-worshippers from the farthest limits
of Persia until quite lately.
Our guide-book told us that there was a decided smell of oil
about Baku, because the dust was kept down by sprinkling the
streets with naphtha. The good mayor seemed amused at the
fiction. There is but little smell ii» the town, and the oil was
never used for such purposes. The name of " black town " is
now a misnomer for that quarter in which the refineries are situ
ated. Since the complete use of residuum has become successful,
by breaking up the oil jet under a boiler with a jet of steam, but
little smoke is evolved. I wish our cities where great palaces
burn soft coal were any thing like as free from smoke. From the
water at night the city presents a beautiful sight. The vast num
ber of street- and house-lights lifting up from the rounded bay
gives it the appearance of a brilliantly illuminated and vast amphi
theatre. Street-lamps are very close to each other, and every
window is lighted. The city is pretty, too, by day from the bay,

428 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
with its old fortress and lofty tower built by the great Queen
Tamara long ages ago. When the wells were bored here a few
years since there was scarcely any town outside of the walled
fortress, now there is a population of 60,000 to 70,000. The
Russian scientists feel satisfied that there will be practically no
end to the supply of oil. To my inquiry if he thought the oil
would last forever, the Mayor of Baku replied, " No ! it will give
out after a while, perhaps, in about 1,000,000 years." A very
bright young German lad acted as our guide and cicerone at
Balakhana. To my question how it was accounted for that wells
could be bored so close to each other and find oil at such greatly
differing depths — that is, from 200 to nearly 1,000 feet — and yet
in no way interfere with the supply one of another, he pointed
to the veins in the back of his hand, saying: "There is the solu
tion : there are veins running near each other, but totally separ
ated, and at different depths, and all fed by a vast oil river far
below any of them."
While I write it is two o'clock in the afternoon. I am finishing
this letter on the Volga. The sun is but rising at Chicago. Guns
are firing, for it is July 4th, the birthday of my country — of my
own, my native land. May it give happiness to countless millions
through countless ages !

CHAPTER XLL
THE VOLGA RIVER AND MIGHTY TRAFFIC— ASTRAKHAN— KAZAN—
NIJNI NOVGOROD— RAFTS— THE PEOPLE— THE GREAT FAIR.
Volga River and at Nijni Novgorod, July 12, 1888.
Several persons, among them the American Consul, being
also English Resident at Moscow, told us we would find the
Volga utterly uninteresting, except for a short distance near
Samara, and advised us by no means to ascend it from Astrakhan ;
that if we were determined to travel along it, then to descend it
instead of going up, which would take at least two days longer.
We chose, however, to go south by rail and then return north by
river, so as to get up with our correspondence on the steamers,
and thus avoid the necessity for stopping a day or two anywhere
to bring up to date. Instead of being wearied by monotony,
we have found this mighty stream very interesting. There is to
me always a charm in moving along the bosom of a great river —
a charm all its own, and of which the ocean is utterly devoid.
The ocean gives its pleasures, but they are wholly different from
those afforded by the running stream. One learns to regard a
river as an entity, as a separate and distinct and, to some extent,
a sentient thing, with which one can hold communion, and to
which one gives affection and friendship, and all with a vague
feeling that there is a species of reciprocation. I look down upon
its floods, and can imagine I hear them laughing and see them
dancing far above in a hundred little pellucid rills — laughing and
dancing in dark shades of forest, never sad, however deep the
leafy gloom about them ; stealing in quiet glee through grassy
meadows, now leaping up in tiny wavelets to catch the airy but
terfly which ventures too near on its gilded wing, then with gentle
murmurs striving to join in the chorus of singing birds in the
blossoming bush overhanging : .. I hear the woodman's axe far off
on the lonely upland side; its. sad tone comes now from close by
in yonder wood, then from afar off, bending and stealing through
the forest trunks — now loud and distinct, then scarcely heard.
I hear the song of the maiden as she trips along the brook-side,
and stoops to lave her brown hands in its cool shallows, and,
throwing a leaf into the rapid channel, watches to see if it be car
ried into the whirling stream below or is floated off into the calm,
429

430 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
eddying pool at the side — and is gay or sad as she thus learns her
coming fate. I hear the low of kine and bleat of flocks as they
come down to drink at the little river-bank, and the laughter of
villagers along its margin ; and the sound of hammers and work
shops in cities on the same little river, now grown into a navigable
stream. The river talks to me, and tells me of these and other
things on its upper line. It catches my sympathy and returns
it. For we were both once little infants, now grown to manhood.
We have had our struggles in vain to go upward ; we have had
our ever-downward march. I stand and look down upon the
deep flood slipping from beneath our keel, and passing off, like
me, with the oft-repeated questions, " Whither? What? How?"
There are pleasures to be derived from the shores of rivers ; the
mountain, bare and bleak or green and wooded ; the hill in shrub
and verdure, with villages and houses and flocks ; the undulating
plain in waving field or close-cropped turf. These give pleasure,
but are not sympathizers in my moods. The rivers themselves
speak to me and commune with me.
I have grown to be the friend of not a few within the last year,
since we began our " race with the sun." The Columbia, with its
white current, and rocky precipices dyed in purple and as soft as
velvet in tone ; the mighty Yang-tse-Kiang, moving in grand and'
deep majesty ; the Pearl, covered by thousands of Chinese boats,
and floating a city ; the Menam, overhung by hundred-rooted
banyans, and about which tiny canoes steal like darting water-
bugs ; the Irrawaddy, reflecting 25,000 pagodas to propagate the
faith of Gautama, whose charity did not forget the tiniest insect.
We touched again and again the holy Ganges, which has washed
away the sins of countless millions, and can make clean the
human heart, though steeped in crimes of the blackest dye. We
crossed the great Indus and its several branches, beyond which
the world's conqueror, Alexander, could not carry his victorious
army. Then we lived for days upon "Old Nilus," whose hoary
head has been ever lost in the centre of the Dark Continent, and
the Danube, washing the greenest fields and the most golden
vineyards of Europe. And now the Volga ! These rivers, or all
but two at least, I count my familiar friends.
No such feeling is ever awakened by the sea ; on its bosom one
watches the mighty swells marking the deep respirations of old
ocean. Whence they come and whither they go they tell not,
nor can one guess. They arise from the vasty deep, and die
away on the boundless wastes. One can watch the monster
waves lifting in foamy crest, hungry for human prey. Angry and
fierce, they repel every human emotion, except fear and awe.
They ask no sympathy — they give none. From out of fathomless
caves they rush, and, sullen, 'return to their gloomy homes. I
love not the ocean, and dread its angry moods. Its calms are
treacherous ; its ripples are deceitful ; its storms paralyze ; its

THE VOLGA AND THE TRAFFIC ON IT. 431
depths are a maw giving back no return ; it is a far-reaching
realm, with no single ray of a redeeming love to light or cheer.
I love it not, and never go upon its bosom without a dread of its
frown. The Volga is Europe's largest river, and is one of the grandest
of the world. With a length of 2,300 miles, it is navigable by
large steamers for near 1,600, and for comfortable steamers and
broad barges for 550 miles more. Its head is in the Voldai Hills,
near St. Petersburg, in the northwestern part of Russia. Its main
branches — in fact, the main river, the Kama — has its source in
the northeast quarter of the empire, and unites with the true Volga
about midway in its course. This great river — formed by these
two branches and their several hundred affluents, many of them
navigable — spreads like a huge vein with innumerable feeding-
veins over one of the richest and largest grain-producing districts
of the world. Its deep waters abound in fish fit for an epicure's
table. The taking of them gives employment to a vast number
of people— upward of 30,000 on the main river,— and furnish an
ever-ready supply of food to millions. Dried fish lie in great
uncovered piles about the cities and villages, in markets and
groceries, and one sees barges 200 feet long, covered with cured
fish piled in ricks 20 feet high, the heads of the outside course
protruding in regular layers, and looking like some new style or
pattern of stonework. Six hundred and odd steamers ply the
river. The one I now write on is 330 feet long, 60 feet beam,
with engines of 800-horse-power, and makes a speed of 20 versts
an hour.
Passenger steamers ply daily along the entire river for over
2,000 miles — I, perhaps, will not err if I say 2,100 and odd miles
— up and down with every comfort for first and second-class
passengers at from$i to $1.75 for 100 miles, not including meals;
a good dinner, however, costing about 40 cents; and comfortable
quarters with good sleeping-bunks for third-class passengers at
from 26 to 30 cents for 100 miles. Innumerable barges of large
size, some of them over 200 feet long and of good breadth, and
drawing 8 to 12 feet when loaded, are being constantly towed
in long strings up and down by powerful tow-boats, one of which
I saw having 1,800 horse-power, and drawing barges on which
were loaded 1,100,000 puds, or 44,000,000 pounds. So many tow
or passenger-boats are met that they themselves enliven the voy
age. Vast numbers of rafts are constantly seen below the mouth
of the Kama, and some above. These are of all lengths, from
200 feet to a quarter of a mile. They are built in sec
tions, so that at any time one can be detached and disposed
of. Many of these rafts have upon them comfortable log-houses
of one, two, or more rooms, glazed and ornamental. The rafts
men live in, and at the end of their journey sell them at a profit
to be taken down and re-erected — a sort of ready-made house.

432 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
These log-houses are so peculiarly a Russian institution, and
are so pretty that they deserve a description. The logs are per
fectly straight, dressed smooth, the inner side flattened, the outer
left rounded, the upper and lower side brought to a straight edge,
or perhaps with a slight groove. The cross logs are so let into
each other that they fit down close, leaving the ends projecting
a half-foot more very ornamentally. The logs are let down upon
each other with calking or a hair-felting between, making them
thoroughly close. We have seen some quite large houses of this
kind, two stories high, and with many rooms. The partitions,
being all of the same structure, are shown by the projecting ends,
making a pretty relief. Generally throughout the wooded coun
try, and in small towns and villages, the houses are of wood, the
better ones built in this style. Sometimes the logs are ripped in
half, but the rounded side is always out. In some localities the
space between the logs is calked with tow or a fine-broken grass or
moss, perhaps usually with hemp-tow. We have seen officers'
quarters near encampments built in this manner and painted a
brown-red, but generally all wooden houses are unpainted.
Paint, except on a roof, is evidently not to the taste of these
people. There is no kind of house for a wooded suburb which
is as pretty as these of logs.
There is another wood-carrier on this river of a remarkable
character and used for sawed lumber — a keel-boat, 150 to 200
feet long, of heavy boards, well calked, but without deck. In this
sawed or hewn timber is laid across with the beam, increasing in
length as the flare of the hull increases, so as to fill it closely.
When the top of the hull is reached boards are packed on, main
taining the flare of the hull, and up to a height of several feet,
then the flare rapidly increases, until the top juts over the whole
hull many feet. On the water the thing looks like a great boat,
the upper part not yet boarded, with a breadth of nearly lOO feet.
On this upper deck are generally one, two, or more of the ready-
made log-houses above named. The amount of lumber on one
of these hulls is enormous. They are generally floated down in
high water only, and stranded when sold. We saw many of them
far down the Volga. As the stranded hull is unloaded it falls
out to the side. No sawed lumber is carried down the river,
except on these crafts. The number of rafts, however, is very
great, the logs coming mainly from the Kama River, and its 400
affluents, to be sawed up below when used.
There are many large flouring-mills in different cities along the
river, one of them, I was told, turning out many thousand
puds of flour. Every city, town, and village has numbers of
windmills. On the high ground back of one moderately-sized
village, I counted 39. Everywhere in the land the bulk of the
peasant-grinding is done by the wind. Going south by rail we
saw many hundreds. In some of the steam-mills wheat-meal is

RUSSIAN BREAD. WOMEN. 433
made instead of flour — a rounded grit as coarse as our fine corn-
meal. The bread from this is delicious. Bad bread seems to be
a rare exception in Russia. Bread is the food of the people, the
working people living on black bread, but it, too, is of excellent
quality. One sees bread for sale in every kind of store in the
smaller towns. I have thus been enabled to examine a great
many specimens. No one ever objected to my " hefting " a loaf.
It always seemed light and never sour, and as the loaves are made
very large (say a foot and a half in diameter when round, or
when oblong, lo inches by 15 to 20 long), and are cut to sell
to small purchasers, I could examine it well. I have never
seen such bread in any other country. I wish Russia would ex
port many of her bakers to America — who can beat the world in
making sour bread and sodden biscuits. It is an exception when
one gets really good bread in a small town in the United States,
and even in our large cities one seldom finds as sweet and tooth
some a loaf as is had here everywhere. I have talked of this to
several commercial travellers — that modern race of sharp men
throughout the world — and am informed that throughout Russia
there is rarely ever seen a bad loaf. It is made here of many
kinds — for eating with meat, for tea and coffee, plain or slightly
sprinkled with seed and sugar, purely white, purely rye, and
mixed. Like the Orientals, the people do not seem to think bread
can get dirty. It is, therefore, piled on tables and counters, and
small rings and pretzels are hung on strings exposed to the dust,
and hucksters peddle the small rings on the dustiest roads. The
common laboring women wear a sort of coarse woollen sacque,
very loose and tied in at the waist. The bosom of this sacque is
a sort of carry-all. One can see one of these women pack into
this greasy receptacle a half-bushel of rings and small white bread.
I suppose such is not made in the peasant village. The bread
must be savory by the time it reaches the hamlet, several versts
away. The women along the Volga all seem to do their full share of
work, even of the heaviest kind. Among the fishermen she rows
the boat while her man casts the net. She trundles barrows and
carries stone, loads wagons, and carries wood and heavy freight
upon the steamers, and helps to build embankments on the
railroads. She is man's helpmeet, and I rather think, meets him
more than half way. But I think she does it of her own free
will. For she is too tough and strapping for her lord to force
against her will. She could hold her own in a fair fight, and has
many opportunities for taking an unfair advantage, for all the
peasant men have the luxurious habit of getting very frequently
gloriously drunk. They go to the cities for great distances on
important fdte days. They pray and cross themselves to an aston
ishing extent all the forenoon and even up to one or two o'clock,
when the church services end, and then they drink like fish. We

434 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
have been lucky in being in cities on holy days. The other day
at Kazan was the great fete of the year ; over 100,000 peasants
were in town. We drove out along the roads leading to the
country, and saw the peasants returning to their villages, some
perhaps 10, 15, and even 20 versts away. They were afoot and
in wagons, the latter having a sort of wicker body, and without
springs. Some wagons held two or three, some five to eight. Every
man, in wagons or afoot, was more or less intoxicated. Here were
a couple arm-in-arm, in hot but good-natured discussion ; there a
half-dozen with arms about each other's neck, singing and happy.
Here a woman dragging her husband along ; there she props him
up in a wagon ; here they lie in the bottom of the vehicle ; there
sitting in it and swaying back and forth. Sometimes there were
a half-dozen men with arms over each other's neck, the outer one
having his arm over a young woman, all singing at the top of
their voices as they reeled from side to side along their homeward
road. The women, in such cases, seemed thoroughly sober but
amused by their male companions, whom they were convoying
safely home. Some of them were, perhaps, their brothers.
I have never seen as many drunken men at one time,
nor, indeed, on 50 or 100 occasions together, as I saw on one road
here during a half-hour. At one locality there were several
dozens of houses about an open space, a sort of wagon-yard.
These were all filled with men who were laying in their supply of
drink. In one wagon were four men asleep on the bottom, a
woman and little boy driving. The woman did not seem at all
put out. She took it as a thing of course. There were a few
nearly grown lads somewhat high. Men of 30 and under were
full and jolly, from 30 to 40 full and stupid. Nearly all the old
chaps were clean gone and asleep. I spoke to a gentleman of
what I had seen. He said he doubted not that nine out of ten
of all the thousanos of male peasants in town that day went home
considerably intoxicated,, and the bulk of them thoroughly
drunk. These are the descendants almost pure of the old Scyth
ians of 2,000 years ago, great drunkards at that far-away period.
A very prominent physician from Moscow, a travelled man
and one of our fellow-passengers, tells me he does not think the
Russians drink as much as the Germans, but that they are the
only people in the world who drink on empty stomachs and be
fore eating. To that he ascribed the drunkenness, and says the
peasants do not hide it when drunk, for among themselves it is
no disgrace. They are not quarrelsome, nor very noisy, but are
thoroughly good-natured. When boozy, a Russian's great desire
is to go to sleep, and if permitted, sleeps off all of his drunk.
Kazan is a very picturesque city on the east side of the river,
and was for long years the last spot from which the exile to
Siberia looked back toward his lost home. Here he entered that

KAZAN. SUPERSTITIONS. 435
great steppe land which was to be his almost trackless road into
cold and bleak Northern Asia. It was the capital of the Kazan
Tartars for centuries, and now has some 10,000 of their descend
ants in the free enjoyment of their religion and customs. They
have not the coarse Mongolian face of those about Baku, but
all have the outstanding ear with large stem. The city has a
population of nearly 150,000, some fine buildings, a large univer
sity, and many fine churches. In the cathedral within the Krem
lin, we witnessed the imposing ceremony of the reception of the
Ikon of the "Virgin of Kazan," which, by divine miracle, escaped
unharmed the terrible conflagration which swept over the city in
the sixteenth century. After a long and beautiful ceremony, the
Ikon was brought in by two sisters of the monastery, which has
it in sacred charge. The bells throughout the city pealed in wild
acclaim, and the people seemed almost beside themselves with
joy. Received with profound veneration by the archbishop and
his long list of assisting bishops and priests, it was carried in pro
cession, followed and surrounded by the bishops, through several
streets, to a booth on a low plain, where the " Ikon from Smo
lensk " and another were met. Then the bells again pealed in
wild noise, and the 100,000 people and over, on the Kremlin
heights and in the adjacent streets bowed and crossed themselves
in a religious fervor bordering upon frenzy. The sun's rays were
pouring down fiercely, yet every head was uncovered for an hour
or more while the procession slowly moved, and every man,
woman, and child bowed and crossed themselves, bowed and
crossed, again and again, until I almost felt theirs was a muscular
religion requiring as much activity of the vertebral column and
of the right arm as that of a trapeze performer.
The Virgin Mother of God visits the city once a year and re
mains one month, and her Ikon is daily carried from church to-
church, when she again leaves, the sins of the city being too
great for her to remain longer. During this month she receives
from 50,000 to 100,000 roubles from the grateful people, whom
she blesses by her presence. The Kremlin wall stands on high
ground ; from its foot a sloping grassy bank drops down nearly
100 feet, and then runs off into a broad decline. During the
• procession we witnessed, this bank for a considerable length, the
walls above, and the incline below, was a dense mass of pious
people, mostly peasants. They were in their holiday dress, light
red being the dominant color. Then came pink and purple and
white. Looking upon this mass of people, we saw a picture to
which the pencil of a Teniers or a Van Dyke could hardly have
done justice. We had admirable opportunities for witnessing the
ceremonies within and without the church, for the police, who
were necessary to keep the pious masses from crushing upon the
holy orders, recognizing us as strangers, permitted us to stand
among the privileged classes.

436 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
The ceremonies of the Greek Church, which we have now seen
on three prominent fete-days — at the Cathedral of the Saviour,
in Moscow, the cathedral in Tiflis, and then at Kazan — are very
imposing, and the music simply exquisite. No organ or any
other instrument is permitted, but the choirs of men and boys
are thoroughly trained. The chanted responses from the choir
are wonderfully sweet and touching, and the whole, I think,
more impressive and much more religious in tone than when
accompanied by the organ. But the mass of ceremony — the
bowing and kneeling; the crossing and kissing of symbols; the
intense veneration of Ikons and pictures ; the manipulation of
robes and vestments, degenerated into an absolute idolatry as
intense as any thing to be witnessed in Hindoo worship or Chi
nese pageantry, and lacking the deep, heart-reaching simplicity
of the Buddhist forms. An intelligent Russian, a firm supporter
of the Greek Church, said to me to-day that this intense formal
ism was all for the ignorant peasants, and that to him it bor
dered upon atheism, the extreme of idolatry and absolute un
belief meeting in the excessive formalism of the church. At
times, during the movement of the procession at Kazan the tens
of thousands of people looking on would bow and cross themselves
for several minutes continuously, looking like thousands of life-
size supple jacks worked by a single string ; and some who
had space enough, would drop upon their knees and bow their
heads upon the ground, and now and then could be heard a man
chattering as if in an ecstasy of worship. In the churches, cere
mony follows ceremony in quick succession, as the receiving the
Bible and kissing it; the elevation of the Host; the preparation of
the wine and bread, gone through by archbishop and the assist
ing bishops ; the kissing each piece of vestment as it is put upon
the prelate ; the kneeling before and kissing the sacred symbol ;
the many points where the entire audience has to bow and cross
itself, and where all have to kneel and many to abase themselves
so as to bring the forehead to the ground ; the marching out
into the body of the church or in front of the screen, which shuts
off the high and sacred altar or inner tabernacle from the main
church by the priesthood ; and then the counter-marching and
bowing to each other, lifting frequently some piece of robe as a.
lady lifts her favor to her partner in a dance ; the frequent
removal of tiaras or gilded hats, and then the replacing them
with formal ceremony ; the constant moving of many priests
with long, flowing locks, often curled and hanging far over the
shoulders and mingling with the flowing beard ; these ceremonies
are so numerous and long-continued, and all so eagerly watched
by the ignorant masses, that I was forced to the conclusion that
the main features of the Russo-Greek religion are simply in a
close observance of outward forms, and that the piety of the
people is mostly in externals. And when to this is added the

RELIGION VERGING UPON IDOLATRY. 437
observance by the people of the outward form of crossing and
removing of hats and short prayers before the many Ikons and
shrines which line the streets, before which few pass without some
ceremony, the low and illiterate never ; and then the fact that
after a day spent in this outward ceremony of worship, thousands
of men will give themselves up to besotted drunkenness ; and
when so drunk that they can scarcely totter, if a shrine should
be passed, they will drop upon their knees and cross them
selves frantically, and chatter out a maudlin prayer — when one
sees all of these things and compares them to the slavish idolatry
of the far Orient — an idolatry as sincere as any thing here
seen, but not more slavish — the question arises, is not the one
nearly as idolatrous as the other, and will not the good God listen
to the worship of the ignorant in the far East through their
symbols as he listens to these? And will He not meet out to
all in accordance with individual sincerity and personal merit ?
At Kazan there is a pretty garden or park, where a regimental
band plays every evening. The frequenters are of all classes.
Willie, with a sigh, declared he did not see even a fairly good-
looking woman during the two evenings we promenaded in the
park. There were several Tartar women so veiled as to show
only their eyes. His imagination worked them up into Oriental
beauties. Seeing them sitting apart and rather removed from the
crowd, with their mantles thrown back from their faces, we
passed before them on a reconnoitring expedition. They were
painted and smiled upon us, evidently open for acquaintance.
They were of the sinners who prevent the "Virgin of Kazan"
from dwelling longer than a month each year in her old home.
The music played in this garden till full midnight. Even then,
there was a streak of day along the northern horizon. The clatter
of vehicles under our window going to and from the garden over
the rough cobble pavements, and the music, kept me awake.
Just at twelve there was a wild peal of bells. I supposed, at first,
it a part of the f^te ceremonies, but soon a glow was reflected
from the tall building opposite our window, and people began to
hurry toward the Kremlin. We followed. There was a fire — a
large mill, which we had tried to enter during the day, but were
repulsed, was burning. It was of wood, several stories high, and
filled with flour and grain. It seemed to me the entire town was
on the Kremlin heights. The illumination of the many church
domes and gilded crosses of the tall bell-towers, and green roofs,
and of the vast crowd, made a brilliant sight. The loss was over
100,000 roubles, and 14 laborers about the establishment are, I am
told, missing. There seems to be no attempt of the firemen to sub
due the flames. The building being detached, was allowed to
burn at leisure. They, however, watched and used water about the
other buildings where sparks were falling.
The police force of provincial cities are not considered large
enough for property protection. Private night-watchmen are

438 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
¦employed. They sound a sort of rattle to disturb the night at
frequent intervals, I believe, to tell thieves that they are about,
and their employers that they themselves are not asleep.
There are about 40 large cities along the Volga, and over
1,000 towns and villages, and many of the latter large and cov
ering extensive spaces of ground. Astrakhan is virtually a sea
port, though it is 80 miles from the Caspian, at the head of the
¦delta of the river. The Volga has many mouths, the two outer
ones being perhaps lOO miles apart when they reach the sea.
At the foot of the western mouth and a little out, "is a sort of
floating town called " Nine Foot," that being the depth of
water on the bar. Here large ships unload upon smaller ves
sels and lighters. Above the bar the river is much deeper.
Between the eastern and western channels of the delta and the
other mouths is a low, flat, island country, with some cultivation,
much grass, and a large number of cattle, and many fishing-
villages. Few river cities make a larger display of vessels — ships.
steamboats, and barges — than this old Tartar town. Hundreds
are lying along its extensive piers and anchored out in the
broad stream. It is a busy city of 70,000 people, with an old
walled kremlin, many fine churches, some good public buildings,
and substantially built up streets. Here are shown Peter the
Great's little ship, built by his own hands, and many of his imple
ments. The whole was locked up when we were there, owing
to some visitor having lately dropped and broken the old em
peror's drinking tankard.
We have halted at Saratof and Samara, both worthy a visit.
Before reaching the latter we passed under a magnificent railroad-
bridge with 13 huge iron spans, and about 80 feet above the
river. It is the only one on the Volga and is a noble work.
The footings of the pier are far beneath the bed of the river.
Nijni-Novgorod, the upper terminus for heavy river craft,
1,530 odd miles from the sea, makes a great display of river
craft. Hundreds of steamers and barges lie along the banks of
the rivers, or are anchored in sets of from four or five up to
a dozen out in the rivers. From this, for 500 or 600 miles farther
up the river, lighter steamers are required. One line, distinguished
as the " American steamers," are stern-wheelers, some of them
fine specimens. Nijni-Novgorod is so celebrated for its great an
nual fair, that its beauty of situation and splendid views have been
¦overlooked, and the traveller's attention has scarcelj' been called
to them. Viewed from the river, it is exceedingly picturesque,
and quite peculiar. The town of 60,000 or more people is situ
ated on a peninsula, made by the confluence with the Volga of
the Oka River, which comes up from the southwest, and is nearly
as large as the main stream. Along the banks of these two
rivers' is a strip of nearly level land, ranging in width from 100
to 200 feet up to 500 or 600, and extending along the Volga and

NIJNI-NOVGOROD. 439
up the Oka two or more miles. This strip is closely built with
nice stone houses, business places, and several handsome churches
and a monastery or two. Behind these buildings lift very steep
hills, 200 to 300 feet high, and rather level on top. On these
the main city is built, many of its best houses and churches
lifting from the crest of the hills and seen from the water.
Between the hills come down deep ravines, and into them run
other and smaller ones. The bottoms of all these have been
handsomely graded into streets, with very steep, even slopes,
lifting up to the hill-top. These slopes, both on the river and
on the ravines, are prettily sodded, with here and there little
bunches of vigorous trees. No houses are built on the slopes,
except where, at the lower edges, a couple of monasteries with
handsome churches slightly climb. The Kremlin's crenelated
wall climbs up the hill on the Volga side, and with its towers,
aided by churches, crowns its crest. Zigzag foot-roads, well
graded, mount the sides of the slopes, and the deep-cut ravine
roads are seen creeping upward from the water. Thus is given
the peculiar picture of a city, with a sort of belt of green, beauti
fully sloping, and well kept hill-sides, running around and sepa
rating the upper from the lower town. The view of the city is
beautiful. The views from the terraced gardens on the hills are
magnificent — a vast plain, sufficiently wooded, with villages and
many domed churches, with a mighty river reaching far to the
north and to the south in graceful curves ; the plain beyond, cut
here and there by smaller waters ; the river below, with barges
and steamers by the hundred at anchor, and yet alive with many
moving among the silent ones. No lines of smoke tarnish the
pure air. These things make a glorious picture, and one well
worth visiting, even though no fair were held here. Yet so great
is the fair, that thousands visit it as a show, and hardly see the
real beauties of the town.
The locality of the great fair is on a flat plain, over and north
of the Oka, and reached by a long and very broad floating bridge.
I had no conception of the extent of the buildings required for
this great annual market, and supposed we would find a few tem
porary structures and large open sj»aces. Instead of that, we
found a good-sized city, with miles and miles of well paved and
thoroughly sewered streets, bordered by miles and miles of brick
houses generally of two stories, but often of three, and quite
a number of four. These streets are from a half mile to perhaps
a mile and a quarter in length, some of them with walks through
the centre, shaded by fine trees. Many of the buildings are
pretty, and on some streets uniform in style. Nearly all have
wide wooden awnings covering the sidewalks. Cutting across
this city, which is oblong, are two or three broad canals — rivers in
breadth, — crossed by bridges, and some spanned by houses of
light, pretty, and airy construction, elevated upon piles. All

440 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
shops and warehouses are now closed, except where men and
women are busy repairing and cleaning up for the vast gathering
to be held in a couple of weeks. It was a curious thing to rattle
over well paved streets among well built houses at mid-day, and
find nearly every thing silent and deserted. If it had been night
it would have seemed natural, for one could have imagined the
citizens yet asleep. On some streets not a soul was visible. Our
drosky rattled dismally, as in a city of the dead. In less than a
month from now all will be different. Shops will be filled, and
brilliant displays made of goods from all lands and of every peo
ple. Two hundred thousand people from many quarters of the
world will be here jostling against each other ; and in five weeks'
time products of scattered countries to the value of $100,000,000
will have changed hands.
The fair, I am told, however, is not what it was formerly. One
no longer sees vast crowds of Asiatics, and long trains of camels
laden with the goods of the far East. The Suez Canal has made
all Europe neighbors of India and China, and the wealth of those
far-off lands comes to the West on the ships of the sea, and not
on the ships of the desert. I learned that one sees at the fair
many people of many lands, but no longer, as formerly, in colo
nies redolent of Asiatic odors, and quaint and curious with
Asiatic costumes and customs. Two hundred millions of roubles'
worth of goods change hands, but the traders are nearly all Rus
sian, and the bulk of the goods is of this land. Still, it must be
an interesting sight to see 200,000 people all in their own shops
and warehouses, eager and anxious to crowd a year's dealing into
a few weeks of time. One probably cannot see the peculiarities
of many people, brought out in bold relief as formerly, but it must
be a grand spot, for one who can speak the prevailing languages,
to study human nature, and to watch it in its greed. Then, too,
one can see it in moods other than when intent on trade. There
are theatres, large and small, and all kinds of amusements. There
are great churches, one of them — a splendid structure — open only
during the fair. The whole thing is a state institution, the state
owning the ground, the public buildings, and a large number,
perhaps the great majority, of the storehouses and shops. Private
persons, however, have built some, and have long leases on others.
One sees signs over shops, beautiful in design, and costly, and, as
yet, nothing has been in the shops since last September. The
buildings are nearly all metal-roofed, and the roofs are all painted
green. This seems almost universal among public buildings in
Russia. One of our reasons for desiring to go to Samarcand, was
that it would bring us here when the fair would be in progress.
We, however, cannot afford to be long enough near it to come
again. I said, in the beginning of this letter, that I found the Volga a
charming river to travel on. It may, perhaps, be called rather

THE TREND OF THE VOLGA. 441
monotonous, for many of its long reaches are lacking in picturesque
highlands, though these are not entirely wanting. It has one
feature, I think, peculiar to itself. The bluffs and high grounds,
such as it affords, are continuous on the right bank, and, with
small exceptions, entirely lacking on the other. It seems to have
trended all the time westward, occasionally forced, by barriers it
could not surmount, to the east. This disposition is, I suppose,
the result of the earth's easterly motion, leaving the freer water
behind, which, therefore, takes a westward course as it flows to
the sea. In parts of its course, and perhaps the greater part,
it lies in a valley 10 to 20 miles wide. This valley is a depression
in the great rolling steppe which spreads across southern Russia.
The river hugs close under lofty cliffs or low hills on the right
bank, leaving a broad, flat belt on the other shore, which it over
flows in its floods. In its normal path it is from three quarters
of a mile to two miles wide. In its flood, for nearly 1,000
miles from its mouth, it is from 10 to 20 miles wide, spreading
much wider at Astrakhan. Some of these bluffs are picturesque,
varying from 60 to 100 and odd feet in height, in steep, rocky
cliffs, washed into grotesque forms, and filled with deep caves.
Above the bluffs the table-lands, more or less rolling, stretch off
westward, and are the great grain fields of the country. Near
Samara, between 900 and 1,000 miles from its mouth, the river
comes upon a little range of mountains, 600 to 800 feet high . These
bend it nearly 50 miles due east, when it breaks through them and
immediately turns westward, making a lofty, narrow peninsula of
the mountain range. Here the scenery for 100 or 200 miles is
fine, and a part of it exceedingly so, the hills or mountains being
beautifully wooded.
Russia is said to have no spring or autumn ; it jumps out of
winter into summer, from a pale cold sun into one of fiercest
heat. I never felt a hotter sun than we had on the white, paved
streets of Samara. We were driving, and being desirous of seeing
the town well, were forced to be out at noon. At one time I
became anxious lest one of us might receive a sunstroke. Our
hats were covered with white silk and our umbrellas hoisted, yet
the heat poured upon our heads almast as if they were uncovered.
During the ir^tense heat of noon the people keep much in-doors.
The Samara streets at that hour were nearly deserted. The
nights are so short that work can be commenced very early and
kept up until ten o'clock. All who are able, take a long mid-day
sleep. The peasants, however, seem impervious to heat. They
can be seen working bareheaded under the fiercest rays. A result
of these hot suns is a growth of vegetation intensely vigorous,
which gives to the forests and wood-clad mountains a wonderful
richness of verdure. The young shoots on the trees are sent for
ward so rapidly and bear so heavy a foliage that they droop and
hang, adding to the dense appearance of the foliage. Many of

442 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
the forest-trees can, at this tim^ of the year, be called weeping.
The birch, linden, and some other varieties of trees, even some of
the firs, have young hanging twigs, swaying like drooping plumes.
The crops of the fields push forward with remarkable rapidity.
Having passed over the same latitudes less than a month before,
we were enabled to measure the rapidity of growth. We stopped
long enough at several towns to drive a few miles out to see
something of the country, and occasionally, through breaks in the
bluffs, with our glasses we could see the great rolling, cultivated
lands behind. These, with the many villages along the river,
their artistic coloring free from all glaring paint (in them the
weather alone applies the brush and time tones into delicious
harmony) ; the large churches, with green domes and lofty belfry;
the whirling windmills behind ; the great herds of cattle at noon
at the water side, and towards night rushing from the upper lands
through clouds of dust down for their evening bath ; the peasants
in bright red, mowing grass and making hay ; and on Sunday and
on a fete day crowds of people on the banks, brilliant in red and
purple and blue ; the many steamers met cutting the water at 15
miles an hour ; the tow-boats with long lines of barges swinging
behind ; the huge rafts with new, bright, and pretty log-houses
mounted upon them floating by ; the fishermen landing nets or
wading out with rod and line ; boys and girls in little skiffs lying
by to catch a rock from our steamer's swell ; the many land
ings at handsome wharf boats, where crowds of people were
gathered, and women old and grave, or young and laughing,
peddled raspberries large, red, and pulpy, strawberries huge and
luscious, or small, wild, and spicy ; venders of bread and of cakes,
and of fish and of bottles of fresh milk for our third-class passen
gers ; and pretty roguish girls ready to swear a bottle of sour milk
was genuine tartar koumiss; men and women in oddest dress;
old women with sandals like baskets and blanket-wrapped legs as
large and shapeless as mill posts ; well dressed men and commonly
dressed men, all in top-boots wonderfully wrinkled about the
ankles, and many of them with heels so high that the wearers
seemed to be standing upon tiptoe ; Tartars with shaven heads
and beautiful Astrakhan brimless caps, and Tartar women with
mantles drawn closely about the face ; droskies reacjy to take one
for a drive behind tough, fine horses at 20 cents an hour ; news
paper-sellers with a dozen papers, their full stock in trade, and
glad to sell a dozen a day ; — all of these things made the run from
Astrakhan to Nijni-Novgorod extremely pleasant. It is true we
were a whole week on the water, exclusive of the days we halted
at cities. I came up the river to write, and found it difficult to
go within my room and to my pencil. We saw to-day a beautiful
stern-wheeler, so like home, of a line running yet 500 miles higher
up the river above Nijni, that we have made up our minds to
try it.

