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 (5ar«BU lllniocraitg ffitbrarg 
 
 3tt|aia. £?nn lorlt 
 
 CHARLES WILLIAM WASON 
 COLLECTION 
 
 CHINA AND THE CHINESE 
 
 THE GIFT OF 
 
 CHARLES WILLIAM WASON 
 
 CLASS OF 1876 
 
 1918 
 
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 OS 8.T56^°'"*" ""*^^''^**y Library 
 
 3 1924 023 061 488 
 
Cornell University 
 Library 
 
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 tine Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924023061488 
 
THIS GOODLY FRAME 
 THE EARTH 
 
 STRA Y IMPRESSIONS OF SCENES, INCIDENTS 
 
 AND PERSONS IN A JOURNEY TOUCHING 
 
 JAPAN, CHINA, EGYPT, PALESTINE 
 
 AND GREECE 
 
 BY 
 FRANCIS TIFFANY 
 
 BOSTON AND NEW YORK 
 HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY 
 
 1895 
 
Copyright, 1895, 
 Br FRANCIS TIFFANY. 
 
 Ml rights reserved. 
 
 The Riverside Press, Cambridge, Mass., U. S. A. 
 Electrotyped and Printed by H. O. Houghton and Company. 
 
To 
 
 EDWIN B. HASKELL 
 
 To you, dear Friend, I gratefully dedicate these few out of 
 
 the countless happy experiences we shared on our trip round 
 
 the world. 
 
 FRANCIS TIFFANY 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 GETTING UNDER WEIGH 
 
 FASE 
 
 I. Providing Funds for Travel 1 
 
 II. Across the American Continent ..... 2 
 
 III. The Action of Wheat on Imagination ... 3 
 
 IV. The Kockies 4 
 
 V. The Pacific Ocean . . .... 6 
 
 VI. Linguistic Privileges 8 
 
 VII. Arriving out 9 
 
 JAPAN 
 
 I. 
 
 I. First Impressions 13 
 
 II. The Promotion of Domestic Happiness ... 14 
 
 III. Yokohama 15 
 
 IV. Japanese Women 18 
 
 V. The Japanese Smile 20 
 
 VI. The Curio Fever 28 
 
 VII. Straws 25 
 
 II. 
 
 I. The Rice Lands 27 
 
 II. Kamakura 28 
 
 in. The Buddha '30 
 
 IV. Back to the Finite 34 
 
 V. The Philosopher's Perch 36 
 
 HI. 
 
 I. Miyanoshita and the Hakone District ... 42 
 
 n. Rice as Motive Power 42 
 
vi CONTENTS 
 
 III. Bamboo Grass 43 
 
 IV. The Fujiya Hotel 44 
 
 V. Volcanoes and Personal Cleanliness .... 45 
 
 VI. The Ten Province Pass 46 
 
 IV. 
 
 I. An Historical Glimpse 48 
 
 II. The Nikko Groves 51 
 
 ni. The Nikko Temples 53 
 
 rV. Popular Use of the Temples 56 
 
 V. Simplicity of Japanese Civilization .... 58 
 
 VI. Japanese Bells 60 
 
 V. 
 
 I. Japanese Manners . 63 
 
 U. Japanese Heroic Moral Standards .... 68 
 
 VI. 
 
 I. Source in Nature of Japanese Art . . . . 72 
 
 II. Variety in Unity 74 
 
 III. Broad Influence of Japanese Art .... 78 
 
 rV. Physical Conditions affecting Art . . . 79 
 
 VII. 
 
 I. The Question of Missions 82 
 
 II. The Buddhist Reaction 86 
 
 VIII. 
 
 I. The Scientific Broomstick-Drudge .... 89 
 
 II. The Crusading Spirit 92 
 
 III. The Day of the Pacific Ocean 94 
 
 IV. Good-By to Japan 95 
 
 CHINA 
 
 I. 
 
 I. At Sea again 97 
 
 II. Consistent Conservatism . .... 97 
 
 III. World Building 101 
 
CONTENTS vii 
 
 IV. So near, and yet so far ! 101 
 
 V. Inside the WaUs 104 
 
 VI. Out into the Country 105 
 
 VII. The Handwriting on the Wall 108 
 
 II. 
 
 I. Hong Kong . 110 
 
 II. Canton River 113 
 
 III. Canton's Eiver Population 115 
 
 rV. Business and Religion 116 
 
 V. TheShamien 117 
 
 VI. Inside Canton 119 
 
 VII. Canton's Examination Halls . ... 122 
 
 VIII. A Government of Philosophers 126 
 
 THE TROPICS 
 
 I. Away from Hong Kong 135 
 
 II. Tropical Yearnings 136 
 
 ni. Singapore 137 
 
 rV. A School for Sculptors 139 
 
 V. A Ravishing Drive 141 
 
 VI. The Botanical Garden .- 143 
 
 VII. A Borneo Philosopher . . . . . . 144 
 
 CEYLON 
 
 I. The Culmination of the Tropics .... 149 
 
 n. Blood thicker than Water 151 
 
 in. Kandy 152 
 
 IV. Christmas in Kandy 154 
 
 V. The Peradeniya Botanical Gardens . . . 158 
 
 VI. An International Ecclesiastical Interview . . . 159 
 
 INDIA 
 
 I. 
 
 I. Pondieherry 163 
 
 n. The Hoogly 165 
 
 m. Darjeeling 166 
 
 IV. Again Mongolians ! 169 
 
viii CONTENTS 
 
 V. The Apotheosis of Machinery 170 
 
 VI. At Last the Himalayas! 174 
 
 Vn. Tiger HiU 176 
 
 VIII. The Alps and the Himalayas 178 
 
 II. 
 
 I. Calcutta 180 
 
 II. How Empires fall 182 
 
 III. Hindu Traits 183 
 
 III. 
 
 I. Benares ......... 186 
 
 n. Street Scenes 187 
 
 III. The Ghats 189 
 
 IV. Burning the Dead . , 190 
 
 V. Sati, or Widow-Burning 192 
 
 IV. 
 
 I. Lueknow 195 
 
 II. The Siege of Lueknow 197 
 
 in. Cawnpore 199 
 
 V. 
 
 I. Oriental Savings-Banks 204 
 
 II. Happy or Miaerahle ? 206 
 
 HI. Beaction from Bad Example 209 
 
 rV. Gaudium Certaminis 212 
 
 VI. 
 
 I. A Glance at History 215 
 
 II. Eliminating the Tartar 217 
 
 III. India's Alhamhra at Agra 220 
 
 IV. Woman in the Evolution of Architecture . . 223 
 V. The Oasis 225 
 
 VI. The Taj Mahal . • 227 
 
 vn. 
 
 I. Delhi 232 
 
CONTENTS IX 
 
 VIII. 
 
 I. Jeypore 238 
 
 II. An Elephant Eide to Amber 241 
 
 III. Mt. Abu 245 
 
 rV. Ahmedabad 251 
 
 EGYPT 
 
 I. 
 
 I. Prelude to Egypt 255 
 
 II. Semitic Prophets 257 
 
 III. The Desert . . 260 
 
 IV. Ismailia 262 
 
 v. The Land of the Rod 264 
 
 II. 
 
 I. A Study in Egyptian Babies 267 
 
 II. NUe Hints 269 
 
 III. The Gizeh Pyramids 272 
 
 IV. Memphis and the Sakkarah Pyramids . . . 277 
 V. Knight-Errants of the ShoTel 281 
 
 VI. The Tomb of Thi 284 
 
 III. 
 
 I. Characteristics of Nile Scenery 288 
 
 II. Pantheistic Animism 290 
 
 III. The Later Tombs of Egypt 294 
 
 IV. The Temples of Egypt 302 
 
 PALESTINE 
 
 I. De Lesseps building better than he knew . . 311 
 
 n. Jaffa . ...... 312 
 
 lU. Jaffa to Jerusalem 313 
 
 IV. Sacred Cities 317 
 
 V. In what Frame of Mind ? 318 
 
 VI. A Stroll to Bethlehem 322 
 
 VII. The Church of the Nativity 324 
 
 VIII. The Spirit and the Flesh 325 
 
 IX. The Jews' WaUing-Place 327 
 
 X. The Dead Sea and the Jordan .... 329 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 BAALBEC AND DAMASCUS 
 
 I. Beyrout and the, Lebanon Ranges . • • 335 
 
 11. Baalbee ... . ... 338 
 
 III. Damascus ■ • 339 
 
 ASIA MINOR AND GREECE 
 
 I. The SaU to Smyrna 347 
 
 II. Smyrna . . 348 
 
 III. Constantinople ... ... 351 
 
 IV. First Introduction to Attica . ... 351 
 V. The Parthenon . . ... 353 
 
 VI. Eleusis . . . . . . 357 
 
 VII. Marathon .... ... 359 
 
 VIII. Athens' Parting Benediction . ... 360 
 
THIS GOODLY FRAME 
 THE EARTH 
 
 GETTING UNDER WEIGH 
 
 Parsons or otherwise, large numbers of the 
 impecunious stoutly aver that they, too, 
 would be glad of a trip round the world, were it not 
 for the cost of the thing. This is no valid excuse. 
 It need not cost one a penny, nay, on the contrary, 
 prove the happiest means of escape from the outlay 
 one is subjected to by staying prosaically at home. 
 
 "What is the paradoxical fellow driving at?" 
 wiU be the natural outcry. Well, at a statement of 
 the plainest matter. of fact. Nothing further is 
 requisite than to drop in unexpectedly of an even- 
 ing at the house of a generous-hearted friend, — 
 one of the kind who, having freely received, loves 
 freely to give, — and then and there to have your 
 breath taken away by his sudden exclamation, " I 
 want to go round the world, and I want you to go 
 with me ! Say yes, and it shall not cost you a yen, 
 a rupee, or a piastre." 
 
 In a flash start up before the mind's eye snow- 
 crowned Fujisan in Japan, with aU the Hima- 
 layan giants from Mt. Everest to Kunchinjinga, 
 
2 GETTING UNDER WEIGH 
 
 thundering with the voices of their united ava- 
 lanches, " Take up with him on the spot ! " In 
 gentler notes, the same is caressingly murmured 
 by the waves of the Indian Ocean, lapsing on the 
 roseate, pahn-encircled beaches of Ceylon. Finally, 
 from out the mysterious depths of the halls of 
 mighty Karnak breathes an echo as from the 
 remotest ages, " Ephemeral child of the brand-new 
 Columbia of to-day ! not a mummy in Egypt but 
 would leap to burst his cerements of cloth and 
 bitumen, and cry ' Amen ! ' at such an offer." 
 