CHAPTER XLII.
FROM NIJNI TO RYBINSK BY RIVER— THEN BY RAIL TO ST.
PETERSBURG— PETERHOF, ITS BEAUTIFUL FOUNTAINS—
THE MEETING OF THE EMPERORS.
St. Petersburg, July 21, 1888.
I SAID that a river had a species of individualism which wins
and returns a sort of sympathy, and sometimes a friendship. The
Volga to a marked degree has this characteristic. As the child is
father to the man, so is the earlier and infant portion of this river
father to the mighty stream it so rapidly becomes. With a total
length of 2,320 miles, it is navigable for 2,160 odd by steamer,
and for 1,524 miles floats great double deckers and bears upon its
bosom a vast commerce. In its smaller upper stream it is no
where a turbulent and boisterous torrent. Drawing rich and
copious aliment from the oozy flats among the low Valdai hills and
the spongy plains about them, it quickly becomes a dignified
stream. Its reddish-dark water, though clear in a glass, yet
almost black when there is a small depth, gives it an appearance
of deepness even among its boggy sources. It is fed by many
respectable affluents. Whiie it is nowhere turbulent, it does not
at any point lie in stagnant pools, and very rarely can be called
sluggish. In its upper 150 odd miles, where steamboats do not
ply, I am told small keels and flats can be floated, and afford con
siderable traffic, and little rafts come out to make up the great
floating islands of wood, which descend toward the sea, and make
lumber comparatively cheap in the vast steppes of the south.
Throughout its entire length the traveller feels safe upon its
bosom. There are no treacherous,* shifting bars and rapidly
changing currents; no cry of boatmen heaving the lead, or with
poles taking soundings, telling the half-asleep voyager that he
may prepare for a bump. Nowhere does the steamer forward and
back, feeling for a safe channel. Nowhere are there formidable
rocks and precipices threatening to topple down, or dark and
dreary swamps breeding mosquitoes and noxious vapors. Every
where this great river seems the friend of man. He crowds its
banks in over 1,000 cities, towns, and villages. Back from its
borders one can see in the rising, rolling plains hundreds of other
villages more or less dependent upon this mighty river for food
and aid. So redundant is the population above Nijni-Novgorod
443

444 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
that at points the villages along the shores seem almost to run
into each other for miles and miles, and lying back are so frequent
that I counted at one time 15 large ones in sight and often six or
eight. Fishermen are always in sight ; fishermen with long nets
worked from boats, and fishermen catching a meal with rod and
line. I frequently watched the latter and saw many a silvery
side glistening in the sun or bright in the twilight as the sportsman
would throw the fluttering sufferer through the inhospitable air.
What a cruel monster is man ! We descant on the savagery of
the tiger, the cruelty of the cat. Yet what do these brutes half
so cruel as the angler does every time he impales the worm upon
the hook, or leaves the shining victim to dry to death on shore,
or to suffocate in insufficient water? We eat tender veal, never
thinking of the cruelty meted out to each little animal, tied by its
feet and thrown upon carts, cars, and steamboat, and trundled
often very many miles in horrible agony. The whole habit of the
common fowl shows that they are fashioned to carry the head
erect, and yet we carry them for hours head downward with the
feet tied so tight as to prevent all circulation in them, forcing the
blood into the head. Man is the world's huge butcher; the
only one of God's creatures which kills for the mere love of
slaying. If his victims could only write his character, he would be
depicted as the most horrible of all monsters, and yet in his van
ity he claims to be made in God's image, and in his egotism
writes etj.ics and sings paeans in praise of his own godlike nature.
The fishes in the depth of the sea, and the worms in the bowels
of the earth have no conception of man's existence. Perhaps
there are, floating in and peopling the pure, ethereal realms sur
rounding us, beings of such transcendental natures that we, like
blind worms, see them not. If so, what countless volumes must
fill their aerific libraries, and what vast pictures must adorn their
transparent walls, descriptive of man's inhumanity to man and of
his savage, wanton cruelty to all of earth's sentient creatures !
We are amused by the colonies of pariah-dogs of Cairo and Con
stantinople, fighting to prevent or punish encroachments on each
other's borderlines. How our aerial neighbors must smile when
they look down upon the million of armed men marching and
counter-marching, filling steamboats and railway trains, to pre
vent some little encroachment upon the borderlines of Austria,
Germany, Roumania, and Russia! We boast of our own far-
reaching brains, of our freeborn souls and our liberty-loving
hearts ; and yet, because two kings, one an untried young man,
and the other a man of no great force, are meeting out upon the
sea and hobnobbing — smiling instead of growling at each other,
— the money of Russia goes up ten per cent, in its purchasing
value. Bah ! Man is not only a cruel brute, but he is a foolish
one. But a little fish has led me into an odd digression.
Many of the river steamers are modelled after those of America,
one line using stern-wheelers. Below Nijni-Novgorod all seem to

STEAMERS USE NAPHTHA FOR FUEL. 445
use refuse petroleum for fuel ; above, some use wood ; coal I did
not see on the entire river. Petroleum is burned by throwing a
jet of steam through a small stream of oil, thus breaking it into
spray. The jets for steam and oil are in the immediate front
edge of the fire-box. A fireman controls his fire by tapping with
a small mallet or gavel the faucet controlling the flow, often tap
ping it so lightly that he moves it almost iirtperceptibly. Through
a small window in the casing of the boiler, he watches to see if
there be any smoke issuing from the flues, his object being to
consume all so as to make no smoke. The boiler-room is clean
and neat. The fire roars intensely and with great heat. The oil
is held in tanks containing fron 10 to 16 tons. Oil-barges over
100 feet long are at the piers of each steamboat line, and the oil
is fed into the tanks by a hose. The barges carry huge cisterns
in their holds containing many thousand puds. At various points
along the river are huge oil-tanks resembling gas-holders, each
holding perhaps 1,000 tons. These are upon high banks, and oil
is pumped into them from the river barges, and fed from them
into railroad cisterns or other land conveyances. At one town I
counted 39 of these great tanks. They belonged to several of the
great Baku refining companies. Kerosene is sent all over the
land where reached by rail^in cisterns and not in barrels. At
Kazan the best kerosene costs but seven or eight cents a gallon.
One result of this cheap burning fluid is that at night towns along
the river look as if illuminated for some gala occasion, the houses
being so universally and brilliantly lighted.
From Nijni-Novgorod to Rybinsk, 306 miles, we came on the
Alabama, stern-wheeler — slow, but comfortable. We did not
object to the want of speed, for the trip was enjoyable and very
pleasing. There were none of the high mountains nor steep
cliffs which are occasionally seen on the lower river, and which, at
a few points, give a scenery bordering upon the grand, but there
were high hills and all was home-like, of Russian, not of English
or American stamp, for there were no farm-houses or country
villas, but a succession of villages — often nearly continuous. The
immediate banks being low, we could look over long reaches of
rising ground, with waving fields and meadows, the latter now gay
with the variegated costume of the peasants, red predominating ;
villages nestled everywhere ; copses of wood, now and then good-
sized forests, and back of all, from 6 to 15 miles*way, the sum
mit of uplands crowned by wood, village, and church domes.
Many of the villages are dominated by large domed and belfried
sacred edifices ; some of the domes gilded, but generally green or
blue, and here and there the latter bespangled with gilded stars.
We passed some large factories, which, after twilight, were bril
liant with Edison's electric lights. The most picturesque objects,
however, were the great monasteries — vast piles with splendid
churches, domes gilded or of azure blue, turrets and colonnaded
cloisters, covering many acres, generally on commanding points,

446 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
or on promontories projecting out into the placid stream. These
monasteries are very rich, and are surrounded or backed by great
domains in field and meadow, with comfortable villages half hid
den in wooded copse. The monasteries are so large and rich in
appearance that they give to the upper Volga a scenic effect
delicious and pleasing.
The villages, from 'our steamer, looked comfortable, houses of
wood — many of the pretty log style — with steep roof of thatch,
kept in place by poles. Windmills are abundant, lo to 15 often
close together, throwing their weird wings in rounded circles
above the low cottages ; then over the back country and cutting
the horizon on the distant upland, these spectral-winged monsters,
whirling in the lessening twilight, add greatly to the pleasing
picture. No paint gives garish white or tawdry coloring to the
villages, but all is aesthetic and soft, the weather alone softening
all down into delicious harmony. Herds of cattle here, as indeed,
all along the river, are bathing in the hot noon.
Several of the cities are very picturesque from the river.
Yaroslav and Kastroma we had time to drive into. In the
former, which has a population of only about 28,000, there are 73
churches. It was once the capital of a free province, as Kastroma
for a few years was of all Russia. In the latter there is a mon
astery nearly 1,000 years old, with a quaint old church, and with
in its walls the little house in which Michael, the first of the
Romanoffs, lived as a refugee before the crown was tendered him.
His house is a little bijou affair, preserved religiously as he left it.
The monks show with great pride many of the czar's relics, rich
vestments in brocade and pearls, and goblets of solid gold. The
wealth of the churches and of the monasteries of Russia is vast ;
some say it would go a long way in paying off the country's debt.
It would take, however, many tons of gold and silver, and bushels
of pearls and precious stones to pay off a debt of $2,500,000,000.
At Rybinsk we took rail, ran through a low country of bog and
partially cultivated lands, with great woods of birch and pine. It
being Sunday, we saw hundreds of peasants at the stations — come
to see the railroad train, the women probably to look with round-
eyed pleasure at the well dressed lady passengers, who promenade
the platforms when the trains stop for a few moments. The
peasants seemed poor, but not discontented. We saw hundreds
when driving in the outskirts of Rybinsk coming into town for
the holiday. The women all were barefooted with their Sunday
shoes over their shoulders, to be donned before entering the
crowded streets. Nature patches up the soles of their feet, but a
cobbler alone can fix those of their shoes. The every-day shoe of
the peasant is a sandal of plaited bark ; but it seems, from what
we can see, that the man treats himself to a pair of boots long
before he gives leather to his wife. Throughout Russia high top-
boots are almost universal. Officers and upper classes all wear

THE CZAR AN AUTOCRATIC FATHER. 447
them, and only the middle-class city man is shod in shoes. The
laborers, when sufficiently well off to drop the sandal, take to boots,
never to shoes. The boots are all of varnished tops and made
so as to wrinkle closely about the ankles, and are washed when
soiled. Boots and shoes are made of uncolored leather, and when
finished are varnished black. High heels are foolishly affected —
so high that many in walking seem to suffer from corns, and often
the well dressed lady minces along in a very ungraceful gait.
The country after striking the great Nicholas railroad from
Moscow continued low, except through the Valdai Hills, which
rise to 600 and 800 feet. Thence to St. Petersburg this great
trunk line traverses a wooded country with a cold, thin soil only
partially cultivated. The road was not laid out for local traffic,
but as a military highway between the two capitals. The cele
brated order of Czar Nicholas, who, when asked how he wished
the road to run, replied by taking a ruler and drawing a straight
line, bears repetition here. The track is as nearly a bee line, as
possible, and is gratefully so to travellers, for the trains glide along
it almost without any jar or even crepitation. I do not recall any
road which seems as smooth.
We have now been in St. Petersburg six days, doing the capital
at our leisure, and enjoying an almost continued day, for at
II o'clock one can read by the twilight, and a broad dawn
covers a quarter of the northern hemisphere at midnight. Thurs
day, the 19th of July, we visited Peterhof, about 20 miles from
the city, seeing the great imperial residence, and at the same time
witnessing the meeting and landing of the emperors of Russia and
Germany. For a week or two the London Times and other
western papers have been talking of the meeting of these two
rulers, yet not until four days ago was it even alluded to by the
St. Petersburg papers, and then only meagrely. It would be
amusing if it were not distressing to see how the people of this
capital have to go to papers published so far away for information
as to what passes or will pass directly under their noses. For ex
ample, I noticed a strong platform being built around the Alexan
der monument in front of the Winter Palace. I inquired, but
could not learn, its purpose. To-day, I learn its object from the
London Times of three days ago. The government does not appear
to think the people have any interest in its doings. Ukases are
published, but not discussed beforehand. The publication is the
first information the general public has that a law is even thought of.
Gen. Annenkoff lately finished the Transcaspian railroad to Sam
arcand. Russians with whom we have travelled told us they ex
pected him now to become one of the big men of the country, but
how they had no idea. Two days ago it was announced by the
Times he had been given the diamond order of Alexander
Novsky, the highest in the land. The public did not know what
the proceedings at Kronstadt and Peterhof connected with the

448 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
meeting of the emperors were to be until the day before they took
place. The emperor is the father of his people and presumes they
will be .satisfied with whatever he in his parental love will do for
their good ; and so far I have not been able to discover that his
children are not satisfied with this order of doing. They never
discuss politics, at least with foreigners, except as to the relations
of Russia with foreign lands, Then there is not much reticence.
I have not seen one intelligent man who does not declare that a
free outlet into the Mediterranean is a political necessity, and that
they want and must have unrestricted trade with all of Asia.
They say they do not want India, but they desire free roads and
free commerce with that land, and they have a general impression
that Enghsh rule in India is galling upon the natives.
Peterhof is the residence of the czar. He occupies the palaces
in the capital only for short periods each year during the gayeties
of the winter season. His so-called country residence is a pretty
though not grand palace. He resides, however, even there in a
fine villa residence and not in the true Peterhof palace, which
stands upon an elevation of 70 to 80 feet, overlooking a beautiful
park of some four or so miles in length along the bay lying
between the mainland and Kronstadt, five or more miles off. The
park is broken and not over a third of a mile in width — perhaps
not over a quarter, — and is finely wooded and prettily laid out
with drives and gravelled walks. Immediately in front of the
centre pavilion of the palace an alley is cut through the woods
down to the beach, here hardly a quarter of a mile off. This alley,
less than 100 feet wide, is flanked by tall firs, running up in spire
forms. In the centre of the alley runs a stream or canal of water
confined between granite walls, and not over 60 feet in width,
leading down to the beach, spanned by three pretty bridges, and
ending upon a small walled-in harbor, with pretty landing
pavilion, from which the royal household takes the imperial yacht
when it goes upon the water. Immediately under the palace the
head of the alley spreads to 200 feet, after having dropped from the
terrace on which the building stands, down to the canal or stream
below. This descent is fashioned into a beautiful system of
marble steps, with waterfalls, fountains, and jets supported by 30
or more statues of life-size in burnished gilt and supporting jets
d'eau. The statues are in double rows, the two inner ones in a
line with the walls of the stream leading down to the sea-shore.
At the foot of the terrace is a large circular basin, 50 to 100 feet
in diameter, with a gilt statue of several times life-size, holding a
dolphin, whose mouth is a jet throwing up a stream of 80 feet,
and surrounded with many smaller jets. Along the walls of the
canal which runs seaward are rows of fountains with lofty jets
throwing 50 feet high, mingling their sprays with the branches of
the fir trees. Flanking the large fountain at the foot of the
terrace are two other fountains of very large size, with beautiful

THE BEAUTY OF PETERHOF. 449
sprays, and below them two marble houses 30 feet high, with
gilded domes and fan-like fountains pouring over their golden
sloping roofs. Altogether there are more than 100 fountains or
jets immediately in view from the terrace above. The great one,
called " The Samson," throws its water 80 feet up ; and 30 more
spout in spreading spray about 50 feet; the others from lO to 20 —
the majority of them vertically, others at angles. Looking from the
upper terrace down upon this system of jets d'eau and along the
marble walks below, filled with brilliantly dressed people, the lofty
sprays mingling with the foliage of the trees, and the calm sea seen
silvery in the sunlight through the clean-cut alley, we had a
picture of surpassing beauty ; or looking up from the lower end
of the marble canal, through the jets and to the dazzling terrace,
over the 100 fountains, one could feel as if it were the creation of
a fairy's wand. .The waters at Versailles are larger than these, but
far less artistic in design.
This scene we had time to enjoy, and through it was to be con
veyed the young Emperor of Germany on his royal visit. It was
expected the czar would reach this little harbor with his guest at
three o'clock, and the empress and her suite and many high offi
cials, in flashing court uniforms, were in the pavilion at that hour.
We soon found that there would be some hours to wait. We
whiled away our time walking about the parks and inspecting the
long lines of guards and young cadets who lined the drives along
which the emperors must pass, and in watching the thousands of
people gathered to do honor to their country's guest. We heard
German constantly spoken about us, showing that the subjects of
William II., or the czar's Courlanders, were out in full force.
Hour after hour passed, and it was about five when we saw in the
distance, near Kronstadt, a puff of smoke from one of the men-
of-war drawn up in line. Soon the whole line of ships, stretched
apparently for miles, was blazing away. We could not hear a
cannon's report, but we could see the firing. I suspect it gave us
an idea of what an old-fashioned naval fight in line of battle
looked like. It was not long before every ship was enveloped in
smoke, and nothing was seen but a thick veil rolling away to the
southward. Presently my glass showed a steamer with a lofty white
flag, emerging from the smoke cloud and headed for Peterhof,
and when I saw the tidy, trim-looking empress standing alone in
the open hall of the pavilion, with her glass levelled at it, I knew
she was looking toward her imperial lord. On either side of the
pavilion on the pier there were long lines of seamen, in clean,
white uniforms. These began to show a stir, and when the
steamer was a quarter of a mile off, a couple of cannon were fired
by them in the regulation salute, and not long after the emperor's
yacht steamed to the pier. The gang-plank was run out, and the
burly, towering autocrat of all the Russias mounted it, affection
ately embraced his lovely wife, and presented his guest. Having;

45°

A RACE WITH THE SUN.

witnessed this, we hurried back so as to get a position from which
we could closely see the two men who wield the destinies of so
many millions of human beings. There was some shouting, but
by no means enthusiastic, as the emperor entered the drives lined
with people.
First came the imperial open carriage, drawn by four handsome
black horses. Alexander wore a Prussian helmet, and made no
acknowledgment of the salute of the people. Politeness accorded
the reception all to his guest. The Emperor of Germany was
uncovered, and bowed to the right and left. I was not over ten
feet away from him as he slowly crossed one of the little bridges,
and was glad to see a decidedly good-looking, bright face, with a
pleasant expression, not lacking in intellectual characteristics,
and withal of much strength. The next carriage held Prince
Henry and the czarowitz, both in lively and laughing chat. The
prince was uncovered. I would have known him at once from a
picture in the Graphic when he was married. The Empress of
Russia and one lady were also in a four-horse carriage. She was
cheered with very considerable enthusiasm, and her warm-looking
face evinced real pleasure at it. While not a beauty, she is de
cidedly pretty ; has fine dark eyes, rich complexion, full lips, and,
I should judge, could love deeply and hate not wisely. Our old
friend, the Grand Duke Alexis, was alone in his carriage, as hand
some as ever, quite gray, and, I learned, a great favorite with the
people. He is the admiral of the Russian navy.
I could not help feeling a sort of admiration for the Emperor
of Germany — admiration for his wonderful position, so young
and with such power for good or for woe to so many millions.
As he passed, the thought flashed across my brain: "You look
strong and brave ; you have in your hands the destiny of Europe
for years to come. It groans beneath the tramp of millions of
men, banded and trained to destroy. What will you do with
them ? Kings have boasted that with a stamp of the foot they
could set armies in motion and hurl them against the world. Will
you not invent a new royal boast — the boast that with a stamp of
your loot you disbanded armies and spread over a suffering world
a panoply of peace ? So many kings have worn the laurel and the
oak for wreaths that their leaves are hardly an honor. Cannot
William of Germany deck his brow with an olive leaf — a unique
crown for a king ? The world has had so many military heroes
that it has groaned beneath their weight, but so few really wise
rulers in peace. Can you not be a leader of the few ? "
Of all the infatuations of mankind, to me the strangest is its
worship of the soldier and its admiration of bravery. Bravery is
so common, so animal, and withal almost universal. Europe to
day has several millions of soldiers. A coward among them would
be a rare exception, except in a panic. Few soldiers have the
¦courage to show themselves cowards — the moral courage to

YA AMERIKANETS. 45 1
enable them to brave the contempt of their fellows. The com
monest one will march up to a cannon's mouth. Not one in a
thousand would turn and run when the bugle sounds for a
charge. And yet the world bows before a soldier, and bends the
neck to the tread of one who happens to be at the head of an
army when it performs some mighty feat of slaying.
I could not catch the features of the czar as he passed us. He
was next us, and kept his face too much towards his guest for me
to see more than a glimpse as the carriage came up. He is very
tall, and now quite fleshy ; looked, with his epaulets and helmet,
a giant by the side of the well knit but rather undersized kaiser.
The drive, along which passed the long line of splendid carriages,
with coachmen and footmen in cocked hats and covered with gold
lace and braid, with their occupants, officers in brilliant uniforms,
was guarded by soldiers, placed apparently less for protection
than for keeping the foot-people from pressing too close, and a
part of it being the guard and battalion of young cadets. The
whole made a handsome picture, especially as the cortege crossed
the bridge over the canal, along which the white spray of fountains
was washing the branches of the green trees. Desiring to see the
czar closely, I walked up to the palace directly after the cortege
had passed the bridge, while the carriages took a roundabout
line. An officer was at the steps mounting the terrace at the
waterfall, and turned all away from it except a few men in uni
form and some finely dressed ladies. I touched my hat, saying:
" Ya Amerikanets " (I am an American), with a gesture showing
I desired to ascend. Whether he understood my Russian or not
I do not know. At any rate I mounted, with the conscious
dignity of being an American sovereign. This declaration of
mine, " I am an American," has given me many opportunities for
seeing things denied to others. I shall take out a patent for the
thing, for it is quite as effective for me here as Paul's declaration,
Civis sum Romanus, was to him nearly 19 centuries ago.
To-day the grand military review was held at Krasnoe-Szelo.
We did not go out, for we would have been kept back with the
mob, and would have seen but little of real advantage. Yester
day I was told, by one who ought to krtow, that a drive, expected
to be taken by the czar and emperor, was changed because of
some Nihilistic rumors in the air. Big men here are quite as
easily scared by rumors of this sort as they are in Chicago, where
anarchist ghosts are constantly bobbing up before some people's
visions. This afternoon the great street, Nevsky Prospekt, was
lined with people who expected the emperor to pass. The
crowd waited long, and finally, nearly three hours after they were
expected, and during which time one half of the driveway was
kept clear by the police, an open carriage, followed by three or
four others, came along in a brisk trot. Emperor William and
Prince Henry were in the front, and bowed their salutations to the

452 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
people. But the czar was not there. Was it " etiquette " which
prevented him from accompanying his imperial guest on his drive
to see the city, or was there some truth as to the Nihilistic rumor ?
I felt a satisfaction in the fact that the German was not afraid to
go where he was announced, even if his host was less willing to
trust his subjects.
The czar occasionally, but rarely, drives through the streets,
going to a church, or for some other purpose, but it is never
known in advance what way he is going. The villainous murder
of his kind father, the best friend that liberty had had in Russia,
is enough to make the son feel somewhat anxious, but I doubt if
he be wise in holding himself so aloof from the people as he does.
A king wins confidence by showing it himself. There may be
madmen who would attempt to repeat the cruel act which took
Alexander II. off, but such madmen are, however, best disarmed
by being ever watchful and on the alert, and, at the same time,
showing them that they are not feared. The assassin is a
coward at heart. To avoid him helps to make him less a coward.
A bold, fearless front makes him more and more a coward. I
lifted my hat with a feeling of increased respect for the brave and
cheery-looking young German Emperor when he drove by me this
afternoon, with no apparent guard other than the good-will and
hospitality of his entertainers. The people of this country have
already received from him large benefits. Every dollar's worth
of goods exported from Russia brings back ten per cent, more of
return than it did a few weeks ago, before he announced his visit
to the czar.. Five weeks ago I received for my English sove
reigns \\\ roubles ; last week I could only get loj. The trusting
act of William in driving unattended through the streets of this
great capital called forth many kindly expressions from its people,
and he received evidence of their respect in a generous cheering
and universal removal of hats.
What may be the political effect of his visit time alone will tell.
Wise newspaper men abroad are giving out their learned opinions
in tones worthy of Malvolio. They say it means nothing, but I,
who am rather an optimist in political matters, prophesy that
good, very decided good, will grow out of it.

CHAPTER XLIIL
ST. PETERSBURG— POLITENESS AND GOOD NATURE OF THE RUS
SIANS—SUPERB GALLERIES— HERMITAGE— WINTER PALACE
—WINTER REVELRY— ST. ISAAC'S CHURCH— ILLUMI
NATION AT PETERHOF.
Wiborg, Finland, July 26, 1888.
I HAVE always had a vague impression that Peter the Great was
somewhat daft — that he was a sort of a lunatic bear, who ima
gined he could create a mighty empire and rule it from his ice-cave
home up near the polar sea. His odd sayings and odder doings,
read of when I was a boy, gave me this impression ; and nothing
was more conducive to the formation of the idea than his deter
mination to build a mighty and permanent city on the quagmire
at the head of the Gulf of Finland, where every thing was frozen
up for nearly nine months of the year, and where, during the next
three, an outraged sun hatched mosquitoes into fierce beasts of
prey. But since I have seen St. Petersburg, and have been an
eye-witness of its grandeur, and have seen so much of the vast
country of which it is the capital, I have been more than ever con
firmed in another of my theories — that lunacy and genius are, if
not one and the same, at least twin brothers. Men are in the
habit of saying that to the eye of genius things unfold themselves
with crystal clearness, while to the ordinary mind they are cloudy,
if not muddy. I, however, have an idea that one-eyed genius
sees the things which throb in the brain behind, and, lacking the
lights of judgment, is not turned to the right or the left by those
arguments of reason, which hold other and more rounded brains
bridled and in check. The poet utters the thought which burns
in his frenzied brain. His words are deep chiselled into marble, and
ring throughout all time. The same thought has run through
a thousand steadier brains, but judgment whispered : " This
is fustian, sound, and fury," and the thought was not formulated
into words ; but when these same steadier brains afterwards hears
it from the poet's lips, it comes home to them and awakens echoes
in the soul, and they bow down before the genius who uttered in
madness what they themselves have a thousand times felt but
dared not clothe in words. Lear and Hamlet were madmen, but
Shakespeare — Ignatius says Bacon — gave words to their mad
dened thoughts, and sent them seething down into the souls
of millions of calmer men, who recognized them as echoes of their
453

454

A RACE WITH THE SUN.

own moments of agony and sorrow. They, however, suffer and
are silent. It was Voltaire, I think, who gave nearly the same
idea when he said : " Le g6nie — c'est I'audace." Madman or
genius, Peter drove a pile down into the quivering bog on the
banks of the Neva, and swore that on it he would build a " house
with a window through which he could look out into Europe."
His counsellors dared not expostulate, for it was a dangerous
thing to thwart the will of the autocrat. What is, is right. The
steadfast rock gathers moss, and around its base nature heaps up
sands. Indomitable will and despotic force laid the foundations
of this city ; the people, but earthworms, bored about among the
rocks and cut them into shifting sands, which grew and grew
about Peter's cottage. They dug canals, which unite the Neva
through the Volga with the White Sea of the north and the far-
off Caspian of the south, and married these distant waters to the
Baltic of the west. And St. Petersburg, the creation of mad
Peter's will, calm, dignified, and grand in the twilight dawn of a
summer's midnight ; brilliant and dazzling in the snows and burn
ing lights of the long, gay nights of winter ; with its palaces in
majestic piles, and temples and churches with rounded domes cut
upon the blue sky ; its great factories and business houses ; its
many river branches and canals, through which clear water pours
in massive volume and rapid current, lined with granite quays and
spanned by innumerable bridges; with its broad paved streets,
along which thousands of vehicles are always rattling ; its wooded
gardens, filled with beautiful houses and gay pavilions ; its long
colonnades, its statues, and monuments ; its hundreds of steamers
darting up and down its many water-ways ; and its thousands of
barges, loaded with wares of many lands — St. Petersburg sits
here between Lake Lacj^o^a and Finland's Gulf, apparently so fit
tingly placed that the cynical genius of Voltaire would scarcely be
able to ask, as it did of Berlin : — " Belle ville, que fais tu la?''
This city is generally spoken of as handsome and regularly
built, with long rows of palatial edifices, handsome in detail, but
monotonous and lacking picturesqueness, because of the regu
larity. This is an unjust criticism. There is nothing of the
quaintness .seen in the old German towns, with which, I suspect,
travellers have in their minds made comparisons. There is, however,
much which is picturesque, but all in modern style. Along the
Neva the great size of the public edifices so arrests attention that
one is apt to dwell too long upon the single structure. A coup
d'ceil, however, gives much of variety, and brings out much for
relief in the different styles of architecture ; and the various tint-
ings, all neutral, are very restful to the eye. Everywhere there
is a general air of strength and dignity, and along the quay for a
mile or more the picture is one of imperial grandeur and magnifi
cence. A topographical outline of the city will probably not be
out of place.

OUTLINE OF ST. PETERSBURG. 45S
The river Neva, rising in Ladoga, the largest of European
lakes, flows southwesterly and then northwesterly, striking St.
Petersburg about 40 miles from the lake. It then bends due
north for a mile or so, and making a short curve, runs due west
for another mile, when it separates into two branches, one flowing
southwesterly, the other north and then westerly, into the bay,
two miles and two and a half miles respectively from the point
of separation. The points where these two branches strike the
sea are about two and a half or three miles apart. South of the
main river and the southerly branch lies the bulk of the city, with
the palaces and the finest of the public edifices. Between these
two branches, and springing out of them are several other
branches, some broad and deep, also emptying into the bay,
and forming five or six great islands, varying in size from 200
acres up to perhaps 1,000, and one much more. The three
main streams vary in width from, say 800 to 1,500 feet.
These islands are cut by small running canals into many smaller
islands. The more northerly ones are covered with villas and
wooded gardens, and one or two of them with parks of considerable
size, over which run fine gravel roads, along which rural-looking
villas are prettily dotted. Through the main city, which lies
south of the river, run three or four deep canals of 100 or
so feet in width and spanned by many handsome bridges at
streets intersecting. These canals, as well as those on the islands,
bend about in wanton manner. On them run small steamers or
steam barges, carrying passengers at a cent a mile, or less, and
crowds of large barges, loaded with every character of freight, and
carrying it almost to the doors of the warehouses. I say almost,
for streets run along the canals on both sides, and of greater or
less width. All of the river branches have rapid, and the canals
fair currents of dark bog water — of water colored by pine lands
and swamps, not pure enough for potable purposes, but consid
ered sufficiently so for bath-houses, many of which float on the
main branches and on the canals of the islands, and quite a num
ber on the canals which intersect the main city. The water of
the main branches is drunk. The city, however, is provided with
drinking-water from above the town, Etnd the streets are sprinkled
by movable hose directly from the street hydrants, which throw
with a strong head.
All streets are paved, mostly with small cobble, kept in con
stant repair, and drained by an underground system of sewer
age. The more prominent streets are partially paved with
wooden blocks — that is, with a band or bands 15 to 20 feet of
blocking, the remainder on either side with cobble. Nevsky
Prospekt, one of the great streets, and the most prominent one
for retail business purposes, has a roadway of 90 feet divided
into five narrower ways ; the outer ones cobbled, then two of
blocks, and the middle, in which the tramway runs, cobbled.

456 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
The blocks are laid together closely in exact hexagons, upon two-
by eight-inch boards, tarred and laid an inch apart, spiked
strongly to six by eight sills solidly bedded into the soil below,
the whole drained by lines of eight by ten troughs, leading into
man-holes. The cobbles are fitted closely together, and then the
interstices are filled with very small broken granite, and with
sand thrown an inch deep over all. The tramway or street-car
rails are grooved, with the bearing flange an inch and a half
wide ; the inner flange, about a half inch wide, and laid absolutely
flush with the pavement. This is a cold climate with long winters
and deep snows, and I am told there is no difficulty in keeping
the grooves clear, and I know that carriages pass across the rails
at all sorts of diagonals without any difficulty or unpleasant jerk
ing. American cities should force street-car companies to use
the groove rail. It would save a great amount of damage to the
running gear of wagons, and would enable light vehicles to cross
safely and without wrenching wheels. The horse-cars on two of
the tramway lines connect quite in the thick of the town with
cars propelled by steam. They are heated by coke, and are
as noiseless as the horse-cars, and do not frighten horses in the
least. Street gutters and sewer openings are so located that street
intersections are flush with the sidewalks. Street-repairers are
constantly at work. The authorities understand that a stitch in
time saves nine, and that the excellence of a street is not in hav
ing it well built first so much as keeping it in thorough repair
afterward. St. Petersburg has a population of 950,000. We were told by
some of its citizens, whom we met at various points before reach
ing it, that every one was out of town during the summer; that
we would find the heat oppressive, the dust bad, the mosquitoes
intolerable, and the flies a nuisance ; but that in the winter it was
glorious, a sort of paradise in snow, where the people have a con
tinuous carnival on ice. Judging by what we saw of things con
nected with winter, there must be every concomitant necessary
to make it joyous. The houses are well built, with thick walls,
and everywhere double windows hung permanently and fitting
closely. The sleighs are pretty and in great varieties. The
horses are tough, well-formed, sufficiently speedy, and of wonder
fully good tempers. Hot-houses have been brought to perfection,
and one now sees in windows melons so sweet that one almost
imagines that they convey their odor through the sense of sight ;
grapes, peaches, and flowers, palms, and ferns, of rare perfection.
And in winter, I am told, there is a vast profusion of hot-house
plants. The summers are so short that out-door flowers are not
at all relied on, but hot-hou.ses are abundant and finely managed.
Willie has been in a state of desperation throughout our long
journeyings in Russia because he had not seen over two or three

THE RUSSIAN A POLITE MAN. 457
very pretty women, and very few who were not positively homely.
But from his frequent ejaculations as we walked the streets or
mingled with the crowds in and about St. Petersburg, such as
"Ah, there!" Ah, there! my beauty," " Ah, there ! my size," I
have come to the conclusion that the czar has attracted nearly all
of Russia's beauty to the capital. Willie tells me that there are
as many pretty women in it as he has seen anywhere, except at
Buda-Pesth. The men are generally polite and pleasant. They
lack etiquette ; but of that politeness which has its origin in the
heart they have a great deal. One form of etiquette is through
out Russia absolutely universal. A man never enters a house
(except a station) without removing his hat. This habit may
perhaps have grown out of the fact that every house — indeed,
almost every room and shop — has its " Ikon," or holy, image.
Men uncover on entering a room, taking it for granted that they
go into the presence of a sacred emblem. This is done in the
post-office, in the vestibule of galleries and court-houses, in the
commonest butcher shop, in the little store-room where the attend
ant, perhaps a little girl, could carry off all her goods in a half-
dozen half-bushel baskets. Men, too, lift their hats to each other
very sedulously. I have seen pilgrims in dirty rags with tattered
sandals, knapsack and rough staff, accost each other on a
thoroughfare by first removing, in studied form, their filthy looking
sheepskin caps.
' All smoke cigarettes, and delight to hold a gallon of carbon in
their lungs and then roll it out like steam from a 'scape-pipe. In
southern Russia and the Caucasus the women — matrons, and
even some unmarried ones — smoke almost as universally as do
the men. I have had, two or three times, nicely dressed ladies
step up to me in a railroad station or on the platform and beg of
me a light. I suppose this arose from my having a cigar, from
which a better light could be had than from the cigarette of
another. In northern Russia and at St. Petersburg I have seen
but two women with cigarettes, and one of them was a princess.
I am told comparatively few smoke here. I am glad that villain
ous habit, which John Bull is carrying around the world, of ram
ming his hand into his pocket for a match when asked for a light,
instead of handing you his burning cigar, is not in vogue here.
When I ask for a light I do not ask for a match. I wish that
which costs the giver nothing, whereas when he goes down into
his pocket he takes trouble for me, and gives me something of
fixed value when he hands me a match. There is a sort of good-
fellowship in the loan of a light. There is a polite insult when
a man gives you a match, for he virtually says : " I have a good
cigar, and I do not wish it poisoned by your weed." The use of
tobacco is at best nasty. There is, however, a sort of free
masonry in the mingling of smoke and loaning a " chaw." I
always liked the feeling which would make a Southern gentleman

458 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
take tobacco from an old darkey, who always begs tobacco, even
when his pocket is full. I have seen a negro pull from his greasy
pocket a plug and hand it to a gentleman, who would bite off a
good " chaw," and never insulted his sable friend by picking off
the outside dirt. A Russian gives and takes a light freely from a
stump. Our journeyings of over 5,500 miles in Russia have been a
revelation to me in many things. First, as to the capabilities of
this vast country; the enormous stretches of land whose produc
tiveness is unequalled by any other ; the depth of the soil; the
rich underlying clays in the south and middle provinces, render
ing famine-producing drought impossible ; the breadth of the
wooded districts of the north ; the systems of rivers of deep cur
rents and without rapids permeating the whole country in such a
manner that short canals can connect them and make water
communication almost continuous from the Arctic Sea to the
Black, from the Baltic far into the foot-hills of the Ural moun
tains. But above all it has been a revelation as to the character
istics of the people. I knew, from many I had previously met in
Continental wanderings, that the upper-class Russian was an
elegant gentleman, but I thought the middle and lower classes
were uncouth, rough, ill-tempered, and bordering upon the brutal.
How different have I found them ! I have mixed with them in
crowds, when working, when worshipping, when idle and when
busy, and when drunk; have watched crowds of peasants and
great gatherings of well-to-do citizens on steamboats, in crowded
railway stations, and in packed railroad cars, and if asked what
are the most marked characteristics of the whole people I would
reply: Amiability and kindliness. They are, moreover, charita
ble. I have seen them, again and again, turn back to give in
small charity to beggars and to needy ones whom they had
passed unnoticed by the wayside. The importunities of beggars
do not seem to annoy them, as is the case among most people.
Too many in our favored land give to the poor and helpless, not
cheerily and for the sake of helping, but rather to get rid of
them, and then with an air of one casting a bone to a dog. Men
dicants throng the vestibules and entrances to churches here,
showing that it is of men's piety they ask. With us, and in Eng
land, they throng the doors of theatres and other places of
amusement, as if expecting help from the prodgical and the care
less. Perhaps they avoid our churches because the ministers have
a corner on the charity of the pious. I have been surprised by
the numbers of all classes who give with kindly air to the poor
supplicants at church doors, in the towns and cities we have
visited. One sees evidences of this amiability in many ways ; all
seern especially kind to children and to animals.
Birds are almost as gentle here as they are in India, where
Buddhism has taught that the soul of an ancestor or a relative

THE RUSSIAN A GOOD-NATURED ANIMAL. 459
may be in the body of some dumb creature, and where charity to
the brute is taught as a religious duty. Crows hop along the
road within a few feet of passers-by. Birds of all sorts perch upon
telegraph wires, and do not fly until the wind made by the train
ruffles their feathers. Pigeons fly down among drosky-drivers,
and are frequently so close to me that I try to touch them with
my cane. Dogs trot the streets with their tails curled over their
backs, as independent as wood-sawyers, and I am told rarely ever
fight. I have not seen any thing bordering upon a fight between
men, and yet I have seen thousands drunk. Give a Russian an
accordion and he is happy and too good-natured to kill a flea. I
mentioned these things to a very intelligent gentleman. He
laughed and said ; " Why, I have been in many lands, and I
believe we have the most amiable people that exist, and their
amiability has gone down among all their domestic animals. Our
men rarely quarrel and never fight ; our dogs don't snarl or bite,
and our horses won't kick." I rejoined : " And yet you have
Nihilists ! " " Ah," he said, " have you not noticed the better the
woman the worse she becomes when she falls? Your amiable
man, when he turns lunatic, is your fiercest man. In old Greece
there was a sect of philosophers who proved by arguments, to
their own satisfaction at least, that there was no such thing as
material existence; that all materialism was but the figment of
the imagination. Our scholastic students have reasoned them
selves into the belief of Nihilism. They are philosophic mad
men." "And like every other disease it must run its course until
thrown off by a better growth," I added. " I am afraid so," he
rejoined, with a sigh. The love of flowers seems universal here.
It pervades all classes throughout the entire country we have
passed. In cities, towns, and villages, dwelling-house windows
are filled with flowers — in first and second stories, — and often so
full that they look like conservatories, and at every country station
children sell wild flowers.
I said something about dogs. That reminds me that we have
seen in all parts of Russia so far visited, dogs of all breeds, and
apparently pure. Setters and pointers of beautiful make, mon
ster St. IBernards, and spaniels, aqd poodles, greyhounds and
pugs, turnspits, shaggy dogs, and smooth-haired dogs, all
well kept and on most kindly footing with the people. The
kindliness to the brute creation seems to have been acquired
by the close relations, long-continued, of the Russians with their
Asiatic neighbors. This brings me back to another Oriental
peculiarity of these people. That is the disposition of merchants
to congregate in great bazaars. Every city has its one or more
large establishment of this kind ; many of them being ele
gant, and all picturesque. In them every character of mer
chandise can be bought, from a baby doll up to a threshing-
machine, and in all, goods are displayed in Oriental colorings.

46o A RACE WITH THE SUN.
Several of the bazaars of St. Petersburg are monster affairs and
built with an eye to architectural beauty. On Nevsky Pros
pekt is one with a front of 700 feet by a depth of over 1,400
on the two cross, and backing on a rear street. It is two stories
high, with a central and two end pavilions on each street, and a
handsome columned portico in front of each central paviHon, and
arched two-story colonnades on the four fronts. It is divided
into a great number of small shops on the first story, and into
store-rooms above and store-houses in the rear. Close to this are
several others, nearly as large, with ornamental fixed iron awnings
over the sidewalks. The ground of the principal one belongs to
the city, the others to wealthy noblemen. The ground owners
built the houses on fixed and fine plans, and then sold the houses
to individual proprietors, reserving an annual leasehold rental.
There has been a general disposition throughout the city to build
in great blocks and divide them up for the several business pur
poses, thus giving it a stately and imperial appearance. There
are no open store fronts, as in America. This makes the blocks
appear more like palaces. The hotel we stopped in, on the cor
ner of Nevsky Prospekt, and near the handsome Michael Palace,
is a splendid four-story edifice, with a frontal of 636 feet. With
the exception of a few of the great public buildings, and one or
two churches, all structures, public and private, are of brick plas
tered in Portland cement ; some are white, but the majority are
yellowish-brown, salmon, peach-blow, and other delicate neutral
tints ; blue and green being, I think, entirely avoided. The public
edifices, palaces, admiralty, etc., along the quay cover a length of
about a mile, and, together with others behind them, a depth of
perhaps a quarter of a mile. Besides these there are many other
state structures and palaces scattered throughout the city on both
banks of the river. The imperial palaces are not used as such
now, but are devoted to galleries, museums, schools of art, acad
emies of science, engineering, etc. They are generally of great
size, three or four stories high, and of elegant though not elabo
rate architectural design.
The museums and art collections are rich in their contents, and
of vast value both to the student and to the amateur. One can
with profit spend days and days in the " Hermitage." The col
lections of coins are unequalled elsewhere. Case after case of
antique seals and exquisitely cut stones and cameos are bewilder
ing, nearly all with fine impressions in wax or plaster, showing
the delicate design and artistic finish. Room after room, and
some of great size, are filled with statuary, antique and modern,
and many of them of highest merit, and vast numbers of Etrus
can vases. Grand halls, lofty and perfectly lighted, have on their
walls nearly 2,000 pictures, all good and many of them chefs-
d'oeuvre. Two or three hundred of them are masterpieces of
Raphael, Correggio, Domenichino, Leonardo da Vinci, Cario Dolce,

WONDERS OF ART. 461
Guido, Van Dyck, Teniers, Ruysdael, Rembrandt, and other
great painters, but above all of Murillo. I have never seen so
many works together of this, to me, unapproachable master.
There are a few fine ones scattered in different European collec
tions, which had caused me to admire him even above Raphael.
But here there are about 20, all in one room, in admirable light,
and three or four of them of grandest character. There is a rich
ness of tone, borrowed, I suppose, from Moorish blood, in his
pictures shown by no other artist. Raphael's Madonnas are too
pure for motherhood. They are artless girls who never dreamed
of guile and were never touched by a human passion. They
nurse the Christ-child as an angel who never touched earth would
fondle a pure scintillation. But Murillo's Mary is a woman
with a woman's heart, overflowing with love, full of unborn pas
sion, a passion that might have been fearfully tempted had not
the all-seeing eye watched over it, and the whispered counsels of
invisible angels directed and angels' hands guided it into paths of
celestial purity. Murillo's Mother of God was a woman who
gave to her child the human passions which enabled him to feel
for the woes of man, and to sympathize with him in his human
struggles ; gave to him a humanity which made him bear his
cross in agony, and to sweat great drops of blood, and to cry out
in human woe as he gave up the ghost. The heart-strings of
Raphael's Mary would have snapped at the sight of intense suf
fering ; but Murillo's Mary suffered and bore as only a woman
can suffer and bear, and when the moment of sublimation came,
she ascended into heaven, still a woman, but a woman turned into
a saint and borne upon angels' wings, fanned and elevated by the
breath of God toward her eternal throne. Close together here
one can gaze for hours on his two masterpieces, inferior to those
of no artist, and equalled only by Raphael's at Dresden. All the
schools of art are fully represented in this noble gallery, and most
masters have in it some of their finest pieces.
Adjoining and united by an arched gallery to the Hermitage
is another magnificent structure, the vast Winter Palace, with
great halls and noble stairways, beautiful marble pillars in great
profusion, lofty conservatories, and -a royal chapel in which rich
Oriental taste seems to have tried to exhaust itself in heaping up
gold and jewelled wealth. In this little chapel one has the ex
quisite satisfaction of seeing the dried hand and wrist of John
the Baptist, a picture of the Virgin painted by St. Luke, and a
piece of the original cross. Luke's colors were not of the fast
kind, for an eye of faith is required to enjoy the purity of the
lineaments of his immaculate subject. This palace has brilliant
specimens of malachite columns and mantels and cabinets, lapis
lazuli vases, and mosaics unsurpassed except in the Vatican.
Here, too, is Peter's gallery, with his private cabinets, his lathe
and working-tools, his diamond snuff-boxes and jewelled swords.

462 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
his clothes, miniatures, and bric-a-brac. A strange mixture of
imperialwealth and plodding industry ! One, however, is brought
nearer to the great Peter in the cottage across the river, in which
he lived while laying the foundations of the capital. There one
sees the old imperial carpenter and shipwright in close and familiar
quarters. I was boy enough to seat myself in a chair of his make
— a sort of combined seat and writing-desk which he used, and in
which I doubt not he often took a nap. I know most people
will say how silly ! But they must know I have adopted as a
motto: " 'T is folly to be wise."
One of the very attractive features of the galleries of St.
Petersburg are the tables, urns, and vases, some of them of great
size, in jasper, lapis lazuli, and Russia's peculiar marble, the sur
prisingly veined and beautifully green malachite. While one
would not go to a gallery more than once to see these things
alone, yet they afford cheerful relief when examining the -works
of art hanging on the walls. The Hermitage and the Winter
Palace each has probably more abundant and larger pieces of
this wonderful mineral — for it is rather a mineral than a stone —
than all the rest of the world together outside of this empire.
The walls of the Winter Palace are adorned by a great number of
large spirited battle-pieces representing Muscovite fights. Many
of them are very fine, but the city furnishes so many galleries
that a stay of months would be required to do them justice.
The emperor never, I believe, resides in any of these buildings,
unless for a few days when the great balls are given during the
long winter months, when his capital is held by a rule of ice and
two thirds of his huge dominions are wrapped in a mantle of
snow. Then in this imperial city, as if in mockery of grim
Boreas, King Carnival mounts his glittering throne, horses
prance and neigh as if partaking of the general joy, bells
jingle and sing in a thousand silvery tones, men in gold lace
and women in embroidered silks, all enveloped in warm mantles
borrowed from the furry denizens of the frozen regions of the
far north, flirt and sing, strut and dance, eat and drink in a high
revelry unknown to, and impossible in lands -where winter's sun
comes forth in warm and genial mood. Here his wintry face is
never fierce, and after a quick run in the short day he retires
early to his southern bed and leaves to man a long and weird
twilight, with streamers in the far north of " the borealis race
that flit ere you can point their place." Then and in those long
nights the autocrat comes among his children and gives them
the light of his imperial face, dearer to courtiers than the glow
of the king of day ; and noblemen and gentry strive to imitate
imperial splendor and to squander the treasures gathered from
their vast country estates. The very poor of the great city
grow enthusiastic when telling you of the gayeties of winter.
For it is then that they touch the gold given in free-handed

WINTER REVELRY. 463
largesse by the prodigal rich, or carelessly scattered in their
wild revelry.
The St. Petersburger asks in a breath of the traveller if he
has seen the Winter Palace and the Hermitage, the statue of
Peter the Great and St. Isaac's. He is proud of many things
in the great city, but these he believes unequalled in the world.
On a massive block of granite, weighing 1,500 tons, cut to re
semble a rugged precipice, the czar sits upon a proud charger,
both of heroic size, and on the brink of the precipice points to
the glorious work of his brain — the proud city of his dreams,
and seems to say : " I spake, and behold the creation of my
voice." He has, to me, the proudest expression I have ever
seen portrayed in marble, bronze, or living colors. The very
spirit of the autocrat, who considered obstacles but things to be
surmounted, and would not learn the meaning of the word fail,
seems to breathe from the proud face and bold demeanor of the
pile of bronze hanging over the precipice yawning beneath the
horse's feet. Other monuments are worthy of note, but I will
only name one, erected to commemorate a victory over the
Turks. It is an iron column standing on a lofty pedestal of
granite, and of nearly 50 feet in height, divided into six stories,
around which, in diminishing tiers, are arranged over 100 cannon
taken from the enemy. It is, I think, unique, and is a fitting
base for the lofty figure of Victory above, holding in one hand a
wreath in laurel of victory, and an olive branch in the other.
The olive branch, I suppose, to be handed over only when the
Mussulman surrenders the Bosphorus to the upholder of the
Russian cross.
As I said heretofore, the Russians are preeminently a pious
people, and take more pride in their churches than in any other
public structures. St. Petersburg is by no means a city of sacred
buildings. There are comparatively few, but several of them
are noble temples. In many respects the Cathedral of the
Saviour in Moscow is the most beautiful Christian temple I
have ever seen, but St. Isaac's here is one of the grandest and,
next to St. Peter's in Rome, is the most impressive and the
richest of churches. It is in form a perfect Greek cross, with a
length of 360 odd feet by 315, built of stone, resting on massive
granite foundations. Fronting each line of the cross is a noble
portico, raised on massive blocks of red granite, forming the
platform from which lift 28 columns, 60 feet high and 7 feet
in diameter, each a single piece of polished granite with heavy
bronze bases, and surmounted by florid Corinthian capitals in
the same metal. These support the upper part of the vast por
ticos, in the pediments of which are figures in bronze of great
size representing different biblical stories. At the four corners
of the edifice are four cupolas or domes, containing the great
bells, and relieved by bronze figures of colossal dimensions, but

464 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
appearing from the ground simply of life-size. Springing from
the centre between these smaller domes is the great dome or
cupola of gilded copper, resting on a colonnade of granite col
umns 30 feet high. The apex of this dome is nearly 300 feet
high. From its shoulder springs a smaller cupola or lantern of
same shape as the main dome. On this rests the great cross at
an elevation of 366 feet from the street.
The exterior of St. Isaac's is grand and in such perfect propor
tion that one can scarcely realize its great dimensions and lofty
height. The splendid bronze friezes and statues, its huge granite
columns of perfect polish, its gilded domes and lofty cross, and
the granite steps and platform of titanic dimensions — these are
all very impressive. But it is not until one has passed through
the great portals of bronze ornamented in alto-relievo and finds
himself in the dim and awful interior, with its huge pillars,
oblong in shape and massive in proportion, built of costly marble
of softest hues, pink and salmon of neutral tone predominating,
and picked out in bands of black and scrolls of white, and then
looks up to the huge rounded dome, letting in the sunlight from
far above — it is not until then that one can realize the perfection
of form of the vast edifice, or can realize the imperial richness of
its material. The pillars are all on bases and plinths of polished
bronze and crowned by capitals in the same rich metal in highest
Corinthian style ; above and resting on these is an interior cor
nice of great depth, whose prominent members are, too, of
bright bronze. The ikonistas, or screen, separating the main in
terior from the inner altar or tabernacle, instead of being light
and apparently movable, is stable and fixed, of perhaps 100 feet
in height, ornamented by ten malachite pillars over 30 feet high
and large and perfect in Corinthian form, surmounted by capitals
of wonderful work and resting on bases wrought with exquisite
leaf ornaments. In the centre of the ikonistas is a magnificent
bronze portal with swinging doors over 20 feet high and made of
exquisite leaf and vine openwork. Flanking the portal and next
the malachite columns are two pillars of lapis lazuli, 20 feet high
and of a marvellous color. Looking from one side, the malachite
columns seem a solid wall for the great screen.
St. Isaac's is celebrated, and deservedly so, for its music. The
reading by the priests is richly intoned, and men with great vol
ume of voice are chosen for the r61e. "The responses of the choir
are very sweet, but in the liturgy the effect is marvellously touch
ing. The service is very long on Sunday, lasting from ten to
nearly one. The floor of the church was crowded, when we were
present, by thousands of devotees, and either the music or their
own devotional feelings kept them standing throughout, with no
appearance of weariness. The fervent devotions of all worship
pers appeal strangely to the heart. I have been deeply affected
in a Buddhist temple. I was held in rapt attention at St. Sophia

GRAND ST. ISAAC'S CHURCH. 465
by a Mohammedan priest. Last Sunday at St. Isaac's my heart
welled up through my eyes. No opera ever appealed lo my love
of beautiful music as did the singing of the choir. Even the
oratorio of " Moses in Egypt," with Mario and Grisi, Belletti and
Albani, and several oth&x primi'vn. the roles, at Paris when I was a
young man, failed to impress me as did this Greek church music !
I do not wonder it takes such deep hold upon the people whose
religion seems almost entirely confined to externals.
Some clouds had hung over the sun for some time during ser
vice on Sunday at St. Isaac's, but as the choir sung out its joy
when the bread and wine were blessed, and the deep, mellow
tones of the huge bells entered through the lofty dome, mingling
with the sweet voices of the choristers, I looked up in almost
startled pleasure. As I did so the cloud rolled by, and the sun
shot down in bright rays through the far-above windows and sent
them in hallowed streams into the church below. I could
then understand the exaltation of devotees when they take for
miraculous many natural phenomena. The rayons of sunlight
poured down into the deep dimness of the church, and from them
spread in mellow mist throughout the glorious edifice ; and
through the great portal in front of the inner altar streamed a hal
lowed effulgence seeming to come from the grand figure of
Christ which fills, in gorgeous stained glass, the great window at
the rear. A sigh of deep devotion arose from a thousand men and
women about me as they bent upon their knees in devout thank
fulness. Next to the churches, the drosky is the most decidedly Russian
institution of the land. The one now most in use is a small, open
caleche with low wheels, the front a half foot narrower in the tred
than the rear ones, and being often not over 18 inches in diame
ter, but generally about two feet. The wheels are strongly built,
the hinder ones twice or more as high as those in front, with the
axle-spindle projecting a couple of inches beyond the hub, a pair
of heavy shafts bowing from the horse's girth and bending in
close to the withers. From the ends of the shaft lifts a rounded
bow or yoke some three feet high, firmly fastened to the shafts
and to the collar or hames. The horse draws directly by the
shafts and holds back by the same, there being a breeching run
ning from the collar on the outer sidcof the shaft and fastened to
it ; a strong trace runs back and is attached to the end of the
axle-spindle outside of the hub. The driver is always a chubby-
looking fellow, in a sort of frock heavily plaited or gathered in at
the waist under a belt. He wears a low-crowned hat immensely
belled and with narrow, rolling brim. He and his wagon look as
if they had been fashioned for each other. He is always sleepy
and good-natured, but wakes as quickly as a cat when called, and
asks more than the regular fare, but takes the right one when
given, with a smile. He is tough, his vehicle is tough, and his

466 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
horse is tough and seems never to tire. If you are not in a hurry
he goes in a jog-trot, but if you wish speed he goes at a break
neck pace, and no amount of jerking over rough streets or roads
ever breaks the wagon, wearies the horse, or puts the driver out
of humor. The seat is very narrow and the springs give, so that
the occupants are constantly inclined to tumble out. This gives
rise to a peculiar social custom, amounting almost to a super
stition, among the Russians — that is, that when a man rides with
a pretty or young woman he must always keep his arm about her
waist, to keep her from being tumbled out ; but his superstition
teaches him that this is never necessary when his companion is an
elderly woman or another man. The drosky generally in use is
nearly the same throughout the entire empire. In the country
towns many of them have bells attached to the bow. The old-
fashioned vehicle has seats running laterally, the driver and pas
sengers looking to the sides. These are seen more in the provinces
than in the capitals. Very handsome ones are used privately.
The stylish one is a " troika," and is drawn by three horses, one
on either side of the shaft-horse. The two outer ones are so reined
that their heads are drawn sharply outward. The middle or shaft-
horse trots, but the outer ones invariably gallop. When style is
affected, a troika of fine finish, with three good beasts, the outer
ones with outward-bending necks in full gallop, and with a fine
set of bells, is a very nobby affair. The horses of Russia are fine
strong animals, and have great endurance. With the exception
of those of Hungary, I have never seen them in any land so uni
versally good as are seen on the great steppe-plains of southern
Russia. In a war with any other country, the Cossacks and their
mounts must prove a strong arm to the service.
On Sunday last we went to Peterhof to witness an illumination
given in honor of the Emperor of Germany. It was a dazzling
affair. In the beautiful water-fountain system I have already
described, many thousands of lamps were arranged in great
obelisks 40 to 50 feet high ; in pyramids or arches over the canal
in frequent tiers, and scattered thickly among the branches of
trees. Looking down from the palace terrace, or up to it from
the long alley, the whole seemed turned into fountains and forests
of flame. The httle lamps along the walk and among the many
fountains were so thick as to seem almost solid, and, mingling
as they did with the water spray, the effect was of marvellous
beauty. Behind the sheet cataracts, innumerable lamps were
placed, with dazzling effect. Heretofore I spoke of the great
fountains in front of the palace. There is another system of jets
in another part of the park, running down from the high grounds
to the Mont de Plaisir, Peter the Great's pavilion on the water.
This is a beautiful building, 300 feet long, and only one story
high. From the two ends run back wings of about the same
length as the front. In the court formed by these are fine old

GRAND ILL UMINA TION A T PETERHOF. 467
trees. The entire building was covered in regular lines with
lamps in ground-glass globes, marking the architectural members,
and from the trees and high up in their branches swung innu
merable lamps of various colors, all artistically arranged. The
ground was laid out in parterres of tulips of various colors, little
lamps, however, taking the place of flowers. From this pavilion
back nearly a quarter of a mile to the hill of 70 feet, through the
trees, is a broad alley ; along this were a vast number of obelisks
of flame, and the woods on either side blazed as with myriads of
huge fire-flies. Tumbling down the hill by a succession of steps
so arranged as to represent a single cascade, are broad sheets of
water. Under the sheets or falls were a mass of deep-red lamps,
while on either side were double rows of amber light, and on
and under the top cascade a blaze in white electricity.
The illumination commenced before ten o'clock, when the twi
light was yet fresh and bright, but the brilliancy of 50,000 or
more lamps was so great that we forgot it was not deep night ;
the twilight seemed to come from the artificial lights, and to be
reflected upon the sky, rather than from the sun below the
northern horizon. In front of the pavilion of the Mont de
Plaisir were several steamers a few hundred yards out at sea.
From these were sent up a large number of rockets and fireworks
of the flower-pot kind, of huge size, and bursting far up in
myriads of brilliant colors. In the pavilion there was a banquet
for the visiting emperor and the czarina and her suite. We
reached the entrance at the rear of the pavilion just as the em
press was coming out, surrounded by the court.
The crowd was great and swayed back and forth, restrained by
double tiers of soldiers with locked hands. We had been pressed
to the front line. Seeing one of the handsomely uniformed staff
close by, I resolved to try my patent open-sesame of " Ya Ameri
kanets." I addressed him, telling him I was an American travel
ler and anxious to see the brilliant scene within. He replied :
" Attendez un moment, monsieur," adding that it was too late to
let me in, as the empress was just in the gate-way. As quickly
as she passed out and was getting into a great open six-horse
drag, with a dozen or more ladies and attendants, the officer
ordered the soldiers to let us pass. We thus had a fine opportunity
for witnessing the most brilliant part of the display, designed
only for God's anointed. But I was one of these, an American
sovereign, and we two were the only persons inside except the
court attaches. The Russians feel very much pleased by the
courtesy extended by the American corvette Enterprise in assist
ing in doing honor to the guest of their czar. Ours was the only
foreign war ship which took part in the ceremonies, excepting, of
course, the German. I suspect the courtesy of the officer of the
staff arose from this. We met some of the officers of the Enter
prise that night at the railroad station, and regretted we could not

468 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
accept their cordial invitation to visit them at Cronstadt. We
did not leave the terrace of the palace until after 12 o'clock. The
scene was so brilliant that we disliked to tear ourselves away.
We leaned for some time on the parapet overlooking the main
fountains in front of the palace pavilion, and enjoyed the magic
scene. The many kiosks and pavilions of the park seemed to be
beautiful structures in flame, and the flower-gardens under us
looked like acres of tulips and hyacinths and crocuses of light.
The lamps were so colored as to make this effect of the par
terres almost perfect. I counted the lamps in a given space, and
calculated from these that there must have been from 50,000 to
100,000 burning in two sections of the park.
At 12.30 we took the train. There was enough of light coming
from the northern quarter of the heavens for me to read my
watch. The great city had a weird appearance — so light, and yet
so quiet and apparently deserted. Now and then we saw a police
man reading a newspaper, which he probably borrowed from a
doorway. The czar's great city virtually has no night in summer.

CHAPTER XLIV.
FINLAND— AN INTERESTING COUNTRY— THE FINNS— TORNEA—
MIDNIGHT WITHIN THE ARCTIC CIRCLE— POSTING— FARM
ING— THE RELATIONS OF THE RUSSIANS WITH THEIR CON-
QUERED SUBJECTS.
Steamship " Tornea," between Helsingfors and Stockholm,
August 12, 1888.
I COMMENCE this letter within the roar of Imatra, the largest
waterfall in Europe, and in many respects one of the finest in the
world. A great river — the outpouring of Lake Saima, with its
connecting lakes over 200 miles long and some 30 broad — here
met a granite hill. A convulsion of the earth split the hill in
twain, leaving a cleft 50 to 80 feet wide and 500 yards long, of
solid granite walls, notched and jagged, and with here little
recesses a few feet deep and there projections a few feet out. The
river, approaching this cleft by a fine, dashing rapid, plunges down
the narrow gorge, bounding, leaping, dashing, surging, roaring,
and foaming, with a fall of 60 odd feet in 500 yards. Its furious
flow is here and there caught by a recess, or hurled by a projec
tion in counter-currents, which lift several feet high and plunge
again to rise below in huge boiling caldrons, shifting strangely
from point to point, often several yards apart. The currents .shot
from the two walls frequently meet to be thrown in massive jets
10 to 15 feet into the air, scattering huge crystals, or floating
off in fleecy mist. Often a current lifts up, like the rounded back
of a mighty monster, to plunge and rise again loO feet below.
From top to bottom the surging flood is one mass of snowy foam,
enamelled here and there with spines of pea-green. The jagged
wall of the cliff is 20 to 30 feet above the water. Against this the
current is often thrown in mad fury, to leap high up its sides and
to fall again into curling pits several feet lower than the general
level. Imatra is not a cascade, nor is it a cataract, nor yet a rapid, but
a hybrid between them all. No rocks project from its bed, and
its boiling and tossing are not from obstacles hidden below, but
rather from its own mad impulse. In a straight line for 500
yards it looks like the lower and broken parts of a vertical
cataract, and could it be hoisted, and yet preserving its present
form, it would seem a mighty cascade with a sheet of snowy foam,
showing occasionally masses of unbroken green. It roars finely,
469

470 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
with the dominant tone of a monster splash ; yet under it all is a
deep bass, rich but yet mellow. On the left bank, the rising hill
is densely clothed in spire-formed fir-trees and yellow pine, whose
trunks seem to have caught and imprisoned the sunlight, so yel
low are they, lifting through the green foliage about them. The
other bank is covered with birch in delicate feathery leaf, and
with trunks and branches of silvery white. Walking at 1 1 o'clock
at night in the weird twilight through this birch wood, I discovered
a pretty effect from the waterfall. The trees seemed alive with
countless myriads of cicadae playing upon their bony chords,
and yet there was not a noisy insect about, nor was there a breath
of air stirring. It was the tiny echoes of the waterfall sent back
by millions of leaves and twigs. There is a pretty hotel on the
precipice overhanging the fall, embowered in birchen wood, where
50 to 100 guests are entertained in a very comfortable manner by
polite attendants. Four versts below, the river again tumbles
in another fall, with surrounding scenery of a truly picturesque
character. But I must go bacK a while. A run of four hours from St.
Petersburg brought us to Wiborg, a pretty old town in Finland,
with a population of 17,000. It is built on a jagged peninsula, at
the head of a small bay running up from the Gulf of Finland. At
one time it was strongly fortified. The old broken-down walls
and earthworks run entirely around the main town and form a
sort of promenade, from which nice views are had over the bay
on one side and over the river, with deep indentations and rocky
promontories on the other. A part of this promenade is turned
into a garden or park 100 and 200 yards, wide, and bending and
running a third of a mile. This is well planted with young lin
dens and pretty shrubbery. A picturesque old fortress, with
octagonal dungeon tower, seven stories high, and flanked by a
strong castle, covers a bold rock inside the town and makes a very
striking picture. The pride, however, of the Wiborgers is a private
park, Mon Repos, open to the public, a good walk out of the
town. The owner has taken advantage of a rocky, indented shore
line, backed by granite precipices and wooded slopes and low hills,
with massive rock islands in front, to make one of the prettiest
of little parks. It has a small castle on an island some hundred
feet high, look-out observatories, kiosks, pavilions, and grottos,
with the woods so cut as to present many pretty vistas, and with
soft, restful bays nestling in green wood, spreading along the
shore, and only lacks a soft, southern atmosphere to make it a
most restful repose.
From Wiborg small but comfortable steamers run up the river,
and then through a canal with 28 locks to Lake Saima, and thence
over it and its connecting lakes into the centre and toward the
north of Finland. The trip on the canal is really charming, now
along a canalized river and then through artificial water-ways.

A CANAL IN FINLAND. 471
Now the steamer runs along a dark narrow stream, with margins
of firs and silver birch ; then through a short run of artificial chan
nel, lifted by handsome granite locks, from which it again emerges
into a pretty lake, bordered with country villas embowered in
woods and mirrored in placid waters. No outlet is seen, but
suddenly a bend around a rocky promontory brings one into other
little rivers with other sets of locks, and again into other lakes,
with headlands, creeks, and bays, studded with little islands, and
at last, after being lifted 256 feet, into Lake Saima, which ex
tends by its connecting lakes from the 6 ist up to the 64th parallel
of latitude, and spreads with innumerable arms, all twisted, bent,
and distorted, over two degrees of longitude.
Finland is preeminently the land of lakes. Looking upon one
of the correct topographical maps, the blue-tinted lakes so mark
the whole that one would think the water covers equal surface
with the land. They have not regular shore lines, but are so
broken into creeks and bays; are so twisted in all. directions ; are
so pierced by promontories and headlands ; and so covered with
innumerable islands ; in parts so narrow, and then quickly so
spreading out — that the water upon the map looks like huge sea
monsters. There are three lake systems, running from near the .
shore of the Gulf of Finland up into the north, besides Lake La
doga, partly in Russia. Saima is Finland's principal lake. There
are two other long ones, but not so large, nor have they so many
arms and other connecting lakes. Small steamers ply over Saima
in daily lines between several ports, and small ships are towed
from near its northern end, laden with lumber, iron ore, tan bark,
and tar, to the Gulf of Finland through the canal. The trip from
Wilmanstrand, near the mouth of the canal and the terminus of a
railroad, up to Idensalmi was most enjoyable. There is no grand
scenery ; none of the islands or headlands are over 100 feet
high until reaching Nyslott, some 70 miles, but they are by
the hundreds. Some are wholly granite rocks, but generally
wooded and green. The granite, however, is not repulsive,
being always covered with a gray moss, brightened to a light
green near the water. So constantly are the islands in view, that
there are few points where the eye can catch a reach of more than
four miles. At one time, however, we could see 20 miles off, but
then only through a narrow channel.
Half-way up to Kuopio we stopped at Nyslott, a pretty place,
with a fine old castle, covering an island rock, with four handsome
turrets and heavy walls deeply marked by cannon-shot. The
views from several high points in the town are exquisite. It is
built on a set of islands, divided by channels connecting the upper
and lower lakes, through which the dark water runs in fine cur
rent. I was struck here by a sort of water weed, or long grass,
which grows from the bottom of streams, even where six or more
feet deep, bearing a white star flower with golden centre. The

472 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
flower is only seen in an eddy or still water below a rock or
bridge, but where the current is .swift the long grass bends and
waves like swimming serpents below the surface, and looks like
threads of gold or silver enamelled in green and bronze. It
grows in all the lakes, but it was at Nyslott that it was most
beautiful. After leaving this place, the run to Kuopio was charming.
The hills were higher, the farm lands finer, and many of the farm
houses very pretty. I will here state that throughout Finland the
cultivators of the soil do not live in villages, as in most of old Con
tinental lands, but on their individual holdings. Frequently these
are so small that the farm-houses are quite near each other, and
form somewhat of hamlets. Some, however, are quite large, and
the barns and out-houses numerous, and some fine. Generally
the buildings are wholly unpainted, but occasionally a large house
and barn would give variety in deep-red, with white window
trimmings. The Finns are fine farmers — plow well, manure well,
and save every thing. Nowhere is seen finer barley, which
grew better and better the farther north we went, up to the
67th degree. I am told it is good up to the 69th, and is
brought down to the southward for seed. The rye has a fine
appearance, but the kernel is small. It is exported to Russia for
seed. It is grown only to a very limited extent about the
65th degree, though we saw some as high as the 66th.
The stalks in some fields were fully six feet high, possibly the
average was considerably over five feet. The stand of barley,
rye, oats, and potatoes is always good, but the oats, with few ex
ceptions, are light-headed. Hemp of good quality, but not over
three feet high, is quite common on the lake lands or in
terior. Barley about the 67th parallel matures in eight weeks
after being put into the ground, hence its excellence for seed.
Farm lands along the lakes, and indeed throughout middle and
eastern Finland, are comparatively scattered, and generally of
small extent. The whole country is full of rocks, either vast
masses of protruding granite earth-ribs or in boulders, many of
them of huge dimensions. From among these the farmer has to
pick out his fields for cultivation.
We reached Kuopio in the late afternoon of Sunday, the 29th.
We at once drove to a handsome park on a little promontory run
ning out into the lake, where we saw banners and a great con
course of people. There were 2,000 or 3,000 people enjoying the
Sunday afternoon, the young men in their best clothes, and the
women in their whitest kerchiefs. The females, old and young,
wear a handkerchief, generally white or colored, folded on the di
agonal and tied under the throat. A long line was formed, and
probably 100 couples were dancing on the green sward to music
made by a military band. Games were going on among the more
boisterous. One of these was amusing. A smooth pole, a foot

PECULIARITY OF NORTHERN SUNSETS. 473
in diameter, was mounted on strong, firm legs. Two young fel
lows would climb this, locking their legs under it, and then, with
bags filled tightly with dry grass, would endeavor to knock each
other off by pounding over the head. Rarely more than two or
three blows were given before one or the. other would tumble
over, to the great amuseme'nt of the boys and girls looking on.
We saw several contests, and, to the credit of the boys, did not
see any thing but the best humor. The boys and young men up
here have their own sports, and do not hire a picked nine to do
athletics for them. The American rage for professional base-ball
is very nearly akin to that of the effeminate taste of Rome, when
people paid to see others fight, and were soon overrun by the
hardy sons of the north, who delighted in themselves engaging in
all kinds of hard, manly sports.
Overlooking the town is a mountain of 700 feet high, and on
it an observatory. From this is an extraordinary panorama.
Spread around 20 to 30 miles are rolling green forests, and hills
and sheets of placid water. Nowhere do the hills rise higher
than the spot on which we stood. To the north and south the
lake or lakes lay in all sorts of irregular shapes — here in rounded
bays, there in long arms, now in sheets, and then in the narrow
streams. As far as one could see toward the south, the water
was spread with islands of various sizes and of many shapes. I
distinctly counted 150. Among them the lake would shine as
sheets of silver, then run off in threads, again to widen into sheets,
and to bend off and lose itself among the hills. To the east and
south the wooded hills encompassed lakes and streams, and
showed small patches of cultivated farm lands. I have never seen
any large view which presented water and land so equally inter
mingled — nowhere a mere water picture, nowhere a simple land
picture. In a fourth of the panorama water predominated, in
the rest the land, but in any direction one looked there was
enough of both to make a complete scene. And yet there
was one thing sadly wanting : there was no warmth of coloring ;
no genial atmosphere to make one feel he would like to wander
among the woods, or over the hills, or float upon the water.
No spot in this far north can woo one to enjoy a dreamy, restful
inaction. We watched the sun drop down into his cold northern
couch. Even he seemed loth to find rest in so uncongenial a
clime. From the instant his lower limb touched the horizon
there intervened several minutes before the last ray was hidden.
Last winter, when near the equator, I could almost see the sun
move as he dropped to his rest, and the tints and hues of sunset
were of so short duration, so fleeting, that they were gone almost
before the eye could fully catch them. Before a delicious color
ing could fix itself upon the retina it would vanish, and another
as beautiful would take its place ; tint melted into tint, tones
dissolved like floating mists..

474 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
" The sun's rim dips ; the stars rush out;
At one stride comes the dark."
Here it is all different. A sunset glow seems painted upon the
sky, and the cloud-tints appear almost stable. I saw bands of
gold and yellow and red and purple drawn along the horizon,
and after turning from looking in another direction for some
minutes, I was almost pained to find the same carpet-lines athwart
the low sky ; and after the sun has gone under, the bright color
ings last as if indelibly fixed.
The midnight twilight of the far north also differs in tone very
much from the fleeting twilights of more southern latitudes, even
as high up as Chicago. There one has a somewhat changing at
mosphere, and, one may say, a fleeting grayness. Here the gray
is crystallized, and almost as fixed as in a picture on canvas. It
may be fancy, but to me it brings an intense feeling of loneli
ness ; much the same feeling as I have felt when high up on an
Alpine glacier. The finest scene is cold, and the atmosphere so
tones every thing, that one feels he is looking through slightly
smoked glass, and that, too, when the air is of crystal clearness.
From Idensalmi on the lakes, about 230 miles north of Wiborg,
we posted 138 miles across the country to Uleaborg, near the
head of the Gulf of Bothnia. Our vehicles were of three kinds.
On most routes we had a sort of dog-cart, with nice springs, on
others a cart with springs to the seat alone, and on one a simple
box set down on the axle. The stations are from 7 to 12 miles
apart, varying to suit the farm-houses, there not being farming
lands at regular intervals. We would frequently pass over several
miles of flat, oozy tracts, growing pine and silver birch, without
a house, and then over a broken country with boulders and pines.
Where there were farms they were generally small, but, being finely
managed, produced admirable crops. Hay is greatly valued, and
every patch of grass is cut.
It rains so frequently, and the drying quality of the air is so
deficient that hay is cured in the central or lake regions on racks.
These are sometimes quite large and of long poles, one above
the other, two or three feet apart, and laid on upright posts 20
or more feet high. On these the cut grass, after lying on the
ground a day, is hung until thoroughly cured ; on them, too, are
cured the tender twigs of birch, elm, and ash, for sheep and goat
fodder. In general, however, sticks eight or so feet high, with
pins a couple of feet long stuck into them at intervals of a foot
or two, are run into the ground throughout the meadow. The
grass is hung up on them instead of being thrown into hay
cocks to cure. All hay must be housed for the long winters,
and, consequently, must be thoroughly cured. Another peculiar
feature of farming exists. Rye and barley are dried by fire be
fore being threshed, and every large farmstead has several houses
for this purpose. These are of logs close laid on moss-filled

AN ODD STEAM BA TH. 475
chinks. In them, on cross-beams, the grain is hung, as tobacco
is with us, and a fire is made in rock-built furnaces, the stones
generally being in quite a pile around the flue, so to retain and
give out a regular heat. One can tell these houses by the smoke-
stains over the door-way, this being the only outlet for smoke.
At the station, where we spent our first night, we found these
houses are put up to another and very droll use. About ten o'clock
a number of hands, men and women, came in from the hay-field.
Soon I noticed them coming out of the dwelling house in white
overalls — a sort of night dress, — and going to one of these dry-
houses. I followed and found that the house was a regular steam
bath. A dozen naked men were perched on an upper tier of
joists, whipping themselves with birchen branches, on which the
leaves were left. The room was so filled with steam that I could
not see until I lit a match. A woman was throwing dipperfuls
of water over the pile of hot stone, and thus making steam.
They were all much amused at my curiosity. At first I supposed
the woman did not mind the naked men, because they were clad
thoroughly in smoke and steam. But I soon found it arose not
from this, but from an entire lack of m.ock modesty, for the
men soon emerged into the open air as red. as boiled lobsters,
and reeking with sweat, and sat around to wipe off and cool,
as the elite do in a Turkish bath. The light whipping takes
the place of the shampooing in our baths. After the men had
gotten through, the women went in and took their sweat. Ex
ceeding diffidence prevented me waiting to find if they came out in
nature's adornments to cool as the men did. Like Lot's wife,
however, I could not help looking over my shoulder, and discover
ed that women as well as men get exceeding red when half-
cooked. At another place we saw several girls, from lo to 15,
standing in front of one of these drying establishments, a few
paces from the road. They did not flee, although their only
garment was maiden modesty. This is one of the Asiatic
habits of their ancestry, not yet discarded in the less-frequented
parts of Finland. " Honi soit qui mal y pense." Adam and Eve
did not discover their want of clothing until their eyes were
opened by sin. Let us hope that lack of guile is at the bottom
of this people's want of conventional modesty. I regret to
report, however, that the birth statistics show a rather high
rate of illegitimacy, but below that of Moscow or Vienna. By
the way, I think I omitted to state that in the Volga we saw men
and women, without bathing-dresses, bathing, not exactly to
gether, but only a few feet apart, and with no sort of screen
between them.
The Finns show a very decided resemblance to the Mongolians
in type ; rather flat faces and stubby noses, and stems of the ears
bulging as if bee-stung. They are not a bad-looking people, and
evince a great desire to please. Speaking not a word of their Ian-

476 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
guage, we have been forced to decided freedoms in making our
wants known. We marched into their kitchens, into their dairies,
and into their store-rooms to point out what we wished. They
invariably seemed amused and never annoyed at this lack of form
on our part. Our guide-book has a short lexicon. We occasion
ally find a word for the thing we wish, and instead of trying to
pronounce it we point it out in the book, and, to the credit of the
people, we have only found two or three old people who could not
read. I learn it is the boast that every one can read the Bible who
was not too old to go to school within the past 15 or 20 years, and
nearly all write and can cipher. In this respect they are vastly in
advance of their Russian brothers, 80 per cent, of whom do not
know their A B C's. The bishops (Lutheran) in Finland refuse
to confirm any one who cannot read the catechism, and thus force
them to learn, for they are all true to their church.
I have taken advantage of our license as ignorant strangers to
pry into much of the home life of these people. On our posting
trips the stations are at the houses not of inn-keepers, but of a
better class of farmers. The horses are invariably in the pastures.
While they were being made ready I went on voyages of discov
ery. The farm-hoqses are placed about a quadrangle more or less
large. The people have an air of slovenliness, but their kitchens
and utensils and their dairy-rooms are clean, and the tea and coffee
service and plates tempt the appetite by their bright, shiny neat
ness, and some of the women rather amazed me by their exceed
ing care ; for example, I saw one wash fresh, clean-looking eggs
before putting them into a pot to boil. One has but to look into
their delicious-looking milk-coolers to get a desire to drink the
milk. Every farm, large and small, has its dairy. Some make all
their milk into butter and cheese ; others sell to larger dairymen
in the neighborhood, who make cheese and butter on an extensive
scale. In every part I have seen the cooler is the same — made of
sweet wood, broad, and only three inches deep. These, after
being emptied, are washed with a switch broom, thus reaching the
smallest chine. They are then rinsed and filled with boiling water to
stand for some time, after which they are placed in the air to dry. So
many are used that one is never filled when sodden. At a moder
ate-sized farm I saw quite a hundred of them. The milk is delicious,
and the butter unsurpassed. We have luxuriated on clabber, one
of God's best gifts to man. The people in our northern States are
sadly ignorant in not appreciating this product of the cow. If I
had to make my choice between two cows, one which gave rich,
sweet milk, which would not sour, and the other which gave clab
ber directly in nice, creamy flakes, I would take the latter every
time. But, thanks to a beneficent Providence, a good cow fur
nishes rich, creamy milk for our coffee and strawberries, and the
genial warmth of the sun turns it at the right time into glorious
bonny-clabber. Finland sends large amounts of butter to Sweden

THE FINNS FINE DAIRYMEN. 477
and to Russia. I suspect it was the long contact with the cleanly
Swedes which made these people neat in their household and
dairy matters.
For seven months of the year cattle are housed. The barns
have very convenient shallow stalls, with yokes for the animal, in
stead of ropes to go around the horns and thus bruise this tenderest
part of the horned animal. Over each stall is a birchen tub, hold
ing nearly a bushel for the cow or calf to feed from, and a broad
alley between the stalls. It is now summer, and the cow-houses
are not used, but every thing is in its place ready for use,- — at least
this was the case in over a dozen houses I looked into. Close by
the horse and cow stable is a small separate room, with a large iron
kettle, larger or smaller, in proportion to the size of the house,
set in a stone furnace. In this the dairy utensils are washed
and scalded, and the food of the cattle is cooked in winter.
All food, except hay and straw, is cooked, and in the winter
fed more or less warm. Even in the summer horse-food (ex
cep hay) is in the shape of coarse bread. Mosquitoes, gnats, and
night-flies are so bad that smothered fires are built about the cow-
lots in the evening. The poor brutes stand or lie about these
when the smoke is so dense that one would think it suffocating.
The beasts evidently enjoy it, and not being forced to switch their
tails could give their entire energies to the cud. Willie suggested
that they could furnish ready-made jerked beefs. Our post-boys in
variably carry three or four rings of bread and some hay in the
cart to feed their horses at the end of the stage before going back.
At some stations we found no men. The women then brought
out the cart, went to the field for the horse, and hitched them up,
and were our" post-boys, but generally we had bright little fellows
from 10 to 12 years old, and a few times little girls. The weather
was showery while we were posting, and we thus lost considerable
time. I employed it in speering about and writing. Travel in
Finland is ridiculously cheap. A horse and cart, holding us two
and our light baggage, costs a little under five cents a mile. A
run of ten miles would take about an hour and a half. It did us
good to see the real pleasure we afforded when we gave our lit
tle post-boys and girls a half-mark, or ten cents, at the end of their
stage. At the farm-house or post-stations, where we spent the
nights, we had good beds, a supper on bacon and raw fish, rye
bread, and Swedish hard bread (delicious), and as delightful milk,
cream, butter, and clabber as one ever ate, and, in addition to
these, very good coffee and sometimes eggs for breakfast. And
the whole for two of us cost from 70 cents to $1. The travellers'
rooms at the post-houses were delightfully clean, — one or two with
strips of carpet, others strewn with sweet fir-twigs. The little
tow-headed children were good-natured, and two or three pet hogs
invariably grunted under our windows, with a gentle squeal for a
crust. The hogs were always clean, and really not bad pets. We

478 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
had always beautifully curled tailed dogs to keep us company.
One stayed with us 48 miles, although we changed four or five
times our post-boys. He had the most independently double-
curled tail I ever saw. He was evidently well known at the differ
ent stations. I think he recognized us as free-born Americans, and
wished to go home with us. We got rid of him by dodging him.
Finnish has no affinity, I am told, with any European language,
or perhaps any Asiatic. It has no prepositions. For them a suf
fix is added. For example, a sign-board has on it " Uluum 50."
This means " To Ulu 50 versts." While " Ulusta " means " from
Ula." To show the difficulty of acquiring the language, a Finnish
lady said to me that she learned Russian quite correctly in a year,
while a Russian friend, a better linguist than she, was two years
in learning Finnish as well. And yet Russian is considered a very
difficult language to master.
The Finns are a hardy-looking people — not tall nor heavy, but
firm. The men have tawny-colored hair, and, like the Russians,
cut it rather squarely around the nape of the neck, but their hair
being thin, this manner of cutting does not give them the uncouth
look of Russians. The latter have generally very heavy suits.
They cut it almost square around the head, and as they go much
of the time, when at work, bareheaded, the heavy hair, banged in
front and square behind the ears, gives them a low, animal ex
pression. I speak of the common man. The better classes and
the military shingle the rear hair. Finnish children have heads
so flaxen that it amuses one. No flax is so severely white.
Their little faces, and the skin under their hair looks brown in
comparison with the tow. The hair of the women is generally
light and yellowish — not so often tawny as that of the men, pos
sibly because their heads, being generally covered by a handker
chief, are less browned by the weather. The skin of the old
women's faces usually looks tough enough to make saddle-bags
of without tanning. Some of the men have very light hair, but
that is on the west, where they are more or less intermixed with
the Swedes.
I said the Finns were good farmers. Besides their fine fields
of rye, barley, and potatoes on lands not naturally rich, the beau
tiful ditches and fine fences evince careful husbandry. The land
is generally cultivated in beds. The ditches dividing these beds,
generally about two feet deep, and sodded about two feet on each
side and down to the bottom, are beautifully made. Even this
sod to the bottom of the ditch is mown. Not a foot of grass
land is left ungrazed or uncut. All farms are fenced in and fields
are separated by fences. These are of light rails, 12 to 15 feet
long, laid on each other, on an incline of say 25 degrees, the lower
end on the ground, and supported by two light uprights fastened
together by birch withes, from four to six feet apart. The rails
lie upon each other between these uprights, and a light brace at

FINNS GOOD FARMERS AND A STRONG RACE. 479
alternate uprights runs through the upper withe fastening, and
rests on the ground some three or four feet off. The fences are
about four and a half feet high and have the appearance of rough
pickets set at an angle instead of upright. We have seen hun
dreds of miles of fences and not a hundred yards out of repair.
Fields are entered through light swinging gates or by neat draw
bars. The general appearance of much of the country reminds
one of parts of Wisconsin. The people here have inherited from
their frozen climate the necessity of economy, perseverance, and
ever-watchful care. They have learned that warmth and food
come from steady labor alone, and with them muscular labor is
not lacking of the honor which should be the result of God's fiat,
" By the sweat of thy face shalt thou earn thy daily bread." We
honor labor in America, but we think it the more honorable when
we let the other fellow do it.
Young America, north as well as south, rushes to the city in the
hope of fine clothes, gay times, and little sweat. The result is
inevitable. Brilliant, idle, indolent, and luxurious young America
is having his place taken by the hardy sons of northern Europe.
They come not with the battle-axe and the iron mace, killing and
slaying, but with sturdy muscles, iron spades, and picks, conquer
ing and supplanting. Bright and intelligent young America needs
not be killed. It will die out and its place be taken by the immi
grant it now laughs at and calls uncouth. Sic semper ! The
battle may be to the swift, but the land inevitably goes to the
strong and to the enduring. The Finns are a sturdy race, but
just now they are a somewhat anxious people. Last winter was
here and in Russia the coldest known within too years, and so far
the summer has been the coolest felt within 140 years. The grain
of all sorts shows no sign of yellowing, and is from two to three
weeks later than usual, and but little hay has been made. An
early frost would be disastrous, and some are feeling quite blue.
It seems singular to see rye being put in the ground for next
year's crop, while close by it is a waving field of this year with
heads yet unfilled. The grass lands presented a busy scene on
the few sunny days we have had among them. Man, woman, and
child were out, all making hay while the sun shone, and at ten
o'clock, the evenings looked almost as busy in the hay-fields as
did the mid-day
Uleaborg is a pretty city of nearly 20,000 people ; does a heavy
export business in tar and fish, and is the centre of the lumber
trade. A large number of ships, mostly barges, lie out at anchor
near it and in many of the creeks and bays on the coast up to
Tornea. We must have seen thirty or more between these points,
all being loaded with lumber for England and Germany. A large
lumber traffic is also done from the lake regions through the
canal. It, however, is principally for St. Petersburg and the east
ern Baltic ports. The rafts are generally towed by small tugs.