 It is, then, a distinct pleasure, before proceeding, 
 to record the impressions of travel that ensued; 
 thus, by so simple a suggestion, to smooth the 
 elsewise rugged way for others, — impecunious 
 perhaps in purse, but millionaires on scenery, 
 architecture, and the metaphysical abysses of Orien- 
 tal Theosophy. 
 
 Before visiting foreign lands, it is said to 
 be a good thing to know a little of one's own, 
 so as not to mistake a chance wheelbarrow one may 
 light on in Timbuctoo for an entirely novel inven- 
 tion, and so write home in too naive a strain of 
 enthusiasm. Certainly, in crossing the American 
 Continent to embark for Japan, one has a chance 
 to see a good deal of his own native land, as well 
 as — if he mean to sail from Vancouver — of the 
 Canadian Dominion. 
 
 It is, perhaps, well enough to pass over the 
 scenes of absorbing interest that lie on the route 
 between Boston and St. Paul. The perils and 
 
ACTION OF WHEAT ON IMAGINATION 3 
 
 fatigues of the same journey have been undergone 
 by previous explorers, — notably by Lewis and 
 Clark, and later by General Fremont, — who have 
 recorded their topographical impressions inch by 
 inch. So to plunge at once into unknown realms ! 
 
 Getting away at nightfall from St. Paul, 
 Minnesota, one awakens the next morning 
 to find himself afloat on a boundless ocean of wheat 
 lands. The assertion of men of science that if, 
 undistracted by sharks and horse-mackerel, the 
 codfish had a free chance to rear to a marriageable 
 age all the sprightly young fry they spawn, they 
 would in ten years pack the Atlantic solid with 
 cod, has here become outright demonstration in 
 wheat. As one rolls along through South Dakota, 
 North Dakota, Manitoba, and beyond, a horrible 
 nightmare of wheat is begotten in the imagination. 
 All the dread monotony is experienced of a sys- 
 tem of " solitary confinement " in wheat. Now, the 
 word of Sacred Writ demonstrates its awful truth, 
 "Man shall not live by bread alone," as, phy- 
 sically and mentally congested with wheat, one 
 feels his gorge fairly rising at the thought of 
 swallowing a crumb of a roU or a cracker. As 
 well offer a man dying of thirst in the Sahara 
 desert a tumblerful of sand instead of water ! 
 
 Nor is this all. With equal oppression is imagi- 
 nation drowned, as in an elevator bin, in its every 
 struggle to picture the lives of the inhabitants of 
 such a farinaceous region. Of course they marry 
 and are given in marriage. Lovely young maidens 
 
4 GETTING UNDER WEIGH 
 
 are led to the altar ; but between tlie mind and every 
 image of tbe charming scene is interposed a thick 
 mist of " Bridal Veil " flour. No ! it is vain to 
 struggle further with the wheat hallucination. 
 Just as dolls are stuffed with bran, so the baffled 
 traveler finally succumbs to the delusion that, 
 should he tap a vein in the arm of one of the 
 natives, there wotdd flow forth, not a stream of 
 ruddy human blood, but a stream of A No. 1 Pills- 
 bury's best. 
 
 " It is wisely ordained," says Goethe, " that 
 the trees shall not grow up into the skies." 
 Only roll along far enough over the dead-level prai- 
 ries, and at last is vouchsafed to weary man a rain- 
 bow of promise that not even the waters of wheat 
 shall continuously prevail over the face of the earth. 
 Faint indications begin to attest that, in the 
 geological " struggle for life," a perpendicular as 
 well as a horizontal, a jackscrew as well as a flat- 
 iron principle is at work in nature. Hurrah ! a 
 hill as high as a woodchuck's burrow. It is big 
 with prophecy of the Eoeky Mountains. Vaster 
 throes of an earth in labor succeed, and bring 
 forth, — is it a huge barn ? No ; a veritable Alp 
 as big as a barn. One is startled at the sub- 
 terranean energies involved. But, so far, all is 
 but prelude. Tired of dead level, Nature finally 
 rises a sleep-refreshed giant, heaving up, first on 
 knotty knees and then on his mighty shoulders, 
 the cumbering bedclothes of the prairies, with an 
 air of " It 's time to get up ! " What a Titan of a 
 
THE ROCKIES 5 
 
 fellow is stirring at last, becomes in a few hours 
 revealed. 
 
 Before I actually saw them, I never could get a 
 vivid conception of the essential genius of the 
 Rocky Mountains, — at any rate as displayed 
 along the line of the Canadian Pacific Eailroad. 
 People are forever darkening cotmsel by compari- 
 sons that serve merely to show what a thing is not. 
 Switzerland has towering mountains ; therefore as 
 the Rocky Mountains tower, they are the American 
 Switzerland. In point of fact, they are the precise 
 counterpart of Switzerland. The Rocky Mountains 
 are, as their name implies, the Mockies, just as 
 the Alps are what their name — the Alpen, the 
 high pasture slopes — implies. In Switzerland 
 the snow-line descends four or five thousand feet 
 lower than here, and so secures superb expanses of 
 snowclad flanks and peaks. Then, below the line 
 of softest ermine, succeed enormous stretches of 
 emerald green grass-lands, dotted with herds of 
 cattle. Demand this of the Rockies, and they 
 wiU flatly answer : " Under such a dazzling sun 
 we cannot keep on om* snowcaps ; and, as for your 
 deep-uddered Swiss kine, their mUk would dry up 
 here in a day. But take us as we are, and we defy 
 Switzerland to parallel us." 
 
 The Rockies are right. Such Titanic sublimity 
 of rock formations, such wrestlings and writhings 
 of uptilted and contorted strata, such spectacle of 
 a vast rock creation groaning and travailing in pain 
 until now, where else is it witnessed on so stupen- 
 dous a scale ? Now, in the Alps, all this elemental 
 
6 GETTING UNDER WEIGH. 
 
 convulsion of nature, this Titan reign of chaos, is 
 largely veiled from sight. It is covered with per- 
 petual snow ; it is hidden under regal mantles of 
 green. Here the Titan is naked, — " naked and 
 not ashamed." His gigantic osseous structure, his 
 thews and sinews, all that constitute him Briareus, 
 are seen in violent action. These are his boast, 
 his glory. " What went ye out into the wilderness 
 for to see? A man clothed in soft raiment?" 
 Such is the burden of this John the Baptist moun- 
 tain dispensation. 
 
 People may quarrel, if they will, that Michael 
 Angelo is not Raphael, or Dante, Petrarch. For 
 one, I find it much wiser to enjoy both types of 
 men and mountains. So, thank God for the 
 Rockies ! 
 
 It is a great experience to set sail, or, more 
 literally, to begin to twirl propeller from 
 Vancouver. Before reaching the open ocean, one 
 carries with him for twenty-four hours superb 
 mountain ranges ; on the right gradually trending 
 northward to Alaska, and on the left southward 
 toward the State of Washington, Mt. Baker loom- 
 ing up in the far distance 15,000 feet in height. 
 Then, too, how soothing to qualmy stomachs the 
 thought that the vast ocean on which one is em- 
 barking has earned for itself so mild and pacific a 
 name. " What 's in a name ? " A vast deal, pro- 
 vided its bearer lives up to it. On the other hand, 
 how small mitigation is it of a sentence to rack 
 and thumb-screws, that it emanates from a raging 
 
THE PACIFIC OCEAN 7 
 
 tyrant habitually addressed as His Serene High- 
 ness ! Equally true does all this hold of oceans. 
 
 To be perfectly candid, the Pacific is as fully 
 entitled to the benefit of an alias as any poor incon- 
 sistent human creature whom dire necessity compels 
 to alternate between roles as divergent as those of 
 exemplary deacon of the church in one place and 
 disreputable gambler or horse thief in another. It 
 got its Serene Highness title from the early voy- 
 agers, who, after a six weeks struggle to round Cape" 
 Horn, amid a whirl of gales, sleet, hail, fog, and 
 distracted albatrosses, at last made northing enough 
 to reach the beatific realm of the trade winds, and 
 then, — sky-scrapers, studding-sails, everything set, 
 — to be wafted day after day over a summer sea 
 that by contrast seemed heaven. Rejoicingly as 
 Dante, when escaped from the terrors of Inferno, 
 could they now sing, " To run over better waters 
 the little vessel of my genius now hoists its sails,- 
 and leaves behind itself a sea so cruel. ... A soft 
 color of oriental sapphire which was gathered in 
 the serene aspect of the air, pure even to the hori- 
 zon, renewed delight to my eyes soon as I issued 
 from the dead air that had afflicted my eyes and 
 my breast. The fair planet which incites to love 
 was making aU the Orient to smile." 
 
 " O widowed northern region, since thou art 
 deprived of beholding these ! " is the continuation 
 of Dante's strain more befitting those who sail from 
 the high latitude of Vancouver, — at least as a gen- 
 eral rule. The voyage is run on the short circle, 
 close enough to the Aleutian Islands to let one see 
 
8 GETTING UNDER WEIGH. 
 
 now and then what a heaven on earth they must 
 provide for gulls, seals, and walruses. None the 
 less, so far as we were concerned, all the way across 
 t6 Yokohama the Pacific lived up to its inviting 
 name. People there are, of course, in whom the sub- 
 jective element so preponderates over the objective, 
 that they will get seasick under any conditions. 
 But there was really no external justification of 
 their conduct. With such a superb steamship as 
 the " Empress of China," with such an unspeak- 
 able green and gold dragon breathing defiance from 
 her bow, with the privilege of two smoke-stacks, two 
 propeUors, two hidls, admirable fare, and almond- 
 eyed Chinese waiters in long blue robes and pig- 
 tails, it was nothing short of deep-dyed ingratitude 
 to turn up the nose in nauseated disgust. 
 
 Bound, as we were, for the Orient, there 
 was in these Chinese servants, — gliding to 
 and fro in their felt slippers like silent ghosts, 
 their flowing robes gently undulating and their 
 pigtails swaying in harmonious concert, — an 
 element of Axabian Night enchantment hard to 
 describe. We felt iu it our first gentle plucking 
 back, our initial weaning from the brimming breasts 
 of the Occident at which hitherto we had drawn 
 our sole ethnological nutrition ; an initial weaning 
 very grateful, it must be admitted, from the long- 
 wonted realm of split trousers, creaking boots, 
 bleached-out skins, and eyeS devoid of that furtive 
 side-glance that seems to look all round and behind 
 an object. 
 