48o A RACE WITH THE SUN.
and some we saw being drawn by means of a windlass turned by
a horse attached to a sweep upon the raft. There is also at
Uleaborg an extensive tanning business. A very good harness
and sole leather is made by using the bark of a small willow bush
which grows everywhere on the lowish lands and is substituted
for oak and hemlock.
Last December at Singapore, within a degree of the equator,
we felt an intense desire to visit that monster nothing, which
bends the mightiest ocean currents, and to stand astride that
gossamer figment of science which stills to a zephyr the fiercest
tropical storm. Finding ourselves a few days ago only a degree
and a half away from another geographical fiction which bids the
great ruler of the day to pause in his daily rounds and for nearly
a half-month, denies him his nightly rest— the intangible and im
palpable arctic circle, which for long months holds the demon of
darkness fast in his frozen grasp, and to our young imaginations
has been a necklace of frost hung upon the bosom of the north
ern world ; — finding ourselves so close to that sweet Eden which
some scientists think is warmed into continuous delicious summer
by mother-earth's central fires, whence man was forever banished
when he presumed to learn that which belonged only to his eternal
Maker, and around which is thrown an impassable barrier of crys
tal swords flashing in icy brightness ; so close to that rosy home
of the Borealis race, which darts through the polar opening in
earth's rounded dome, and dancing athwart the s\cy dazzles us
with its flitting splendor; — finding ourselves so close to the polar
circle, we resolved to enjoy the sensation of being within the
frigid zone.
A run of twelve hours on a tiny steamer along the coast, within
many green islands, off. many little ports where the saw-mill
buzzes, and before which lay many ships to bear off lumber to be
built into the homes of other lands ; a pleasant sail brought us
to the mouth of the Tornea River, which brings down an enor
mous volume of water from Lapland's melting snows. This is the
dividing river between Russian Finland and northern Sweden.
On the Russian side is the town of Tornea, and on the Swedish
pretty Haparanda, connected by a long foot-bridge over which we
passed to visit the Swedish frontier after lO o'clock at night.
Here we saw many evidences of Swedish neatness and order.
The houses, homes of nearly 2,000 people, are of charmingly neat
hewn or sawed logs, all painted prettily, generally of a neutral red
tint with white trimmings along windows and corners, nearly all
with gardens and on clean streets, and nearly every other one
with a letter and paper box, showing the people to be a reading
one. We saw many of the people promenading, all well dressed
and tidy, even one of them who was quietly undulating from one
side of the street to the other, and enjoying greatly a resolution
not to go home till morning, and as morning would come so soon
had laid in a heavy supph- of " bran vin."

TORNEA RIVER AND ITS SCENERY. 481
I will say here, for the benefit of our policemen and their drink
ing pets, that throughout Russia and somewhat in Finland we
have seen many men in every stage of drunkenness, from the gen
tleman endeavoring to walk a straight line, to the stupid drunkard
asleep against a wall, but have not seen a single one who was the
least noisy on the streets ; nor have we seen a policeman interfere
with the quiet staggerer, except to help him to mount a curb
stone or to get into a drosky. As long as he does not disturb
others he is allowed the personal liberty of getting drunk as he
pleases. They recognize the doctrine of the economy of vice,
and permit a fool to quietly kill himself rather than take care of
and protect him against himself at the expense of the state. After
all, has Jack not as much right to catch his death by sleeping in
a ditch with a heavy load of whiskey aboard, as Mr. Plump has
to pull apoplexy out of a dish of terrapin, or Miss Grace to court
consumption with thin shoes and tight laces? The world is get
ting very full, and the fool-killer may yet be recognized as a val
uable factor in political economy.
Tornea is a few minutes below the 66th parallel. Thence up to
the 67th we rode in little carts, posting as we had done in the
interior, and as we afterwards did back to Uleaborg, The ride
was a delightful one and the scenery very charming. The river
averages nearly a third of a mile in width, now flowing for miles
in a placid stream with strong current, and then for a mile or so
a dashing rapid, rushing as violently as the rapids above the
American fall at Niagara. Here it would widen into a sheet so^
broad as to deserve to be characterized a lake ; then contracting,
it would rush in a narrow bed and roar in deafening noise. Far
out into the rapids, and sometimes almost across the stream, are
built many strong fences or frames, among which during the sea
son traps and nets are set for salmon. The catch is very great,.
and next to lumber is the principal export. Back from the river,.
at distances varying from one to two miles, are ranges of brokea
hills from 100 or 200 to 400 or 500 feet high and sloping down to^
the stream. Their crests are wooded, mostly in firs and pines,.
while the slopes are more or less cultivated, with red farm-houses^
but unpainted barns, cow- and hay-houses. Frequently these
buildings follow so closely one to another as to appear a succes
sion of scattered villages. All cattle being housed for si.x to^
eight months makes so many buildings necessary that quite a.
small farm seems a hamlet. The Swedish side of the river pre
sents the more prosperous home life. But the farms on either
are so many, the houses so abundant, and the crops of barley and
potatoes so bountiful that it was hard to realize that we were just
outside the arctic circle. The scenery was pretty, possessing
many of the characteristics of that shown by the Susquehanna ia
Pennsylvania. The tinting, however, entirely lacked warmth, andl
had too uniformly a cold, green tone. The atmosphere had ai
darkened tone, something like certain fine-cut glass in which lamp-

482 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
black seems to have been dissolved. Another striking feature up
here is a sort of all-pervading silence. The world seems to be
hushed and quiet. But still the trip was well worth making for
the scenery alone, and in that way repaid us for the fatigue.
The second day from Tornea brought us to Aavasaksa, an iso
lated mountain 700 feet high, and just below the circle, when the
sun was yet three to four hours up. The panorama from its
summit was magnificent. Around us for many miles lay, in
broken piles, low mountains, green with forests, and here and
there bright with little sheets of water. The great river wound
among the hills, coming from the north and sweeping in a broad
channel below us, with islands and a few scattered farms, and an
affluent stream coming from the east with a fall, a few versts
away, whose roar was mellow and soothing ; far toward the south
the river swept in a placid sheet. But our eyes rested with in
tense interest upon some blue hills a degree farther north, on
which for three days in each year old Sol rolls in vain endeavor
to end his long diurnal run. Hundreds of visitors, for whose
benefit a pretty pavilion has been erected on the mountain top,
come here in the three long days of June to look upon the mid
night sun. We spent two hours enjoying the splendid panorama,
and then drove to a station five miles yet to the north, where we
were to stop for the night. There we took a fresh, strong, tough
Finland horse, and after watching the sun set at 9.40, drove tow
ard the north pole, to spend the exact midnight, whefewe knew
we would be miles within the frigid zone.
It may have been an idle fancy, but there was a delightful
charm in the lonely drive along the banks of the splendid river,
which for a mile or so was a rushing rapid ; through lanes of silver
birch and tall firs lifting like spires on either side, and looking
.upon the northern horizon, which stretched for many degrees
east and west in warm and brilliant glow. A few long bands of
clouds lay close to the earth, like ribbons in pink, fringed with
flame, with others above them in gold and violet, while floating
half way to the zenith were fleecy clouds in purple with golden
fringe. These brilliant dyes changed not nor melted away as one
looked upon them, but seemed painted in living colors upon an
eternal canvas ; clouds would slowly move, but their tints and
colorings seemed to move with them. The only visible and
marked change was in a lengthening out of the glowing horizon
as the sun moved below more to the east. We paused just at 12
and silently watched the strange and weird scene, and my watch
showing exact midnight, Willie took out a book and read a page
by the bright light coming from due north. A bat flew close to
our heads, a toad hopped across the road, and we heard the tinkle
of a distant cow-bell. How strange it sounded ! there was no other
living sound to be heard ; not the buzz of a single insect. A gen
tle murmur came from a river-rapid a half mile or more away.

A WEIRD MIDNIGHT IN THE FRIGID ZONE. 483
Its plaintive murmur seemed to intensify the prevailing silencef.
How strangely sounded that cow-bell so far towards the unap
proachable north pole ! We were nearly upon the 67th degree of
north latitude, and some miles within that circle which we had
always regarded as the synonym of eternal frost. Northward the
woods opened, giving us a clear view ; about us were tall birch
trees like sentinels in uniforms of frosted silver, their light foliagfe
bending in plumes of lace, and a few firs in solemn green. About
their roots were strewn boulders of all sizes, but over ground and
boulders were spread carpetings of gray moss so thick that we
sank into it to our ankles. We cut bark on which to write our
names as souvenirs of this, our farthest northern travel. Wist
fully and in silence we looked at the glorious picture painted on
the northern sky, and, mounting our cart, slowly trotted back tO
our station, which we reached as the sun was just rising upon our
backs. We have seen quite a number of toads far up here, but
have not heard a sound from one. They and frogs take the place
of singing-birds in the tropics. Here they are now silent. The
next two days we had a rather dismal ride in light and cold rains,
but we cared not ; we had obtained what we came for and had
fine weather for it, and besides we had already seen most of the
road. We had, however, good weather for our last day's posting,
and for our run south by rail from Uleaborg to Helsingfors.
The railroad carried us through much interesting country, with
thin lands and little cultivation, until we came to Lake Nasjanir/
180 miles north of the south line of Finland Thence there was
some exquisite scenery. We skirted this and Lake Pyhajarvi
for nearly 100 miles, now with wide water views, and then with
bits of inlet and bays with long promontories and islands, and
a very considerable extent of farming country, giving the land
scape some of that delicious home and water scenery so much
admired on the north England lakes. The country all along the
Bothnia coast has much more of Swedish characteristics than irt
the central portions of the land. In the towns the better classes
speak Swedish almost entirely, and the farms and houses are pre
tentious. Indeed, there are few countries in which there are so
good farm-houses and barns. From this down the rye was
nearly ready for the sickle, and we were in a decidedly temperate
zone. Tammersfors and Tavastehuus are two picturesque towns, one
with a fine old castle, and a rapid river running through the centre
with a fall of about 60 feet, affording a boundless water-power, a
most beautifiil series of intermural pictures, and a roar which can
always be heard over the noise of the town. The views, too,
from different points about these two towns are as fine as hun
dreds in other lands which furnish the only attractions for long
excursions. Swedish blood along the western side of Finland is
very apparent among the women. They are better-looking and

484 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
not worked quite so hard as horses, as are those of the inner lake
regions. We saw many exceedingly pretty ones at station houses
all the way on our ride between Uleaborg and the north circle.
Three daughters of one house were of a delicate type of beauty
that would have made them attractive in any parlor. We saw
several photos from relatives in America, pictures taken in Min
neapolis and Wisconsin. On our train was a young peasant girl
on her way to Northern Michigan. She will not have to work as
hard there as her sisterhood do in this land. Here there is abso
lute woman's rights ; they seem thoroughly independent, and ex
ercise the right to do all the heavy duties of life quite as freely as
do their husbands and brothers.
I was told of a custom among the purely Finnish peasantry of
the interior which shows a very peculiar freedom between the
sexes — a species of marriage on trial. A couple live together as
man and wife — somewhat clandestinely, but often with the knowl
edge of the parents — for a year, after which, if they find the rela
tionship conducive to happiness, they go before the pastor and
have the knot tied by law and church. If not agreeable they
separate, which separation does not hurt the girl for other en
gagements. The parents are, when cognizant of the arrange
ment, careful to have witnesses to it. Then, if the man backs
out, he is forced to give one-half of what he owns to the deserted
girl. The man endeavors to get up the affair without witnesses,
in which event he is not held, but he is compelled to support the
offspring, if there be any, such offspring being recognized by the
girl's family. Infanticide in any of its forms is unknown in the
land. At Tavastehuus I saw a group of eight or ten women, all well
dressed, on the platform of the railway station. One of them was
a rosy-faced, pretty girl of about 20. She carried a magnificent
bouquet, and was the recipient of much attention from the others,
who kissed her twice round. When the last warning bell rang
she was locked in the arms of an elderly woman, who with stream
ing eyes strained her again and again to her heart, and, I saw,
asked the good God to bless her child. They were mother and
daughter. As the train pulled out the girl stood upon the car
platform and bade them adieu with wet cheeks. But I thought I
saw a ray — a gleain of cheery hope shining through her tears. I
asked a man where she was going. " Till Amerika — till Minnis-
sota," was the reply. Ah ! I then read that hopeful light in her
tearful eyes. She was leaving friends and kindred to go all alone
to the far-off land, where her lover had gone before her, and where
she v/as to join him, to fill the nest he had built up for his com
ing mate. Who knows what high places the young to be hatched
in that free nest may fill in the lake State of the Northwest?
Helsingfors is a very pretty, finished town of fifty-odd thousand
people. It is admirably paved, has fine public buildings, a pretty

HELSINGFORS. 485
garden and esplanade, where music is played each evening and
thousands sip tea, coffee, or beer, and enjoy a social time. There
are about the city some fine views and a noble Lutheran church.
The Finns are nearly all Lutherans, there being few Roman or
Greek churches in the country. They have in the interior and
north a droll mode of begging for the church. In front of each
of several village churches we saw a large wooden man in some
what clerical dress, with painted, sleek cheeks and hat, quite well
executed, standing near the road, with a poise of hand showing
he was making a request. His abdomen is a locked box, into
which the passer-by can drop his pennies without entering the
portals of the sacred edifice. If Dr.  had erected one of
these in front of his fine church at home, what a world of pathetic
pleading he could have saved.
We have now been two and a half months in Russia and her
dependencies ; we have seen her provinces and people more or
less Asiatic, some of them purely Oriental ; have seen Russians
in their original home and in their conquered dominions. I have
thus been enabled to draw some conclusions, and I think fair
ones, as to the relations of this mighty conquering nation, with
her Asiatic conquered subjects, and to compare such relations
with those existing in India between the English and their brown-
skinned subjects. I came to this country with a traditional ha
tred for the autocratic rule of the Russian monarch, and with my
sympathies all on the side of the Anglo-Saxon and against the
Slav. These prejudices have been considerably removed, and I can
now look calmly upon what may be the inevitable, and draw juster
conclusions as to what that inevitable will be. In giving my ideas
let it not be understood that I pretend not to have derived them
solely from observation ; I got much second-hand. But I have
seen enough to be able to tell how far this second-hand informa
tion may be reliable. A little reading about a country, with a
superficial personal observation, gives a better knowledge of it
than a deep study of the same in the closet at home. Our wisest
biblical student in his study surrounded with books and every
edition of the Old and New Testaments, does not comprehend
the truths of the Bible as well as a far less learned man does, who
has lived among the bleak hills and the valleys where Jesus lived
and walked, and has studied Oriental character from living models.
A thoughtful man can reach some juster conclusion after a hur
ried tour of two or three months in India and Russia, coupled with
superficial reading, than a far abler one can from long study at
home. For the latter is more or less compelled to get his idea
from men who saw with prejudiced eyes or wrote with stipendary
pens. It is often difficult to determine whether a learned treatise
touching European politics, or on any subject affecting such pol
itics, is a scientific, honest dissertation, or a paper paid for by
the diplomatic bureau of one or another European power.

486 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
Americans are intensely lovers of ideal liberty, and haters of
theoretic slavery. The " idea " and the " theory " are perfectly
satisfactory to the vast majority. With the knowledge that they
can be free when they wish, and cannot be made unwilling slaves,
they are not only willing but glad to have others, whom they
imagine their servants, to do all the governing while they them
selves are left undisturbed to build up homes and to amass wealth
for themselves and their children. A mere tithe of them really
think for themselves. Once every year they imagine they do
considerable thinking on governmental affairs, and every four
years are hugely impressed with the profundity of their thought,
and of their intense earnestness in putting their thought into
action. But if we are candid with ourselves, we must confess that
a very few have done our thinking, and we march up to the polls
to put into action the determinations of a mere handful. But we
are freemen and do this of our own accord, and are glad that the
few have saved us from aching labor, and we imagine we choose
this handful which saves us so much rack of brain.
; Now the children of ages — untold ages of Asiatic despotism
do not care a fig for this ideal or for this theory. They are satisfied,
as their forefathers have been for countless centuries, to let the God
of Fate select the men who think for them, and blindly follow
without a dream of any thing different, and are never aroused
from their sleep unless western agitation thunders in their ears,
and even then they are not awakened, but listlessly and half-
asleep, utter a " Mashallah " or invocation to some heathen god,
and forget. The Russian, like his eastern neighbor, not only cares
not for this ideal and this theory, but has schooled himself to the
belief that while he himself, individually, may be capable. of self-
government, his neighbors are not. He believes that, while he
himself might stand as a free man, his neighbors would make
fools of themselves, and in their folly would give great trouble.
He is therefore perfectly satisfied to let his " Little Father," the
autocratic czar, do all his thinking and save him the trouble, and
to do all the acting and thus save him from his foolish neighbors.
All he asks is to be let alone to attend to his own affairs, and his
" Little Father" does so let him alone. He has complete personal
liberty. He can work and eat and drink and can get drunk if he
wishes, and whatever interference he feels from his ruler he thinks
absolutely necessary to keep not himself but his unwise neighbors
from doing harm. He therefore submits without a murmur. When
he goes as a conqueror into Asia he gives this same sort of rule
to the conquered, which is a vast improvement upon the system
they have grown up under, and under which no man had any thing
he could call his own if his superiors coveted it. The czar is gov
erned by no written law, but he is far more governed by public
opinion than is the President of the United States, except just
before our king asks the people for another term, when he becomes

RUSSIANS FRATERNIZE WITH THE CONQUERED. 487
keenly alive to the wishes of the dear unwashed. The czar, too,
is governed and restrained by an intense religious idea — by rigid
customs. This religion is that of Christ, which preaches good
will to all and love and human kindness. He is an autocrat, yet
he does not run counter to this idea nor violate these customs.
His crown would not be worth the velvet which softens the metal
to his brow, should he attempt to violate this idea or disobey
these customs. He would not wear it a week; his soldiers would
tear it from his head. He has carried his armies into Finland,
and the Finns govern themselves and are among the freest people
in Europe. Just now the " Little Father " is beginning to russian
ize the Finns more than he has heretofore done. He has carried
his armies and his rule into the Caucasus and the Transcauca-
sus ; but that rule is precisely the same as that meted out to
Moscow or the region of the Ural ; and the Russians, as individ
uals, treat the conquered people just as they treat each other in
the province of St. Petersburg. Georgians and Armenians are
generals in the army and won great honors in the late Asiatic
wars. The governor-general's photograph hangs in show-windows
in full Georgian costume. Russian officers are driving and prome
nading with Georgian ladies, and one sees Russians and natives
eating and drinking with each other in the restaurants and caf6s
as friends and equals. Georgian officers and gentlemen drive and
promenade with and take to the theatre Russian ladies. All the
laborers and drosky drivers at Tiflis are natives, and those beyond
are Tartars. They meet Europeans as men, and look them fear
lessly in the eye as men. I saw Tartar drivers stoutly maintain
ing their rights in disputes as to fares or charges not only with
Russians, but with some who wore epaulets ; and if a Russian
should strike one of them he would get blow for blow. I saw no
evidence of servility — no cringing of manner among the Tartars
and Bokharians or Persians on the Caspian. They were as manly
and as independent in their bearing towards Russians, both civili
ans and officers, as are the Tartars on the Volga, and these latter are
as brave and bold-looking as if they owned the land now, as they
once did.
Tartars promenade on the esplaniades and listen to the music as
if the show belonged to them, and Bokharians and Persians on the
Caspian are treated by the Russians in no way outwardly differ
ent from that accorded to those who belong to the conquering
race. The Russians fraternize with the natives as thoroughly as
their difference of religion will permit, and the mosques in cities
on the Volga and in the Caucasus are as safe from individual
insult as are the Christian churches. But one sees everywhere the
evidences of a yielding on the part of native customs and civiliza
tion to that of the conquering classes. Russians do not go into
the conquered countries to squeeze them for a time and then to
return to the north to enjoy their gains. They go to stay, to live,

488 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
to be a part of the country — I doubt not to get, if they can, the
largest half of the cheese, but to eat it on the spot. It is the
policy of the government to russianize its conquered countries,
and the Russians as individuals do their share by making homes
among the people and by mingling with them. The railroad cars
of all classes are open to the natives, and if they ride in the third
it is because it fits their purse, and they find economical Russians
in the seat next them. As far as I could see, and from what
I could learn, the veil which hides the Mohammedan woman is
being to some extent dropped, and they are beginning to mingle
with their rulers and are becoming of them. The Russian is a
man of strong fibre and very conservative, but he cares but little
for class and knows nothing like caste. In this he differs widely
from the English. These inveigh violently against the caste dis
tinctions of the Indians, and yet the native of India sees as much
caste exclusiveness among the whites as among his own people,
but of a different nature. Hindoo caste is religious ; English caste
is purely social, and the lines are drawn with ridiculous rigidity.
A Hindoo regards himself as religiously defiled if he eats or
drinks from a cup used by a Christian or by one of his own people
of a lower grade. An Englishman holds himself severely aloof in
social intercourse from his inferior European, and the women are
as strict observers of precedence as at home they are at a court
drawing-roon-|, and a native less than a nawab is utterly tabooed.
The Russians are savages in battle, but when the battle is
ended the native kindness of their disposition at once shows
itself. Prince Dondoukoff-Korsakoff gave me several examples of
this. As, for instance, when in their fierce fights in the region of
Kars and Khiva, after a town had been given up to sack and
pillage, he had often seen Russian soldiers, with hands bloody
from the fight, feeding hungry natives, coddling children in their
arms, and nursing sick women. " We do not want any fight with
England in India," said he, " but if we should get into one she
will find our Asiatic subjects loving us, while her own hate her."
And the old, battle-worn soldier's eyes burned when he spoke of
the abuse of Russia by the English press. " Ah, mon prince," I
replied, " why cannot England and Russia go side by side across
Asia and give to her the true light of western civilization?"
"We will if England be wi.se," he rejoined. " We do not want
India, but we want to carry Russian trade into the country. But
if war shall ever come we will be welcomed by many a strong-
handed Hindoo." I have been almost amazed to find among the
informed men in Russia the belief that England's weakness in
India springs from the causes I have enumerated heretofore, and
which I wrote in my note-book months ago. I formed these
opinions when my prejudices against Russia were so great that I
thought every step she made toward central Asia was an injury to
liberty.

RUSSIA'S METHODS BETTER THAN ENGLAND'S. 489
These opinions are now greatly modified. Russian dominion
beyond the Caspian will be an advancement in civilization, and
her kind of rule is the best suited to, if not the only one for which
the Asiatic is or can be for a long period fitted. She can rule her
conquered people by autocratic methods and do no violence to
her own traditions, and without contravening her own notions of
government. She is an autocracy, and her people, as a rule, not
only acquiesce in, but are satisfied with her methods. They say
they could not be so well governed in any other manner. They
admit that they are fearfully burdened by a colossal army, but
say they are forced by their European neighbors to keep it up in
its full numerical strength, and to give it every modern improve
ment. England stands upon a different platform. Hers is a rule of
the people founded upon liberty. The very A B C of her consti
tution inculcates an unconquerable love of liberty. She cannot
violate safely the spirit of her constitution, nor vary materially
from the true chart, without running the risk of wrecking her ship
of state. She has a difficult problem to solve in governing the
heterogeneous masses of her Indian dominions. As a govern
ment she is doing well. But the people — the individuals — she
sends to them are, I fear, doing much to undo the work the gov
ernment has done and is doing. I am England's well wisher in
her Indian work but I cannot shut my eyes.
A beautiful sail through a thousand or more islands, now in broad
lakes and then in narrow salt straits, brought us to Abo, once
Finland's capital. This is a picturesque town, covering an im
mense territory with its 28,000 people ; widely scattered houses,
so built to avoid conflagrations, with which it has been several
times afflicted ; a castle of nearly 600 years ago, and a fine old
cathedral, and a park prettily climbing .a high eminence with
noble outlooks. Here we received the Grand Duke Michael of
Russia, the Princess of Baden, and his son and her daughter,
going to visit their kinswoman, the Crown Princess of Sweden.
We also had aboard the Finnish author. Professor Torpelius,
whom I found a very urbane and pleasant man. He is well on
in years. His sweet young daughter was a model of filial at
tention and affection.

CHAPTER XLV.
SAIL TO SWEDEN— PRINCELY FELLOW-VOYAGERS— STOCKHOLM—
THE SWEDES— HOMELIKE LANDSCAPES.
Stockholm, August 16, 1888.
The little steamer Tornea had her saloon prettily decked with
flowers and was very gay with bunting when she steamed out of
the Aurajoki, on which Abo is situated, and our cabins were
fragrant from huge and really elegant bouquets, tied with ribbons
of great size and of rich texture in the colors of Russia and of
Baden, presented to our princely passengers by ladies of the city.
There was a large concourse of people on the quay, with some
soldiers and a band of music ; also a singing band from a Russian
battalion stationed at Abo. By the way, the Russian regiments,
as far as we have seen, all have a sort of glee clubs, which sing
rollicking songs very finely, the refrains and choruses being very
like those of German and our own student songs. They sing
marching, when the whole regiment seems to join in. One even
ing in southern Russia our train was passing through a wood,
near which was an encampment, and a night practice was going
on. The shouts and chorus of the marching men were very
musical and spirited, coming through the white birchen forest.
And now I will mention another thing, which is very wonderful
in all of these northern countries — that is, the perfection to which
hot-house cultivation has been brought. One sees in windows in
northern Russia, Finland, and Sweden, not only very beautiful
exotics, but of the costly kinds with us, and oftentimes in the
houses of people of very moderate means, thus showing them to
be of small cost. There are more flowers to be seen in the win
dows of a moderately sized town of Russia than one would see in
all the windows of the United States. In Stockholm the fuchsia
trees in the parterres in parks and squares are of very large size
and perfect form and in many varieties. Everywhere we have
been for the past two months we have frequently paused to
admire in private windows beautiful plants, such as one sees with
us only at residences of the very rich, or about the gardens and
shops of professional florists. This arises from the fact that the
season for outdoor culture is so short that the greater attention
is paid to house culture ; and houses here are kept throughout
490

THE GRAND DUKE MICHAEL. 491
the long winter at an even temperature. " The heat of my house,"
said a gentleman to-day, " is that of gentle spring for weeks and
weeks, although without, the snow is frozen solid five feet deep
and the thermometer is at — ," naming a degree of Celsius agree
ing with 20 Fahrenheit below zero. Thermometers are in every
house, and are so common, permanently fixed on the outside of
the windows, that they seem to have been in the very estimates
of the builders. Walls are of great thickness when of brick or
stone, and once heated hold their heat evenly ; and well chinked
log-houses are the warmest of all. Wood is a non-conductor.
But to return. The cabins of the Tornea also had a number of
handsome growing plants, perhaps somewhat more than usual, for
our handsome Finnish captain was quite proud of his imperial
guests. This, he said, was the first time in the history of Russia
when one of the imperial family had gone out of the country in a
commercial ship. Heretofore private yachts or armed ships had
been used for such purpose. While talking with the captain, the
young duke joined us and learned of our visit to Caucasus, where
he had been born and had lived up to within a few years. After
ward he came to me and informed me that his father would
be pleased to meet me. I found the Grand Duke Michael an
agreeable gentleman, fully six feet tall, very handsome, of
splendid physique, soldierly in his bearing, somewhat bluff and
plain-spoken, and yet evidently kindly. He reminded me much
of Prince Dondoukoff, Governor-General of Caucasus, of whom he
is a great friend. He was himself governor-general of that vast
province for eighteen years, during which time and under his
command such vast strides were made by Russia in Asia. He
captured Khiva and other important provinces, and, I think, has
some powder .stains on his face, perhaps gained in battle. His
bearing and appearance are somewhat severe, but he was so
unaffectedly plain in his conversation with me, that I quite lost
sight of the fact that he was the brother of the late, and uncle to
the present, czar. He informed me that he was President of the
Imperial Council, and gave me some information as to that power
ful arm of the government. All measures proposed by ministers
have to be passed upon by it before presentation to the emperor.
At present it consists of about 50 members — appointed by the
emperor — but is rarely full at its meetings.
He and the two princesses seemed much pleased that my talis-
manic "Ya Amerikanets" had proved an "open sesame" to so
many places of interest, and remarked that Russia and America
were old friends, and then informed me that the daughter of our
minister was betrothed to Baron  . Something the princess
said was rather an interrogation as to whether I was not pleased
by the news. I frankly acknowledged that, on general principles,
I was opposed to these alliances ; that we Americans were all
sovereigns, and held ourselves as the equals of the greatest by

492 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
birth of all lands, conceding superiority only to those who had
won it by individual merit; but that our fair daughters, when in
termarried with European nobility, invariably, so far as I had
heard, forgot their American characteristics and became intensely
imbued with exclusiveness, and that, moreover, it was only our
gilded belles who rang themselves into titled houses. The young
princess — who, by the way, has a jolly German face, and would, I
think, hugely enjoy the freedom of an American girl — smiled
audibly at this. The prince informed me that this match, he
thought, was one of love, and the Princess of Baden added that
the young lady was a nice girl, and had been very kindly received,
just before leaving for America, by the empress. The son of the
duke is only 19, over six feet three — the tallest but one of the
imperial family. I was mistaken in thinking the emperor very
fat. One of the party said : " It is simple meat and muscle, not
fat. He is a very powerful man physically." So.mething being
said of our splendid voyage about the world, I told the princess,
who asked if it did not fatigue me, that I was a very young man.
" Yes," she said, " a man is as old as he feels ; a woman, as she
looks." "True, your highness. I am 32 and the rise. You are
just 18." The bright and handsome mother of the handsome
grown daughter was not displeased by the compliment, and the
grand duke rejoined : "And I am exactly 25 without the rise."
At another time, when we were steaming up the magnificent
approach to Sweden's capital, I said : " You, of course, have been
here before?" "Yes, 50 years ago," adding with a laugh, " 25
years before I was born." For the benefit of our young men I
will state that the captain informed Willie that this straight, well
preserved old soldier threw off the soft mattress from his bunk
and slept without a pillow.
The sail from Helsingfors to Stockholm is a very pretty one;
always, except for two or three hours at night, through islands by
the hundreds, if not by the thousands — some bald-headed,
rounded, granite masses of rock, smoothly washed throughout
countless ages, without a shrub or a lichen, others green and well
wooded ; some small, others of considerable size, with small farms
and fishing villages ; now we would be in little lakes of 100 or so.
and then of several thousand acres in size-, then threading through
narrow creeks athwart which the steamer could not lie lengthwise.
Sometimes we would see a windmill whirling upon a high ground,
and then we would catch the masts of a small ship riding in a
creek beyond an island, but looking as if the bare poles were a
part of the wooded land. The large groups of the Aland Isles
belong to Finland. Then, crossing an open sea, we entered the
Swedish islands, which are fairly without number and continuous
to the coast. The Baltic last winter, as it frequently is, was
frozen solidly over, and sleds passed from coast to coast. Quite
a number of English ships were abandoned in the ice. Hardy

THE APPROACH TO STOCKHOLM. 493
Finns, wandering on the frozen sea, took possession of them and
gained 60,000 kronas as salvage when the winter ended.
The approach to Stockholm from the east is simply magnificent
— through creeks and little bays, winding and bending; through
wooded lands and islands, 50 to 150 feet high, with villas and
fortresses, pretty boat-houses and ornamental landings, summer
resorts and permanent houses, among ships and fishing-smacks,
steamers and steam barges, all at this time showing more or less
bunting, and bright with banners in honor of the Russian duke,
whose coming was evidently expected. People waved handker
chiefs from landings and from water cottages. This latter, how
ever, seems a Finnish and Swedish custom. On the lakes and in
the country where our steamboats and trains would pass, women
and children almost invariably waved their handkerchiefs to
passing boats and cars. At first I supposed it was for friends
aboard, but was told it is universal and a way of showing their
general good-fellowship ; but to our steamer the attention was far
more than usual and very demonstrative. The grand duke came
to the front and was evidently pleased by the reception. He had
informed me before that the Crown Princess of Sweden was his
niece, he being married to the sister of the Grand Duke of Baden,
and that the Princess of Baden now aboard was the niece of the
Baden ruler ; that they were paying his niece a visit, and then he
was going to the Transcaucasus to spend a couple of months on
some large possessions he has there, and where four of his children
were born.
At the beautiful granite quay, quite in the city of Stockholm,
we found a large concourse of people gathered. An open space,
250 by 50 feet, was surrounded by soldiers or policemen, and in
the centre stood the crown prince and princess awaiting their
guests. I told the duke of my mistake in looking at the Sultan
through my opera glasses and asked if it would be a breach of eti
quette here. He laughed and said he would use them if he were
in my place, and I did. The crown prince is a tall, slight young
man, with full, dark, but not heavy beard, a rather pleasant face,
but by no means a strong one. He rather stood back, while his
wife stepped forward to greet and talk to her kinswomen on the
deck of the steamer while it was" being tied to. She is tall,
elegantly formed, with a very pretty — perhaps beautiful — face,
the strength, however, rather detracting from its beauty. She was
exquisitely clad in a close-fitting overdress, showing admirably her
fine form. I never saw a more graceful figure, and the face was
full of animation — indeed of sweetness — while she inquired as to
the voyage. The prince himself would be called by our boys
rather la-di-da. If the next generation of Swedish kings be
strong men, they will inherit the strength from their handsome
Baden mother. When the gang-plank was thrown out for
the royal party to come aboard the sailors were laying a

494 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
carpet for them to walk upon. The prince, however, im
mediately walked with the princess aboard, motioning to
the sailors to leave off the carpet ; and when he entered his
carriage with the duke he walked to the outer side and opened the
door himself before the flunkey could get to it. The crown
princess rode away in a splendid carriage with the Princess of
Baden and her daughter. The prince followed in another with the
grand duke and his son, the two elder guests taking the right-hand
seats. There was no cheering whatever, but a silent and very
respectful reception. I am told this is considered here the
proper etiquette when the roy"al family appear in a private
manner, and that even on public occasions any hurrah is very
feeble. The pride of the Swede in his capital city is certainly deserved.
Every visitor says it is one of the handsomest cities in Europe.
I think it is decidedly the most beautiful. Indeed, it would be
hard to say what more it requires. It may be said to sit upon
islands, for even the portions which are a part of the main-land
are so nearly surrounded by water that they seem insulated. The
sea comes up to it through a mass of islands- almost touching the
promontories sent down by the main. The channels through
these, though of great depth generally, are very narrow, the main
one, capable of admitting an armed ship, being less than lOO feet,
wide. These islands and headlands lift 50 to nearly 200 feet, no
where leaving any plain or flat surface. The old town was upon
three or four islands, but now the great bulk of the city is on the
promontories of the main-land ; but these are so irregular in
shape and so nearly surrounded by water that one has to make
long detours to reach points desired, or to take boat for a near
cut. We saw fire-wagons tearing at night across a square at a
break-neck pace ; the young men with me followed them to
see the blaze. I stood still on a bridge and soon saw the illumi
nation in the very direction the wagons had come from, and not
far off. They had a detour of a mile or more to make, and my
young companions had a long run. What is called the ring-hne
of street railway makes many zigzag bends in and out and over
bridges to get around the town. Water permeates the city in
every direction. Here in channels 100 feet wide, there widening
into a broad stream 200 yards across ; here in little creeks running
up into the granite hills, there in rounded little bays — water clear
and transparent, but deliciously green and cool-looking. The
streams are crossed by bridges, some of them very elegant struc
tures, and plying on them in every direction, across, and up and
down, and diagonally, are the prettiest of little steam barges,
some holding .scarcely a dozen people, others 50 or more, running
to and fro, in and out, like water-bugs on woodland fountains, and
carrying passengers at eight tenths of a cent and up to six cents,
according to the distance run. These creeks, streams, and bays

A VIEW OF STOCKHOLM. 495
are walled in by solidly built granite quays in massive smooth
masonry, against which lie the small steamboats plying the lake,
and large steamers from the sea, and are filled with pure water,
coming down in green flood and rapid current from L^ke Malaren,
which drains a large country, into which it pushes in many-armed
and irregular forms over 100 miles. The outflowing channels are
too rapid and shallow for the craft which ply the lake. To
remedy this, one of the narrow branches is locked so as to hft the
larger lake-going vessels up from the sea level. The sea can be
reached directly, or by going up the lake and toward the interior
for many miles, where a deep canal joins one of the arms with a
ragged fiord, which leaves the salt water a half degree south of
the city and penetrates deep into the country.
Water is, perhaps, Stockholm's most attractive feature, and
permeates it in so many ways that it is called by some the Venice
of the North ; but added to this are the solidly built houses,
climbing some of the hills upon narrow, zigzag streets in con
fused, picturesque mass. One height is reached by a lofty street
elevator," lifting in airy, open ironwork 150 to 200 feet high,
with a light iron bridge reaching far over housetops on slender
columns, resting like scaffolding against the sky. In other
localities are elegant streets bending about in comfortable width,
or in stretches of a quarter of a mile, with parkways nicely
planted in shrubs and flowers, and all perfectly paved and lined
with noble buildings generally four stories high and in good
architectural style ; and then there are squares with fine statues
and flanked by public buildings of handsome proportions. ' The
city possesses a splendid park of 1,000 or more acres surrounded
by water and beautifully hilly, and many small parks, gardens,
and squares, scattered about the town, prettily laid out with
monuments and fountains in bronze, and beautifully planted in
trees and shrubs clothed in rich green. In some of these gardens
are elegant cafds, brilliantly lighted at night, where excellent
bands play until the witching hour of midnight, and gay people sit
or stand about and flirt. By the way, flirtation is vtty common,
and, I am sorry to add, statistics show it to be not of the most
harmless kind.
I was in Stockholm in 1875, and was so charmed with it that I
advised some of its citizens to have a glass case built over it to
preserve it exactly. I am glad my advice was not followed, for
the city has grown to over 210,000, and has been greatly im
proved ; and some of the newer streets have been laid out with
handsomely parked esplanades and built up with houses sur-
passed by those in few capitals. The royal palace is a huge and
not bad-looking quadrangle, with fine state apartments, but in no
way differing enough from the conventional palace to deserve a
description. Outside of Russia a traveller can see the interior of
one regal palace and know them all. Those of the czars are sui

496 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
generis, and each worth an examination. The royal museum has
some very fine work-s of art, some of the statues and paintings
being good. There are some, however, hardly fit for a royal collec
tion. I made a funny blunder in the museum. I saw a good
many really fine paintings marked " Okant." I reached the con
clusion that Mr. Okant was a Swedish artist of some merit and of
great industry. But finally seeing he was the painter of religious
and historic subjects, of humorous and solemn moods, of figures,
and of landscapes, it suddenly dawned on my brain that " Okant "
meant " unknown." My mistake reminded me of the honesty of
the Swedish character. They acknowledge ignorance of the
artists of some fine pieces, which in most countries would have
been ascribed to well known masters whom they best fitted, and
thereby had their value enhanced.
The Swedes do not strike me as being a very cheerful or par
ticularly bright-tempered people, nor yet are they solemn. They
seem rather phlegmatic and even in their temperament. They
are generally well dressed and are exceedingly neat in garb and
in their household surroundings. We spent some hours in the
" Deer Garden," the great park of the city, where the masses were
spending the Sunday afternoon and evening. We saw lovers
walking, crowds at games, several groups dancing, and many
pic-nicking. All seemed quiet ; there was no sort of boisterous-
ness and but little light-hearted gayety and fun. Even the groups
of dancers seemed rather to be getting through with the figures
than to be circling in real joy. This was the case even when the
figures required forfeits. The kissing was given without boister
ous jollity, and lacked that wild joy when happy souls dance on
two pairs of meeting lips. In caf6s and restaurants there is quiet
— none of that loud-toned abandon which marks the Teuton's
gatherings. The German.?, when thoroughly enjoying themselves,
talk and vociferate loudly, as if wholly forgetful of every thing
but the jolly, present moment, and of everybody else.
By the way, I was particularly struck with the quiet, low tones
in which Russians converse. We saw them in all sorts of crowds,
and rarely did we ever hear voices raised to a high pitch.
This was the case even when we knew they were feeling the effect
of exhilaration. The Finns are much like them in this respect,
and the Swedes so to a considerable extent. So far the Swedes
appear to me to be pretty well off. We have seen no beggars
anywhere. There is.considerable complaint that America is drawing out of
the land its best bone and sinew, and I am told that there is in high
quarters a disposition to stop emigration, if they knew how to
bring it about. The same feeling exists in Finland. High taxes
are driving its people away very rapidly. In both countries, just
now, emigration is said to nearly counterbalance natural increase
of population. And in both there is much waste land which with
low taxes could come into productiveness.

THE PEOPLE OF STOCKHOLM. 497
I spent a part of a morning attending the congress of the
Young Men's Christian Association. I paid my crown for ad
mission into the gallery. It was presided over by a very promi
nent German, and had several distinguished delegates. Speeches
were made in English, German, and French — the substance of
each being then given in languages other than the one used by
the speaker. I understood them well enough to consider them
quite good. The ablest was read by the president, but, as all
read addresses do, elicited much less applause than feebler efforts
extempore. I was struck by the fact that a large number of the
young men were gray-haired, and many had but little hair to tell
its color, and a very few were really young. The Bible was
extolled by the speakers as the surest guide to its own truths.
I regretted I could not remain another day to join the associa
tion on an excursion to which I was invited by our John V.
Farwell, a delegate. Many of the delegates are learned men and
deserve a successful meeting. My newly made acquaintance.
Prof. Torpelius, the Finnish author, was in attendance.
Willie says there are a great many pretty girls in Stockholm, but
that their shoes look as if made for very large girls — the fault, I
suppose, of the shoemakers, and not of the feet of the pretty
blondes. Some of the peasant costumes now worn in the city by
attendants in the museum and by girls who run little row-boats
are very bright and pretty. Our newly promoted minister, Mr.
Magee, was very polite to us, as he is to all Americans.
I got rid in Stockholm of one of my unpleasant reminders of
an unpleasant past. In 1884 I stumped the State of Illinois with
terrific energy to make a president of the United States. I was
on my feet over ten ten-hour days in nine weeks, and was
whipped from one end of the State to the other. I broke my
voice and injured my health, taking so many medicaments for my
throat that some of my gums receded from my teeth. Up near
the Arctic circle we had to eat jerked reindeer. Some of the salt
meat got into a cavity in the gum, about a wisdom tooth, causing
me much pain for ten days. I left my reminder in the iron grip
of a dentist in the Swedish capital. I wonder if I had saved
that " bone " four and a quarter years ago if it would not have
been a wiser thing. As the wisdom-tooth had then added little
or nothing to my stock of wisdom, I now the more willingly let
it go. I finish this at Christiania, whither the run by rail from Stock
holm was a charming one. It is generally made by tourists by
the " express," making the distance nearly all by night. We, as
we generally do, travelled only by day, and were amply repaid for
the extra time. There was no grand scenery, but a great deal
which was very pretty ; and we saw much of Swedish farming
and something of the customs of the country people. Now we
were in lands thickly wooded with pines and birch, The straight
branchless pines would spin and waltz around each other as the

498 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
train rushed through them, or deeply green firs would make a
dense shade. A break would now occur in the woods, revealing
a glimpse of a quiet lake, or we would skirt one of the pretty
placid sheets, when red farm-houses and waving fields were mir-
rowed on its silvery surface. Then a broad, rolling plain would
be spread out before us, with a hundred farms and well-fenced
fields, waving in freshly green oats and unbearded wheat, or
covered thickly with tall shocks of newly cut rye, like tents in a
pigmy camping-ground. Men and women were cutting tall timo
thy and red-topped clover, or throwing it into rounded domes,
and the whole air was redolent of new-mown hay. Cattle grazed
meekly in meadows from which the grass had been mown, and
looked sleek and contented
Many of the landscapes were exquisitely homelike, cheerful,
and abounding in and running over with peacefulness. I know of
no American home scenery so pretty, and but few in England to
surpass some of the spots we passed over. Lakes were never
long absent, and some of them beautiful. The farm-houses were
all painted in red and many of the barns and out-houses ; not a
flashy, dazzling red, but of a soft and almost neutral tint. I sus
pect the tone has been borrowed from the lichen tint which
covers so many of the granite boulders in the shaded pine lands
of this far north. I have seen some so red that it was difficult to
beheve them not painted with the brush. Oftentimes, too, the
natural surface of stones built into fences along the road looks as
if a painter had cleaned his brush upon their old, water-worn
faces. I spoke before of the gray moss covering huge granite
boulders, but I forgot to mention the beautiful lace-pattern variety
or lichen which often mantles many of those scattered over the
damp, wooded lands up toward the arctic circle. No elaborate
embroidered handkerchief could be more regularly and delicately
worked by woman's nimble fingers than some of these nature's
woven fabrics upon the cold, gray monsters dropped by the
glaciers of a far-off past. They are generally circular, from one to
two feet in diameter, and have, when full grown, three rows of
embroidery, each about an inch and a half deep. They look as if
fairies had spread their choicest lace treasures upon the stones to
dry. They are seen all over this northern land, but we saw the
most perfect about the 67th parallel.

CHAPTER XLVL
NORWAY — MAGNIFICENT SCENERY — TRUSTFUL PEOPLE — PLEAS
ING SIMPLICITY— PRETTY LOG HOUSES— FARMING IN
NORWAY— GLACIERS AND WATERFALLS.
Christiania, September 8, 1888.
I ONCE heard a Norwegian and a Swede in jocular dispute,
which became a little bitter when the latter declared he " never
could understand what the Lord made Norway for ; that it was
nothing but a mass of rocks." The Norseman replied that it was
made to grow men in, as Sweden had found more than once to
her cost. The retort was patriotic and justified by the sturdy
valor of the Norseman since he first appeared among men as
the twin brother of the northern blast, and was supposed to live
in ice grottos about the pole. But as a nursery of men, Norway
has hardly been sufficiently prolific? to justify the fearful throes
borne by Dame Nature when she gave it birth. Every acre came
from the very bowels of the earth, and every rood was torn from
its heart in volcanic agony. Three weeks spent in rapidly run
ning over its mountains and through its valleys ; looking up upon
its snow fields and mighty glaciers ; looking down into its dark
gorges and fathomless fiords ; skimming along its green waters
and under its towering precipices and beetling crags ; listening to
the wild songs of its countless water-falls and the roar of its cata
racts ; breathing the sweet breath of the pines on the mountain
side and braced by the cool, health-giving atmosphere everywhere
found, — all convinces me that " Norge " might have been, if it was
not, intended for a continental or world's park, where Nature can
be communed with when in her grandest moods; where a man
can come close up to her, can be cuddled to her heart, and be
nursed upon her very lap ; where the noblest features of the
world are heaped together within comparatively small compass,
and can be looked upon without danger, and visited with simple,
invigorating labor.
Nature practised her hand in many latitudes and in most dis
tant regions before she laid Norway out. In exalted mood she
lifted Everest and Kunchinjinga to the skies, but threw about
them such mighty foot-hills, such vast buttresses of ice, that
their crowned brows can only be gazed at from afar, and any
attempt at intimacy is repelled with awful doom. Elbruz and
499

500 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
Kazbek are thrown with silvered domes upon a background of
purest, cerulean hue ; around them are clustered monarchs cast
in majestic mould, with valleys and slopes between, where fairies
delight to dwell and flowers are ever in bloom ; but to reach these
sceptred kings vast plains must be traversed beneath the scorch
ing sun. "Old Mt. Blanc" was reared in fearful' majesty, and
" The Maiden "• pierces the clouds with her tresses of all un
touched white, but to revel in their glories one must climb to
alpine heights, and many a votary of the one sleeps in unrecord-
ing ice, and lovers of the other are wrapped in winding sheets of
snow. Having tried her hand in the plastic art, with fingers all
deft and with practised eye, old Nature wandered from southern
climes toward the upper pole and lifted from the sea the north-
land, an epitome of all grandeur, a crystallized photograph of all
beauty, a fixed reflection of all charms — glorious " Norge ! "
Her mountains lift not by the tens of thousand feet through
plains and hills which have swallowed up half of their vast alti
tude, the remainder to be attained only by the most daring and
hardy, but springing from the world's great level, the eternal
ocean, while appearing as lofty as the highest to the beholder,
they may be reached by the maiden's tiny feet and by the old
man's faltering step. Far off from a burning sun, the accumu
lated snows of countless ages flow in glazier currents, measured
not by acres, but by the hundred square miles — glaciers, compared
with which the Mer de Glace, of Chamouni, is as a fish-pond by
the side of an inland sea. The great Jostedals Brae covers an
area of 500 square miles, and sends many an arm nearly down to
the sea, as if it would bathe its frozen fingers in the warm stream
sent by our own gulf to temper the winds to this northern clime.
We have now travelled about 950 miles in this wonderful land
— 530 of them by posting in " stolkjarre," " kariol," and carriage
over mountains and through beautiful narrow valleys ; 220 odd on
little steamers and barges over crystal lakes and wonderful fiords,
and the remainder in slow-running railroad trains. We have
travelled too rapidly for simple enjoyment. That is, we have
taken but little time for rest and have not halted to dream. I
have wasted so much of my life heretofore that I must, like the
busy bee, lay up a store for honeyed dreams in my soon-to-come
old age. We have exercised our legs, and backs too, and have
kept our eyes open and our ears unstuffed with cotton. I will
now attempt to give some very sage conclusions about men and
things here. All of these conclusions I shall be ready to change
when shown they are wrong. I always claimed the right of
changing my mind. It is only the fool who boasts that he never
does. Your inconsistent man is often a very wise man. He
learns enough to-day to know that he was wrong yesterday.
I like the Norwegians. All travellers here declare them per
fectly honest. I certainly have not seen the slightest disposition

THE NORWEGIANS. 501^
on the part of any one of them to deceive or cheat, and if trust
fulness be an evidence of honesty they are wonderfully so. They
have huge keys to their store-houses and granaries — keys big
enough to brain a man with. These huge keys are nearly always
in the keyhole or hanging somewhere within reach of one feloni
ously inclined. At wayside stations curiosities — sometimes of
small silverware — are exposed in the unattended public room,
where any one could easily carry them off. Cigars are in open
boxes for the traveller to help himself from, with the expectation
that he will honestly account for any he has taken. Farm-houses
are left open when the whole family goes off to the mountain to
cut hay, and in some unfrequented localities the wayfarer goes in,
builds a fire, goes to the store-room, helps himself to milk and
" flat-broed," cooks, and eats a meal, and leaves on the table
money enough to pay for what he has used. Frequently a post
boy (he is sometimes a man and not infrequently a girl or woman)
has taken what I have paid for his dues, putting it into his pocket
without counting. He always, however, sees what you give him
as gratuity, and warmly shakes you by the hand when he says
" tak " (thanks). I gave a servant girl too much for our dinner.
She seemed much amused, when she corrected my error, that I
should have made such a blunder. At wayside stations they
charge ridiculously low prices, and as far as I can learn make no
distinction in making the reckoning to foreigners and to home
people. They are a sturdy, fine-looking people, and are the most
thorough democrats on the face of the globe. They have abol
ished all titles and nobility, and have not learned to worship
wealth. One man is quite as good as another, and his bearing
shows he thinks so. He takes off his hat when he meets a
traveller on the roadside, but does it as freely to the coachman
who drives as to the rich man who lolls back in the carriage. He
has high respect for his pastor and for the patriarchal head of a
family. He is, however, frequently a dissenter, and shows no
disposition to pay church rates, and in that case wastes no great
amount of love upon the pastor who is placed over him by the
government. The Lutheran Church is the established one of the
land, and the livings are in the gift of the authorities.
They are a good-natured people I am sure. The kitchen is the
living room in a well-to-do farm-house. I have walked into these
frequently, and generally found the mother putting the finishing
touches to the pot when preparing a meal ; and I could never tell
which were the daughters of the house and which the servants.
By the way, the latter are not ashamed of their calling, and when
I asked a pretty one if she were the daughter, she said, with a
smile : " Oh, nei, I am a servant." Many of the women in the
mountains and upper valley are very comely — not beauties, but
ruddy, rosy, plump, and healthy specimens of femininity. If I
should write verses I would not write them to " The girl with the

502 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
raven locks," nor to "The flaxen-haired maiden," nor yet to "The
red-haired girl," but just now would write a sonnet to "The sweet
girl of the tow head."
The women do their full share of the work of the land, but we
have found the heavy labor is done by the men. The women
reap and bind grain and rake and mow hay. The men, however,
wield the axe and the scythe. All grass is cut, however light, and
often a very quick, sharp stroke is necessary to shave it off. For
this sort of hay, a scythe a little over a foot long, with a handle
less than two feet in length, is used. The stroke is as sharp and
quick as it would be if the mower were taking the head off a
snake. We have seen nowhere the double-action scythe used in
Finland. There a long-handled implement is wielded first to the
right and then to the left, with a rapidity and evenness of action
simply marvellous. I do not think the Norwegians good farmers.
They plow or dig their fields well and deep, but their barley and
oat fields have nearly as much weeds as grain. They harvest close
to the ground, so as to save every weed and spear of grass.
Nothing which grows but is saved for hay, and the cows and
sheep eat any and every thing. Even the potato vines are hung
up to dry for fodder, and leaves of birch and elm are cured and
stacked for winter use. Horses do not eat leaves unless sorely
pressed. Grain ripens here very slowly, and is often cut thoroughly
green. This is more than usually the case this year, for the season
is nearly three weeks later than ordinarily. I saw barley being
harvested in the mountains perfectly green and with heads not
half filled. They know not what night frost may come. Barley
up in Finland matures in eight or nine weeks ; here it frequently
fails to do so in four months, and never in less than three.
All grain and hay is hung up to dry and cure. Each valley and
locality differs somewhat from the next one in the mode adopted.
This shows how conservativej^eople are — each following the
example of his forefathers. There is something pleasing to me in
this respect for the ideas of the past — so different from our land,
where the old is ever discarded and the new taken up. I have
alrnost learned to like the Chinese for worshipping their ancestors.
It is better than with us, where Young America generally thinks
his father an old fossil. In the Gudbransdal— valley of Gud-
brand there are old homesteads which make one almost feel he is
being carried back a few hundred years to the old English halls,
without the pomp of baronial power and mastership. There is
the old tall clock, the old cupboard in the corner, old tables and
other old traps of long ago, and the old man with his pipe and his
children and laborers about the great kitchen in full and free
equality. Yet the old man's will and word is the law of his little
realm and is implicitly obeyed.
Real estate is held upon a singular tenure. A man may dispose
of it as he pleases, but the next in succession has the right to

LIQ UOR TRAFFIC IN CITIES. 503
demand to be the purchaser, even from the vendee who had paid
in full, and he has several years within which to reach his deter
mination, so that an interloper cannot know for some years
whether he is the owner or not. This virtually prevents free
disposal, and the next in succession usually feels a pride in holding
to the old farm. To enable him to buy out his mother and sisters
he goes into debt, and his life then becomes one of drudgery for
the benefit of the mortgagee. The farmer has to keep up the
roads along his land. This burthen with others keeps him poor,
and many seek relief in emigration. If I be not mistaken, the
number leaving the country, both here and in Sweden, is more
than one to three of the births. This very much annoys the govern
ment and causes it to discourage emigration as much as possible.
I am not anxious to have increased emigration to our land. We
are filling up too fast, but no better population could go to our
shores than the hardy sons of Scandinavia.
I had, until coming here, been of the impression that the Nor
wegians were hard drinkers. It was probably so once, but is no
longer the case. I have seen but two men under the influence of
liquor ; one was an excursionist on a railway, the other an
Englishman on a steamer. The people ascribe the improvement
to two things — first, the prohibition against selling any liquor
from five o'clock Saturday afternoon to nine o'clock Monday
morning, and to the peculiar regulation of dram shops in towns
and cities. The traffic in Christiania is under the control of a
syndicate of gentlemen, who own and run the saloons, reserving
only five per cent, of the profits for themselves, and turning the
balance over to the city. Coffee, beer, and liquors are served in
one room and sandwiches in another. No man is permitted to sit
down in the establishment, or to take more than one drink of
liquor or more than a half-bottle of beer at a single visit. The
beer of the land is good and cheap. It is decidedly the beverage
of the people, and so far as my observation extends in the cities
and in the country, sobriety is a national characteristic. Bad
liquor does more harm than much liquor. If the prohibitionists
would only preach a crusade against poison as a beverage, and
would make the wilful manufacture^and sale of adulterated liquors
and beer a penitentiary offence, I believe I would agree to be their
candidate for the presidency. But it will not do for them to stop
a man from making a simon-pure old Bourbon or a canoe of pure,
cooling lager. That is a blow at the natural liberties of free men.
Apropos of presidential candidates, I hear some of our fellows
are poking fun at Ben because his ancestor was drawn, hung, and
quartered. They must not attack the family record. Remember
John Brown was hung, but his soul goes marching on. Ben's
family are very good people, even if one ancestor was a crop-head ;
and besides the lusty old fellow helped to teach the Anointed of
the Lord that royal necks and .sharp steel had affinities.

504

A RACE WITH THE SUN.

I said all grain and grass was hung up to dry. This is some
times done on " hesjies," long racks — posts set in the ground,
about six feet high, with five or six tiers of slender poles or lines
stretching between them — a sort of five-deck clothes-lines.
These are sometimes several hundred feet long, and when there
are several rows one behind another and well filled, look at a
distance like compact companies of infantry, and when close by
and covered with short, green grass resemble well-trimmed quick
set hedges. The more general plan, however, is to hang the grass
or grain on "corn-stals." These are sticks, eight to ten feet high,
set into the ground, with cross-pins for grass but smooth for
grain. The sheaves of grain are so hung upon these that the
heads all bend toward the sunny side, and look not unlike a
woman's massive tresses flowing over her shoulders and down her
back. The little fields, often of less than a quarter of an acre,
scattered over the mountain slopes or in larger sizes in the
smiling valleys, with these tall " corn-stals " scattered over them,
make a charming landscape. The Norwegian farmers like the
Finns and the .Swedes, do not live in villages and clustered
hamlets, but each on his individual farm. I have an idea that this
gives a feeling of independence and a love of real liberty. People
in villages become more or less dependent. The man who lives
alone grows to be self-reliant and loves elbow-room. It is among
such that civil liberty takes deepest root. The necessity of
housing all cattle and all provender during the long winter
months makes very large barns or many buildings necessary to
each farmstead. The farmer whose whole arable land does not
exceed a dozen or two acres, has eight or ten — and often more —
buildings closely gathered about his residence. The larger farms
do not increase the number of these buildings so much as they
increase the size of each. In some of the mountain districts,
where the whole tillable lands of a homestead are not greater
than one of our market gardens, the out-houses are often so tiny
that one could almost imagine they were put up as toys, rather
than for the earnest necessities of a hard life.
In some of the richer and broader valleys, the barns are com
modious structures which would do credit to a Pennsylvania
Dutch farmer ; all buildings throughout the land we have visited,
except in Christiania, are of logs, generally well hewn, sometimes
sawed, with prettily carried up corners, and fitting closely to
gether upon a calking of fine moss, and with lapping eaves and
projecting gable roofing ; very pretentious ones are boarded over.
The roofs in the south and about the fiords are of red bent tiles;
in one or two large valleys, of huge slabs of slate ; but generally
throughout the country, of six or eight inches of turf laid upon
an under-roofing of birch bark. These turf roofs in this rainy
country are green with emerald moss or growing grass, and many
of them with bushes of pine, mountain ash, or birch growing in

LOG-HOUSES AND STABBURS. 505
healthy thrift from four to even 15 feet in height, so that a man
may truly be said to live under his own roof-tree. I counted 18
young trees, none of them under three feet in height, and two or
three over ten feet, on the roof of a house 30 x 20 feet. The
grass on some of the houses was fit for the scythe. On one was
a large patch of pansies, and many were white with wild margue
rites. Painted houses, except about large towns, are the excep
tion. Many receive, when first put up, a washing of thin tar.
These latter left untouched are soon exquisitely tinted by time
and the weather, and wear most artistic hues. Nearly every
.cluster of farm buildings has its " stabbur," or store-house, lifted
upon low bevelled posts, up which mice and other rodents cannot
climb. In some localities these stabburs are the farmer's
pride, and are exceedingly pretty. On bevelled posts two feet
high is erected a pretty log-house, say 10 x 15, and 10 feet high.
Upon this rises a second story, projecting over the first four or
five feet on all sides, and supported by brackets more or less
elaborately carved. The upper story is then surmounted by a
roof of green turf, projecting two to four feet. These erections
are often the perfection of log architecture, and are set forward
before the residences as the pieces de resistance of beauty. They
are generally painted red, or charmingly tinted by the weather,
and when they are the accompaniments of a dozen or more ham
lets scattered over a mountain slope, are very picturesque, and
look not unlike little Burmese temples. They may indeed be
called the temples of the owners, for in them. they store their
cheese and butter, their groceries and barley meal, their seeds and
little wealth of threshed grain. I saw one being erected, where
the old carved brackets, of an older one rotted and pulled down,
were being built into the new. The owner said the brackets were
over 400 years old, and had adorned the store-houses of his ances
tors. The people take great pride in their old family relics, but
are too democratic to erect monuments to their dead heroes,
wherein they differ greatly from the Swedes, whose capital is
filled with statues. We have not seen a half-dozen monuments
in the land. All but two of these were to the engineers who built
their magnificent roads. The exceptions were one to George Sin
clair, a Scotch adventurer, who led 900 of his countrymen into the
heart of the country to assist the Swedes. Three hundred peas
ants collected over a pass he was to take, and, hurling stones and
logs down upon the invaders, destroyed them all. A huge slab,
with the commander's name and the date of his death, is erected
near the roadside. I asked our coachman why the monument
was erected to him. He replied : " Because he was killed."
There was more wisdom in the answer than he dreamed of.
Many a man goes down to fame simply because he was killed.
A broken arm or a wooden leg takes a man to Congress or makes
him a governor. A broken head and death-stroke makes him a

5o6 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
hero and gives him a monument. How many thousands have
lost their bright opportunity by not being killed at the right
time ! The other exception mentioned was the statue to Chris
tian, the founder of the city, in Christiania.
Norway has an area of 122,000 square miles — considerably
more than twice as -many as the State of Illinois — and yet she
has only a little over 1,000 square miles of arable, cultivatable
lands. About a fifth of her surface is covered by forests — not of
large trees such as we consider valuable timber, but of close-
grained pines, large enough for a European market, and of birch
and other trees. The remaining land surface is all bald rocky.
heights and upper moorlands, with scanty grass for pasture and
moss for reindeer, and snow-fields. She has a marvellous amount
of running water well stocked with fish, and almost fathomless fiords
and interland channels teeming with the finny tribes of the deep.
Her forests and fisheries have constituted her wealth in the past.
Her magnificent scenery will go far toward feeding her population
in the future. A few years ago her roads were only rough bridle
paths and foot trails. Now she has many of the best engineered
and gravelled roads in the world, and is extending them to every
point sought by the tourist. Thousands of foreigners seek health
and pleasure here every summer. And each summer exceeds
the preceding one by a heavy percentage. So many Englishmen
come to it that it is called by some of them a suburb of London,
and the language of John Bull is being picked up a little on every
mountain side and in every valley, and along the great fiords of
the west an American or Briton rarely needs an interpreter.
The fjords or fiords are deep-sea creeks running far into the
mountains inland on the whole coast, from the far north down to
the border of Sweden. It was from them that the Vikings
(creek kings) sallied forth to prey upon the richer people of Eng
land and the south. In some instances these creeks are over lOO
miles long, from a half mile to four miles broad, and as deep as
the outer sea. They ramify into countless arms, jagged and
rough. On a topographical map they have been likened to the
crooked trunk of a dead tree, with the larger gnarled branches
projecting, but stripped of smaller limbs. These branches end in
deep narrow valleys extending still farther inland, in which are
long deep lakes on higher altitudes. These lakes occupy the
beds of fiords, which extended back at some earlier period, before
the country was lifted high above the sea. From the fiords huge
mountains lift their precipitous heights 1,000 to 5,000 feet directly
from the water, with here and there steep slopes, on which little
patches of cultivated land mingle with the precipices. Gener
ally, however, the mountains rise at once in sheer precipices or in
mighty rocks with little terraces, on which stunted trees find
scanty foothold, or ledges green with light grass.
Behind the mountains are upper plateaus, covered with glaciers
and eternal snows. Over their crests pour water-falls, so far up

MOUNTAINS AND WATER-FALLS. 507
that they are lost in mist, to be again gathered into tumbling
streams on lower rocky projections, or, having worn the rocky
sides down into more gradual descents, they hing like silvery
bands, 1,000 and 2,000 feet long, on the frowning mass of granite.
The mountains are of volcanic origin, and stand as they stood when
first cooled off after being belched forth from the deep bowels of
the earth, more or less modified by the action of water and frosts
through countless ages. They lift in monster domes, rounded
and bald-headed, smooth and nearly solid, and could they be seen
from far-off heights, would appear as vast water-worn bowlders,
strewn in irregular order on the face of the land. In bne respect
they make this one of the oldest parts of the earth ; that is, they
are all composed of primary rocks, thrown up by the globe's
eternal fires, and bear upon themselves no secondary formation.
In fact, however, I suspect this is one of the newest of landsi and
is the creation of one of the world's latest cataclysms. This is
evidenced, first, by the absence of overlying stratified rocks and
clays, and yet more strikingly by the sharp lines and edges of
monster fragmentary rocks, which often lie in Titanic masses as
they fell down from the heights into gorges and narrow valleys,
broken from their moorings by too rapid cooling. Vast piles of
such fragments are often met with, piled like Ossa upon Pelion,
into lofty hills. These great fragments are seen 200 or more feet
in diameter, with edges as sharp as if they had been cleaved but
yesterday, resting upon underlying monsters, with crevices as
large as caves, or on points so small that a few strokes of a slender
hammer would change the position of millions of tons. There
are no pinnacles, needles, and horns to be seen in Norway piercing
the skies, as in the Alps or in our own Rockies, but the tallest
points present somewhat rounded crowns on the background of
the sky. This is a land of water, of rushing torrents — torrents
fed by upper snows and frequent rains, tumbling down mountain
sides and dashing along valleys in rapidly falling masses, forming
innumerable cascades over frightful precipices and countless
water-falls in the valleys. Many of these are of wondrous beauty,
but so constantly recurring that tourists become surfeited with '
their wild music and their filmy or foaming charms.
The tree line ends at some 3,000 feet altitude, and the lofty
heights of the mountains are clothed in heather or are naked and
smooth in rock. Vast snow-fields lie on the upper plateaus, some
congealed and pressed into glacier streams ; others descending in
great stripes and bands in deep, rocky furrows, far down into the
valleys, so that when once into the mountains, white robes and
scarfs and ribbons are always visible about monster shoulders.
The roads are splendidly engineered, built of disintegrated granite
sands, or soft particles of somewhat flaky gneiss, smooth as a
garden walk, and sloping from lofty heights in loops, bends and
zigzags, along frightful precipices in charming convolutions,
along which the mountain ponies trot or gallop with surefooted,

5o8 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
brave, and never-flagging steadiness. There are few good-sized
horses in Norway ; nearly all of the small ones are pony-built.
They are fairly well formed, almost always tawny or dun more or
less of a yellowish or whitish tinge. All have a dark streak of
hair, beginning in the foretop, running through the middle of the
mane, along the spine, and into the tail. Nearly all are prettily
roached the two lighter sides of the mane being removed, leaving
a black or dark roach, even to a nearly white pony.

CHAPTER XLVII.
CHRISTIANIA— VIKING SHIPS— THE THELEMARKEN— THE FIORDS
—CLIMATE OF NORWAY— SPLENDID ROADS— DELIGHTFUL
TOURS— MOUNTAIN DAIRIES.
Steamer Christiania, September, 15, 1888.
Now, having given a general survey of this pleasing country
and its holdings, I will endeavor to draw a few pictures of the
particular things seen and done in our rapid tour of three weeks.
We commenced our inland journeyings at Christiania, going by
rail some 50 miles southwestwardly to Kongsberg ; then by
posting 190 miles in little spring carts, through smiling valleys
and over bleak snowy mountain heights and passes to Odde
on the southernmost arm of the great Hardanger Fiord ; thence
through the arms of Hardanger on a little steamer and posting to
the southernmost arm of the Sogner Fiord, which carries its almost
fathomless salt waters a hundred and odd miles into the interior
mountains; then on this briny inland creek to one of its northern
landing-places ; and by post and over the crystal lakes on row-
boats or little barges to the great Nord Fiord ; and again
posting to the Sondmore, and over and along its branches
twisting like a reptile through mighty pricipices 3,000 and 4,000
feet high in the Geiranger and the Slyngs Fiords, and on
ward again by posting to the beautiful Molde Fiord and the
picturesque town of Molde, — making in all 300 to 320 miles from
Odde. By posting again nearly 200 miles through the deep
gorges and frowning heights of the Romsdal, and over the
pass and through the beautiful valley of Gu'dbrandsdal to Lille-
hammer, and on the long and sweet lake of Mioesen about 65
miles, and finally by rail 42 miles again to the capital, and finish
ing all on the fine steamer Christiania of Copenhagen out of the
Christiania Fiord, on which I am now writing.
The ride, when entering Norway by rail from the frontier of
Sweden, is spoken of by the guide-books as tame. This should
be so understood as by comparison with the nobler scenery
offered the traveller in other localities. It is really very pretty ;
low mountains clothed in pines of foliage so dark that they seem
almost black ; scattered farms with clusters of houses charmingly
tinted by the weather, and fields green in light-colored oats, and
well mown meadows, and little fields of rye mounted on tall,
509

5IO A RACE WITH THE SUN
closely planted " corn-stals," and patches of barley now beginning
to yellow. Our track lay along a broad, flowing stream, with here
and there large saw-mills, surrounded by huge piles of newly cut
boards and great rafts of slender logs, with several pretty villages
and towns and tasty houses.
We found Christiania a fine, well-built city of 120,000 dwellers.
Its general characteristic is that of substantial solidity without any
pretentions to great elegance or beauty. Some of the public
buildings are fine and the palace is imposing. The king, who
was in the city when we arrived, or rather in its neighborhood,
does not occupy it, and rarely even the bijou of a residence, Oscar's
Hall, charmingly situated on the fiord near by. He was sojourn
ing in a log-house somewhere near by, I suppose thereby to flat
ter the democratic tastes of his Norse subjects. He goes about
here with decided simplicity. These people have no great rever
ence for kings, and the present one's movements are much more
unpretending than when in the sister kingdom. The union
between Norway and Sweden is almost exclusively through the
crown. In all things else Norway is an independent, separate
kingdom. The museum is quite good, but the thing most attractive to us
was the old viking ship. This is a keel about 85 feet long, with
a pitched-roofed log-cabin, in which the bones of tne old robber
king were found. It was discovered buried a few years since in the
sands, where it had lain for nearly or quite a thousand years. A
dead king was buried in it with his horses and cattle, which were
killed for him to feed on during his nethermost pilgrimage. The
views about Christiania are fine, and the suburban residences of
its better-to-do people very pretty. One of the prettiest is the
150-years-old house of our kind consul, Mr. Gade. It has pretty
grounds and handsome trees, and an exquisite garden. His
beautiful American wife is, however, its best adornment. With a
wealth of silvery hair, and rosy complexion, and the softest of
dark eyes, she shows that a Maine girl lost nothing when she was
transplanted to Norge to be the mother of two nearly grown
children now finishing their education at Cambridge, Mass. He
has been our consul for nearly eighteen years ; delights to show at
tention to Americans, and exhibits the book of my good old friend.
Judge Caton, as his most valued treasure. I do not know but that
he values the kind lines written on the fly-leaf even more than all
of its valuable printed pages.
The run by rail to Kongsberg is fine, through deep valleys, high
upon mountain slopes overlooking deep gorges and sunny valleys,
on which haymaking men and women stopped to wave their hand
kerchiefs to the passing train. Every one gives their salute to
whirling train and panting steamer. In fact I have reached the
conclusion that this article of apparel throughout the Northland
is rather kept white for this purpose. The back of the hand is

4 TRIP THROUGH THELEMARKEN. 511
much more used for nose-wiping. It is convenient, always handy,
can be cleaned without ironing, and saves the rag. It is astonish
ing how long the Finns, Swedes, and Norse men and women can
wave their napkins to parting friends. It makes us sometimes
rather sigh when embarking that no one ever bids us good-bye.
We have had no one to see us off since we left Seattle. We go
aboard an ocean steamer as a sort of every-day affair and quit aland
as coolly as the denizen of a city takes a horse-car. We have grown
utterly cosmopolitan. The world is our home and all people are
our brothers. We pass from one land to another as nonchalantly
as most people turn a village corner ; we look back upon the
masses we leave with kindly regard and silently bid them a long
adieu. We then look forward to the next where we shall meet
with generous welcome. The world is everywhere our oyster ;
with courtesy and a silver knife we open the shell on every strand
and eat of its juicy contents with heartful thankfulness to the
Giver of all good gifts ; with kindness to all and malice to none,
with forgetfulness that any were ever our harm-doers ; with hopes
that all will be our well-wishers we think of the far-off land where
real friends have stood by us in the past, with longing soon to be
among them and to be better Americans and truer Chicagoans
because we have been and ever will be citizens of the whole
world. The Thelemarken district has not been much visited by tour
ists because its roads are of very recent date, and some two or
three passes are yet so steep that one has to take a good many
stiff walks to surmount them. But it was to us a succession of glo
rious experiences and views. Now we were in sweet valleys as
pastorally beautiful and homelike as one could wish ; little waving
fields and mowed lands so smooth and with trees so scattered along
streams or in clustering copses that they looked like well-kept
parks. Homesteads perched on steep mountain sides in gather
ings of a dozen out-houses with green moss or grass on their roofs
and now and then with little trees growing far above the ridge
pole. Scarcely any tawdry or glaring in paint, but all sweetly
tinted with that softest of all brushes — the weather, and by that
truest of all artists — time ; beautiful stabburs, or store-houses,
the treasure houses of the owners, fashioned with a taste only to
be reached by the rounded log, exact corners, and widely over
hanging eaves, in the softest of neutral red, if painted, but gener
ally stained by the coloring of oozing pitch, helped perhaps by a
thin coating of tar which time has wiped down as if with light blend
ing brushes dipped in dry burnt umber. We sometimes stopped at
a plain farmer's station where we would have trout with sides
studded with rubies, and with butter and milk scented and fra
grant from the sweet mountain grass cropped by the little cows,
and waited upon by a nice Norwegian woman who seemed to care
more for our praise of her good things, than for the small price in

512 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
" kronor and eere " she would charge for the meal ; then our little
horses — pony-built and compact, which do not know how to baulk,
looking so docile and sensible, carrying us now on the very verge
of a precipice and then almost on a jutting crag, and giving us a
twinkle from their honest eyes as if saying " was that not a close
shave?" These things were all pleasant helps to enjoyment.
I must not forget that horses are not tied and tethered by the
head. The halter is fastened to one of the fore-feet instead. When
a driver halts in town or country he fastens a cord from one fore
foot to one of the shafts. When cattle, horses, and even sheep,
are tethered out to pasture it is done by the foot. It is amusing
to see these educated animals reaching for an extra tuft of grass,
standing on three feet while the fourth is stretched to the rope.
The people and their cattle live on terms of the utmost intimacy
and are perfect friends. A low word from the owner is enough to
make a pony put forth his best exertions and a whip is rarely
needed. A strange driver needs the whip and a good one. The
boy stands or sits behind the traveller, and when he gets down to
walk going up hill the pony pays no sort of attention to the trav
eller who drives, but when the boy mounts, off he trots before a
word is spoken. The brightest post-boy 1 had was a woman who
could jump up and down with the agility of a cat. And yet
she had two sons in Minnesota ; one of them had been there
seven years, thus showing she was no youngling. In my gallantry
I wished to get down to open a gate. She objected ; I gave her
to understand that I was quite young. She looked at my gray
head with an incredulous grin. I reserved my gallantry after that
for some more appreciative fair one and let her do the jumping.
Our little boys were generally of the brightest and rosiest kind
and took great pride in showing off their little stock of English ;
and how thankful were they when they would shake us by the
hand and give us a warm " tak " (thanks) for the 25 " acre " we
would give as trink gelt. Once we stopped at an old wooden
church curiously built in a sort of rising terraces of stained
shingles. Some of its timbers were there as they were placed
600 or 700 years ago. The good pastor of Hitterdal was most
kind when he dismissed the class of some 20 maidens he was
preparing for confirmation, and showed us his old treasures.
Among other things he pointed to a sort of visitors' registry,
on one of its earliest pages being the name of Napoleon, written
by the Prince Imperial before he started off for cruel Zululand.
The meek-looking young girls in neat black dresses, with black
handkerchiefs on their heads seemed thoroughly to realize the
solemn ceremony they were soon to pass through when uniting
themselves thoroughly to the church. The peasant women wear
usually a gown of dark or black coarse woollen stuff, with hand
kerchief, light or black, tied at the throat.
At times our road lay along streams — now torrents with pretty
falls, rushing through clefts in the rocks, and then spreading into

¦HITTERDAL" CHURCH, THELEMARKEN.