ARRIVING OUT 9 
 
 Besides, from a purely linguistic point of view, 
 these Orientals furnished a university-extension 
 course in philology that was a liberal education in 
 itself. On first going abroad, my friend and I 
 were guiltless of a Chinese word. Yet scarcely 
 had we been a day at sea before we could ask for 
 oxtail soup, curried rice, fillet of beef, or pistachio- 
 nut ice-cream ; yes, and what was more to the pur- 
 pose, without fail get them. 
 
 Spite of all that may be urged by pedants, bent 
 on glorifying their own attainments, Chinese is not 
 a difficult tongue to master, — at any rate under 
 the Meisterschaft system practiced on board the 
 Vancouver steamships. The scheme is beautiful 
 in its simplicity. For example, ox-tail soup is 
 merely No. 1, curried rice No. 2, fillet of beef No. 3, 
 and so on and on to the end of the bill of fare. 
 AU that is needful is to call out the requisite num- 
 ber, and presto ! the dish smokes on the table. Thus, 
 as by a wave of an enchanter's wand, is dissipated 
 in an instant the whole baleful fog of linguistic 
 confusion precipitated on the world by the defiant 
 impiety of the projectors of the Babylonian Tower. 
 American, Frenchman, Chinese, Hindoo, every man 
 hears his fellow speaking in his own tongue in 
 which he was born. 
 
 We were thirteen days on the passage, and 
 yet on going down into the engine-room, the 
 night before our arrival out, it was a startling sur- 
 prise to find that the ship's screws had not yet made 
 a million revolutions. Night and day, without an 
 
10 GETTING UNDER WEIGH 
 
 instant's intermission, had the mighty hearts of the 
 engines been throbbing, and not yet a million pul- 
 sations recorded. No finite mind can frame a con- 
 ception of what a million means, say the greatest 
 mathematicians. Now I felt it. Jay Gould, with 
 his seventy millions, dilated in my mind to truly 
 astronomic and cosmic immensity. 
 
 The day before our arrival, it rained. Should 
 we, then, have rain and mist to blot out the glori- 
 ous spectacle of the sail into Yokohama bay ? Only 
 this once on our whole voyage had our steam siren 
 been kept sounding for fog, making us then per- 
 fectly comprehend why Ulysses plugged with wax 
 the ears of his crew when the other siren lifted her 
 sweet voice from the rocks. No ! It could not be 
 that we were doomed to chilly drizzle and to a blot- 
 ting-paper atmosphere soaking up all the delicate 
 outlines of the coast. Nor was it so. A glorious 
 sunrise transfigured sky, sea, and land ; and, lo ! in 
 ideal beauty of proportion, from cone to base, stood 
 out snow-crowned Fujisan, lording it all over 
 Japan. Oh, the beatitude of volcanic forces, when 
 they eventuate in such a miracle of beauty ! Tamer 
 and more prosaic than the man who knows no fiery 
 passions is the land that knows no earthquakes. 
 Who, with a soul of poetry in him, would not 
 gladly see some adjacent county of Worcester torn 
 from its rooted foundations and lifted 12,000 feet 
 nearer heaven than it ever stood before, to secure 
 from his own windows the daily vision of such a 
 joy forever^? 
 
 By nine A. M. we were at our moorings, and soon 
 
ARRIVING OUT 11 
 
 surrounded by scores of sampans eager to take 
 passengers ashore. As the radiant September 
 morning was warm, and the competitive sculling 
 with huge sweeps, of the most vigorous kind, clothes 
 soon came to be felt unbearable. Not that, to be- 
 gin with, the boatmen had much on. But now in 
 a trice that little came off, to a mere loin-cloth. 
 What an intoxicating feast of backs and chests, and 
 loins and legs, developed by a lifetime of stand-up 
 rowing! ^sthetically exhilarating was the sight, 
 as though all the statues in the Vatican — Apollo, 
 Hermes, Antinous, Ganymede — had suddenly 
 leaped down from their pedestals and taken to 
 sculling sampans. Only, instead of white marble, 
 their bodies were of gold bronze. 
 
 Satan's malign work in the Garden of Eden it 
 was that first suggested clothes. Not yet have 
 Japanese boatmen given in to the shamefaced, 
 guilty dogma. So, devoutly be it hoped that no 
 misguided missionaries will feel bound in con- 
 science to make a point of the obnoxious tenet, — 
 at least for sculler-converts. 
 
JAPAN 
 
 No traveller ever knows so mucli about a 
 new country, — its race characteristics, its 
 institutions, its art, literature, and religion, — as 
 during his first three days stay there, or before he 
 has had time to pick up enough of the language to 
 say good morning. It is a pity, then, to let the 
 world lose the benefit of his first intuitive divina- 
 tions. 
 
 Perhaps there is a certain occult irony in the fact 
 that one's earliest innocent impressions of Japan 
 are gathered from his perch on the seat of a two- 
 wheeled adult baby carriage called a jinrikisha, in 
 which a male Japanese drags him round, instead 
 of, as in his previous infancy, a Hibernian lassie, 
 and that, too, at a pace befitting the greater hardi- 
 hood of his time of life. If of a philosophic cast of 
 mind, one's first speculations naturally turn on the 
 comparative advantages, as an instrument of pro- 
 pulsion, of a man or a horse. The conclusion is 
 entirely in favor of the man. The horse is a brute ; 
 the man is a rational being. The horse shies or 
 runs away ; the man does neither. The horse is in- 
 capable of conversation ; the man is at once guide, 
 philosopher, and friend. Serene contemplation 
 and active driving are incompatible, as is witnessed 
 
14 JAPAN 
 
 in the biograpties of so many philosophers who 
 have run over countless children, smashed the 
 vehicles of other people, and ended off with break- 
 ing their own necks. To see a country to profit, 
 one needs to give the rein to his own free fancy and 
 not to the jaws of a brute beast. 
 
 From his first day even in a foreign land 
 the humane and enlightened traveler is 
 eagerly on the lookout for fruitful ideas to carry 
 back with him. He yearns that those who have to 
 stay at home shall reap some benefit from his being 
 happy enough to get away. Loud, then, was my 
 Eureka of joy to find, in less than half an hour, 
 that Japan had startled me with a suggestion which 
 opened up visions of enhanced domestic bliss to 
 millions in my native land. It took this shape. 
 Bicycles are essentially anti-social and selfish insti- 
 tutions. The only valid plea for them is that they 
 develop the calves of the legs. But calf for calf, 
 these Japanese runners would bear away the prize 
 at every cattle-show in the country. What, then, 
 if in America, tender, but straitened husbands, 
 incapable of a horse and wagon, would but consent 
 to abandon their selfish wheels and to brace their 
 thews and sinews to the chivalrous work of treat- 
 ing their delicate wives to frequent jinrikisha spins 
 on the Brighton road ! Contrast with this the 
 murderous adage about a chance to kill two birds 
 with one stone ! Here, at a stroke, is power to 
 impart fresh health and joy to two loving mates, 
 along with delightful associations of scenery and 
 
YOKOHAMA. 15 
 
 companionship that would perpetually endear them 
 to one another. 
 
 Let the next convention in the higher interests 
 of woman take up seriously this weighty matter. 
 Depend upon it, man will never be taught his 
 rightful place in creation till put into the shafts 
 and spurred on by duty and love to make his six 
 mUes an hour for the health and delectation of his 
 better half. As to the future erection, in some 
 great public park, of a statue smiling benignantly 
 down on a thousand flying jinrikishas, and to 
 which, as they speed by, happy wives and proud 
 husbands look up with eyes brimful of gratitude, — 
 be all that as it may ! 
 
 Like all seaport towns, Yokohama presents 
 an odd intermixture of native and foreign 
 characteristics. Old and new Japan here jostle 
 one another in the queerest fashion. At anchor in 
 the harbor lie huge modern steamships and iron- 
 clads, along with clumsy junks, — while, ashore, 
 Chinese lanterns and electric lights, bare legs and 
 stove-pipe hats, straw sandals and india-rubber 
 boots, mingle in the most incongruous way. Here 
 comes along a man in a rice-straw thatch of a 
 cloak, suggestive of a porcupine in a partially qui- 
 escent state, — his quills prone instead of erect with 
 anger. As a device for shedding rain it is pecu- 
 liarly effective, each separate straw serving as a 
 distinct conductor. But the next man wears a 
 cheap mackintosh. Incongruities like these might 
 be multiplied to any extent. 
 
16 JAPAN. 
 
 There is a foreign resident as well as a purely 
 Japanese quarter of the town. The first is built 
 up with high, solid hotels, dwellings, and ware- 
 houses, as a special invitation to earthquakes. 
 Along its water line runs a broad boulevard called 
 " The Bund," planted with trees, and commanding 
 an entrancing view over the bay. The second, or 
 Japanese quarter covers ten times the space with 
 its low, story-and-a-half wood structures, chimney- 
 less, cellar-less, and with the rounded corner posts 
 set into grooved stone sockets, to admit, under 
 earthquake shocks, of a " bye-baby-bunting " 
 oscillation that must be soothing to the feelings. 
 The streets are entirely unpaved, so that in times 
 of rain every man, — and the same law applies to 
 women, — has to become a " pavement unto him- 
 self " by wearing pattens, with cross pieces set 
 underneath, that raise him two and three inches 
 from the ground. For so short a people as the 
 Japanese, this proves an immense enhancement in 
 dignity of appearance, and in rainy weather they 
 wear a truly imposing look. 
 
 Certainly, to one accustomed to the brick and 
 stone built cities of America and Europe, there is 
 something in the first sight of a great, swarming 
 beehive of a city made out of nothing but frail 
 wood structures huddled close together, that is cal- 
 culated to make him shudder at the thought of 
 kerosene, and question how great the blessing our 
 own country has conferred on Japan by sending 
 out this especial form of missionary enlightenment. 
 Earthquakes were bad enough, but earthquakes 
 
YOKOHAMA. 17 
 
 and kerosene, hand and glove with one another ! 
 For miles on miles stretch these low, wood struc- 
 tures with no distinctive architectural feature but 
 aboriginal Tartar roof, — a plain outgrowth of the 
 primitive Tartar tent, — together with a capacity 
 of lying all open to the public gaze unexampled 
 elsewhere. 
 