FLATDAL A HAPPY VALLEY. 513
broad and placid streams ; quaint little saw- and grist-mills were
frequently among the rocks about the falls, so small that one
could almost take them for boy's toy mills. These mills are char
acteristic features throughout the land. They are always of logs,
often not ten feet square, and usually covered with turf, all the
greener for being within reach of the spray of the cataract whose
fall turns their wheels. They are large enough for a set of stones,
a little hopper and trough, and a barrel or two. Sometimes they
are run by an outside over-shot wheel, though more frequently by
a little wheel directly under the stones. At one place I counted
II little mill-houses, one after another, within 200 feet of each
other, on a small mountain stream. Many a Norseman grinds
his grain, sharpens his axe and scythe, turns his lathe, and cuts
the hay and straw for his cattle by water. For the latter pur
pose a wire band is carried sometimes quite a distance from a
water-wheel into the barn. Now and then one sees a grindstone
whirling away, turned by its own separate tiny water-wheel not
much larger than a boy's flutter-mill.
Some of the mountains lifting from the valleys in the Thele
marken are of lofty grandeur and the precipices of fearful heights.
We passed many mountain lakes, some of them high up near the
eternal snows, and of depths almost unfathomable — 2,000 feet
and upwards. Along these we would skirt under lofty precipices,
over roads carved like galleries from the solid rock, and the
mountains on the opposite side mirrored in the deep crystal
water. After passing, one day, through a lofty pass between
mighty, rocky buttresses, we emerged upon one of the most im
pressive scenes I have ever looked upon. Fifteen hundred feet
below us lay a valley apparently perfectly level, about a half mile
wide and five or six miles long, with a farm-covered slope 1,000
feet high spreading to our left and next us. The level valley was
laid out in meadows cleanly mowed, in barley fields, just begin
ning to be built up in corn-stals, and in pea-green oat patches ;
through its full length stretched a river some 50 or more feet
wide and ending in a lake at the farther point ; scattered over it
were clumps and clusters of trees gracefully and tastefully placed,
as if planted for a royal park ; dotting the little plain here and
there were a few farm-houses, while close under us was a hamlet
and a spired church. The whole was bathed in a late afternoon
sunlight, and was so warm and beautiful that I involuntarily ex
claimed, " Behold a happy valley." It was exquisitely beautiful;
but when looking a little above our level, the scene ceased to be
beautiful — it was at once one of majestic grandeur. On the right
and left reared two huge bowlder-like mountains 3,000 to 4,000
feet high and of the length of the valley. These were of nearly
precipitous sides, but rounding as they lifted to the lofty crests,
seemed smooth, bald, solid, and of unfissured rocks ; across the
lower end of the valley was another of like form and character.
The plain below us seemed to have been scooped out of solid

514 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
rock. There was a wonderful impressiveness in these huge
masses of stone, each looking like a single rounded loaf-shaped
bowlder, with a few little roughnesses in which stunted pines had
taken root, making the sides look semi-green, but leaving the
summits cold, naked, and gray. These masses of solid rock are
more awe-inspiring than far loftier summits, where they are split
and sundered into needles, horns, and pinnacles. The latter
show at once that they have yielded to the elements. The solid
mass seems to have defied time and nature, and to rest in eternal
fixedness. A road bending and winding like a serpent upon itself
brought us soon down into the valley. High upon the mountain
side hung a little foamy stream bending over its very crest, and
looking at top like a silver thread tight twisted and compact, but
as it came lower down, seeming to be frayed, until within 500 to
800 feet of the bottom it was unravelled and spread into silvery
mists. It looked but a tiny thing, yet we could hear it roar,
though it was more than a half mile away. This beautiful valley
is Flatdal in Thelemarken.
Our road carried us nearly 4,000 feet up, over wild and dreary
downs, far above the tree line and among bands of snow running
in the deep furrows down to our feet. Few alpine passes are
grander than this, and none more wildly dreary. On the little
upland valleys was fair grass on which " saeters " were located,
and cows and sheep were feeding, but within range of vision were
loftier slopes gray with reindeer moss. Three of our meals were
on fresh reindeer meat ; as roast and steak it was sweet and juicy.
The owner of Haukeli-saeter owns a herd of 400. We were
sorry to find they were all some miles off on a higher mountain,
to which there was no road. He raises about 100 a year. They
are milked twice a week. Their food is a peculiar moss which
grows on the bleakest heights. The herd moves along as its
food gives out. It is on this account that the Laplander has no
fixed abode. He moves with his friend and support. It looked
odd to see huge antlers lying around loose like cattle-horns in a
butcher's yard. The flesh brings only a trifle more than beef.
There are several large herds in Norway, the largest having 2,500
head. The lofty mountain heights belong to government. Rein
deer owners pay for each a little over a kronor a year for pastur
age. The milk and cheese made from it has a sweetish taste, not
unlike that of the sheep.
The most striking piece of road I saw, and there are many fine
ones, is that which drops one down from 1,000 or more feet into
the valley of Roeldal. It bends about in loops not 100 feet
across, winding round and about like a corkscrew. Some foot
travellers at slow walk down the direct footpath beat us, though
we went at a rapid trot, so rapid that I half held my breath sev
eral times when we seemed to be hanging on almost perpendicu
lar precipices. The outer sides of mountain roads have protec-

SAETERS AND GAARDS. 515
tions a few feet apart of blocks of stone three or so feet high, set
firmly on the outer edge of the slope. At a Httle distance these
blocks resemble crenalations on embattled walls. Looking from
the lower valley of Roeldal to the road far above, the bendings
are so short that they might be taken for embattled rounded
towers. Tumbling over the crest of the mountain near this is a
water-fall not far from 1,500 feet high, which, viewed from a point
opposite seems a single cascade. The stream far above is proba
bly not over 20 feet wide, but it spreads over the steep sides of
the rocks until in fan shape it becomes a mass of foam a hundred
feet wide. So little has this splendid valley been visited that the
guide books do not even mention this beautiful fall. Nesthng
down in this valley is a deep, dark lake, from which lift mountains
sheer up 2,000 to 3,000 feet.
I spoke of " saeters." They are mountain estabhshments where
cattle and sheep are grazed and the cows milked during the sum
mer. The milk is brought to the farms below each day when
near, and twice a week when far off. We met twice, early in the
morning, dozens of rosy-cheeked, tow-headed beauties, each with
a couple of tin cans holding several gallons of milk. They go up
at night, milk the cows, and bring in the produce early to their
farm homes, perhaps several miles off. The cans swing from a
sort of harness over the shoulders, and are kept apart by a flat
stick scooped out so as to fit over the stomach. Ever valley
farmer has his saeter-land in the mountains. Often the sky
which overhangs his mountain land is of equal value per acre.
A man has perhaps a farm of 25 to 50 acres in the valley;
off in the mountains he has hundreds or thousands of acres.
On these are the saeters. The saeter buildings, cow- and hay-
houses of several farmers are close together, and their cattle
graze in common. The cattle are all housed each night and
come in of their own accord. Some of these saeters are of
themselves now comfortable farms, and have considerable culti
vatable lands ; this since good roads have been built to reach
them. That is, some farms are still called saeters, though
in strictness they are "gaards" (farms). They are, too, the sta
tions on the post-roads, in high altituldes, and have their fixed
names, and on maps are marked as if they were villages. There
are along the Thelemarken road many splendid water-falls, some
of them tumbling from great heights and in large streams. Falls
are frequent of several hundred feet high, and with much more
water than is in the Bridal Veil at Niagara. At one point three
falls are close together, two of them falling 200 or 300 feet from
one mountain, the other from the opposite side of the gorge from
another mountain. The three are not a hundred yards apart. This
is a charming spot, one of the finest in the world. The falls of
Switzerland are tame things compared to them. We did not visit
the two great water-falls. What we saw was enough. I could

5i6 " A RACE WITH THE SUN.
write of each wonderful place we visited, but it would take too
much space ; I simply give some as specimens of all others ; these,
however, being those which most pleased us, and being, too, more
or less characteristic of all others.
The Naeraedal is a gorge of terrific grandeur, barely broad
enough to permit the passage of a rushing torrent and the narrow
road. It is flanked by rocky mountains, lifted so precipitously as
to seem almost perpendicular, of 3,600 and 4,300 feet respectively
in height. At the outlet of this gloomy canyon lies Gudvangen,
a pretty little hamlet on the head of the deep southern arm
of the Sogner Fiord, itself but a continuation of the Naeraedal,
only the water-way is of breadths varying from half a mile
to one or more miles, and widening to several miles as it nears
the sea. At the head of the Naeraedal gorge, over a steep slope
of 1,000 or more feet, climbs, in a succession of short zigzags, the
smooth and even road, having, now to the right and then to the
left, one or two beautiful cascades, tumbling now in leaps and
then in broken foam over jutting rocks, the streams forming
each being considerable rivers. The view from the summit of
this slope resembles the Yosemite. The mountains are al
most baldly naked gray felspath rock, two of them lifted in
huge domes and presenting so rounded fronts that one can
scarcely realize that they are the projecting ends of a long range
and are not single well-defined domes. Behind these are two
others, presenting their flanks to the narrow valley and blending
into the vast rocks near the fiord. Into the depths of the gorge
the winter's sun reaches only for a short time each day, and in
some parts is not seen at all for two months. On the top of the
steep slope named is a fine sanitarium hotel (Stalheim) looking
down into this gloomy gorge, and looking up to the pinnacles
3,000 feet above in whitened mass of rock and whiter snow.
That one may understand the beauty and grandeur of the
water-falls of Norway it is necessary to realize that though narrow
cataracts when they rush through the rocky crevices, the streams
are yet so large that when spread into widths from an eighth to a
quarter of a mile, and several feet deep, they flow with the cur
rents of strong rivers. There are dozens of these large falls along
the route we traversed, tumbling from elevations of 2,000 or 3,000
feet, not all visible as falls in a single view, but in fearful rapids,
and often in a succession of leaps, or dashing over steeply slop
ing precipices in snowy foam, and parts of each, if looked at from
directly in front, having all the appearance of single leaping
cascades. But besides these larger water-falls there are hun
dreds upon hundreds of smaller ones, which he over and upon the
sides of mountains 2,000 to 3,000 feet in height in bands of silver.
One rides through valleys and along fiords for miles and miles,
and is never out of sight of these long streams and is never out
of hearing of their roar. Many of them which seem but threads

MILD CLIMATE IN HIGH LATITUDES. 517
are yet of such volume that they can be heard a mile or more
away. In the wild gorge I have just named, though it is but
eight miles long, and is the arm of the fiord of the same name
and about as long, there are several dozen falls fed by the great
snow-fields which cover the mountain plateau above.
I should here state that Norway might be said to be a great
mountain plateau varying from 3,000 to 8,000 feet above the sea,
through which in every direction and in every form run innumera
ble bent and distorted valleys, some of which seem to have been
formed by splitting the mountains asunder, and others as if the
jets of molten matter had suddenly cooled before filling the space
intended to hold them. These upper plateaus represented on a
chart are gnarled and irregular in shape as are the valleys below.
On them, each fall and winter, is heaped a vast mass of snow,
caused by the meeting of winds moisture-laden from the gulf-
stream, which washes the coast and the colder winds from the
land. The sun is not hot enough to melt the snows in early
summer, but gradually sends them down in innumerable streams
till winter again locks them up with icy bolts.
Although this country is in a higher latitude than northern Lab
rador and southern Greenland, yet its climate is so tempered by
the gulf stream that on the coast there is rarely as cold weather in
winter at Molde on the 63d degree and opposite the northern end
of Hudson Bay, as at St. Louis. The winters are very long and in
the interior are nearly as severe as at Chicago, but about the fiords
and the lakes, which are extensions of them, vegetation is very
rich and the foliage of the trees is of much luxuriance and of great
size. I measured a lilac leaf five inches in diameter and elm leaves
are twice as large as with us. This is the true home of the cur
rant. The bushes are as large as our snowballs and the fruit
nearly as big as small cherries, and gooseberries are seen as large
as damsons. One rarely sees anywhere so thrifty maples and
lindens as about Molde Fiord.
The whole of the Sogner Fiord presents magnificently grand
scenery, but the sublimest in Norway is that of the Geiranger,
one of the arms of the Stor. The water on this and other branches
near is a mile and a half wide, but does not appear half so much,
because of the towering precipices wMch rise out of the creek and
almost perpendicularly climb to a height of four or more thou
sand feet. I have seen elsewhere only one sheet of water and
mountain scene equal to this — the Koenig see in the Tyrol. It is
apparently a lake, for no outlet is seen when once upon it. The
rocks so blend together in their dark gray massiveness that they
seem solid buttresses in every direction. The sharp, jutting edge
of one of the lofty cliffs, 2,500 feet above, seems so to overhang
that passengers on our little barge speculated upon the possibility
of leaping from it to the water below. Here close by, like a
mighty pulpit, is a canopied stone named after St. Olaf, who was

5i8 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
hidden near by, and being slain became the patron saint of
Norge. Little water-falls tumble over the great heights, some
of them lost in mists far above, and until they are again caught
by black projections, on which they are gathered and spread as
veils of lace.
Perched in several spots, on terraces i,ooo and 2,000 feet up on
the steep mountains, are tiny farms reached by zigzag paths along
the cliffs, so steep that wooden poles are fastened along them to
enable the climber to mount with his burden of hay. Grass is cut
on every nook where a basketful can be saved and is then carried
in boats to the foot of these paths, there dried, and afterward
carried on the head above. We saw haymakers on spots so steep
that they rested on a knee while the other leg would be stretched
to reach a lower footing. They looked more like climbing hunters
than every-day plodding toilers. How men and cattle can move
about on the dizzy heights during snowy winters is a marvel, and
now and then it is said one does lose foothold and goes tum
bling below. One of the pleasing peculiarities of Norwegian
scenery is that in the most frightful gorges and on the steepest
slopes, every spot whereon soil has collected and on which a man
can stand becomes the mown meadow or field of a hardy moun
taineer. Houses seem to be hanging on the very brink of dizzy
precipices, and on inclines so steep that one would suppose them
anchored to keep them from sliding down ; and little fields are
green in barley where one would think goats must be employed
to harvest them, fields so small that a good-sized umbrella would
almost shade them. When the slopes are free from rocks for
eight or ten acres then they become sunny, smiling homesteads.
These soften many rugged passes and give the roughest spots
oftentimes a charming pastoral appearance. Then, again, wher
ever grass grows it becomes a meadow. Men and women climb
the steep mountain side to cut close every spot which can fur
nish a hamper full of short hay. Every spot as large as a good-
sized bedspread, in wood or among rocks, is closely shaved and
the crop taken off. Hay cut from these spots is carried off green
to be dried elsewhere and housed.
The air is so humid that the shaven sward at once takes an
emerald hue. Little land is cultivatable, but a great deal grows
short thin grass, all of which is mown, for the bulk of the cattle
do not graze near the houses, but are kept during the summer
high up on the mountain side. This grass-land is cut so evenly
and the crop is so quickly removed that the mowing appears
to have been done for beauty and not for use. Scattered over
land about houses and hamlets are low birch and elm trees or
bushes. These give to the valleys and lower mountain slopes a
beautiful park-like appearance. The trees mentioned all have
their regular uses. They are cut-in each year, and their young
twigs and leaves are dried and stacked up about the barns, the

THE ROMSDAL. 519
twigs for fuel, the leaves for food for sheep and goats and to help
out the cow should the regular provender prove short. Indeed,
many of the poor people depend to a great extent upon leaves to
support their two or three cows a good part of the long winter
months. Little boys and girls and old people are seen constantly
picking elm, birch, and mountain-ash leaves in great hamper
baskets, to be dried and stored away. By the way, we have
in America no conception of the beauty the mountain-ash is pos
sessed of. They greatly enliven the appearance at this season of
many Norwegian landscapes, and are so red with berries that they
look as if they had been sprinkled with blood for a passover in a
more than Egyptian night.
By many the Romsdal is considered the grandest of all Norwe
gian valleys. It is certainly magnificent. It is a strange mixture
of beautifully home-like and terrific gorge scenery. Lofty moun
tains tower upwards of 5,000 feet high of almost solid, naked
gneiss rock, so precipitous as to seem nearly vertical, some of
them terminating in small rounded pinnacles, others cutting the
sky with sharp-edged cliffs ; some are so smooth on their faces that
they shine in a light, misty rain, and others rough as if just riven
by fearful convulsions. These monster rocks tower on either side
of and confine a valley nowhere half a mile wide, and in many
parts only a few hundred yards across. The valley is beautifully
cultivated, having pretty farm-houses, waving little fields, and
clean-shorn and park-like meadows, and through it runs a river of
much volume and of crystal clearness, always in swift flow, gen
erally in tumbling, turbulent, rapid, and in two or three places in
beautiful cascades, twisting and leaping down dark canyons or
clefts in the rocks. Up this majestic valley for several hours we
were accompanied by dark clouds hanging below the crests of the
mountain, now roofing the gorge over our heads, and then break
ing away and giving us glimpses of the sky lines far above. At
one point a splendid cataract of large size tumbled close by us,
1,000 feet in height, and with all the effect of a single leap ;
a dark cloud screened its loftiest spring, so that it seemed to
be pouring in foaming mass out of the very heavens. The Roms-
•dal debouches into the fiord near Molde, a very pretty town of
nearly 2,000 people, and only a fe\*- miles from the Atlantic,
which can be seen from an eminence behind the town. Here
we were on the 63d parallel, and yet so soothing is the gulf
stream that vegetation is of much luxuriance. Maples, lindens,
elms, and cherry trees wore leaves of great size, and the currant
and gooseberry bushes are twice as tall as I have seen them
in America, and the honeysuckle embowered the houses. To the
east of the town, across the fiord, which spreads into a land-locked
bay, stretches a long line of peaked mountains, broken into an
exquisite sky line with patches, collars, and bands of snow, giving
it a wildly alpine appearance. Here we were nearer the sea than

520

A RACE WITH THE SUN.

anywhere else before. Our journey from Odde had been over the
north and south arms of fiords and through the high passes divid
ing them, and from 30 to 80 miles from the true coast line.
Before quitting the fiords I must not omit to mention Sjoe-
holt, on the Slyngs Fiords, which affords one of the most charm
ing water and mountain views to be found in any land. The
fiord, four or five miles wide, lies between lofty mountains more
or less covered with verdure and reaching toward the ocean for
15 or 20 miles, with a background of prettily outlined hills. The
mountains fall in height from those nearest to those farthest off,
in such manner that the loss of elevation in the more distant ones
seems so be caused by perspective, rather than in reality.
The Romsdal pass ends in a high mountain plateau of wild and
desolate character, and then commences the valley of Gudbrand
or Guldbrandsdal, which cuts Norway from the northwest to the
southeast. In this was the seat of the last of the pagan chiefs of
the land. The mountains in this charming valley are quite high,
but have long slopes on which are beautiful farms and thrifty
farmers, living in good old-fashioned style. When I say beauti
ful farms, I mean for this land. Now and then is a field of 20
acres in size, generally smaller, but running one into another so
closely as to give a single-field appearance to the whole. In many
respects the characteristics of the valley are not unlike some of
the finest Swiss valleys, only this continues at greater length,
being considerably over 100 miles in extent. The farm-lands
climb 1,000 or more feet up the mountain side and then meet
upper wooded heights, only a few of the loftier ones being devoid
of trees.
Our little roached horses carried us in good trot, down this
valley to Lillehammer, where we took steamer on the long
lake dignified here as an inland sea, the Mioesen, a beauti
ful, narrow sheet of water, bordered by fine mountains, with
every slope a picture of pastoral beauty. But we have Copen
hagen now not far off to see, and I close, after having done but
half justice to the land of Norge.

CHAPTER XLVIII.
COPENHAGEN— THORWALDSEN— FREDERICKSBORG— THRIFTY
DANES— RUN TO BERLIN— BERLIN IN 1852 AND NOW—
REFLECTIONS.
Berlin, September 21, 1888.
The approach to Copenhagen by sea from the north is quite
imposing. On the left lies Sweden, with its high, sloping ground,
pleasantly wooded, and dotted by villages of some size. On the
right lie the low-lifting lands of Denmark, or Zealand, with
picturesque Helsingoer, the old gateway to the Baltic for the sea-
dogs of the British Isles and for the Vikings of the northern fiords.
The hardy Danes held the key to unlock the gates and demanded
and obtained no light toll from trading craft which wished to sell
or to barter with the people of the northern inland sea. With a
deeply uttered " Vaer saa god " (be so good), the toll-taker
boarded every ship going or coming. If the skipper was slow to
pay, the leather-jerkined Dane laid his heavy hand upon a huge
blade hanging over his hip, and pointing to the big pop-guns
ranged like unheaded beer kegs about frowning Kronborg, got
his gold without much ado. Elsinore was a big thing in olden
days, and sagely crazed Hamlet uttered its name sonorously. I
know not if the prototype of the ghost exacted fixed fees. He
and those of his ilk perhaps took as occasion demanded or ability
to pay permitted, but when the Hanseatic League, those free cru
saders whose God was trade, and whose coursers trod the path
less sea in quest of gain, toppled over, the Dane had his regular
toll-fees, and charged somewhat as per tonnage. This, however,
became a bitter pill to swallow for the great nations which could
take all Denmark down at a gulp without making a wry face. So
not long ago, I forget when exactly, but since the Yankee carved
out the golden heart of Mexico, they paid to Denmark some
where in the neighborhood of $80,000,000 for the relinquishment
of the right to close the free use of this artery of old ocean, and
since then the once grand and powerful Elsinore has dropped
down to a town of a few thousand population, whither people go
on excursions to revive old memories ; and the amiable Christian,
ninth of the name, carries the fame of his land all over Europe
by furnishing unkinged countries with rulers, and reigning rulers
with queens, and is, I hope, furnishing the veins of royal lines
with a vigorous and yet kindly blood.521

522 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
I believe in Danish blood, for I go even further back than our
Republican candidate, Ben, does for the origin of our line. It was
Airesen, the Yorkshire Dane, who helped to flog, the Saxon and
stole some one's north English home, and set us afloat upon the
troublous waters of this world. Out of revenge, John Bull, unable
to slash the man, put a rough aspirate to his name, and he became
" Harrison." I do not know that I can say to the ghost of this
old fellow, " I will call thee royal Dane." I am not by any means
certain his was blue blood at all, unless of the color of blue flame.
For his descendants were " butchers and bakers and candle-stick
makers," and especially ran to the trade of blacksmithing, and the
bluest of blazes arose from their furnaces, if not running in their
veins, and Cromwell's friend could have made the axe which clev
erly taught kings that they were quite human. I like the Danes,
too after visiting them. They are a nice sort of people, good-look
ing, active, and appear brimful of intelligence. The men are strong
and hardy, and Willie says the girls are very good-looking. I had
to tear him away from the Tivoli when the clock struck low 12,
and had I not exercised prudent parental restraints, he would
have gone to that fairy garden every night. He has more admira
tion for European female costume than I, and the nearer he
approaches to Paris the greater grows his zeal in that direction.
Perhaps it is the difference between 19 years of age and 63. He
dotes on rosy cheeks. I pity the poor things who are caged up
in corsets and weighted down with skirts.
But I was approaching Copenhagen. The two shores of the
Sound are pleasing, but that of Denmark the more so. There are
a succession of villages, one almost running into the other. The
spires and towers of the capital beyond loomed high above the
city, over which rested a heavy veil of smoke, telling plainly of
English soft coal ; not a pall such as hangs over Chicago, but too
much so for the beauty of the city or for the whiteness of shirt
fronts. Passing the picturesque fort, all green with high sward-
covered earthworks, and, through two lines of war steamers
showing iron teeth, and old ships of the line (the royal nav)'), we
landed at a pretty pier, about which gayly dressed people were
enjoying an evening promenade.
We soon found ourselves in a fine city of 300,000 people, well-
built, well paved, and in every way worthy to be the capital of a
thriving though not large kingdom. The people have quite a
cosmopolitan style about them, and move about with a brisk, busi
ness air. Shop windows make pretty displays and signs are
gaudy. It is astonishing how four or five names predominate all
over the town. In Norway you call a boy "Olaf" and the
chances are he will answer you. Here you may take off your hat
to " Mr. Nielsen." He will either return your salute, or he will
say you are mistaken, his name is " Jansen." Nielsens, Olsens,
Petersens, and Jansens are everywhere. It seemed to me that

THORWALDSEN, BRAHE, AND ANDERSEN. 523
out of every 100 signs, more than half of them were of these.
Sometimes " Jansen " took a variation and called himself " Johan-
sen," and "Petersen" became " Pedersen." But the dodge could
not fool a knowing one — they were " Jansen " and " Petersen " still,
just as " Smythe ' is surely " Smith." Stores are crowded closely
together, and basements are evidently as popular as first-floors.
All that is required is enough of the basement window above the
sidewalk to make a pretty display, and the below ground is a
good locality for a money changer, a meerschaum dealer, or a
statuette vendor. The streets in the old town are narrow and the
sidewalks very contracted, but they are all kept clean, and as
many people walk in the roadway as on the foot-path ; this es
pecially in the evening when wagon traffic is mostly over. The
streets were generally well peopled, probably more so while we
were there than usual, owing to the exhibition then coming to a
close. In the new quarters the streets are tolerably broad and
the houses rarely under four stories in height, five being the
usual number. These newer buildings are of pretty modern archi
tecture, but built in solid blocks, there being very few separate
houses with yards or grass plats. Looked down upon, from one
of several church towers, the city is picturesque. I chose the one
known as the " Round Tower," for my observation, because of
its easy ascent over a broad winding walk upon brick arches, up
which Peter the Great rode on horseback, and his queen, Cath
erine, in a carriage. This tower is 1 10 feet high. By stepping the
outer edge of the walk I found it 330 yards. The old town from
it looks very quaint, with its tall houses built on narrow, irregular
streets, of lofty, steeply pitched roofs, with two, three, and some
times four stories of trap windows cut through the red bent tiles.
Circling about the old city is the finely built newer town, with
massive blocks of buildings all in black-slate roofing. There are
some fine public buildings in the city, and the old Rosenburg
palace is filled with mementoes of the kings and queens of the
land, many of them rich and interesting.
But it is not the kings and queens or their works which make
Copenhagen interesting to the traveller. It is the memory of three
men — Tycho Brah6, who played with the stars and made them
the companions of man ; Hans Christian Andersen, who touches
the human heart and makes the prattle of children sweet songs
for old age ; and Bertel Thorwaldsen, whose chisel gave to marble
a breathing soul. These three have monuments here, but the
real monuments of one are in the scientific libraries of the world,
and of another on the book-shelves of the reading mothers in
many lands. They can be known everywhere, but it is only in
Denmark's capital that one can fully know the grandeur of Thor
waldsen or enjoy his works. There one breathes a Thorwaldsen
atmosphere. If not near one of his great pieces in marble or
plaster, he sees about him in shop windows or in hotels and stores

524 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
little statuettes and placques, fine reduced copies of his master
pieces. Close by the great palace, now but a shell, for only its
solid walls were left unconsumed by fire, stands the Thorwaldsen
museum, solid, massive, and gloomy, and not unfittingly so, too,
for it contains his tomb, as well as the bulk of his works and of
his art and household treasures. The oblong building surrounds
an open court, in the centre of which is his grave, green with
growing vines, but plain and otherwise unadorned. His real
monument are the creations of his brain and chisel, which fill the
rooms and corridors three stories high of the building enclosing
his ashes. There one can wander for hours, feeling that the very
spirit of the man is hovering near him. And what a spirit is his! It
speaks in his every statue and rests before you in his every relievo.
I am perhaps not connoisseur enough to feel thus and try to find
a cause for the feeling. I reached the conclusion that it arose
from the presence of his own statue by himself among his other
works. This is so natural and life-like that it seems to live in and
to pervade the entire building. His Christ and the Twelve in
the Church of our Lady, are considered the grandest works of
his hand, but they do not so strike me. The Redeemer is
majestic, but to me, more from its great size and its simple pose
than from any conception it embodies. Take away the sentiment
which any fine representation of the Saviour necessarily arouses,
and there is not much left — a pagan, a cold unbeliever, could
look on it utterly unmoved. Different is the effect produced by
the frieze which surrounds the base of the vaulted dome behind.
This represents the procession to Calvary's hill. The horses seem
actually moving, excited by the shouts of the multitude, and one
can almost hear the cry of " Crucify him ! " by those who are
hurrying toward the hill. So life-like is the form of Mary as she
drops under weary agony, that one can see her as she is sinking.
Christ, seeing her, seems to pause and loom up as he bears his
heavy cross. The wood grows light, borne up by the mighty heart
of the bearer, and the sad yet grand pity of the son, as he turns
his face toward his sorrowing mother, is wonderfully touching.
I have never heard this frieze spoken of, but to me it is the finest
design of the mighty master.
The opera-house is a building of decided artistic merit, and it
is said the performances in it are of a high order. But it is to the
Tivoli one goes to see the gayety and life of Copenhagen. Its
grounds are of many acres and contain all sorts of amusement,
from the Flying Dutchman to the orchestra dispensing classic
music. One can spend a whole evening and not take in the
shows. Caf6s abound to suit every purse and music for every
taste. Here under a handsome half-dome is a great brass band
with appropriate airs. Two hundred yards off is a huge glass
pavilion, with light supporting pillars and arches decorated with
trailing vines and masses of rare exotics ; crystal chandeliers, bright

COPENHAGEN. THE TIVOLI. 525
with a thousand gas jets, flashing through prismatic pendants,
and an orchestra of 100 instruments discourses music of the high
est order. Close by the first is a cheaper restaurant and caf6,
where a few acre will enable a moderate man to slake his
thirst or satisfy his hunger, while hearing good band music. At
the crystal pavilion the chocolate, coffee, and ices are as good as
one gets at Paris, and the wines are costly, and thousands of the
elite, in pretty costumes, eat, drink, promenade, and flirt. The
entrance fee to the garden with all of its privileges is only 50 ©ere,
about 14 cents. Thousands go every night and take their evening
meal, and thereby make the stock of the company a good invest
ment. The garden is brilliantly lighted with electricity and gas,
and when we attended the most perfect order and decorum
reigned. Between the two principal music-houses is a variety
theatre, where rather rollicking pantomime is performed. These
three sets of amusements alternate, so that a visitor can go from
one to the other, a regular printed programme giving him the
pieces to be played and the order, so that he can take his sausage
to band music, his ices and chocolate to orchestral, laugh both
down between times at the show, and promenade among acres of
other amusements.
Apparently the biggest man in Copenhagen, next to the king,
is the owner of Karlberg brewery. Not only does he slake every
person's thirst, but is a patron of arts. He has a fine gallery
and adorns the exposition. It may be for advertisement. But
would it not be a good thing for some of our millionaires to
advertise in the same way. By the way, he has queer advertise
ment in the grounds. A huge bottle, 50 to 100 feet high, in the
top of which people go in lines to see the stars. I have often heard
of people seeing stars by getting a bottle into themselves, but here
the thing is reversed. Near the grounds the brewer has an electri
cal lens, a sort of revolving light-house, which carries rays to a great
distance, sending rainbow hues at night among the branches of the
trees and over domes, and far off on lofty buildings.
Adjoining and occupying the grounds during the day is the
National Exposition. This is quite thorough, but not very large.
The main building is of beautiful design, and great taste has
been displayed in the arrangement of ^oods and wares. Next to
Denmark, Sweden makes the largest exhibition, and Russia the
richest. This latter people are treading hard upon the more
western ones in industrial arts, but run largely to rich and costly
fabrics. Norway is prettily and characteristically represented
with log mountain houses, reindeer and peasants in costume.
The art gallery has many fine things, Denmark and Sweden
taking the lead, Norway following. The Germans claim that
their best things have gone to Munich.
The city of Copenhagen has some parks quite in the town,
which add greatly to its beauty. These occupy partly the place

526 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
of the old fortifications. They are thoroughly kept up, and
afford the people charming walks without the necessity of patron
izing the street-cars to reach them. There are many monuments
and statues adorning different squares and gardens, all of con
siderable merit, and a broad sheet of lake water through the new
quarter of the city. An hour's run by rail brings the sight-seer
to Fredericksborg, a very handsome palace rising out of a pretty
lake. Unfortunately the water is very nasty, and makes one
hold his breath when the wind is coming toward him ; but the
grounds are beautiful, and the interior of the palace charming.
It is arranged as a national museum, showing the progress of the
kingdom's history, and possesses many charming pictures, the
finest being by Block. His small pictures in the chapel reprcr
senting the history of Christ are marvels of beauty, but must be
seen to be enjoyed, and cannot be described. An amusing inci
dent occurred to us in the palace. We entered a long, narrow
gallery. At the farther end of it we saw what appeared to be
life-sized figures. Involuntarily I exclaimed, " Ya Amerikanets,"
and marched on, as I recognized one as that of the czar of Russia.
It was a huge picture, representing King Christian and his queen
and their children, with their wives or husbands and their chil
dren, in all 32, and of life-size. So finely executed is the whole
that when first seen in the distance they look the originals them
selves. The czar and czarina are in the foreground, and first
seen when one approaches through the long gallery. What a
progeny has this Danish king ! There stood the Autocrat of the
Russias, the most powerful individual in the world ; the future
king of England if the good old lady will ever let him mount the
throne of the most powerful government the world ever knew ;
the king of Greece, ruling the land red-flowered from its soil
being rich with the blood of heroes ; the crown prince and little
girls and boys enough to furnish all future Christendom with
royal eaters for the people to feed.
The run from Copenhagen by rail through Zealand was very
interesting. The farm-houses are low, all in squares, all thatched
and quaint. The queer old church towers, square with high-
pitched roof, as if the builders had quit before the towers were
finished and thrown over them temporary tile coverings. The
towers are about a third of the whole ground-plan of the church
edifices. The country is all thoroughly cultivated, of good soil, and
teeming with produce. Cattle, horses, and sheep were browsing
down the clover or grass in regular lines, every one tethered,
each with line enough to enable it to feed up to the next one's
bound. Instead of driving the cows to the house to be milked,
the maid visits them in order across the field. The milking
seemed to go on up to ten o'clock or later. All animals are
tethered by a head halter, but the muzzle bands are of wood

COPENHAGEN TO BERLIN. 527
instead of leather ; two sticks across the lateral jaw fastened at
top, but with holes under the jaw. Through these the hne runs.
If the animal pulls, the sticks act as a clamp and soon cure the
wearer of any disposition to pull. I saw hundreds of animals
out at pasture, but not a single one loose. This causes each
animal to eat closely its own little .pasturage and insures great
economy of grass. Parts of the country look very woody, owing
to the fact that lines of trees are planted along the edges of every
field. These are all cut-in for twigs for fuel and to make fences of,
the twigs woven into and through uprights. There were seen few
fences in Zealand, but on the island south the land was fenced into
very small fields, and yet in all of these the grazing stock were
tethered. Apparently the Danes are good farmers. The ground
being sown in rye or wheat was admirably prepared, and there
was a general appearance of comfort about the farmsteads and an
air of thrift everywhere. The people look as if they were gov
erned by fair laws. It has been the boast of their kings that
their monuments were in the hearts of the people, and that they
could at any time safely lie down upon the lap of a subject.
Certainly a happy, as well as a proud boast.
At Gjedserodde we took steamer for Warnemunde, at the
mouth of the Warnow River in Mecklenburg, reaching it in two
hours. This is a pretty sea-bathing place for the Prussians.
Along the bank of the river for nearly a mile, over a well-built
quay, is a narrow esplanade, planted with nice young trees, and
lined on the inner side with little cottages, each with a veranda
or a porch enclosed with glass, in which we could see from the
steamer, as we sailed by close to the shore, the fashionable people
sitting at tables as if in glazed conservatories. Many were prom
enading under the trees. The ladies must have been pretty, for
Willie insisted that we stop over a day, and sighed when I refused.
We landed and took rail for Berlin. We passed by quaint old
Rostock, with its lofty church towers and its memories of past
glory when it was an influential member of the Hanseatic
League. Then through the Mecklenburg Switzerland. I was
quite surprised to find Prussia possessed any country with such
fine scenery. For many miles we ran through low mountains,
or rather high hills, clothed in fine forest, with now and then a
pretty lake and several quaint old towns. We saw quite a num
ber of handsome chateaux, and still more large manorial estab
lishments or Ritter houses, with huge squares of barns ; with
great fields, where steam machinery seemed to be used in har
vesting and scores of laborers were at work. There were meadows
large enough to make a dozen ordinary German farms, and dozens
of tidy-looking peasant women were raking hay, and scores of
men were mowing in long lines. In three instances I saw propri
etors on horseback overlooking many field laborers, this being
the first time I had ever seen farming on this scale in Germany.
The whole ride was pretty till night fell.

528 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
Reaching Berlin, we drove to the Central Hotel. The porter
told us he had but two rooms vacant, and yet the house accom
modates 700 guests. When he informed me of the price of the
vacant rooms I told him the revenues had not come for this year
from my island in the Indian Ocean, and that I only wanted to
stop a few days, and did not wish to purchase the hotel. A Ger
man hotel porter is probably the most dignified of human beings.
One who has never seen one can form no idea of the dignity of
which the human form is capable. They never laugh, very rarely
smile. Their caps go off with exquisite grace to a man who
drives up with a footman. Their hats are an immovable fixture
to a traveller who approaches in a second-class carriage. Willie
asked me one day if there were not training-schools for porters,
they were so fearfully dignified. I told him they were born so.
For did not the Roman say : " Portier nascitur, non fit." We
then went to the Windsor, an old house, where we pay our money
and get its worth. And then at last we were fixed in the capital
of the German Empire, the land of Rudesheimer and Hochheimer,
and of the real lager that cheers but does not inebriate, the land
of personal liberty, — I do not know so well as to the other kind,
— the land which in a few short months this year had three em
perors without a tragedy, and now has three empresses and one
Bismarck. Berlin, with 1,300,000 people, is a grand city, fit capital for
a powerful empire. I spent in it the last month of 1852 ; it
was then a rather dull and heavy city of 400,000 people. It
was not a fascinating town, and one hved in it with regretful
memories of Paris and Vienna. I had a pleasant sojourn in it,
however, and made my first real acquaintance with that, to me,
most attractive characteristic of the father-land, the simple, un
pretending home, with its unobtrusive hospitality and genuine
warm-hearted kindliness. Under one roof-tree were the father and
mother, the son and daughter, and perhaps the son-in-law and
daughter-in-law, all friends and equals. There was the great
linen-room, with sheets and pillow-cases, towels and shirts, and
female underwear enough to set up a moderate furnishing shop,
all sweet, and smelling of fragrant cleanliness ; there in another
room were great baskets filled with soiled linen. I don't think
washing-day came oftener than once or twice a year, when it was
done in the country by wholesale, and what a splashing and
beating there was out by the river-side when the first dirt was
thumped out with paddles. I had seen it during the summer in
the country. I went with paterfamilias and his flock to winter-
gardens, where we listened to music and ate our evening meal.
Die gute mutter knit socks for the little grandchild, and the
young daughter-in-law worked names upon her own garments or
on little odd fabrics for some one not yet ushered into this
breathing world. Fraulein Hedwig talked in low tones with

BERLIN A GRAND CITY. 529
Rudolph, to whom she was betrothed, and sometimes their
hands, which had become somehow fastened together under the
table, forgot to release the grasp when they came above the
¦cloth ; and the young American talked glibly in bad Deutsch, and
made many odd and sometimes offish mistakes ; but he would be
reassured when the family would tip beer glasses, and the brother
would call him " alter Schwede." He was trying to learn German
in those days, and mingled whenever he could with the good,
simple-hearted folks. I am afraid much of this old-fashioned
warmth has departed since Berlin has become so grand, and mill
ions of French gold have got into the land. For the capital is
now a grand city ; old houses have been torn down ; new streets
have been made ; and private residences are almost palatial.
Now and then in my walks I stumble upon quarters where old
buildings are looking familiarly upon me and are talking of long
ago ; but everywhere new ones are being wedged in among the
old, and in a few years there will be but little left to remind one
of the past, except about the public edifices, which have changed
but little.
Government seems to have had sterner duties than erecting
palaces and museums. It has been building an empire. Private
wealth, however, has not been idle, and Berlin shows more indi
viduality of taste among its private residences than any other city
we have visited. St. Petersburg is grand, but the monogram of
an autocracy seems to meet one's eye in every fagade and on
•every column. The love of personal liberty pervades Berlin and
shows itself in the varied styles of its residences and the exhibi
tion of the owner's notions in architecture. In the new quarter
of the town, south of Thiergarten, are miles of streets, some of
them not much broader than our wide alleys, lined with elegant
houses, as varied in appearance as are the characters of the owners.
-One common feature, however, pervades the whole : all have
small gardens or door-yards in front, filled with pretty shrubbery
and handsome trees, with trailing vines climbing high over the
walls, and with porches often two stories high, and balconies
loaded with exquisite flowers and rare exotics. These little front
yards give a sufficient width between house lines and prevent the
narrow streets seeming too narrow. All yards are fenced off from
the streets with light iron railings. The fashion which has sprung
up in America of leaving door-yards open is a bad one. It takes
away that air of privacy which is absolutely necessary to a home.
I believe in democracy, but I want my house to be mine own,
into which no one can enter except by lifting the latch-string ;
and my yard and grounds are as much a part of my home as is
my sitting-room. When I sit in my yard in my hammock-chair
I am willing all should see me enjoying my dolce far niente, but
if any one wishes to enter, let him come in by the gate. It is a
sort of snobbery to throw into the street the house-yard, and to

53°

A RACE WITH THE SUN.

expect that the owner's name will throw about it a noli me tan-
gere sanctity. A light railing permits a full view of the hand
somest grounds, but at the same time gives an air of home-like
privacy. Perhaps one of the most peculiar features among first-
class residences here are the little shops, creariieries, green grocer
ies, and the like in basements of the finest houses. They are
certainly a great convenience to the residents.
The first thing we did the morning after our arrival in Berhn
was to walk through the great street, Unter den Linden. It was
not much changed since 1874, nor indeed since 1852. The same
street, 190 feet broad, with its traffic-ways on either side, its
bridle-path, and its broad foot-ways under quadruple lines of
trees ; but the lindens looked stunted and sickly. They alone of
all things have not thriven under the empire. How poor are
they compared with the fresh and vigorous trees on Herren-
hauser Alice at Hanover. We walked down to Frederick the
Great's statue. I never could pass it without pausing for some
time. It had been but lately erected when I was first here in
1852. Never lifted in metal or marble a more living, moving
horse, and Fritz sits him as a part of him. I took my first lesson
in properly sitting a saddle from it, and have often had a quiet
fancy that the grim old king sits thus through eternity. Not a
bad heaven to sit on such a horse throughout eternal eons. I
hail thee, " Ranch ! " Thou understoodest the difference between
a thorough-bred and a plug, and well didst thou know how to
mount thy royal rider, so that he and his charger would never
tire. If the government has not cared to expend much upon
building museums and palaces, it has not been idle in filling those
it had with noble works of art ; and now the student and the con
noisseur can spend weeks with pleasure and profit in the galleries
of Berlin. Some of the newer public buildings are fine. The
good oberburgomeister (first mayor) showed me through the noble
civic palace, the rathhaus, and tendered me an intelligent gentle
man to carry me to and through all of the city departments.
It is the boast of the Berliner that his city is now utterly
impregnable, yet once every week the best part of it is absolutely
taken possession of by a peculiar people. The name " Unter
den Linden " should be taken down each Saturday morning and
" Judenstrasse " should be put in its place, for the Jews take
possession of it. Not Jews silent and melancholy, as in Poland ;
not Jews squalid, keen, and crafty, as in Amsterdam ; but well-
dressed Jews, intelligent Jews, with heads erect, looking as if
they knew and felt their power and influence ; Jews out in their
finery, on foot and in equipages, enjoying the day on which they
were commanded to do no manner of work, for on that day the
Lord their God did cease from his labors. They own many of
the largest manufactories and works about Berlin, and live in
magnificent houses. I accidentally visited their elegant syna-

THE JEWS OF BERLIN. 531
gogue when a wedding ceremony was being performed ; after
the couple arrived, the doors were closed and nobody could enter.
About the altar were hot-house plants, mostly green. Preceded
by rabbles bearing candles the bride and groom mounted the steps
leading to the narrow altar, followed by eight or ten young ladies,
all exquisitely dressed. The bride was robed in fleecy white and
wore a veil concealing her face. The groom wore his sleek hat,
and all males throughout the building kept on their own, for it
was commanded that covered they should enter the temple of
the Lord. The ceremony was long — a half hour. At the end
the officiating rabbi removed the veil, the groom kissed the bride,
and the knot was indissolubly tied. I do not think a Chicago
divorce court could undo the bond made by that long ceremony.
I saw the bride well when she descended from the altar, and so
very pretty was she that I felt sure her husband would never wish
again to be free. It was the God of the Israelites alone who de
creed that the woman should be a helpmeet to her husband.
Such order exists in no other theocracy, and well has the Jewish
woman obeyed the mandate. Among no other religionists does
the wife so earnestly fulfil her duties. She assists the man with
womanly devotion ; she instils into her children obedience to the
mandate " Honor thy father and thy mother," and under that
code the child grows up learning to obey before he learns to or
der, and to acquire the knowledge purchased by the long experi
ence of the parent. He thus enters manhood prepared to battle
through life with the wisdom of the father. In that lies the
secret of the wonderful success of these people in every walk of
life they attempt. The young among the Jews do not think
their fathers old fossils, but tread in the safe track laid out by
experience, and improve upon it as they march and learn. Chris
tianity, springing out of Judaism, gave greater scope to freedom
of thought and of action. But the youth of Christendom too
often mistakes license for freedom, and imagines that it knows
all when it has acquired the wisdom of books and of the colleges.
It forgets there is a wisdom at home, unpretentious, and often
uttered with unlettered tongue, which is not written in books or
delivered in learned lectures ; a wis|[lom simple and practical,
homely and rough, which is worth for the private walks of life far
more than all the teachings of the schools. There are few men
of 50 who cannot teach much to the brightest boy of 21. The
Jewish mother teaches this to her boy, and without knowing it,
plays the wise professor.
Berlin is cut by several canals, which years ago performed a
very stinking r61e. All of this has been changed. The canals
are handsomely walled up with solid quays, carry produce cheaply
through many parts of the city, and now instead of giving odors
which I remember as being quite nasty, are entirely inoffensive.
Trees and turfed walks border them, making pleasant prom-

532

A RACE WITH THE SUN.

enades, and elegant residences loom up along their lines. The pri
vate residences of Berlin and the great beauty of their floral adorn
ments evince decided taste among the people ; but another thing
which would not perhaps so strike most observers, also evinces this
growth, — that is, the decorations about and manner of goods dis
played in shop windows. Many of them vie with those of Paris.
There is not, as there, the lavish display of jewels and precious
stones, although these are fine, but rather of articles de vertu and
small works of art, many of then of considerable merit. Very many
windows have busts, statuettes, and pictures, single and grouped,
of the three emperors and their children. The rapidly succeed
ing demises of the two elder ones, coupled with their illnesses
and the sad surroundings of Frederick's death have done much to
endear the house of Hohenzollern to the people. This is touch-
ingly shown by the thousands who stop before the imperial
groups, and by the kindly words then uttered. The young em
peror appeals most to the people's hearts by the pictures showing
him fondling with his little children, especially in one where he is
kissing his little baby, or throwing it into the air. People delight
to know their rulers are filled with home affections, and that
monarch and subjects have this common bond between them.
There can be no doubt that Wilhelm is now deeply nestled in the
hearts of the Germans, and perhaps all the more so because when
he was three degrees removed from the throne there was a strong
prejudice againt him ; it was thought he was too much imbued
with Anglican prejudices.
There is one thing among the Germans over here that I do not
admire, and that is a ridiculous adulation of rank and love of
titles. The great military manoeuvres have been in progress, and
every day imperial carriages are seen dashing along the Unter den
Linden with visiting guests or their attending officers going to or
from the station or to some banquet. The thousands on the
streets stop and look at them as they pass as if they were made
of some new kind of stuff ; and it matters not if the occupants
of the royal carriage be visitors or home officials, the hats around
are rapidly doffed. Several times I have asked gentlemen who I
saw were uncovering, who the occupants of the carriages were.
Generally they did not know. It mattered not whether the
officers had won their spurs, or were simply favored ones, off go
hats. If an imperial carriage happens to stop before a house
awaiting the egress of the one who is to ride, frequently a thousand
people stop and wait the great one's coming out. It is pleasant
to see the doer of great deeds or the thinker of great thoughts
honored, but it grates upon the feelings to see one bowed to
simply because he wears a title. And then the way a man's
titles are piled on when addressed is very amusing, especially in
provincial towns. I remember how this bothered me some years
ago, when my family was here. At a semi-literary dinner was a

GERMAN LOVE OF TITLES. 533
doctor of laws, who was assistant professor of rhetoric. He was
always addressed as Herr Dr. Assistant Professor of Rhetoric
 , all the titles being compounded into one word ; or Herr
Colonel Master of the Duke's Stables  . Woe to the guest
who failed to compound into one word all of these positions when
addressing Mr.  , or who left out the word "von " ! I made
many mistakes and finally settled the matter by telling them frankly
that I was an unlettered Yankee. They let me get through with
one title in addressing any one, but I think they very much pitied
my lack of good form. I do not wonder that kings, princes, and
nobles throughout the world think themselves made of finer ma
terial than that of common men. The people by their adulation
teach them so to think. Socialists in Germany and France rail
at the privileged classes ; Nihilists in Russia slay them ; but the
great bulk of the people show that they worship them, and when
one master is gotten rid of, they each pick up a lamp and grope
about in the dark, Diogenes-like, trying to find, not an honest man,
but another master, under whose feet they may lay their necks.
In France there is a republic, at least in name, but true French
republicans, deeply imbued with a genuine love of liberty, coupled
at the same time with a love of order and good government, are
hard to be found among the masses. They pick up a charlatan
and are ready to do his bidding because he somehow reminds
them of Napoleon ; and Bonapartists and royalists feed their
folly, so that they may bring democracy into ill repute and there
by pave the way for monarchy ; and in America madmen are
banding together ready to destroy the best form of government
the world ever knew because it lacks something they have
dreamed of in their wild Utopian philosophy. Will men — can
men ever learn to be wise enough to enjoy the good that is
possible and to bear the ills that are inevitable ? We have
coursed with the sun around the world ; we have seen many
lands and many peoples ; we have watched these latter and have
seen the greed with which they hunger for masters, and I some
times ask myself, did God's fiat go forth, when he fashioned man
from clay, that clay they were, clay they would be, and as clay
should be trodden upon ? Ah ! what fools these mortals be !

CHAPTER XLIX.
A LUNCH "EN FAMILLE" WITH BISMARCK— CHARMING HOSPITAL
ITY—KINDLINESS OF THE PRINCE— AUTOGRAPHS AND
PHOTOGRAPHS.
Hamburg, September 23, 1888.
Being in Berlin, the focal centre whence moved the forces
which unified a number of comparatively petty states always
jealous of and often quarrelling with each other, into an empire
so powerful that the courteous visit of its young emperor to a
brother ruler quiets the political world and enhances the value of
imperial coins, I was naturally desirous of seeing and, if possible,
talking with the statesman whose genius and iron will wrought
this wonderful transformation. We were told at our legation and
by others that the thing was impossible ; that our minister had
seen Bismarck but once, and then only in curt and most formal
manner. I resolved to dispense with diplomatic assistance, and
to try individual resources which had succeeded so often before.
The result was that on the i8th of September Dr. von Rotten-
burg, Werklischer Geheimer Oberregurungsrath (virtually the
secretary to the chancellorship) called at our hotel and tendered
me an invitation from the chancellor to lunch with him at one
o'clock the following Saturday, the 22d, at Friedrichsruhe. The
Dr. informed me that this was an unusual departure and insisted
that I be silent on the matter, for others might hope for a like
favor and would thereby force the prince to do an unpleasant
thing by refusing. He advised me to start at eight o'clock on
Saturday morning and he would telegraph Count Rantzau, the
chancellor's son-in-law and private secretary, to stop the train for
me to alight. He suggested that I go in my usual traveller's
dress, for the prince was a very plain man, and I would probably
see only the family. I boarded the train suggested, expediting
my baggage to Hamburg, where Willie would join me Sunday
evening, he wishing to visit Potsdam. For two and a half hours
the road ran through a flat and uninteresting country with
several towns and villages and closely cultivated. We then
traversed a fine rolling district, fairly well wooded, with pretty
farm-houses and hamlets, some chateaux approached by avenues
of trees and surrounded by small parks and a few towns old and
quaint. The scenery was pleasingiyrural. At 12 o'clock we
entered a large forest of beech, of many thousand acres, well
534

THOUGHTS SUGGESTED BY BISMARCK'S NAME. 535
stocked with stag and other deer, and in a half hour halted at
Friedrichsruhe, Bismarck's private domain, which has been cut
out of the great forest.
In writing this chapter I shall mention some incidents and
words which in themselves may seem trivial, but make up a whole
which enabled me somewhat to look into the home life and
private character of the man who, with Napoleon Bonaparte, make
the two most remarkable characters of the 19th century — a man
whom history will probably paint as one of the greatest of all
times. For over 25 years Bismarck's name has been interwoven
into the fabric which will go down as the history of the old
world. In Europe, Asia, Africa, and the far-off islands of the
boundless seas, students, during all this time, have been forced,
when figuring out the destinies of men and peoples, to see this
man's signet deeply imprinted upon every chart. Kings and em
perors have lived and died ; nations have arisen and others have
disappeared from the world's map ; but in the biographies of the
.men and the annals of the peoples constantly appear indelible
marks made by the daring genius and rugged force of this
uncrowned autocrat. While all men have admired and respected
the statesman and millions have hated him, few have seen the
man and fewer still know any thing of him as a host, a husband,
and a father. We read of Greece and Rome, and see their heroes
stalking across history's page in flowing toga or accoutred in
buckler and sword, and are almost surprised when we enter
their tombs or look upon their votive tablets to find them men
full of household fancies and overrunning with domestic affections.
Bismarck, more than any other great modern character, is seen
and measured only as a stern, relentless, and hard adviser of
soldierly kaisers. The world scarcely realizes that he has a home
— a home with all the sweet surroundings of that dearest of all
unsentient things, — and that in it he is a man of loving heart and
full of tender sentiment. I was in that house only three hours,
but they were three hours of revelation. A traveller hears the
whinnying of an Arab horse when his dusky master comes in
sight, and from that inarticulate greeting knows how kindly has
been the wild wanderer of the desert to his dumb friend. In far-
off Burmah he sees a crow steal rice out of the bowl from which a
native takes his frugal meal, and learns how deeply into the heart
of that brown-skinned man has sunken Siddartha's lesson of
charity to all breathing things. A kind word and a look of love
by a man to his wife ; the gentle but familiarly caressing touch of
a woman's hand upon her husband's arm ; the fond assistance of
a daughter to a father in some trivial matter, and his loving look
when he receives it ; the easy familiarity of friends to one of the
world's great ones ; the little nameless acts in free and familiar
life — these little things take a man's heart out of his impenetrable
body and enable us to read its inner emotions more infallibly

536 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
than would hours of his hottest asseverations as to what that heart
contains. To enable my reader to see the Iron Prince as I saw
him, in as few words as possible I will tell something of what was
said and done in his house by him and his family, and what his
guest said to bring out speech from his entertainers. Some things
I shall keep back, for Prince Bismarck treated me so kindly, and
what he said was so unreserved, that some utterances might
possibly not have been of a character to be repeated.
On my alighting from the train, which immediately moved off,
a rather handsome young man, with blond complexion, walked
up and said in perfect English : " Mr. Harrison, I am glad to see
you. I am Count Rantzau." There was an open carriage in
waiting. We drove to the residence, not 400 yards away and
close to the railroad. On learning that I spoke a little German
the count expressed pleasure, for it would enable me to talk with
his mother-in-law, who spoke no English. Just at the lodge gate
quite a number of ladies and gentlemen were loitering, the count
said " with the hope of seeing the poor chancellor, who has a
hard time getting rest and retirement." Bismarck's residence
was, before he acquired it, a sort of hotel, I think, in the forest
which has for a great while been resorted to by Hamburgers. It
is commodious, utterly unpretentious, but very home-like. Its
interior is fitted up plainly, with none of the fussy finery which
makes the modern rich man's house gaudy and artistic but utterly
uncomfortable, and forces the owner to the smoking-room or to
the stable to find a spot in which he can be at ease. Inside and
out Friedrichsruhe is simple, yet elegant in its simplicity — a fitting
home for a man who cares nothing for externals and display,
whose acts are and have been deals in the destinies of nations. I
was immediately taken by the count, who soon after went out,
into a moderately-sized reading- or sitting-room, and presented to
the Princess Bismarck, her daughter, the Countess of Rantzau,
Countess Stalberg, n^e Princess Reuss, Countess Eickstedt von
Peterswald, Fraulein Agnes Eickstedt, and Frau Oberin voa
Rentsow, the last four being friends visiting and staying with
the family. My reception was one of absolute cordiality, indeed,
as much so as if I had been an expected friend. They spoke of
America and how they should like to visit it, and of my long
journeyings. All spoke good English except the princess, who
understood it enough to enable me to converse in German freely
with her by occasionally interlarding an English word. She is a
lady of pleasing appearance and deportment, entirely free from
every thing which could be termed mannerism, and full of that air
which is so attractive and winning in an elderly woman, and
which can be described by the simple term motherly. Her
daughter is about 30, I should judge, full, plump, — but not toa
much so, above medium height, with cheerful oval face, decidedly
pretty, and with an expression of rare sweetness. She has several

FIRST SIGHT OF THE IRON PRINCE. 537
children. I saw two of them, bright, rollicking boys. Had I been
a welcome friend the mother and daughter could not have
treated me with more simple kindness and unobtrusive hospi
tality throughout my entire visit. I had been in the room a few
minutes when the countess, looking out of the window,
exclaimed: "Ah, there comes papa!" laying stress upon the last
syllable, and at the same time leaving the front of the window for
me. The ladies all rose and stood somewhat to the side, but so
as to see out. Some 50 or more yards from the house I saw
coming out of the park wood, a man fully six feet tall, broad-
shouldered, full, but not corpulent, wearing a low-crowned soft felt
hat, a full white cravat folded about his neck in old style, with
out shirt-collar, plain dark clothes, the coat rather carelessly
buttoned — walking slowly towards the house with stately
measured strides, and accompanied by two noble greyhounds, fat
and dignified, keeping by his side with such even step that I
could almost fancy they were measuring their gait by that of
their master. I looked at him silently until he was within a. few
feet of the house. I noticed that his daughter was watching my
face intently, and, I fancied, almost anxiously. I said half as if
in soliloquy: "He will be able to keep Russia and Austria at
arm's-length for years to come." A glow of pleasure spread over
the daughter's face. I then understood the expression I had
noticed a few moments before. She had been watching me to
see how his physical appearance affected me. He soon entered
the room, shook hands with me almost warmly, saying he was
glad I had come, for I had done good service, and he was pleased
to tell me that he and all lovers of law were indebted to me. I
at once understood why he had done me the honor of inviting
me to his house. The princess repeated what I had said of his
strength. He said he was glad I thought so well of his powers.
After a few moments spent in his telling the ladies, who were
interested listeners, of his walk in the forest, which had been
somewhat extended, he offered his arm to the Countess Stalberg.
The princess placed her hand upon my arm. We followed her
husband to the breakfast-room. Bismarck took the head of the
table, with Countess Stalberg at his ri^ht. Count Rantzau at the
foot, the princess and her daughter sitting opposite each other on
the middle sides, the other ladies between them and the foot, and
I between the prince and princess. The dining-room was hand
some, but plain. The breakfast consisted of tenderloin steaks,
cutlets, cold meat, and omelets, with red and white wines, fol
lowed by black coffee, and was finely prepared. Conversation at
once became lively and wholly free, and was carried on in German
and in English, which the prince at first spoke with a little hesi
tation, but afterwards with fluency and purity, and with slight
accent. When I spoke in German and hesitated for a word
Countess Rantzau frequently came to my relief in most charming

538 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
manner. In this way the princess and I were enabled to keep up
our share of the talking. In reply to the question as to the wine
I preferred, I said I was fortunate in liking all pure wines, but I
found certain kinds had a tendency to cause a gouty thickening
of my fingers. " So they do with me," said the prince, at the
same time holding up both hands and working his fingers by
opening and shutting them, adding that he' had not much faith in
doctors, but that his understood his case, and interdicted any but
white wine, and of that very sparingly ; that he was very fond of
old hock, but it did not go well with him now, and he was forced
to drink a newer one, and then only at dinner. Socialism was
spoken of. The prince showed his hostility to it, but thought we
would not suffer from it in America, for our great political parties
made no alliances with it. I said that they voted for members of one
or the other parties, that " at one of my elections they had voted
largely for me." " Is that so ? Then you were very ungrateful."
I said he was mistaken ; that we got some good reforms from them,
and he should not confound the socialists with us with the an
archists. That they came together and ran with the same machine
when the eight-hour movement was inaugurated; that socialism
with us was not radical as in Germany, and could not become
dangerous, because the poor man acquiring property soon became
conservative. " Yes, I know," he rejoined, " but the leaders are
innately bad, and only want to gain for themselves, and care not for
the cost ; and many, possibly the bulk, of the followers were simply
blind ! " During the breakfast I endeavored to bring up as many
topics as possible, and I think the Chancellor saw my intent, and
assisted me by readily going from one subject to another. The
princess turned the conversation to my travels. I said : " I had
been many times in Europe. Had seen Mt. Blanc, and had gone
to Asia, and had seen Mt. Everest. I had been to the Caucasus
to see Elbruz, and was now in Germany "  I paused, which
caused all to look up at me, when I added — " to see Bismarck."
The ladies laughed and applauded. He bowed with an amused
smile. I told him how much good my travels had done me, and
suggested to him the propriety of his going around the world.
He said " he was too old and had too much to do ; that he be
longed to his country, and that as long as it demanded his ser
vices he could not think of rest." I told him I had found great
relaxation, when the cares of office were pressing, by going to the
circus or the minstrels, where I could laugh. "Ah!" said he,
grinily, " the newspapers afford me comedy enough." "Yes," I
rejoined, " and I see they charge you with inconsistency because
you claim a freeman's right to change your mind." "Of course
I change my mind when I find I have been wrong, and I also yield
my opinions when I find others differing from me who have equal
rights with me. I have no right to set up my opinions against
those of all others, even when I am certain that I am right." I

AI' BISMARCK'S TABLE. 539
asked if the old emperor was not a very firm man. " Yes, firm
almost to obstinacy on matters he thoroughly understood, but on
most matters of state he confided greatly in those who had charge
of them. He was very trustful of those who had his confidence."
He then spoke somewhat at large, very feelingly, of William I. I
told him that we were in Ceylon when the news of his death
reached us, and that a rumor had gotten abroad that the crown
prince had asked for his, Bismarck's, resignation, and I was asked
what I thought of it. He looked up quickly and said : " What
did you reply?" "I told them Frederick had too much sense
for that." The old Chancellor's eyes kindled when he straightened
himself up and said : " Mr. Harrison, my sovereigns have always
demanded my services, for they knew I was ever ready to retire ;
I have been but the people's servant." I told him of our hearing
of Emperor Frederick's death at Vladikavkas, and I was pleased
by the regret expressed by officers we met on the mountains.
"Ah, yes," said Bismarck rather sardonically, "they had an idea
he would change his father's policy. In that they were mistaken."
Speaking of a distinguished man whom I liked, he said : " He is
amiable enough, but a fool in politics ; a bad politician, and gave us
any amount of trouble." " You believe, then, in such a thing as a
good politician ? " " Why, certainly I do. No man can be a
successful statesman unless he be, too, an astute politician." A
paper just engrossed (I now suspect the memorial presented
three days afterwards to the emperor, urging the prosecution of
Prof. Geffcken) was laid on the table. He said: "You see, Mr.
Mayor, I am down here in retirement and yet I have to work.
I have not failed to work a single day in 20 odd years." The
Princess interjected : " For 26 years." " Yes, for 26 years not
a single day." " Let me suggest that your Highness take a rest and
travel incognito." He rejoined : " I don't know, I have been too
busy ; I am afraid I could not bear the rust." "And," I interjected,
" a little afraid, also, to be where you cannot have your finger
in the European pie." He smiled at the sally, but the ladies all
laughed heartily, and Countess Stalberg added : " The pie would
be a poor affair if his fingers were out of it." I said I, too, had
feared rust, and to prevent it had written very largely of what I
had seen — that it was sometimes hard labor and yet a rest from
the past, and then told him that Dr. von Rottenberg had enjoined
upon me silence as to this visit, but that I hoped he would release
me from the obligation ; that our people, and particularly my
German friends, would be deUghted to hear of what I saw and
heard at his table. " Well, yes, I suppose so " ; adding that the
doctor did not wish him to hurt the feelings of others by refus
ing to see them, but that he wished to see me because I had
helped to bring the anarchists to justice. I laughed and told
him the political papers had bitterly attacked me because I had
not arrested them in advance when they made their violent

54°

A RACE WITH THE SUN.

speeches, and thus to have prevented the Haymarket crime. He
quickly said : " You did just right ; you were not afraid, but you
struck at the proper moment." He evidently was familiar with
that bitter night. He then inquired particularly about the acts
of the authorities after the terrible crime, and I saw that he did
not agree with me in drawing abroad line between the anarchists
and socialists. I told him I had been present when Wilhelm had
landed at Peterhof, and how I had been impressed with his bear
ing, and that Petersburgers were flattered by his driving about
unattended by guards, and that I thought the czar made a mis
take in showing a want of confidence. He exclaimed : " Yes, his
father showed confidence and got killed for it." The princess
interjected : " Poor man ! I do not wonder that he feels uneasy."
" They have a bad habit in Russia," said the prince, " a bad habit
of trying to kill kings — since Peter the Great's time they have
run that way." I told him how, during the anarchist troubles, I
had received letters written in blood, but that wholly unattended
I had ridden in the most excited districts. " Yes, yes, but you
were in America and among Americans, and not in Russia." I
spoke of the well-dressed people about his gate waiting to get a
peep at him. He said : " He was a worker and did not like to
make a show of himself, and that when the emperor was visiting
Friedrichsruhe a few weeks before, crowds of people came on the
road hoping to see him, but that he, too, said he had lately had
enough of that kind of thing." When coffee and cigars came
on I laughingly exclaimed : " We in America think that Bismarck
knows the American hog, and that if he lets it get over the fron
tier it will stay at the German table, but that perhaps he did not
know the American man so well that when one gets to Prince
Bismarck's table he would never know when to leave." He
laughed heartily and explained the pork question to the ladies,
who at first looked rather shocked at the first part of the joke.
He then said he would have to go to work shortly, but he
would give me all the time he possibly could. I told him that
I had to disobey Dr. von Rottenberg's injunction by telling my
son, who was travelling with me, of my visit, but that Willie told
me to say to him that his constant silence and eternal gratitude
could be had if the prince would write a line and sign his nam'e
to it. He laughed at the young man's device to get his autograph.
He said he might possibly write his name but not the
line. I added we might then put a dangerous line over the
name. " I see, it might be a due-bill, but we will block that
game. Tell your son if he will hang an anarchist I will write an
autograph letter to him." He then had some photographs
brought to the table and selected a large one and wrote his name
under it and the date, saying : " Keep that to remind you of this
pleasant day." The princess took it from me and enclosed it in
an envelope. I said to her : " Now, will not your Highness

TABLE-TALK. 541
write your name also across the envelope ? " She did so, and I
handed it to him saying : " If you will now put your name under
it I will have Bismarck properly dominated by his wife." He
laughingly did so, saying: "That is the way the world over."
He handed the paper to his daughter, who wrote her name under
his, and then the count signed under his wife. All were de
lighted at my thus getting two autographs from the prince, who
is, I learn, very averse to giving them. The princess had not
permitted the pen (a new quill) he wrote with, to be used by any
other. She handed it to me with the remark : " It never wrote
but one name, and that but once. Keep it as a souvenir of this
visit." She then sent out for a beautifully bound small auto
graph album, and requested me to write my name in it.
The album was about a third full — a couple of pages before the
one I wrote on was the name of Count Kalnocky, the Austrian
prime-minister, who had been at Friedrichsruhe for three days
and had left the day before, and I think of Signor Crispi, the
Italian premier, and other distinguished men. I turned the
leaves back a page or two and read the signature of Wilhelm II.
Further back was that of the Emperor Frederick, and near the
first page that of the old Kaiser Wilhelm. I remarked that my
name would in such company go down to history. She replied :
" As long as the Bismarck family lives." She then told me to
write the date under my name that she might have a souvenir of
this pleasant day, and exacted a promise that I should send her
my photo from Hamburg. Fraulein Eickstedt brought a fan for
my autograph. On one leaf was Count Kalnocky's, but not Bis
marck's. I suspected that she wished him to write his now while
he was in so generous a mood. Seeing that the prince did not
smoke I expressed some surprise, for I had always heard he was
devoted to the weed. He said he had been forced to give up
cigars, though very fond of them — that for many years he smoked
almost constantly ; he would throw away his cigar on going to bed,
and would reach out for one immediately on waking ; that he was
now 73 years old and had to be careful. He smoked a pipe with
light Deutsch tobacco after dinner. I said I was 63, and a rather
hard rider, but I feared I was smoking too much. " Oh," said the
prince, " when I was 63 nothing hurt m4, and I rode 20 miles every
day on horseback, and smoked all the time." Speaking of rest,
he said his best rest was lying easily in a room all to himself.
"Yes," I interjected, "and keeping your brain at hard labor."
He laughed and went on : " Or walking in the park or forest,
listening to the birds sing and the winds gently sighing among the
branches." " That is a ngw phase in your Highness' character.
The world does not dream that Bismarck is poetical and senti
mental." " Full of both," he replied, " but especially of senti
ment." He told me his forest was three miles long and about four
wide, and so stocked with deer that they were proving destructive

542

A RACE WITH THE SUN.

to the trees ; that he never shot now, but was at one time very
fond of the sport ; but at 73 he was forced to give up his old
hock, his cigars, and to give the deer a free forest. I asked the
princess if she never indulged in a cigarette. With a gesture
of amused horror, she said : "Oh no." I apologized by saying
that the last princess I had the honor of talking with blew
cigarette smoke from her rosy lips, and named her. " But she
comes by that naturally," said the prince, " for though a Ger
man princess she was a Russian by birth, and a decided beauty."
They then spoke very kindly of the lady, whom he and the prin
cess had known in Russia years ago when unmarried. I saw that
the iron man was of melting metal when woman's beauty was in
question. This, too, was further shown by his gentle tones and
manner to a very pretty young Jewess, Fraulein Alexander, from
Hamburg, who with her mother had called, and by the prince's
request had been shown into the breakfast-room just as the table
was being vacated. Something said caused me to acknowledge
that I acted under a very heterodox maxim, especially in executive
matters, — that is, never to do to-day what I can put off until to
morrow. " You are right," he said ; " it might have been a maxim
of mine, for I have acted up to it. Each day brings its full duties
and enough of them. Perform them well, and then wait for the
next day to do the things then necessary." I added that I had
found the next day often brought new and valuable light, and
besides the necessity for prompt action ofttimes focalizes the
energies of the brain. His reply, which was extended, expressed
thorough acquiescence in the proposition. In reply to a question
as to the number of my children, I said : " I have four, but have
lost several little ones." " We, too," said the Prince, " have buried
a child," or children, I forget which. One of the lady visitors
seemed surprised at this ; and then he and the princess spoke very
feelingly of their lost little ones. Bismarck's countenance when in
conversation lights up greatly, and his smile is very pleasant, but
the whole face drops back very quickly to one of rather severely
reflective cast. His manner at the table was easy and affable,
almost gentle, and there were nameless little things which revealed
a softness in his character that I had imagined he lacked even in his
home life. I have given only a few of the things that he said or
were said to him directly ; all at the table joined in the general
talk, which was absolutely free from all restraint or conventionality.
So kind and unobstrusive was the hospitality of all, that one
looking on, and not knowing our respective positions, would have
thought that I was an honoring guest instead of being the honored
one. We were at table not far from two hours, a very unusual
thing for her father, the countess said, — " that is, unusual for a
breakfast." Had the Prince been utterly unknown to me, that
breakfast would have made me pronounce him a most genial host, a
kind husband, and an affectionate father. At table all paid most

BISMARCK THE WORKER. 543
respectful attention to his every word, the attention on the part
of the visiting ladies being that of idolatry, that of his wife and
daughter of devotion. When he left to go to his workroom he
expressed regret that he could not give me more time, but that
for the next two or more hours he did not belong to himself.
I told him how much I had enjoyed my visit, and ended with :
" Keep Europe in peace and the world will be your debtor."
" That is my end and hope. Good-bye ! a pleasant voyage, and safe
return to your home and family." I stood as he walked off with
his private secretary, and although I am never greatly impressed by
rank and high station, I was almost awed by that retreating mass
of brain and will-power. So much had the man's kindly inner self
been revealed, that unconsciously I felt as if parting from a friend.
The princess and her guests went out upon a veranda, bidding me
good-bye, and leaving me with the Countess Rantzau, who wished
to get me the family photographs. To her question as to when I
would again be in Europe, I replied not before two or three years,
when my youngest daughter would be out of school. After inquir
ing about her, she said : " Tell her to get her German well up and to
come over to pay us a visit ; you will bring her, will you not ? " To
my expression of pleasure at the kind and hearty invitation, she
told me she was glad I had come, that it had pleased her father,
and had been a rest to him, and added that I had gotten from
him what she was afraid to ask for herself, — his autographs, which
were desired by some of her friends. I laughingly said : " I gen
erally get what I particularly want." She said : " It seems so, for
we were all surprised when he broke over his rules by inviting you
to breakfast." When I bade the charming lady good-bye her
manner was as unaffectedly warm and kind as if I had been an
elderly relation. I walked to the station. The local train was
made up there for Hamburg. I had been seated in the car for a
few moments when I saw the countess walking rapidly towards us.
As soon as she saw me she called out : " Mamma says she did not
sufficiently tell you good-bye. She is coming to do so." Sure
enough, there was the aged lady, with Countess Stalberg, walking
quite rapidly, followed by a man drawing a small carriage chair. I
went to meet her. She told me she thought I was coming out
upon the veranda, and was surprised to learn that I was gone.
She had wished to tell me good-bye and to wish me a safe voyage
home, and hoped I would find my children all well. She also
wanted to tell me to be sure and not forget my photograph from
Hamburg. She stood some time by the car talking with that
warm-hearted self-forgetful manner rarely seen so well marked as
in a well-born German woman. I asked her how long she had
been married. She said 41 years. " Then in nine years I will
drink the health of your Highness and the Prince when you cele
brate your golden wedding." " Would you come to our golden
wedding if you should be in Europe ? " " Yes, indeed, and from

544

A RACE WITH THE SUN.

America too." " Then," said she, " you must come. Consider
yourself invited. You are the only one I have yet asked." Her
manner showed that she was talking from her warm heart. Her
daughter quickly added : " And to the diamond wedding too."
"Oh, I fear I will not last that long." "Yes, you will; papa and
mamma are older than you, and they are going to live for their
diamond wedding." Just then the bell rang. With warm shaking
of hands I left them. As I stepped into the car the Countess
Stalberg cried out : " Remember, Mr. Harrison, there is but one
Everest and one Bismarck." I replied : " That 's true. Good-bye !
many long and happy years to you all." Thus ended a most
charming visit, charming not simply in that it was to the home of
one of the world's great men, for if he had been but a plain man
the kindly hospitality of himself and wife and daughter, the
marked disposition to make every thing pleasant to the temporary
guest, a disposition so unobtrusive that it was not observed at the
time, but is recalled with a species of surprise ; the free and genial
manners of the ladies who were regular guests in the house ; — these
things made my visit one to be remembered with genuine pleasure.
Added to this was the presence of a man who is and has been for
nearly a third of a century playing upon a board where real kings,
bishops, castles, knights, and breathing pawns have been the men,
all pushed back and forth at his will — and as if they were but
blocks of ivory and wood in his hand, — this man for the time being
no longer one of the world's great ones, but simply the kind hus
band, the gentle father, and the agreeable host, and for J:he time
being also so acting and so acted to that his inner self, the man, was
being more or less revealed.
We can measure and weigh the force of the sun's rays in any
region by studying the fibre and color of plants and flowers ; so,
too, can we measure and weigh the heart-forces of a strong, brainy
man, — a man of great nerve-power, by studying the tone and
bearing of those constantly in intimate association with him. If
his heart be utterly cold or always locked within himself, the effect
upon those about him is analogous to that of sunlight denied to
animals and plants. Fishes and insects live in great caves, but are
blind and colorless. Plants in dark vaults grow, but are devoid of
every tint. I watched the wife and daughter of Bismarck. The
helianthus looks not more readily to the morning sun, or follows
him more earnestly throughout the day, than do these two women
follow the husband and father in look and action — follow him with
loving devotion. Were he at home and in his family the stern,
relentless man his public life makes him thought, these ladies
would have had the fountains of their hearts more or less dried
up. They would not have shown, at least in his presence, the warm
kindliness I saw displayed. Had he been the hard autocrat at home,
his presence would have been a source of constraint, and would
have thrown about him an atmosphere of chilliness ; but there was

DEVOTION OF HIS FAMILY. 545
just the opposite. All listened to him with interest and marked
respect, but it was the interest and respect of those who really
wished to hear his words. He and they were unaffectedly kindly
towards each other, and as much so to me as they could have been
had I been doing them a favor by coming to the house. Am I
wrong in thinking that directly and through those about him I
read something of the man's heart, and found it to be one of
much natural warmth and gentleness ?

CHAPTER L.
HAMBURG— AN INTERESTING CITY— QUAINT HANOVER— LEAN-TO
OLD HOUSES— RUN TO FRANKFORT— THE RHINE.
Brussels, September 30, 1888.
Hamburg is a very beautiful city. A fine lake spreads itself
in the very heart of the town, along whose borders are charming
walks, bright caf^s and noble buildings. Canals cut the city in
many directions, from out of whose waters lift quaint old houses
with .sharp, gabled roofs, of four and five stories, each upper one
projecting, on brackets, one, two, or more feet over the one be
low, looking as if they were trying to meet each other about the
sky's line over the narrow canals. In the centre of the gable,
high up near the roof-comb, project beams from which suspend
on pulleys long ropes to hoist goods from water barges to big
folding-doors in the centre of each story. Into these doors en
tered the wealth of many lands when the city was so rich a mem
ber of the Hanseatic League. The same old blackened beam
projects, but newer cordage now lifts up the rich freightage
of prosperous commerce, for Hamburg is to-day the third or
fourth in point of commercial tonnage of European ports. She
grows apace, and the 100,000 people of a few years ago have
now become nearly, if not quite, 500,000. Her lake and canals
are not exactly stinking, and in that there has been great im
provement since I was last here, in '75, but they have that pe
culiar odor which pervades the atmosphere about still waters, and
the entire city is redolent of fish, tar, cordage and of a thousand and
one things which go down upon and up from the sea. The people
are quite fussy in their fashion and fine gear, but it is the fussi-
ness of commercial folk and wholly different from that of Berlin,
where one insensibly reaches the conclusion he is in the capital of
an empire. There are, too, many quaint old lean-to buildings in
the older part of the town along streets not 20 feet wide, and along
the canals not much wider. It is very charming to look at two
old, narrow-fronted houses leaning together with their lofty,
steeply pitched roofs, in which are two or three stories of lofts
overtopping four or more stories below, each so low that a tall
man has to dodge the joists above when he walks. These
houses were built several hundred years ago and lean against
each other with a sort of John-Anderson-my-Jo affection. Tear
down either house the other would fall. Like good old mar-
546

QUAINT OLD STREETS. 547
ried couples they have stood the brunt of many storms to
gether, and niust stand and tumble together at the end. There
are many of these old structures in Hamburg, making it, next
to Hanover, the quaintest of German towns. That is, they are
in parts the quaintest, though modern structures in both so
abound and are so fine that the older streets are overlooked
by many tourists. In many other old towns modern improve
ments have been so few, that an odor of oldness and an air
of quaintness predominate and characterize the whole, but in
all to a much less degree than in parts of these two northern
cities. At Hanover in many streets one feels he is living in a
past age. A cluster of old lean-to houses meets one's eye
constantly, leaning against each other and over the streets
as if striving to shake hands across the narrow ways, and
looking so ancient that when a woman appears in an upper
window one feels like addressing her as the wife or daugh
ter of some old burgher of three and four centuries gone by.
Here upon an architrave, spanning a musty door-way, in queer
letters deep cut into the stone, is a quotation from the Bible,
showing the religious sentiment of the owner when he stood in
buckram and broad, flapping top-boots, to superintend the build
ing of the house in which he was to live and to rear up his chil
dren in the fear of the Lord. One passes through the door-way
and mounts steep stairways, winding about through low stories,
dropping his head as he ascends, for men were not expected in
those days to go heavenward with too erect fronts. Little rooms
open from each landing, in which are good-natured women and
children amid clothes-lines stretching from ceiling beams, and all
redolent of fresh washing and sauer-kraut. Up one goes from
story to story, passing a little coop in which a goose gently
cackles, for German townspeople, as well as the country folk, are
believers in goose-grease for measles and whooping-cough. The
upper story is reached (so the curious one thinks at lea'st). The
rooms are hardly seven feet high, but still each little eight by
nine room is tenanted and little children wonder what the stran
ger wishes, but the good frau is not offended when she is told
how pretty is the old-time house. Tlie curious visitor is about
to descend when his eye catches another stair, almost as steep as
a ladder and nearly hidden in a recess in the wall ; up he goes,
and is in a loft black with the smoke of by-gone centuries, filled
with rags and old-time chests and cupboards black with age. It
is a rag-picker's loft ; his shop is then recollected as Being below
in the narrow little courtyard ; old scraps of lace and embroidery
hang on lines, and the dark chests are padlocked. How they got
up those narrow steps one can scarcely guess, but they are there,
and one almost whispers, lest the fairy form of fraulein, dead tv/o
or three hundred years ago, may open the lid of a chest and ask
why the intruder comes. Still another loft, and perhaps a third,

548 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
are cramped in beneath the ridge-pole. The roof tiles are
shiny in polished smoke stains, and the light of day comes
through many a chink, but the tiles are bent and keep out the
rain, though they let in light enough to save windows. The
rafters are rough-hewn and massive, and filled with nail heads
driven for clothes-lines to hang to when Martin Luther was fight
ing the devil in his dreams and electors and palatines were bat
tling to tear down or to maintain the faith of ages. An old
residence with the date 1527 on its door lintel, and yet filled
with human tenants, impresses one with its age more than
does a temple 2,000 or 3,000 years old, in which jackals and
bats are the only living habitants. Present human life forms a
living link with the dead past, and one feels he is at least sur
rounded by the ghosts of three-centuries-ago dead, whereas in
the ancient temple he feels that myths alone ever walked among
the massive columns. These latter awake no human sympathy
in the breathing present for the long-silent past.
The new city of Hanover impresses one as quite a capital.
Not so Hamburg, which is a town of bustle and business. But
the Hamburger has fine theatres and some churches of great
beauty. The new chime bells of St. Nicholas had just been com
pleted when we were there on Sunday, the 23d. We somehow
or other generally stumble at the right moment on what is going
on in cities we visit. We went to the church to be present at
the morning service. A sweet strain of music came from the
lofty tower, — it is 473 feet high. The new and fine-toned chime-
bells were being tried for the first time ; tune after tune was
played very finely and I was loath to go inside, but did. A
beautiful anthem was being rendered by a choice choir to the
congregation which packed the church in reverent attention.
The sermon over, we went out, and still the music was coming
from far above as if awakened by celestial hands on celestial
chords. For three-quarters of an hour weird strain after strain
was rendered, and when grand "Old Hundred" pealed forth in
its solemn heart-reaching tones, I listened and felt no Catholic
could help feeling grateful to Luther for that noble score. I
think he was its composer, at least I am sure the air I listened to
was his, though I may have misnamed it. I can never remember
airs, much to the merriment of my musical boys. I am as full
of music and poetry as an egg is of meat, and all the fuller
for that none would ever come out of me. As soon as this air
was finished we hurried off; I did not wish to hear others. How
long they were kept up I do not know.
The canals of Hamburg, while being marked features in add
ing to the quaint picturesqueness of the old town, are not, as in
Venice, component parts of the beauty of the city. The hand
some fronts of the houses are on streets, and it is their rear walls
whose foundations are washed by the waters.

SWEET SCENERY. 549
The run from that city to Hanover was pretty— fine old towns,
handsome farm lands, and the queerest of farm-houses and farm
villages, with their half-hipped roofs, all the latter in fresh-looking
red tile. Hanover is a beautiful city, aside from its old streets
and houses. The public buildings are fine, its drives and parks
exquisite, and the people jolly and gay. The caf^s at night are
crowded, but we saw but little coffee or chocolate used. Bavarian
beer, however, was quaffed in surprising quantity. I always like
to talk to Hanoverians. Their German is so distinct that Lean
follow them better than any other people in the father-land.
We took rail thence to Frankfort-on-the-Main. It gave us a
charming ride. Few roads in Europe present more pleasing
scenery. Nothing grand, but much that is sweetly rural, and
a great deal full of the mildly picturesque. For some hours low
mountains lay to our right, with wooded slopes toward the higher
ground, and fine farm lands below. In the distance, to the left,
were the outlying hills of the Hartz mountains, where every dell
has its legend and every steep hill its brocken. Everywhere the
peasantry were plowing and sowing small grain, or were busy
afield gathering potatoes, of which tall bags stood in line across
the fields like whitish sentries. In some localities the land was
broken by two yoke of oxen, but generally with one or two teams
of horses. Scarcely any cattle were seen grazing. Flocks of
geese were frequent, each attended by a gooseherd. Cows were
hitched to light wagons drawing in grain or carrying manure out
to the fields. The cows are not idle ladies in this land ; besides
their more gentle duties they do their share of farmwork. I no
where saw women at heavy labor as in Austria and Russia. They
follow the reaper, bind and gather crops, but only the men seem
to perform labor demanding strong muscles. In Austria, how
ever, women are hod-carriers and stone-packers. We saw nowhere
in Germany women made beasts of burden, though they are,
heaven knows, hard enough worked to satisfy the command that
as a part of man they should earn their bread by the sweat of
their faces. Indeed their whole bodies are forced to reek in sweat.
People, especially the communists, pour out their dissatisfaction
with the laws of glorious America. But their grumblings are not
half as silly as those of our women. They are pampered and coaxed,
wheedled perhaps, and sometimes cheated, but when compared
with their sisters in most lands our women are queens ; and when
they are forced to work for a living feel themselves down-trodden.
Besides the fore.sts on the upper mountains, large wooded tracts
and copses crown the summits of lower hills and creep down their
sides into the valleys. Here and there are elegant chateaux.
Schloss Marienburg, built by Queen Maria of Hanover, is one of
the mo.st picturesque palaces in Europe. It is a great mediaeval
building, with towers and turrets, beautifully nestled on a lofty
hill in noble timber. On several rocky eminences and abrupt

55°

A RACE WITH THE SUN.

conical hills are old ruins with tall towers and old dungeon-keeps,
very romantic and charming. Gottingen, world-famous for its
university, recalls musty memories and student duels. Near this
fine old literary town the road climbs from the river Leine for
several miles a lofty divide, showing beautiful valleys with villages
and hamlets and woods and silver streams far below, and then
drops down by an even descent to the Weser, along which and
the Fulda it ascends to Munden. We were along here generally
high upon the mountain slope, with the silvery river much below.
The low mountains are for miles clothed in rich young forests,
now borrowing autumnal tints. Ruins peep from among the
trees on pointed foot-hills, while villages and hamlets are nestled
in orchards and fruity gardens. Few spots are to be seen any
where more deliciously sweet than Munden, with its orchards and
pointed roofs, steeples and old towers, down in the neck, formed
by the junction of the Fulda with the Werra. The road here
drops from the mountain side and bends in beautiful curves
around the old tree-embowered town, as if the engineer was think
ing as much of the beautiful view it permits as the ease of loco
motion. Near Cassel, also, we had fine views. The number of
towns and large villages along our road is surprising, I suppose
owing to the rail following closely the line of the old carriage
road, along which population has been for ages accumulating.
But I have given so many of my many letters to descriptions of
scenery that I forbear dwelling longer now. I love it so much
that my pen becomes a loving one when I begin to describe a
view which sinks deeply into not only the eye but far down into
the heart. One very pretty feature of many miles of this road is
made up of fine old mills, now on tolerable-sized streams, and
then on the same when, as we run up, they become so small as to
be almost lost in the long grass of green meadows.
I would have liked much to stop at quaint old Marburg, a mass
of pointed-roofed, tall houses, hugging a high hill, on which lifts
an old castle. So closely are the houses packed on the hill-side
that each upper one seems to be erected upon the inner roof of
the one next below it. Here it was that the reformers met, about
1530, to settle disputed points of the new faith, and where Luther
answered every argument of Melancthon in opposition to the
actual presence by the one single assertion, showing his strict
adherence to the Bible's words : " This is my body." Again and
again the mild and able scholar would come around to his argu
ment. Bluff old Martin had but one answer, and that was the
words of Christ. Striking the table with the book, he exclaimed:
" Hoc est corpus meum," and ended the discussion. Brave old
Martin Luther ! Whatever his opponents may say of his faults,
they must confess his was a sturdy heart, and the literal Bible
was his only guide. His was a great, stalwart body, full, it was
said, of human passion. But he bravely fought his passions as he

COLOGNE CATHEDRAL. 551
fought the devil when he appeared to his excited imagination.
His was a good fight. He not only brought into full day a mighty
revolution and a new creed, but he purified the church he left.
Its better elements soon got control and drove out the money
changers, who sometimes get into the temple of the Lord.
We enjoyed Frankfort much, with its fine streets, beautiful
tree-embowered residences, and splendid palm-garden. It has, too,
some quaint old buildings, fine churches, and good collections.
The Ariadne is one of the best things in modern marble. We
revelled in Rudesheimer and old legends along storied and castled
Rhine ; we looked with admiration upon that Gothic triumph, the
Cologne Cathedral ; walked and sat in its grand nave and aisles,
and bathed in floods of glorious light, pouring through the old
pictured windows; listened to the deep tones of its organ as they
rolled among the noble columns, and were caught and mellowed
among the vaultings of the nave 150 feet above, to be returned to
us in glorious ripeness. Again and again we visited the splendid
pile, wandering with our eyes among its forest of airy pinnacles,
and climbing its towers from point to point till our vision swept,
512 feet above, into the blue sky. I remember how as a
young man, in 1851, 1 gazed with admiration upon the unfinished
pile, the broken tower, with its old wooden crane, which had
waited there for long centuries, ready to resume its task, pinnacle
upon pinnacle about the roof crumbling and scaling away ; I
wondered then if the dream of Gerard would ever be a finished
whole, and envied the future traveller who might visit it. It is a
grand pile, but, as I think I said some months since, if the Lord
should choose His dwelling-place on earth, He would never abide
in a tomb-like Gothic church. From Cologne, through the sweet
lands about Aix la Chapelle, we quitted the father-land, but I
hope not for the last time.
We found Brussels a beautiful city, and not the dull one I
thought it 37 years ago. It is thoroughly modern, and has mpre
social red-tape than any other European capital. How one can
find any thing to make the appointment of Minister to Belgium
worth accepting, is hard to conceive. Most cordially I congratu
lated my friend, Judge Tree, on his psomotion to St. Petersburg.
Belgium is a prosperous land, and though the mo.st densely
populated country on the globe, sends but few emigrants abroad.