 Indeed, in Japan, the sliding-door principle 
 reaches its acme. We at home know it merely as a 
 means of practically throwing two rooms into one, 
 while here the entire interior partitions of the house 
 are all sliding doors, in the shape of screens 
 covered with glazed paper. Add to this that the 
 whole street front is daily taken off the house, and 
 it will be clear at a glance that no other country in 
 the world incites laudable curiosity to so rewarding 
 a study of all that is going on in its shops, parlors, 
 sleeping rooms, nurseries, and kitchens. So accus- 
 tomed, indeed, are the mass of Japanese to living in 
 public, as no longer to be conscious of the fact that 
 they are in public. Having no contrast in their 
 minds of the f eeliag of privacy, they are as perfectly 
 at their ease under the eye of man as under the eye 
 of the sun. Each man is thus shut up to establish- 
 ing his own castle inside his own skin. It were a 
 curious subject of investigation how much this per- 
 petual living in public has had to do with the for- 
 mation of a marvelously perfected external ceremo- 
 nial type of manner, — very charming, very seduc- 
 tive, no doubt — but which reveals no more of what 
 is actually going on inside the man than the shell 
 of a turtle reveals the emotions reaUy agitating his 
 
18 JAPAN 
 
 troubled or peaceful spirit. Nature, after all, has 
 a way of " getting even " with all kinds of circum- 
 stances. 
 
 None the less, Japan is the country of countries 
 for watching the perpetual going on of the external 
 comedy of human life. The curtain is always up 
 and the play in lively progress. This is the first 
 spell of fascination exercised on the spectator. In 
 Europe and America, on the contrary, the reflective 
 traveler is perpetually annoyed at being shut out 
 by doors and blinds from any free study of the do- 
 mestic life of the inmates. Should he steal up 
 to a window and flatten his nose against the pane of 
 glass, his conduct is deemed intrusive. But how 
 else can he hope to gain adequate comprehension 
 of the sacred seclusion of the English or German 
 home ? Here, thank Heaven, one can quietly loaf, 
 and, without discomposing husband, wife, or chUd, 
 watch everything going on within, — yes, and very 
 likely know just as much about it as he did before ! 
 
 As for human beings, no sight at first makes 
 so fascinating an impression on the new- 
 comer in Japan as that of the young women. They 
 are such dainty, miniature creatures, and wear such 
 a guise of having just flitted down from the pretty 
 pattern on a paper umbrella, that it is impossible 
 to take them seriously as responsible beings. If 
 a bevy of them laughingly sprang back on top of 
 such an umbrella and re-grouped themselves into 
 the original design, it would not surprise one a bit. 
 A halo of perpetual child grace surrounds them. 
 
JAPANESE WOMEN 19 
 
 The pretty patterns of their robes, with wide-open- 
 ing sleeves and gayly-flowered belts ; their shining 
 black hair done up to last a week without re-dress- 
 ing, and stuck through witlj gilt and enamel pins 
 enough to hold it safe in a gale of wind; their 
 golden yellow complexions shot through with a 
 rosy blush ; their dainty figures and ever smiling 
 eyes, all combine in a charming Pinafore picture 
 that calls out the oddest kind of a half tender- 
 father, half fond-lover feeling in the breast. Easily 
 in prettily modified shape, revives the essence of 
 the old Greek fable, — how some exquisitely artis- 
 tic Pygmalion of a toy-maker, infatuated over the 
 charm of one of his own daintiest productions, 
 should have wrung from the gods the boon of 
 power to make it actually breathe and live. 
 
 Often at home we hear an infatuated parent say 
 of his charming little girl of ten, " Oh that I could 
 keep her as she is, and never have her grow a bit 
 older or bigger ! " Well, here is the very thing 
 before one's eyes, — the artless grace of childhood 
 lingering on, spite of calendar, marriage, and 
 motherhood. Yes ; but they are only playing at 
 motherhood, as little girls play with dolls ; they 
 surely cannot mean that you shall take the baby in 
 earnest ! 
 
 Such, — open to future correction — is one's 
 first inevitable impression of these dainty creatures. 
 Culture, as the word is understood in New England, 
 has made no inroads on their complexions or eye- 
 sight. They have never read Emerson, never 
 dipped into Kant. Their sole " categorical impera- 
 
20 JAPAN 
 
 tive " is to charm by amiability. Their faces sfiine 
 as with the reflected light of an insensible perspi- 
 ration of amiability. Amiability transpires from 
 every pore, and forms a visible nimbus around their 
 whole personality to aii extent of at least eighteen 
 inches. 
 
 It would be half invidious, however, to charac- 
 terize this child charm of the young women of 
 Japan under the aspect of arrest of development. 
 The phrase implies something abnormal and stunted. 
 On the contrary, they seem to have reached their 
 full stage of child maturity, and never to have been 
 meant to go any farther, — never to have been 
 fashioned to reach self-consciousness. As one 
 grows familiar with Japanese gardens, planted 
 with miniature beeches, pines, and oaks, adorned 
 with miniature rivers, bridges, and lakes, and set 
 off with a miniature volcano and with a miniature 
 gorge suggestive of Fujisan and the abysses on its 
 flanks — the whole pretty scene from LiUiput seems 
 lacking in flavor of natural human interest till one 
 sees in his mind's eye these dainty little beings 
 turned loose to play there. 
 
 Indeed, as a preacher, one would hardly know 
 how to adapt a serious sermon to their spiritual 
 estate, but would feel the duties of his responsible 
 calling graciously fulfilled in taking his little flock 
 to picnics and watching them smile. 
 
 Some one has written a book on the Japa^ 
 
 nese Smile. I have never read it, but here 
 
 is my spontaneous impression. For a thousand or 
 
THE JAPANESE SMILE 21 
 
 more years now the smile has been the most vital 
 tenet of Japanese social religion. Unintermitting 
 as has been their devotion to the cultivation of 
 chrysanthemums and wistarias, still more uninter- 
 mitting has been their devotion to the cultivation 
 of the smile. " The road to happiness and the road 
 to fortune lie in the smile," is a familiar proverb. 
 Even if one is to communicate the news of the 
 death of his nearest and dearest, or of the burning 
 down of his house, or of the total wreck of his 
 property, he is to do it with a smile. Let no one 
 trouble another with a sign of grief or pain ! Most 
 especially is this the law for women, the end and 
 aim of whose existence is to charm her superior, 
 man, — the being for whom she was created. Now, 
 nothing short of a thousand years of' inherited prac- 
 tice could have achieved the result witnessed on 
 every hand. What wry faces we make when try- 
 ing, in company, to smile cheerfully over an ulcer- 
 ated todth ! but the Japanese woman can do it as 
 naturally and sweetly as though the malign molar 
 were a piece of French confectionery. 
 
 For example, only a couple of days after arriv- 
 ing, I went with my travelling companion into the 
 country to visit a man who had, for a number of 
 years, been a servant in his household in Massa- 
 chusetts, but had now returned to Japan and taken 
 unto himself a young wife. The two were living 
 in a very humble way, raising silk-worms. 
 
 Duly taking off our shoes, we politely entered in 
 our stocking feet, and before long were presented 
 to Mrs. Tokyo, as, by way of disguise, I will call 
 
22 JAPAN 
 
 her. Oh, the inimitable grace with which she 
 glided down on hands and knees before us, and 
 touched the ground three times with her forehead ! 
 In my whole life I never felt so queer a sense of 
 somehow or other being the blessed babe, subjected 
 to the adoration of the shepherds. No doubt the 
 mental confusion was pardonable in the case of one, 
 for the first time in life, an object of female wor- 
 ship. My friend and I, of course, did our best to 
 return the salutation ; but we must have appeared 
 sheer barbarians. Veiled in her flowing robes and 
 girt with her broad, rich belt, Mrs. Tokyo's every 
 movement was grace itself ; while our stiff joints 
 enacted the angularity of a pair of skeletons at a 
 court presentation. 
 
 The more formal part of the ceremonial over, we 
 now sat down together on the floor matting, Mrs. 
 Tokyo with her feet and limbs tucked under her as 
 daintily as a bird tucks her head under her wing, 
 and we with ours sprawled out. Now came the 
 chance to study, at close quarters, the mystery of 
 the Japanese smile. At every pleasant word ad- 
 dressed her through the wretched medium of her 
 husband's interpretation, the smUe beamed forth 
 afresh, with a sort of afterglow lingering on till 
 another sunrise broke in rose and gold. And yet 
 all this while the poor, dear creature must have 
 been suffering torture. To her we were as envoys 
 extraordinary and ministers plenipotentiary from 
 Teheran, infinitely her superiors in education, so- 
 cial position, knowledge of the world, — in every- 
 thing but grace. But all inward torment was 
 
THE CURIO FEVER 23 
 
 hidden behind the girlish glee and sweetness of the 
 smile. 
 
 "What force of wiU, what power of self-con- 
 trol ! " the New England mind would argue. No, 
 there was no wUl in it. The Japanese smUe is a 
 national institution, and not an individual act. It 
 is the distilled essence of a thousand years of trans- 
 mitted practice. Though at the farthest remove in 
 beauty from the abstract grin which was all that 
 remained of the vanishing cat in " Alice in Won- 
 derland," it none the less represents just such 
 an abstraction. No need is there of anything be- 
 hind it. In the majority of cases there is nothing 
 behind it. It now floats disengaged on the air, 
 without conscious motive, pure smile per se. In- 
 voluntarily, I recalled the words of Napoleon to 
 the French troops in Egypt, — " Forty centuries 
 look down upon your deeds ! " Only the words 
 took on the slightly modified shape, " Forty centu- 
 ries smile on you through the lips and eyes of Mrs. 
 Tokyo ! " 
 
 Of course, to one habituated to the streets 
 VT . 
 
 of an American or a European city, with 
 
 their massive buildings and plate-glass windows for 
 the display of goods, the uniform monotony of the 
 long rows of plain, low, frontless structures of wood 
 imparts, in Japan, a decidedly shanty-like look to 
 a city. Perforce, one thinks of an immensely mag- 
 nified Leadville, or like mining towns in Colorado, 
 struck with a stupendous "boom" of prosperity, 
 while still in the board and shingle stage of archi- 
 
24 JAPAN 
 
 tectural evolution. Once, however, begin to in- 
 spect the treasures exposed in the shops, and forth- 
 with Aladdin's battered old lamp is at its magic 
 work. What a wealth of bronzes, vases, exquisite 
 designs in porcelain, lacquer, inlaid work, ivory 
 carving ! The shop seems but a cheap wood-box 
 to pack all these costly articles into. One cannot 
 escape a half-humorous sense of how thoroughly 
 Wordsworth would have enjoyed such an exhibi- 
 tion of " plain living and high shop-keeping." 
 
 Now sets in, with all who have money to spend, 
 the mania of curio-buying, — as distinct a form of 
 malarial fever as attacks those first reaching the 
 Congo, or the Niger, in Africa. The blood-tem- 
 perature mounts to 105°, the eyes glare wild, the 
 cheeks burn with a hectic flush. Only to think of 
 it ! — the century-old Feudal State of forty million 
 people suddenly broken up, and such a wealth of 
 Daimio and Samurai armor, pikes, swords, trin- 
 kets, carvings, bronzes, precipitated in an ava- 
 lanche on the market, — not to speak of the shoals 
 of infinitely clever artisans ever in the background 
 to supply new antiques as fast as the old ones are 
 exhausted. 
 
 Personally protected myself from any attack of 
 the curio-fever by the quinine tonic of lack of 
 funds, it was stiU vastly interesting to study the 
 violent symptoms in others. However stoutly 
 cynical moralists like La Rochefoucauld may deny 
 it, there is, after aU, such a thing as disinterested 
 shopping, — shopping through pure unadulterated 
 sympathy with a friend who is able to indulge in 
 
STEA WS 25 
 
 lavish expenditures you yourself cannot afford. 
 For the exercise of this virtue, I was most felici- 
 tously blest, as in the instance of my opulent trav- 
 eling companion, the fever broke out in the most 
 virulent shape from the day of our arrival in Yoko- 
 hama, — to the degree even of causing him, in the 
 delirium of the first night, to rave about cabling 
 for an additional letter of credit so immense in 
 sum total, that hardly could the Bank of England 
 have cashed it. In three days he had accumulated 
 Samurai swords enough to equip a regiment of 
 cavalry ; screens enough to fence in Boston Com- 
 mon ; exquisitely embroidered silk bedspreads 
 enough to cover all the beds in all the wards of 
 the Massachusetts General Hospital ; ivory carv- 
 ings enough to create a panic among the yet re- 
 maining elephants in Africa. Vastly instructive 
 was it to go round with him and see him purchase 
 experience. It was a liberal education in shop- 
 ping. 
 
 _.__ In recording one's impressions of a new and 
 strange land, it is perhaps only just to set 
 down first those that seem lighter and more tri- 
 vial. Light and trivial, however, they are not to 
 one who looks at them with a deeper eye. Straws 
 show which way the winds blow and the currents 
 set. So, if only one learns these grave facts, what 
 matter that it was a dancing straw that taught him. 
 Moreover, in venturing on a little unobtrusive 
 book, it will never do for the writer too suddenly 
 to throw open the flood-gates to the mighty tide 
 
26 JAPAN. 
 
 of statesmanlike views, philosophic speculation, aes- 
 thetic range and rapture, he feels himself capable 
 of pouring forth. This might frighten off modest 
 readers, humbly distrustful of their power to cope 
 with such a mind. 
 
n. 
 
 Among the first excursions from Yokohama 
 the visitor to Japan is eager to make, is 
 the one to Kamakura, to see the colossal bronze 
 image of the Buddha. How often had I read and 
 dreamed of this, and now it was realized romance 
 that it was so close at hand. One leaves by rail, 
 and, after a ride of twenty miles, takes to the 
 omnipresent jinrikisha for a few miles more. The 
 rice-land country, through which the train runs, is 
 beautiful beyond praise. 
 
 Not personally addicted to rice as an article of 
 diet, — unless, perhaps, as a mere vehicle for the 
 piquant stimulus of curry, — I was soon forced to 
 admit that the cultivation of this cereal for purely 
 aesthetic ends would prove an enhancement of the 
 charms of the Garden of Eden. At this late Sep- 
 tember season of the year, the rice-lands stretch 
 out in the sunshine a sea of gold. Since rice de- 
 clines to grow except in water, and water declines 
 to stand stiU except on a perfect level, the im- 
 mense area of alluvial deposit in which the plant 
 roots wears the look of a lake of luxuriant, sunlit 
 vegetation. Encircling in graceful curves this vast 
 burnished expanse — now jutting out into it in 
 promontories and now retreating to leave space for 
 lovely bays — are hills densely wooded, completing 
 
28 JAPAN 
 
 the picture with ravishing contrasts of form and 
 
 color. 
 
 Curiously enough, each charming little valley, 
 with its brook winding down between the densely 
 wooded hiUs to the shining level of the plain, now 
 delights the eye with the exact transcript of a 
 series of beautiful cascades of golden rice. As in 
 the gardens of Versailles, streams of water are 
 made to run down great flights of broad stone 
 steps, breaking into a gentle fall at each suc- 
 cessive step, so here the same effect is wrought 
 by utilizing the water of the descending brooks 
 for successive terraces of rice. So vivid the im- 
 pression of life and motion, that literally it seems 
 as though the beautiful plant itself had taken to 
 the mobile ways of the element in which it grows. 
 When one pictures the scene of an infinite 
 variety of these lovely little valleys, pouring their 
 brooks of gold through luxuriantly wooded defiles 
 into a sea of gold below, he will have presented to 
 the mind the sight that makes one of Japan's 
 most characteristic beauties. 
 
 Though once a capital of Japan, with 1,000,- 
 000 inhabitants, all that remains of Kama- 
 kura to-day is a struggling village on beautiful 
 Sagami bay, the next bay southward of that of 
 Yokohama. Besides a temple to Hachiman, the 
 God of War, and another to Quannon, the God- 
 dess of Tenderness and Love, and the great im- 
 age of the Buddha, here called the Daibutsu, no 
 
KAMAKURA 29 
 
 traces remain of what, in 1400, was an immense 
 city. All has lapsed back to primitive hills, valleys 
 and trees. 
 
 At first one is tempted to smile derisively at the 
 statement that a million people once joyed, suffered 
 and died here in a crowded capital, and to say, 
 " Oriental figures must be taken with oriental sta- 
 tistical imagination ! " But this were a mistake. 
 Japanese cities leave no ruins. With the removal 
 of Mikado, or Shogun, to another spot, — and sixty 
 times has this occurred in the course of Japanese 
 history, — the card-board city is abandoned to rot 
 away or be burned for fire- wood, — just as with the 
 North American Indians : when the chief shifts 
 his camping ground, the whole wigwam village 
 must follow in his train. It is the same experi- 
 ence, only on a vaster scale. Perhaps, as a symbol 
 of the transitoriness and evanescence of all finite 
 things, of the vanity of the griefs and passions bar- 
 ricadoed in the wriggling ant-hills of human life, 
 no spectacle could be presented more fitted to at- 
 tune the mind to the contemplation of the serene 
 Nirvana-wrapped Buddha. As one walks medita- 
 tively nearly a mile back from the sea shore, along 
 an avenue shaded with century-old cryptomerias, to 
 the elevation on which are seated the temples of 
 Hachiman and Quannon, it is the coimterpart, in 
 this temple of Nature, of traversing the main aisle 
 of a Gothic cathedral to approach the Holy of 
 Holies of the altar. 
 
30 JAPAN 
 
 All this delay is not keeping the colossal 
 Buddha too long waiting. He recks not of 
 time or space. He dwells in a realm in which the 
 finite is swallowed up in the infinite. He has en- 
 tered on Nirvana. While he is seated there, century- 
 after century lapses unheeded by. The magnifi- 
 cent feudalism of the past is broken in pieces ; the 
 noisy Occident clamors at the gates of the Orient ; 
 the thunder of Commodore Perry's guns rever- 
 berates in Yokohama Bay; the fierce, discordant 
 shriek of the locomotive, symbol of the insane 
 restlessness and fever of the finite, tears the quiet 
 air into shreds. But he broods on, forever lifted 
 out of and above the whole mad "causal nexus" of 
 desire, pursuit, possession, leading inevitably on to 
 satiety, heart-break, greed, crime, dust and ashes. 
 
 Overwhelmingly one feels all this, as through an 
 avenue of giant trees he approaches the colossal 
 image of the Buddha. It is vast enough in its pro- 
 portions to seem a part of surrounding nature, 
 to awaken the vague sense of sharing the purely 
 elemental life. The prosaic mathematics of size 
 simply belittles and vulgarizes the weight of the 
 impression. In a sitting posture fifty feet high, 
 forty feet broad, eyes three feet, mouth seven feet 
 long, — these are statistics for the empty, gaping 
 crowd. One hastens to fling the figures off his 
 mind, and, instead, to revert to Keats' awe-inspir- 
 ing parallel of Saturn in the gloomy grove ; so like 
 and yet unlike. 
 
 " Deep in the shady sadness of a vale 
 Far sunken from the healthy breath of mom, 
 
THE BUDDHA 31 
 
 Far from the fiery noon, and eve's one star, 
 Sat gray-haired Saturn, quiet as a stone. 
 Still as the silence round ahout his lair ; 
 Forest on forest hung atout his head 
 Like cloud on cloud." 
 
 Colossal embodiment of a great world-religion 
 that has brought rest to millions of the weary and 
 heavy-laden, the tranquil, breathless essence of that 
 rest revealed in its now super-sensuous founder, — 
 such is the significance of the vast presence before 
 one ! The mighty head bowed in serene tran- 
 quillity, the breathless calm, the peace too massive, 
 too diffused, too elemental, to suggest any finite 
 form of thought, of desire, of emotion, — yes, the 
 peace passing understanding, which could not be 
 what it is if the understanding could grasp and 
 measure it, — this, the ineffable, interior heaven 
 of the supreme mystics of all ages, of Plotinus, 
 Boehme, Saint Teresa of Avila, is what the great 
 image makes palpable to soul and sense. 
 
 Still, it naturally may be asked, is it not to its 
 colossal magnitude that the Kamakura Buddha 
 owes the main reason of the overwhelming impres- 
 sion it exerts ? Of course, it is to this, if only we 
 add colossal magnitude suffused through its every 
 dreaming atom with indwelling soul. Magnitude 
 means magnitude. The little may suggest, but 
 cannot body forth, the vasb and circumscribing. 
 