CHAPTER LI.
WONDERFUL, FASCINATING PARIS— IMPROVEMENTS OF THE
EMPIRE— RECOLLECTIONS OF DECEMBER, 1851
—MARKETS OF PARIS.
Paris, October 14, 1888.
From Brussels to Paris the road traverses a country not unin
teresting, but devoid of characteristics to make it, in such letters
as these, worthy of description ; and although we had yet to
traverse nearly 6,000 miles before reaching the goal in our " race
with the sun," there was to me no more of that charm of novelty
which had enabled us to enjoy our, up to now, laborious journey
ings. The old man of the party would, from this on, take his
ease. To the young man, however, the real culmination was but
reached. He was told to take advantage of his short opportuni
ties, and to see and study as best he could. Paris and London,
next to one other, are the two most remarkable cities the world
has ever known. These two vast hives may be studied as the
very epitomes of the great book of human nature. The one of
man as a cultivated worshipper of the beautiful, the aesthetic, and
the refined ; as an intense seeker of pleasure ; a laughing, idle
lover of ease, or as a reckless sybarite ; the other of man, an earn
est toiler along the rugged paths of ambition, or a delving, sordid,
worming offspring of greed ; the home of the grandest type of
manhood, and of the lowest representative of vice. In Paris one
can drift along with a moving crowd with nothing to do, yet
never wearying, for about him are thousands as aimless as him
self, and, though he speak to none and hear none speak, he has a
constant companionship and a felt but unexpressed sympathy,
which makes care and ennui an impossibility. He saunters along
the streets and boulevards and jostles against others, who are
never offended, for they, too, are idle saunterers, and are not cer
tain but that themselves were at fault. He stands before a show-
window, and treads upon some one's toes, who begs pardon, [ox he
has put his foot in the way. He takes an afternoon walk along
the mighty thoroughfares to get rid of time pleasantly. He meets
and passes a hundred thousand engaged in the same undertaking.
He does this day after day and week after week, and can be posi
tive that but comparatively few of those seen to-day were his co
partners in idleness the day before. For, during the year, they
552

CHARMING PARIS. 553
number a million, not from Paris alone, but from the butterflies
and the honey-consumers of the civilized world. To the man of
taste and to the .studious dreamer, Paris makes unnecessary any
individual companionship — except what springs up with one who
temporarily occupies the seat next him at the restaurant, in the
caf(^, the out-door concert, or on the deck of an excursion steamer
or omnibus. The motto of every one met is " // faut s'amuser,"
and every one is ready to give his or her aid in this Parisian
devoir. Not only are all polite and ready to meet one half-way,
from etiquette, but from the universal demand for amusement.
Politeness is not confined to the better classes, but the common
est and poorest laborer in his working blouse knows its forms and
rules as well as the habitu6 of St. Germain. The same terms
used in the salons of the nobles are also at the tongue's end of the
soiled toiler in the Faubourg St. Antoine, of the ragged street
gamin, or of the worn-out old rag-picker. The accent and patois
alone show any difference between the expressions of the highest
and of the lowest. One, therefore, need fear no coarse repulse
to his advances, it matters not who is, for the time being, his
neighbor. Every shop window is arranged for aesthetic effect, so that the very
streets are museums, where one can, with no other cost than being
somewhat footsore, see, enjoy, and study the beautiful, and he al
ways has company, who, be they male or female, are ready to inter
change opinions on what he observes. Except at the hours when
people move to or from business, all whom he meets seem to have
his occupation — seeking enjoyment. I remember once long ago
being with a party looking down a boulevard, where many thou
sands, could be seen from our vantage-ground. One of my com
panions offered a wager he could in two minutes make this
multitude do as he would do. The wager accepted, he stepped
to the edge of the sidewalk and looked intently at the sky. One
after another the passers followed his example, to see what he so
anxiously watched. In an incredibly short time every one in
sight was stopping and looking aloft. I doubt not the contagion
went far beyond the turn of the street, which we could see. He
won the wager. " Chaque bourse a ses plaisiers " is truer in
Paris than in any other city. A meal* a play, a ball, a concert is
at hand in each and every quarter, to be had for prices ranging
from a few sous up to as many francs ; each the same as every
other, but differing in quality, though not in quantity. A steak
or roast dinner from a worn-out dray-horse — a little tough,
but quite as nourishing may be had for 20 cents, as the fillet
from a Norman-fed bullock for 20 francs; both washed down
by a bottle of wine, here costing six or eight cents, there all
the way up to two or three dollars. A dime gives a man a wild,
whiriing waltz at a ball with a modest-looking giri, neat and trim
in pretty shop garb, or he may pay all the way up to five dollars

554 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
for no better waltzing in more aristocratic ball-rooms, but with a
partner wearing silks and laces and painting on cheeks artistically
rose-tinted. Theatres abound in every quarter, all with fairly
good acting, and jests, perhaps broad and not too chaste, for ten
cents, or with no better wit but its viciousness sugar-coated, for
prices ranging through all scales up to two or three dollars.
If the idler be of scientific turn, he may skim lightly near the
surface, and pick up a gentlemanly knowledge of any or all
sciences dropped from learned lips in free-lecture rooms, or may
delve deep into hidden lore in the richest of libraries, open to all,
and then hear elucidations in the Sorbonne, and examine in open
museums specimens, for which have been ransacked the bowels
of the earth and the caves of the sea. Would he read as connois
seur, or study as student, the glories of Art ? Acres of can-v'as are
spread before him, on which genius has depicted human passions
or rivalled the beauteousness of nature, with glooms dug from
cavernous depths, mellowness of tints borrowed from the rain
bow, or effulgent light plucked from the stars. Acres of forms
pose in godlike mould, or writhe in demoniac agony in marble or
bronze, into which the chisel's magic touch has breathed living
souls. Would he study or amuse himself with human foibles and
every-day human thought? in cafd and in crowded garden ; on
working day thoroughfares or fete-day excursions, he can mingle
with thousands who, intent upon their own enjoyments, exhibit
their hearts and souls, as fully as skitting lambs show their inno
cence, or kittens display their frolicsomeness. No civilized peo
ple evince such debonair recklessness of others' opinions as do the
French. Subtle and secretive in matters involving grave interests,
they are very children when they have no dangerous motive to
conceal. I spent a part of the autumn and winter of 1851-52 in Paris.
My associates were largely of the student class, partly American
and partly native. Some of my experiences would be amusing if
I could narrate them, and some bordered upon the tragic. Louis
Napoleon was president of the republic. I had no confidence in
his republicanism, and declined a presentation to the " Little
Prince," offered me through a charming young lady, daughter of
our then minister, one of my distant Virginia cousins. Her name
is now being made famous at home by her namesake and niece.
My lack of confidence in Louis Napoleon was soon justified. The
evening of December ist was calm, and the sunset sky sweetly
rose-tinted. The house in which I had apartments was on St.
George's, near the one in Rue Lafitte in which the president was
born. It was occupied by a large number of Italian patriots,
refugees from Rome. From one I was taking lessons in his soft
language. Early in the morning of the 2d, his tap came upon
my door. Pale and excited, he told me that the city was in a
state of siege, and that Caviagnac, Thiers, and other republican

REVOLUTION OF DECEMBER, 1851. 555
leaders were arrested and sent off to Ham and other fortresses.
My blood boiled, and my tongue rattled off denunciations. " Tais
toi, mon gar5on," he said. " But I am not afraid, I am an Ameri
can." " C'est vrais, mais nous sommes — nous autres — Romains,
and your words may be dangerous to us." I swallowed my
coffee hurriedly and sallied forth. The boulevards close by were
crowded by excited people. Soon a line of mounted lancers be
gan to pour up the broad avenue. There were 10,000 of them.
Close by my side on the curb-stone stood a distinguished-looking
lady. I asked her what were the feelings of the Parisians now.
With a shrug of the shoulders and a sweet smile, she answered :
" It is gratitude to Monsieur le Prince for this magnificent
spectacle." Her words were so cold-blooded that I angrily re
torted ; " C'est impossible ! " With sweet condescension she re
joined : ''Monsieur est Americain, n'est pas? je suis Parisienne,
mais je connais Ies Parisiennes; attendez Ies denouements." She
was very beautiful, but for the moment I forgot my admiration
and disliked her.
Events afterward showed that she was right, and that my
patriotic sympathies were all wasted. Rapidly the great streets
were filled with soldiers, and news came of barricades in several
localities. Afterwards, with a party of students, I started to get
near Porte St. Martin, where a strong barricade was thrown up
and fighting was going on. I stopped in a boutique (shop) to write
a postscript in a letter I was about to post home. My friends got
a little way ahead of me, and the crowd was so great that I could
not overtake them. I got within sight of St. Martin, when an
order ran down the boulevard to open every upper window.
Some shots had come from behind closed blinds ; and im
mediately after another order ran along the line of soldiers to
clear the streets. The crowd at first did not budge ; a rattle of
musketry poured down towards us, and a cannon-ball crashed
into a boutique window a few steps behind me. Then there was
a rush to get away. I was carried along by the moving mass.
Bits of plaster came down upon my head from upper walls upon
which musket-balls were rattling. As Sam Weller said : " It was
too exciting to be pleasant." I was glad to reach a cross street,
into which I plunged, and made a detour so as to reach a point
where I could cross the boulevard to get to my residence. This
I could not do until I reached the Madeleine, over a mile off.
The crowd rapidly vanished from the streets, as if by magic.
When I crossed Rue Vivienne, there was not a person to be seen
except the soldiers, 200 or 300 yards off at the boulevard's inter
section, who at that moment poured a volley adown the street. I
thought I heard bullets whistling; when I had crossed Vivienne I
laughed at myself for imagining I had heard bullets, for I then
felt sure the volleys were of blank cartridge. I afterwards found
that the walls above the second story at that point had been

556 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
riddled with balls, and more than probably some of them came
while I was there. It was almost impossible to remain in my
room, so great was the fever of excitement burning in me. At
one time I was in a pack at the mouth of Rue Lafitte when some
firing was heard up the boulevard ; we were ordered to disperse
with an " allez vous en." We paid no attention to it. Then
came a stern " Va t'en / " We knew that meant business, especially
when a platoon of infantry was seen rapidly approaching. I was
next the boulevard. The crowd rushed back, leaving my rear
open to the enemy. I ran, putting my hands in front of me, and
then drawing them back, as if swimming. Each motion put two
or three Frenchmen, not so strong as I, behind me. I thus made
a living breastr^NoxV to my rear, of probably a hundred, when the
crash of musketry was heard. There were screams. How many
were hit I did not hear, but I soon saw two men on shutters borne
up the street.
St. Martin's barricade fell and was captured, and at dusk, with
a little lady friend of our concierge, I went out to reconnoitre.
The public were permitted to cross the boulevard only at Rue
Montmartre. Mounted sentinels were moving back and forth,
while the mass of cavalry were bivouacked in the centre of the
broad avenue. We had crossed, and were stooping down to
examine what we took to be blood in the gutter. All at once I
felt something cold touch my cheek. I looked up; the barrel of
a horse pistol was within two inches of my nose, and the mounted
owner ordered us on. I need not say that we obeyed with exceed
ing alacrity. I said some things at that time bordered on the
tragic. My friends who got lost from me on the way to St. Mar
tin were unable to reach a cross street when the firing com
menced. Chaupan of New Orleans went through a hole in a
boutique shutter, made by a cannon-ball, and hid himself in the
deserted house. Jones of Kentucky, got into a shop with a
crowd, soldiers rushed in and gave him a sabre cut on his hand.
Metcalffe of Mississippi, finding the bullets were whistling dan
gerously, dropped with face down to the ground close to the
house-walls and lay still. Soldiers in file passed along; one gave
him a kick, saying: " C est fait pour lui" (he is done for). Poor
Orrick played Falstaff, but dreading the while lest they might put
in a finishing touch. All were more or less greatly endangered.
Ap. Catesby Jones had a leg broken in two places below the
knee, and was for months in a critical condition. One of my
Italian friends appeared no more in our house, and his com
panions were sad and silent. Some gay young ladies lamented
the places lately filled by student friends (French) in a boarding-
house I sometimes frequented in the Latin quarter. The bulletins
set down the killed at a dozen or so. I knew of nearly that many
myself. I talked the other day with an old soldier; he said there
were l,ooo killed, most of them idle spectators. In February I

CHANGES IN PARIS. 557
went eastward, and did not return for nearly a year. I then saw
Louis Napoleon drive by with a guard of honor from the inaugura
tion of the Strasburg station— he was Emperor. Handkerchiefs
waved and " Vive I'Empereur " rang along the gay boulevards. I
remembered the words of my chance lady companion, and had to
confess that the French were not ready for a republic. " L'em-
pire c'est le paix," said the scion of Bonapartism. Time has shown
that "L'empire" was the synonym of glittering imbecility, of ex
travagant and dishonest beautification of Paris, and of national
decadence. France is now gnashing her teeth in rage and vainly hoping for
a day of revenge. Appealing to this feeling. Imperialists and
Royalists are joining hands with extremists calling themselves
Republicans, to destroy all conservative free rule in the country.
Can she govern herself? Is she not again seeking a dictator's
heel to tread upon the necks of her people? It seems so, for it
looks as if Boulanger is about to be mounted on horseback. The
empire certainly, while rocking the people into a dream, whose
attractive visions were self-seeking corruption, luxurious vanity,
and national enervation, robed Paris in garments of beauty.
Magnificent boulevards and broad streets were cut and opened
into every quarter of the city. They were lined with splendid
edifices, flattering the pride of the citizens, and at the same time
manacling their limbs. In '52 a few upturned omnibuses and
heaped paving-stones from xoo or 200 feet of adjoining streets, in
a half hour, made a barricade which, defended by a half-armed
rabble, held in check thousands of well-armed and disciplined sol
diers. Now a Gatling gun or a field-piece discharging grape can
sweep a mob from any quarter of the capital. Law and order can
thus be preserved, and so can the rule of an usurper. Mob
violence in Paris has committed the most horrible crimes of
modern times, but the love of ease and luxury, the greed of gold
and its purchased splendors, made the mob a possibility, and
awakening the sympathies of lovers of liberty throughout the
world, has thrown a covering mantle over the mad acts of an op
pressed and cheated people, and has apotheosized into heroes
men whose deeds in other lands woul4 have been called demoniac
crimes. The opening of these streets and improving them into the beau-
tifiers of his capital enabled the emperorto enrich himself and
his pets. A new street was planned, contiguous property was
purchased quietly, the new avenue was built up ; values were
enhanced many fold. Imperial minions were enriched, and the
city itself frequently gained largely to its exchequer. The open
ing of the Rue de I'Op^ra, a short street, I am told, netted to the
municipality 11 millions of money. These improvements are
still being made by the republic, wonderfully to the beauty and
largely to the health of the capital. Although during my former

558 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
visits I ran over oftentimes and knew Paris well, yet to-day I
cannot recognize many of its most frequented localities. Where
I formerly squeezed through narrow tortuous streets, now I find
broad and magnificent avenues. Old monuments, churches, and
halls, formerly half hidden by dingy buildings reeking in slime
and dirt, now lift into fine sky lines from pretty squares and on
wide airy thoroughfares. Old public buildings are reconstructed,
but some of the most historic arches, towers, and fountains are
retained and made parts of the new and splendid structures,
retaining thus enough of the old to endear them to the lover of
the traditions of the past. A bloused stone-cutter the other day
laid down his chisel and pointed out to me with pride "Ies
souvenirs historiques " being built into the old " halles au bl6."
These old remains are very dear to the ouvrier of the Faubourg
St. Antoine. Every Parisian workman is deep-tinged with patriot
ism and with love for the traditional glory of his country and city,
and one is constantly surprised by the grandeur and dignity of
tone and language immediately assumed by the hard-handed
toiler, when he mentions his country's past and his hopes for
its future. But he is impatient of the slow progress of steady
growth, mistrusts the statesman who would cement as he builds,
and is calmly awaiting for to-morrow, though knowing that the
certain to-morrow may not come for a year or a decade. He
chafes at delay, and is ready to applaud a charlatan who talks
glibly of doing to-day, and puts into the saddle a self-seeking bab
bler who may the next week ride rough-shod over his country's
liberty. Not only the hard-working toiler, but the dreaming
student is ready to take these chances, for the latter knows that,
in the excitement to come, he may ride upon the crest, as the
froth whitens upon a storm-driven sea.
The Sunday after we arrived, Willie and I visited St. Cloud,
never rebuilt since it was fired by an ill-directed bail from Fort
Valerien, aimed at the Germans, who were encamped on these
grounds during the memorable siege. To the glory of the Ger
mans in that terrible war, it may be proudly claimed by them
that they used every exertion to prevent the destruction of
monuments and works of art. After wandering about the park
and enjoying its exquisite views, we accidentally stumbled through
a park gate into a little alley of Sevres, marked " Rue Gambetta."
The lane ran through large walled gardens; the vines covering the
walls made our walk sweet and pretty. There was, however, one
unpretentious white stuccoed house against the little street, with a
few small windows. The upper wall was all covered with a dia
mond-shaped trellis for ivy. The vine was, however, all dead, and
the cement walls, as high as could be reached, were almost dingy
with pencil-writings. Looking over the high garden wall, I no
ticed the side of the house was covered by a large Kentucky
creeper, all bright in large trumpet-shaped flowers. This was the

LEON GAMBETTA. 559
first of this old home plant, rarely seen in Europe, I had seen for
years. It caused us to pause and look for some time. A gen
tleman (he was the only one, except ourselves in the street) passing
and seeing our apparent interest, told us the house was Gambetta's,
and was the one in which he died. It was strange that we should
thus have been attracted by this house, which at once assumed for us
an intense interest. I found that what I had taken for idle scrib-
bhngs on a deserted house, were words of affection and admira
tion written by the statesman's admirers. " Vive Gambetta, the
people's friend"; "Brave Gambetta, the country's defender";
" Get well, Gambetta, thy country needs thee " ; " God preserve
thee, Gambetta, the citizens demand thee." These and hundreds
such are written on the wall, some of them when probably he lay
upon his death-bed. We rang the gate-bell, rang again and again ;
no one came ; we rattled with our canes upon closed window-
shutters. The prolonged barking of a httle dog in an upper
room showed us he was alone. We went off for a lunch ; learned
that the house was in charge of a concierge, and that it once be
longed to Balzac. This gave an additional reason for us to get
into it ; therefore, after an hour or more we returned. The guar
dian was still absent. We determined to scale the garden wall,
and in so doing I strained my hip, and am yet somewhat lame
and unable to do much walking, and had to keep my room for
several days. We succeeded, however, in getting into the gar
den, where Leon Gambetta had often walked ; gathered some
horse-chestnuts from a tree overhanging his door. The brilliant
orator may often have sat beneath its shade. Here, too, were the
fine old trees under which Balzac may have written or meditated
some of his brilliant romances. I was lame, but did not regret
it, for though not in the room, we were at the house and in the
gardens of one of the most brilliant of Frenchmen — the stay and
prop of Continental liberty and the friend of humanity, one of
the most striking characters of this prolific century.
To write properly of Paris would require more space than is
now permitted me. I went each morning to the great central
markets. I am a believer in the grape, and went for fresh chasse-
las and to enjoy the bustle of the early sales and the good-
humored gayety of the market-peopld These market-sheds are
of great extent, all undermined with spacious vaults, in which
what fails to be sold in the morning may be coolly stored till the
next day. The early sales are by wholesale and made by auc
tion. Lots of butter and of cheese, hampers of vegetables and
fruits, carcases of meat, and masses of fish, are knocked down
rapidly to the retailer and are rapidly carried off by regular por
ters in great broad hats to protect the head from grease and
drip. Each porter takes a tab, carries his load to another part
of the market where the purchaser pays and gets a ticket to
enable him to pass the bounds. There are regular auctioneers.

56o A RACE WITH THE SUN.
and the business is done quickly. The retail purchasers are
largely women. The wholesaling is over at nine o'clock. Then
the retailer invites the passer with compliments to purchase.
" Voila, monsieur, a fish for your charming wife." " See this bou
quet, your pretty lady-love will dote on you if you take it to her."
" Here, monsieur, is a quail for your sick daughter." " Look at
this live fish, just the thing for your guests this evening." " Buy
this beautiful wreath of immortelles, just the thing for your hand
some family tomb at Pere la Chasse." As we walk among the
stalls of different articles, all in their respective quarters, old
women ply the passer, and often with compliments my modesty
prevents my noting. One sees much of Parisian human nature in
these places. Large markets are held in the several quarters of
the city on fixed days, generally twice a week for each locality. The
broad promenade spaces of several boulevards have sockets in the
walks into which posts are set, and then rods run along them,
making covered awnings for the stalls. The awnings are erected
the evening before, and after the morning sales are over the locali
ties are quickly cleaned, and in an hour no one would suspect
the pretty streets had been so used. The market people are
thus able to reach different parts of the city through the week.
Cabbages and other vegetables are brought into the city pro
tected by their outer leaves. Purchasers strip these off and drop
them at once. Tons of this refuse lie about the markets, but are,
immediately after the market closes, carted off by public teams.
But I must forbear further writing upon this great city. I could
write on and fill half a volume and write only of what has come
to my individual notice.
We left Paris the 15th, via Dieppe for London. Caught a
glimpse of the old cathedral at Rouen, but did not halt, ran
through some beautiful scenery in Normandy, with sweetly
sequestered homes and quaint old mills ; had a smooth sail to
New Haven, and at ten o'clock at night I felt that strange
oppression I always suffer from when entering huge London.

CHAPTER LIL
LONDON— GREAT AND VICIOUS LONDON— ITS FOGS— HOSPITALITY
IN 1851 AND 1888— TORTWORTH COURT AND
BERKELEY CASTLE.
London, November 2, 1888.
When I arrived a young man in London many years ago, I felt
overpowered at my littleness in this mighty human hive, and was so
green that I had not even thought of a hotel to which I might go.
When the cabman banged the door with the demand " Where, sir? "
I almost sank back in despair. But the thought flashed across my
brain that I was in this man's power, and that dire might be the
consequence. I felt it would never do to let him know my utter
ignorance of the ways of the world and above all of London. So
with an air of intense composure I answered " Golden Cross." I
did not know in what part of the city it was, nor what sort of
house, but I had lately been reading the veracious account of the
memorable excursion of that wonderful man Mr. Samuel Pickwick
and his friends, and I recalled at the moment that it was from this
tavern " the club " had started. I found the place comfortable
and have since several times made it my temporary abode, for it
is at Charing Cross, the very centre of the city. From its door
one can mount a " bus " for any and every quarter of the metrop
olis. We are in it now and make daily journeys about the vast
town. I will not attempt a letter descriptive of London to bring it to
the reader's mind ; to do so properly would require hundreds
of pages. Unlike Paris it has no salient characteristics which can
be named as peculiar to and therefore properly descriptive of it.
Here are all things and all manner o"f all things, so mingled
together that to paint it, the pencil must be dipped in all colors
and in all tints, and the artist must know all things and how
to arrange them. This globe of ours is round, its surface is cov
ered with earth and water ; the sun lights it by day and the stars
shine upon it by night. This would be as properly an analysis of
the globe's characteristic, as any thing I could say of this vast
cauldron of humanity in a simple letter would be a description of
it. I might say it has four millions of people, — the mind can
hardly grasp the fact. Better probably would it be to state that
the ten largest cities of America united into one would not sum
561

562 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
up its complement. Gather all the people of the great State
of New York and pour them into London emptied, and there
would be vacant places left and room for those of a few of our
nine by ten commonwealths. But what is more, the great Empire
State even with its huge city could not furnish the ingredients to
make up the medley of human nature here to be found. Here
man soars aloft and looks with undazzled eye into the brightness
•of the stars, and here sinks into the lowest vortex of depravity ;
here he vies with the gods in sublimity, and here revels in the
companionship of the most loathsome reptile. He touches a
chord that sings in ethereal cadences throughout the spheres, and
yet commits crimes so hideous that a convict escaped from Hades
would hardly plead guilty to their doing. Here is the centre of
the world of wealth — the very heart whose pulsations vibrate to
the farthest corner of the world, and here squalid hunger is
gaunt from very starvation. Piled up on a few acres are the shin
ing coins of the whole world, or the debentures which could bring
in all, and then would bankrupt the very mines in the rock ; and
yet within a few minutes' walk there is the home of starving want
and racking misery. Here countless millions could be raised
in a day to carry light into the heart of the dark continent, or to
equip armies and squadrons to destroy human slavery and its
trade ; and yet close by girls are being daily sold to vice, and in
fantine innocence is taught to steal and to commit crime as a
science. Here thousands of pure, good and able men and women
are daily banded together to lighten the load down-weighting poor
humanity and to bring it into communion with its God. To reach
their place of meeting those same men and women pass by quar
ters into which they would not dare to go without the eye of
a policeman constantly upon them, and where murders are
now being committed in manner so hellish and for reasons so
utterly unaccountable, that the world stands aghast with horror.
Nothing is so good, no idea so sublime, that the performers of the
one, and the votaries of the other are not here to be found in vast
and earnest numbers ; nothing so vicious or so hideous, no thought
or passion so bestial and degrading, that thousands cannot here be
found to delight in performing the one, or to reek and wallow in
the other. Paris is the epitome of certain traits of human nature
— London is the epitome of the world and of all traits of human
nature. Nature seems herself every now and then to grow shocked
at the possibility of its depravity and tries to cover it over with
an impenetrable gloom. A London fog is the one thing typical
of this place, and of it alone. It is not fog as understood else
where, but a mist ground up with soot — a mist coated with dirt
and rime ; a pall settled down to shut out the heavens and
to hide the city from the spirits of the air and the stars in
the sky. Coming from the " Lodge of Israel " at Cannon Street

TORTWORTH COURT. 563
Hotel at midnight, I found the city was shrouded in fog; I
mounted the deck of an omnibus to have the full benefit of the
thing. Coming out of Ludgate Hill the driver got so bewildered
that he lost his way in the little open space not 200 feet across,
and instead of going straight into Fleet Street turned at right
angles, and did not discover his mistake until he was about to
enter Blackfriars Bridge, where there was a little opening in the
fog, and yet he had been on this line for 10 or 15 years. We
frequently could not see the lights on vehicles meeting us until
they were bumped into us. The fog is often in patches where all
is nearly impenetrable and the lamps are hardly visible across
a narrow street, and yet 100 or 200 yards off one can see with tol
erable distinctness. I was reading in my room (it has three good
windows on the street) at 11 o'clock, suddenly the sun went out,
and I could not distinguish the sky line of the building across the
way not 60 feet off. I groped my way down stairs before the gas
was lighted ; drivers on cabs and 'buses were calling out to each
other so as to learn their respective positions, and men and boys
were offering their services to convey pedestrians to their destina
tions. People often accept such services even when within a few
hundred yards of their homes. The city seems to be trying to
hide itself in sheer disgust for its own misdeeds.
When I was a young man I was a breeder in Kentucky of short
horns, and going abroad visited the famous herds of England. I
went to Tortworth Court, the seat of the Earl of Ducie in Glouces
tershire, to see his celebrated " Dutchess " cattle, and was intro
duced to his lordship by the bull, " Fourth Duke of York." I was
treated with great kindness by the family and afterwards spent
some weeks at Brahan Castle, north of Inverness, in Scotland, which
Lord Ducie had taken for the season. His son, Lord Moreton (now
Lord Ducie), of my own age, was a fisherman and supplied the table
with salmon ; I furnished it with venison from the great forest,
well stocked with fallow-deer and roebuck, and played billiards
with the kind earl, somewhat an invalid. He died a few months
afterwards, and the present earl, has always been off yachting
when I have since been in England. We have kept up an occa
sional correspondence. Learning we were here now, he wrote for
us to come to Tortworth for a visit. A charming run on the
Great Western Road through sweet home scenery along the
Thames — at times rushing with a speed of 70 miles an hour, —
through picturesque Bath, brought us to Bristol, thence an hour
northward carried us to Charfield, the Tortworth station. I wish
I could write of the splendid hospitality found in the interior of a
great English country-seat; but will content myself by saying the
guest is as free as if he were in a fine hotel. He can walk or ride ;
can talk or write ; can play tennis or take a row in pretty lakes ;
can stroll among herds of fine short-horns or watch gay phea
sants wandering within 100 yards of the house ; can look upon

564 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
old family pictures, or study in the library or in the museum, in
which is a fine collection of old English and some Roman coins,
nearly all dug up on the grounds about the park ; can take a pipe
or a cigar in the smoking-room ; can go through the park, in which
are specimens of the best American trees, all labelled. In short,
can do as he pleases and have a good time. Tortworth residence
is very large, containing 50 odd sleeping-rooms, and fine halls, all of
Bath stone and Elizabethian in style. The grounds or home place
contain 4,000 acres and are very beautiful, most admirably kept up,
— in fact I could see nothing out of order.
The present Lord Moreton has inherited his grandfather's love
of short-horns and fine pigs, and is selling many to go to the
Argentine Republic. His father I do not think knows a short
horn from a mountain tow-head, but is great on arboriculture and
yachting. I had one familiar acquaintance, an old chesnut-tree
about 18 feet in diameter and written of as old several centuries
ago. It is not much more than a living shell or tall hollow stump,
supported by a huge ivy which keeps it staid and green at winter
in its vast old age. It is one of the oldest British trees ; the ivy
and the balmy climate may keep it alive for centuries yet to come.
The Gloucestershire hills stretch near by, making a pretty
outline. On one of the highest points stands a tall tower or
column, the monument of Tyndale, who first translated into
English the New Testament. This was his native home.
Six miles from Tortworth is the oldest inhabited stronghold in
England — Berkeley Castle. It is a solid old keep with massive
walls, deeply marked by cannon-balls thrown against it by
Cromwell. Lord Fitz Hardinge, the owner, acted as cicerone for
us and showed us its old rooms and many relics of long ago.
There was the room in which Edward the Second was murdered,
meeting the most ignoble death ever inflicted upon a king. His
bed is kept as he used it. There was Elizabeth's room with its
massive wooden bolts, barring out intruders from the virgin queen
and the bed upon which she slept when a guest at the castle.
Here were her candlesticks, her perfume bottles, and other pretty
things, and a beautiful little prayer-book, written and illumined by
her own fair hands. If I remember rightly, they were dainty and
deserved the pride she had in them. These and other of her
ornaments were given by her to one of her maids-of-honor, a
daughter of this old house.
We looked into the kitchen, in which a meal was being pre
pared, with old pot-racks and other kitchen furniture the same as
used centuries ago. The great deer park was formerly about the
castle, but the noble proprietor moved it some distance away,
because his good dame found it so easy to kill fat bucks to load the
table when Queen Bess was her guest. The present lord is the
master of the Gloucestershire hounds and had just returned from
a hunt when we arrived. He had gained a good appetite from his

FAREWELL TO ENGLAND. 565
hard riding, but left his lunch table to take us around, and
munched biscuits while he showed us his rare old curios. He
looked the typical fox-hunting Englishman, tough as a pine knot,
and as careless of appearances and as independent as a wood-
sawyer. Willie got some nice old coins at Tortworth, dug up
about Tortworth Court. We left the hospitable house with much
regret, and leave for Liverpool to sail to-morrow on the Alaska.

CHAPTER LIII.
OUR HOME RUN— NIAGARA— WE LOSE THE RACE
WITH THE SUN.
Homeward Bound, November 15, 1888.
Our passage across the Atlantic was uneventful and not un
pleasant, although it was rough and stormy. Twice the wind rose
to the dignity of hard gales, and the ocean greyhound Alaska
rolled tremendously, proving that old dogs can learn new tricks.
The captain said when we started that she did not know how to
roll, and I think acquired a dislike for me because I congratulated
him afterwards on her aptness in taking lessons. We reached
Sandy Hook at night and anchored to await the tide. I fear I
am not orthodox in my patriotism, for I did not work up any in
tense sentiment when I went on deck in the morning, and saw
America after so many months of absence. I did lift my hat,
however, and with deep respect said " My native land, good
morning." I felt a sort of regret that our journeyings were
ended ; I was anxious to reach home to see loved ones, and once
more to greet my friends. I looked back over the sea ; there was
a thread of light marking the way we had come, and beyond on
mountain and plain, on hill and valley, were many a charming
scene now lost to me forever.
We halted in New York two days, that Willie might look at our
own commercial metropolis while recollections of Old-World cities
were fresh in his mind.
I am making notes of this my last letter on the M. C. railroad as
we pass through quiet Michigan. A little link of a hundred miles is
yet to be made, to close up the girdle we have been making around
the world. It has been a long and somewhat tortuous one : now
lying on the equator, then looped up over the Arctic Circle; here we
were running with fleet-footed old Sol ; there doubling upon our
tracks we made a couple of thousand and more miles with the early
dawn ever in our faces. The track we have made would measure
about 45,000 miles. In all of that vast distance we have not met
with a single accident. The two boys have each had a day or two of
slight indisposition. I have not been sick a single day. We have
sweltered in tropical heats, and the sun has shot down upon our
heads burning arrows ; we have eaten all kinds of food and par
taken wantonly of the fruits of every land, and for several days in
566

COLD BATHS. 567
Finland and Norway were wet from morning till night. We took
with us a well supplied medicine chest ; with the exception of a
few quinine pills taken out, we bring it back as it started. Just
before sailing from Vancouver I read in a newspaper the state
ment of an eminent French physician, that he had for a year
or more poured each morning cold water over the back of his neck
and had escaped colds. He did not say that it was the cause of
his exemption, but recommended its trial. I have not failed to so
do a single morning in fifteen months, and have not had a single
cold. I could not persuade the boys to follow my example, and
they have been frequently enrheumed. It is worth trying. In
the far East we adopted the Indian mode of bathing, that is by
pouring cold water over the person, and at the same time rubbing
one's self. It is the simplest of all baths and perhaps the best, for
it permits free exercise while bathing, and thereby prevents the
chill so often dangerously accompanying a cold souse or the
steady shock of the shower, and is greatly more refreshing than
the sponge bath. It is economical and convenient, and one can
obtain all the refreshing benefits of a cold morning bath and not
consume over a pailful of water, especially if using a broad flat
tub to stand in. Where water is in limited supply it is the
thing, and for persons of small means, who can by it have the
beneficial morning refreshment without the expense of a bath
room. A broad tin tub costs but little. We often amused
ourselves watching mothers in India bathe their naked little
ones from babyhood up to ten or more years of age, at
street hydrants in cities, or near the tanks in villages. The
European bathroom throughout the far East is a small room
with an inchned cemented floor and cemented wainscoting. In
this is a tub, small or large according to the ability to get water,
and a tin dipper, usually an old preserved meat-can. Since reaching
Singapore we have rarely missed our morning pour, for nearly
everywhere we could get a broad foot-bath. To this and to fruit
diet I ascribe much of our excellent health. In India our guide
books cautioned against the free use of fruit. We partook pro
fusely of all kinds, in all localities and at all times. For nearly
five months we rarely failed eating for breakfast a fill of " pomolos,"
the shaddock of Florida. Some say it is an antidote to malaria.
By peeling off the inner skin it is a dehghtful fruit. A little of
the inner skin gives a taste of quinine, and is possibly possessed
of its virtues.
A night whirl carried us from New York across the Empire
State, and the next morning gave us a view of the world's wonder
and America's pride and glory — Niagara. It would furnish a fit
ting climacteric for this, my story of a voyage around the worid.
For here one looks upon the very embodiments of relentless force
and indomitable energy ---of irresistible and eternal motion.
Here for untold ages there has not been one moment of rest — not

g68 A RACE WITH THE SUN.
a fleeting instant of silence. During countless centuries the
majestic roar, deep and solemn as the stertorous breathings of a
boundless universe, has not during the flash of a second been
once hushed, or has ever modulated its awful tone. Here is
grandeur and sublimity, but yet more than all, beauty without
stint. A distinguished Briton once wrote with supercilious con
tempt of an untutored Yankee, who, after looking upon Niagara,
exclaimed: " How beautiful ! " The Yankee, however, was not
devoid of ethical refinement. America's mighty cataract has
all the elements of the beautiful, but not all of the grand. It
does not arouse a feeling of fear and dread. Mountain billows
rushing before a howling storm, seem ready to engulf one who is
in their path. Huge snow-clad peaks or towering rocky pinnacles
cutting a far upper sky, looking as if their distant heights were
the props of the eternal throne, seem ready to topple upon and
to crush the beholder. These are awful — fearful — grand. Words
of tenderness die upon the lover's lips in their presence. But
Niagara wins a loving look and woos a cooing word ; it mellows
the heart, and quickens a gentle pulse ; it is the very trysting
place for lovers ; its marvellous beauties reach the heart, and the
hearts of thousands furnish a better criticism than the learned
aestheticism of the schooled critics. It is grand, and sublime, and
yet more gloriously beautiful. I never go to or from the East,
without a feehng that I have lost something if I have not had one
look at it. Even the hurried view from Suspension Bridge and
the ten minutes from the look-out of the M. C. railroad repay a
good part of the ticket's cost.
We have but a hundred miles more to make, and our journeyings
will be ended. I look back with regret, for the joys of the past 1 5|
months can never again be mine. We have seen many lands and
many peoples. We have been happy, and I have endeavored
through these letters to make my friends at home partakers of
our happiness. The endeavor has been beneficial to myself. It
has forced me to an intensely close observation of every thing,
and I hope to somewhat accurate conclusions. I have reached
such conclusions honestly, but have made no pretensions to pro
found researches. I have written of things as they appeared to
me and as they would most probably have appeared to my readers
had they been in my place. At least I have endeavored to let
them see through my eyes. Much that I have written may seem
trivial, but the monarch mountains of the world are but aggrega
tions of tiny atoms. A man's life and a country's history are only
collected masses of countless little things. A fossil bone and a
carbon leaf gave Agassiz food for months of study, and from
them he fashioned a beast of monster dimensions and revealed a
planet of emerald brightness. Iron filings are dull and lustreless
dirt, a magnet causes them to assume forms of perfect beauty.
We look through our window upon the fog, it is cold, damp, and

HOME AGAIN. 569
dreary. 'The frost in the night weaves upon the panes patterns
so exquisite that the daintiest lace worker can only tamely imitate
them. Many little things — many homely things ih distant lands
have been revelations to us. I have striven, dear readers, to lay
them pleasantly before you, that you might see what I saw, and as
I have seen. I have felt you were my constant companions, and
have been happy in the companionship. If you have enjoyed my
company as I have taken pleasure in yours, I shall be more than
repaid for my labor.
For nearly two years we have known no winter, our world has
all the while been mantled in green. I look'^ut of the car win
dows on Michigan's low hills and gentle slopes ; all is leafless and
of russet tone. Cattle are cropping the embrowned grass, or look
up mild-eyed as we pass, and chew the cud of sweet content.
Their sides are sleek, for they have revelled in the summer's
green ; they can bear the wintry blast and look forward to the
coming spring. We, too, have had many long months of glorious
summer. In our memories are garnered what we have gathered,
to be food for thought in the winter of declining years. Will
that winter be followed by an emerald spring? We will hope and
live, and will live in hope.
Again I look out of our window. Clouds are gathering over
the sky ; the curtain of the far west is dyed in purple and salmon.
Through a cloud rift the rounded low-down sun is bloody red.
Nearly 500 times has he run his course since we started in our
race with him around the world. He has reached our home and
passed it, and we are not yet quite there. He dips his rim and is
gone. He has won the race. To him and to you good-bye.

THE END.

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