 AH the sublime creations of the ages are colossal 
 in mass. The wrestle of Job with the Almighty, 
 the Prometheus of iEschylus, the Lear of Shake- 
 speare, the Satan of Milton, the Fifth Symphony 
 
32 JAPAN 
 
 of Beethoven, each and all are and must be colossal 
 to produce the effect they work on the mind. Des- 
 olation, defiance, revolt at injustice, heaven-storm- 
 ing aspiration, each and every passion of the breast 
 of man is in these vast creations raised to super- 
 human proportions. On any other terms, as well 
 expect miniature raised-map reductions of the Alps 
 and Himalayas to do the work for the imagination 
 of their rock-bastioned, cloud-girt, snow-and-ice- 
 cr owned originals. 
 
 Here then, first, gets its overwhelming expres- 
 sion the root-thought of Buddhism, — the soul up- 
 lifted like a sunlit peak above the clouds of this 
 storm-troubled sphere. Out of the cloud-realm 
 pour down on all who dwell below the dank, driz- 
 zling rains, or dart the lightning forks that shatter 
 earthly good in ruin. Above them lies the un- 
 troubled ether. And toward the supreme embodi- 
 ment of this thought in the Kamakura Buddha it 
 would seem as though the very elements of earth- 
 bred havoc had conspired. Once the statue was 
 covered in by a temple, where, penned in such a 
 petty, finite enclosure, its majestic effect must have 
 been wholly lost. In rolled from the ocean a great 
 earthquake wave, sweeping away every vestige of 
 the temple, but leaving the mighty, dreaming 
 Buddha unstirred from his base. He heard it not, 
 felt it not, but brooded on in impassive cahn. And 
 so, century on century, he sits under the open sky, 
 wrapt in his infinite peace. The rains descend, 
 the lightnings flash, the woods rock in the roaring 
 gale, dynasties rise and fall, Lilliputian tourists 
 
BUDDHA 33 
 
 from the far West peer and peep, and air the last 
 fashions of a trivial world around his mountain 
 base. But he is oblivious of it aU. It cannot pen- 
 etrate Nirvana, where he dwells in unbroken rest. 
 
 It is a great privilege to pass even a brief hour 
 before this stupendous symbol of the faith of mil- 
 lions of one's fellow creatures, and to be led by it 
 into nearer communion with one of the vast world- 
 interpretations of the problem of human destiny. 
 Indeed, it leaves behind in the heart a yearning to 
 spend, in a kind of spiritual retreat, the mornings 
 of a whole month, meditating in such a presence. 
 For who can fail to recognize how immense a role 
 the essential principle of Buddhism has played 
 in the spiritual history of reflective and sensitive 
 minds in all ages and in all lands. 
 
 Heart-sick weariness over the dust-whirl of the 
 finite, — its petty cares, its mosquito stings, its 
 commonplace vacuity, its fitful fever of hectic ex- 
 citement, — surely one does not need to cross wide 
 seas to encounter minds fretted as with sharp acids 
 that have eaten in the pattern of all this dreary 
 scheme of human life. Those there are, of course, 
 to whom nothing is tragic, men, and women too, 
 incapable alike of the rapture of joy or the agony 
 of grief that are the vital substance of the heavens 
 and the hells of deeper natures, — men and women 
 who could sleep heavily through Gethsemane, or, 
 should they chance to awaken for a moment and 
 catch a glimpse of the Son of Man in his agony, 
 would, at their deepest, but utter their sympathy 
 in an " Ah ! really ! I suppose it all must have 
 
34 JAPAN 
 
 been quite a disappointment ! " and then resign 
 themselves to sleep again. And, as the world goes, 
 they are good, average people. 
 
 Historically, however, and with all deeper and 
 higher minds, this shallow or stolid complacency 
 in the presence of the suffering of human life has 
 never held its own. At the root of Christian mo- 
 nasticism, of the theology of the mediaeval Catholic 
 church, and of the wide-spread shapes of Calvinism 
 and Jansenism, lies an element always kindred to 
 the Buddhistic despair of the world, — the deep- 
 down sense that the world, as it is, exists but to 
 be denied and ultimately delivered from ; while 
 in how much of modern philosophy is the whole 
 strain pitched in the same minor key ! Hegel but 
 repeats the Buddha. Nor is this mere theme for 
 regret. Better any religion or philosophy, however 
 dark the colors in which it paints the actual, than 
 shallow acquiescence in the world as it is, with no 
 suffering consciousness of its evil, nor yearning for 
 redemption from its appalling mystery. 
 
 Spite of all that lies latent behind it, or 
 breaks through in deeper intuitions, this 
 world is, after all, a very finite, bustling, kaleido- 
 scopic world. Pure, abstract being is too meta- 
 physical, at any rate for tourists, and anon must 
 be broken up by the prism of the five senses into 
 trees, flowers, society, laughter, lunch, eager curi- 
 osity, and keen-eyed perception. Emphatically did 
 we feel this when we left the mighty, brooding 
 presence and took once more to our jinrikishas. 
 
BACK TO THE FINITE 35 
 
 We were a party of nine, each one of whom had 
 three coolies, two to run tandem in front and one 
 to push behind. Thus, in single file, we stretched 
 out in double-quick procession several hundred 
 feet ; and, as the coolies evidently " felt their oats," 
 from the bowls of rice they had eaten, we were 
 soon speeding along at a rattling pace. 
 
 What exquisite garden culture in the fields on 
 either hand ! Every inch of soil how made to tell, 
 and to tell in two to three crops in rotation ! The 
 blooming buckwheat, the polished lanceolate leaves 
 of the Japanese potato, the feathery-topped carrots, 
 — never a weed there put in trace of competition 
 in any struggle for the survival of the fittest for the 
 pot of the Japanese peasant. And yet how tiny 
 each separate little patch of beans, or rice, or what 
 not! DoU vegetable gardens they looked. Yes, 
 everything in miniature again ! Again, infinite 
 concentration on the minutest details, — the irre- 
 sistible shaping force that necessitates the form 
 everything takes in Japan, agriculture, service, 
 manners, ornamentation, lacquer or cloisonne, carv- 
 ing, painting. On pain of death, with starvation 
 as herald of the doom, no one may dare to slight 
 a feature of his work. Yet all is " unresting, un- 
 hasting," to a degree that, spite of his motto, 
 Goethe himself could never reach over the most 
 elaborate finish of a poem. 
 
 We were bound for Enoshima, a beautifid pro- 
 montory jutting out into the Pacific, its forest- 
 crowned top the seat of a famous temple, and, at 
 its base and climbing its slope, a fishing village. 
 
36 JAPAN 
 
 where all kinds of beautiful objects are made of the 
 shells, seaweeds, sea-urchins, sponges, and corals 
 gathered from the deep. Breaking journey only 
 for lunch at a charming half tea-house, half hotel 
 sanatorium, where, in the shelter of pine groves 
 sifting out any chill from the winds, delicate Jap- 
 anese and Europeans seek relief from the more ex- 
 posed situation of Yokohama bay, we started out 
 again under a weight of obeisances from the bevy 
 of girls in attendance that made each one of us 
 the equal in consciousness with the sultan of the 
 Sublime Porte. Whereas, at home, we Americans 
 are but ordinary " sovereigns," and no one of the 
 seventy million sovereigns shows a jot of respect 
 for the royal insignia of the others. Of course, 
 as became good republicans, we now felt corre- 
 spondingly exalted. 
 
 Of all the " coigns of vantage " for a phi- 
 losopher, — better far than any basket sus- 
 pended between heaven and earth, — commend me 
 to the seat of a jinrikisha. No other such throne 
 of contemplation does the world afford. One is 
 utterly alone. No care for himself demands atten- 
 tion. No voice of another disturbs the silence of 
 his meditation. Fresh material of observation is 
 opened up to him at every turn. Far from having 
 to spin spider-film theories out of the bowels of his 
 own consciousness, like the student in his closet, 
 eye and ear are on the alert to furnish data that 
 can be relied on to confirm or to rebut his shaping 
 generalizations. 
 
THE PHILOSOPHER'S PERCH 37 
 
 What miglit not Immanuel Kant have become 
 under these conditions ! At first, perhaps, the jin- 
 rikisha philosopher is all eye, all rapture. " Oh, 
 the ravishing beauty of this land ! " he constantly 
 exclaims, as he is smoothly whirled high above the 
 sea along a road from which he looks down to the 
 beach below fringed with creamy foam, or off over 
 the dreamy surface of the water to bays and pro- 
 montories and moimtain-crowned islands, steeped 
 in so poetic an atmosphere. Next, to turn a defile, 
 the road curves inland a mile or so, where orange- 
 trees hang thick with fruit, and the persimmons 
 show red and gold among the foliage, and the steep 
 slopes of the defiles are waving with the feathery 
 plumes of the bamboo, tiU again, the cry, "The 
 sea! the sea! " 
 
 But your philosopher on his perch is no fool of 
 sense and time and space. He will both eat his 
 cake and have it. By degrees bis outer eye begins 
 to close and his inner eye to waken. Then inevi- 
 tably looms up again before Mm the Nirvana-lapsed 
 Buddha of the morning, and he begins to ruminate 
 on the nature of the century -long influence the 
 mighty dreamer has exerted on the children of this 
 mobile race about one on every hand. So, here for 
 his speculations ! 
 
 From the very superficial view I have been en- 
 abled to take of the Japanese people of to-day, it 
 seems to me that the Kamakura Buddha over- 
 expresses the character of the influence Buddhism 
 has exerted on them. The great image dates back 
 to the thirteenth century, to the times in which the 
 
38 JAPAN 
 
 original Buddhistic missionary spirit had not yet 
 lost its first vitality. Far more of India, and of 
 its deep pessimistic despair, and of its deep-down 
 yearning for deliverance through simple escape 
 from all that makes up to it the weary summary of 
 finite existence, is manifest in the statue than holds 
 actually true of the Japanese people as one sees 
 them now. They are not an Oriental race, in the 
 sense of a race dwelling under the overpowering 
 heat and among the jungles infested with the tigers, 
 cobras, scorpions, and malarias of Hindostan. 
 Quite as much are they a northern as an Oriental 
 race, and latitude plays a far more significant part 
 in the development of a people than longitude. 
 
 In reality, the Japanese are more nearly allied 
 in temperament to the French than to the inhab- 
 itants of India. They may derive their main reli- 
 gious conceptions from India, just as the French 
 derive theirs from Judaea ; but they have modified 
 them profoundly. After all, this term " Eastern " 
 is a misleading term. It implies simply east from 
 some conventional point, say Greenwich. Every 
 place on the globe is east from some other place. 
 But this fact is nothing in comparison with such a 
 question as that of north or south, that of a tem- 
 perate or of a tropical climate. Japan is breaking 
 away from the East in the conventional sense, and 
 is coming to the consciousness that her future 
 means alliance with America and Europe, with 
 their science, politics, philosophy, and ultimately 
 with their more hopeful religion. 
 
 AU this signifies that the Japanese are not over- 
 
THE PHILOSOPHERS PERCH 39 
 
 poweringly a brooding, dreamy people, but an alert, 
 mobile, impressionable, at once artistic and practi- 
 cal people. They dwell in one of the loveliest and 
 most diversified countries in the world, with coast 
 lines as changeful as those of Greece and its archi- 
 pelagoes, with a flora of the most marvelous variety, 
 with mountains, lakes, forests, and meadow lands 
 of extraordinary beauty. All this they enjoy to 
 the full with a naive, childlike, unreflecting delight. 
 They do not seek the forest as the Buddha did, to 
 get out of the glare and heat of every-day reality, 
 to be free to brood undisturbed, to have all the dis- 
 tracting multiplicity of light and color and form 
 quenched in twilight obscurity, that the inward 
 alone may possess the mind. Rather is their de- 
 light sought in the fascinating diversity of the out- 
 ward and the finite. The tint of a cherry blossom, 
 the delicacy of a bit of moss, the graceful curve of 
 a spray of woodbine, the dart of a bird at a but- 
 terfly, or the motion of a fish in a pool, — these 
 they prize above all the abstractions in the world 
 or beyond the world. To catch, as it were, on the 
 wing the living spirit of all these, to reproduce 
 them at once with fidelity and freedom in metal, 
 wood, ivory, embroidery, dress-pattern, sketch in 
 color, — to make the most ordinary household uten- 
 sils reminders of them, and fragrant with their 
 beauty and perfume, — just here lies the attitude 
 of the Japanese mind toward nature. 
 
 Be it confessed, the profounder questions of hu- 
 man life and destiny have in no age taken a strong 
 speculative hold on this people; while the more 
 
40 JAPAN 
 
 practical and superficial ones have been marvelously 
 resolved. It is in vain that one will seek among 
 them for any deep original thinkers on social, phi- 
 losophical, ethical, or religious subjects. From 
 China, with India behind it, they have imported 
 their theology, moral and social systems, manners, 
 and art in its myriad forms. These they have 
 modified in accordance with their own social needs, 
 exquisite taste, and placidity of temperament. 
 With them, the awfid Buddhistic temple of India 
 becomes a miracle of fanciful and intricate lacquer 
 work; whUe the superb groves of cryptomerias, 
 pines, and camphor-trees surrounding those tem- 
 ples are the happy play-grounds of thousands of 
 children and of throngs of merry-making pilgrims. 
 None the less, in just the same sense that Europe 
 is Aryanized Christian, so is Japan stiU thoroughly 
 Buddhistic in attitude, the present rage for Herbert 
 Spencer notwithstanding. Like all Oriental peoples, 
 the Japanese are penetrated with the sense of the 
 evanescence of life, that it is a vapor which vanishes 
 away, a bubble that bursts and is gone. Still, it 
 is a beautiful bubble, iridescent with rainbow colors 
 and bright with a thousand charming reflections. 
 Even if not that, at least it can be borne with quiet 
 patience or ignored with quiet indifference. Any- 
 how, it is a small matter, not worth breaking the 
 heart over, if there is such a thing as the heart. 
 Beyond the bourne, the ancestors live on in some 
 vague, impersonal way. Bum incense to them and 
 plant flowers on their graves, to keep alive the 
 dreamy sentiment. Soon wHL the like be done for 
 
THE PHILOSOPHER'S PERCH 41 
 
 US. Meanwhile, there are careless, pretty children 
 to play with, cherry blossoms, wistarias, lotus 
 flowers wherewith mildly to intoxicate the senses, 
 Crowds of neighbors to chat and gossip with, charm- 
 ing designs to work out in wood, ivory, and metal, 
 " unresting, unhasting " work to keep the mind 
 direrted from worry, with, crown of aU, retirement 
 from the cares of life at fifty, when the children wiU 
 look out for us ! 
 
 Such is the creed, even though, as with aU creeds, 
 sharp and stern inroads are made on it by the 
 tougher experiences of life. But the mistake of 
 mistakes is it to think that creeds effect nothing 
 because they are unavailing to effect everything. 
 They are an atmosphere, tonic or depressing, uncon- 
 sciously breathed in at every inhalation. To " break 
 up the tables with a laugh " because, forsooth, the 
 Roman Stoic sometimes cut a wry face over an 
 agonizing toothache is a very shallow way of dis- 
 missing to limbo the value of a shape of faith that 
 put iron into the blood of millions. AU great 
 world-ideals. Christian, Buddhist, Stoic, Epicu- 
 rean, Mohammedan, are working forces of incalcu- 
 lable range and power. 
 
III. 
 
 Foe lack of space I must pass very rapidly 
 over the impressions left by an excursion of 
 some days to Miyanoshita, Hakone lake, and over 
 the Ten Province Pass to Atami on the seashore, 
 at which last point even Sir Edwin Arnold's multi- 
 tudinous command of gushing vocables gave out, 
 and he was forced to lie down and pant in breath- 
 less incapacity of further expression. The excursion 
 was poetry from beginning to end. As nobody ever 
 looks out the position of any region on the map, 
 it is perhaps superfluous to add that the peninsula 
 of Idzu, on which Atami lies, is south and west of 
 Yohohama bay, and that the Hakone region back 
 of it is mountainous. Natures there are, however, 
 that must get vent topographically or die. 
 
 To mount from Yumoto to Miyanoshita, an 
 ascent of 1400 feet, our jinrikisha runners 
 did the five miles of steep uphill work inside of 
 fifty minutes, including a momentary stop for a sip 
 of tea, generally their only stimulant. We had three 
 coolies each, and all through the awful pull they 
 smiled like cherubs. " Let the galled jade wince, 
 our withers are un wrung," was snapped out from 
 every elastic muscle. And yet we Americans insist 
 that a vegetable diet is unequal to imparting 
 
BAMBOO GRASS 43 
 
 strength. , These fellows, moreover, have intellect 
 enough left to refresh themselves after their tough 
 work by playing chess, that most strenuous of re- 
 laxations for all but Napoleon Bonaparte. 
 
 As the road wound along a picturesque 
 mountain gorge, far below at the bottom of 
 which was a leaping river, broken by frequent water- 
 falls whose white foam shone out in relief against 
 the dense foliage, gradually there opened upon us 
 the higher slopes of the mountains, as they rose 
 clear from the forest, clad in a pure naked beauty 
 of olive-green that was a fresh revelation in Japa- 
 nese scenery. These slopes stretched as wide-rang- 
 ing and unbroken as the pasture lands of the Alps, 
 and yet in color offered such a contrast. " Sym- 
 phonies in olive-green, with infinite variations in 
 light and shade, on the same theme," painter 
 Wynants would have called them. Yet as we 
 feasted in delight on their poetic beauty, we could 
 make out no herds of grazing cattle or flocks of 
 nibbling sheep. None the less, as Wordsworth 
 puts it, these seeming pastures were an " appetite," 
 awakening in us vague but delicious reminiscences 
 of happy grazing days in bygone stages of being. 
 Why should not living sentient cows and sheep of 
 to-day enjoy the feast along with us ; they chewing 
 the cud of the juicy grass and we the cud of its 
 aesthetic charm? 
 
 It seemed a wrong. It was a wrong. The " sym- 
 phony in olive-green " was of bamboo grass, whose 
 flinty silicious sheathing cuts the coats of the 
 
44 JAPAN 
 
 stomachs of the countless herds it might otherwise 
 nourish. Yet Japan is three fourths mountains, 
 and, in certain immense regions, the bamboo grass 
 is everywhere. But for it, the hills might be as 
 white with flocks and as rich in the browns and 
 reds of dappled cattle as Wales or Scotland. A 
 high price this to pay for simple beauty, but oh, 
 how beautiful it is ! What a light, too, it cast on 
 an enforced vegetable diet. Tree will is not so 
 absolute a thing as we are apt to take it for. 
 
 Should I attempt to describe the Tujiya 
 hotel in Miyanoshita, it would only be 
 to swoon like Sir Edwin Arnold before Atami. 
 Once in a while, even in this imperfect sphere, is 
 the ideal reached, and the ideal is the ideal, the 
 standard of perfection, alike whether in hotel, 
 poem, or strain of music. Not only have the 
 Japanese sent abroad their brightest young intel- 
 lects to study medicine and philosophy in Germany, 
 military and naval science in America and England, 
 engineering in Switzerland, but wherever a culinary 
 mind of the highest order has emerged above the 
 average level, they have dispatched it swift to 
 Paris, to master the subtlest secrets of the white- 
 aproned, paper-capped artists presiding over the 
 kitchens of that famed metropolis. Again a straw, 
 but a straw that shows which way the wind blows. 
 Let no one hope to understand the Japanese 
 apart from a study of the instinctive imitativeness, 
 the infinite pliability, with which they adopt all 
 varieties of new ideas and lift them to perfection. 
 
VOLCANOES AND CLEANLINESS 45 
 
 Beautiful, however, in all its appointments as 
 was the Fujiya hotel, it was in its service that lay 
 its crowning charm. This service was wholly in 
 the hands of the daintiest of miniature girls, every 
 flowered pattern of whose crepe dresses and every 
 hue of whose silk belts seemed to have been se- 
 lected by a presiding artist. Early each morning 
 came a tap on the door, in would glide a little 
 fairy with a tray of coffee and toast in one hand, 
 and over the arm a long, loose bathing-gown. 
 The tray she would deposit on a little table by the 
 bedside, and then with a sunny smile lift a lump 
 of sugar for the cup. Another lump ? The smile 
 beamed more luminously. Still another ? It was 
 diffused over the whole face. The temptation was 
 almost irresistible to exhaust the whole sugar bowl, 
 to see how far human ecstasy could go. Then 
 would she withdraw and wait outside till, arrayed 
 in the loose flowered kimono, you were ready to 
 have her pilot the way for you to the bath. 
 
 Just as the Japanese are vegetarians and 
 owe it to the bamboo grass, so are they the 
 cleanest people in the world, and owe it to vol- 
 canoes. How would Buckle, the original inventor 
 of the relations between human history and physi- 
 cal environment, have leaped with joy to find him- 
 self stared in the face in Japan by such confirma- 
 tions of his theory. Until the advent in Europe 
 and America of that last infliction of human woes, 
 the plumber, — with his elaborate system of over- 
 head cistern, water-back, boiler, and circulating 
 
46 JAPAN 
 
 pipes, — nobody ever thought of bathing ; while in 
 Japan, on the other hand. Nature had for thou- 
 sands of years been carrying on the whole elabo- 
 rate process of supplying her children with boiling 
 water without a word of advice, or a bill, from so 
 unnecessary a functionary as the man of lead. The 
 rain-elouds were the overhead cisterns, the volcano 
 was the furnace, the subterranean springs were the 
 boiler, the running streams were the circulating 
 pipes. Not that every portion equally of Japan 
 had a volcano at command to heat its water and 
 fill its bathtubs. Still, they were plentiful enough 
 to introduce on the widest scale the luxury, and 
 to make it the custom, till now every peasant in the 
 land has his tub, with natural or artifical volcano"- 
 attachment, in which he boils himself daily tiU 
 fatigue or rheumatism are dissolved away. Who 
 after this will say that foreign travel is not im- 
 mensely improving in the vast generalizations it 
 opens up before the reflective mind ? 
 
 It is a day's journey from Miyanoshita to 
 Atami over the Ten Province Pass. Too 
 steep, the climb and descent, for the jinrikisha, 
 one now betakes himself to the kago, a palanquin 
 with long bamboo poles borne on the shoulders of 
 four coolies. It is useless to attempt long descrip- 
 tions of scenery. Enough that the way leads over 
 the backbone of the Idzu promontory, waving 
 with vast stretches of plumy bamboo grass, and 
 looking down on either side to the sea breaking in 
 curves of foam on the beaches. Ten Provinces 
 
THE TEN PROVINCE PASS 47 
 
 are commanded by the eye, while over them all 
 Fujisan rears its superb snow-crowned cone. Wise 
 is the mountain whose " soul is as a star and dwells 
 apart." One Dante, one Milton, one Fujisan ! 
 Atami I will not venture to picture. The fear of 
 Sir Edwin Arnold is before my eyes. 
 
IV. 
 
 Fifty miles or more north of Tokyo, in a 
 mountain region of peaks six to eight thou- 
 sand feet in height, lie the famous memorial tem- 
 ples of Nikko, perhaps the most sumptuously 
 adorned of any in Japan. Before undertaking to 
 say a word about them, let me make a brief allu- 
 sion to the past religious history of Japan. 
 
 The day was when the Buddhist church played 
 the same great role in Japan that the Roman 
 Catholic played in medifeval Europe. Just as 
 Italy, Spain, France, Germany, and England were 
 covered with monasteries, abbeys, and countless 
 ecclesiastical foundations by the one, so was it here 
 in Japan by the other. The same principles of 
 human nature were at work in either case. Thou- 
 sands and tens of thousands were driven by the 
 turbulence and misery of ages of domestic warfare 
 to seek refuge in the church. Mikados, set aside 
 by more powerful rivals or voluntarily abdicating 
 in sheer world-weariness, shaved their heads and 
 assumed the garb of the monk. Powerful barons, 
 heart-sick at last over their lives of violence and 
 cruelty, hid themselves in penitence in the cloister. 
 Broken traders, peasants brought to ruin, women 
 blighted in their affections, refined and tender 
 natures of all kinds that could not bear the stress 
 
AN HISTORICAL GLIMPSE 49 
 
 of the outside world, betook themselves to this one 
 haven of rest. Riches poured in. Enormous grants 
 of land were made by princes a,nd feudal lords. 
 Temples were built by them in atonement for their 
 sins. Theological schools were founded in count- 
 less numbers ; while the Peter's pence of the poor 
 amounted, in the aggregate, to enormous sums of 
 steady revenue. Then followed the same results 
 that were witnessed in Europe. Abbots and bish- 
 ops became powerful forces in politics and in actual 
 warfare. Ignorant and ferocious swarms of monks 
 made themselves the terror of whole counties. 
 Rival theological schools rent the land into dis- 
 cordant sects in the advocacy of hair-splitting met- 
 aphysical distinctions. Veritable sages and saints 
 appeared. But the fatality of the Japanese mind, 
 with its imitative rather than original characteris- 
 tics, manifested itself through all. No new con- 
 tributions of any spiritual depth were added to 
 the imported creed. No monxunental works of the- 
 ology like the " Summa " of Saint Thomas Aquinas, 
 no rich hymnology, no treasuries of devout thought 
 like the " Imitation " of Thomas a Kempis, no 
 noble manuals of worship to compare with the 
 Roman Catholic Missal or the English Prayer- 
 Book, were the return to the world for such lavish 
 outpourings of the common means. 
 
 On every hand to-day stand these truly colossal 
 ecclesiastical foundations. They cover the moun- 
 tain-sides with their square miles of temples, dor- 
 mitories, groves, and gardens. They have their 
 great ranges of state apartments for abbots, bish- 
 
50 JAPAN 
 
 ops, princes, and feudal lords. They bear witness 
 to an age when they must have yielded substantial 
 satisfaction to the millions who otherwise would 
 not have maintained them. Not alone did they 
 allay superstitious fears and furnish retreats to 
 men weary of the world. They inaugurated sys- 
 tems of festivals and pilgrimages which were the 
 happy holiday experiences of the masses of the 
 people, in whose minds were at the same time sown 
 the seeds of instruction in the knowledge of good 
 and evil. Moreover, the fundamental theological 
 view impressed was at the last remove from the 
 agnosticism of the original Indian Buddhism. 
 Amida, the supreme, self-conscious Deity, had be- 
 come incarnate in the Buddha to redeem mankind 
 from suffering. It was not the lone, isolated 
 Buddha, it was Amida Buddha, the divine-human, 
 that had conquered and triumphed over the realms 
 of misery, and who, in infinite compassion, showed 
 the way of blessedness. Nor was this all. To the 
 popular imagination, at least, were opened up 
 visions of a heaven bright with hierarchies of 
 angels, and of a hell terrible with the torments of 
 the wicked, as many a picture in the temples re- 
 veals, even though these supernatural visions never 
 took such hold on the vaguely dreaming minds of 
 the Japanese as on the minds of more highly vital- 
 ized and passionate races. 
 
 Many and beautiful, too, were the parables and 
 legends thus spread abroad through the hearts of 
 the peasantry. Let me give one of them, — the 
 Japanese version of the poor widow in the Gospels, 
 
THE NIKKO GROVES 51 
 
 whose copper mite cast into the treasury out- 
 weighed, in the sight of God, the gold of the rich 
 man. Be it premised, for the full understanding 
 of the story, that the avenues leading to the tem- 
 ples in Japan are lined with high, monumental 
 stone or bronze lanterns, many of them of great 
 cost. The touching parable runs thus : A certain 
 rich man presented a temple with a hundred fine 
 lanterns, while a poor woman, who had no money 
 to give, cut off her hair, and, selling it, bought a 
 cheap and humble one. After they had all been 
 set in place, they were one night lighted up at a 
 festival. Then the god sent a powerful wind ; and, 
 lo ! all the hundred lanterns of the rich man were 
 blown out, while the poor widow's burned bright 
 and clear through the whole night. Thus did the 
 god bear witness that the liberality of the heart 
 was the one thing precious in his sight. 
 
 I have already alluded to the enormous 
 spaces and superb groves surrounding great 
 numbers of the temples. It would be an ample 
 return for circumnavigating the globe to find one's 
 self wandering for a single day under the awful 
 shade and overpowering height and spread of the 
 giant cryptomerias, pines, firs, and cypresses that 
 cover the whole sacred mountain on which lie the 
 Nikko temples. Where the great avenues are cut 
 through them, with their frequent rises of stately 
 flights of stone steps, the century-old trunks, lifting 
 in enormous girth to a towering height, present 
 a scene of monumental grandeur that Karnak in 
 
52 JAPAN 
 
 Egypt cannot surpass. It is arboreal architec- 
 ture on so stupendous a scale that the aisles of 
 a Cologne cathedral dwindle into insignificance 
 in comparison. All the ancient Druid in one's 
 blood comes out ,• and his life, long centuries back, 
 when the groves were the only temples, revives 
 and swallows up the present and the intervening 
 past. Half haunted did I feel with a strange 
 fancy that here was the actual heaven to which the 
 devout, nature-loving spirit of Asa Gray, our own 
 peerless botanist, had been sent after its beautiful 
 life on earth. How would he worship in such a 
 presence ! 
 
 Far more in these groves than in any of the tem- 
 ples does the inmost spirit of the Buddhistic Nir- 
 vana seem to express itself. " Come unto me, all 
 ye that are weary and heavy-laden, that are lonely, 
 world-weary, sin-sick, and I will give you rest ! " 
 is the voiceless invitation breathed abroad. Quietly 
 a strain comes stealing into the mind like that of 
 "Wordsworth's lines : " Thought was not : in enjoy- 
 ment it expired. Wrapped in that stiU communion 
 that transcends the imperfect offices of prayer and 
 praise, his soul was a thanksgiving to the power 
 that made it : it was blessedness and love." Ah ! 
 could one but spend a long, full summer among 
 the groves of Nikko, he would " come " to his own 
 deep, inward self, healed of his wounds, life's fitful 
 fever quenched, the power of the world over him 
 dissolved away forever. 
 
THE NIKKO TEMPLES 63 
 
 __-. Far less is it beauty or dignity of form than 
 magnificence of ornamentation that im- 
 presses one in a Japanese temple. Given a column, 
 a frieze, an open-work cloister, the beam of an over- 
 hanging gable, and the Japanese artist has merely 
 something to start with. We are accustomed at 
 home to go wild over a piece of their exquisite lac- 
 quer-work. But here, in many a temple, the whole 
 interior — columns, ceiling, altar, floor, images, 
 shrines, candelabra — is one regal jewel-box of lac- 
 quer and gold, the entire splendor above reflected, 
 as in a limpid pool, in the mirror of the lacquered 
 floor beneath. In many an instance the effect of 
 the whole is one of such gorgeous yet harmonious 
 glory that the mind is absorbed in the spectacle as a 
 beautiful unity ; but this is not the abiding feeling, 
 as in the grander orders of architecture, where the 
 structural character is such that the whole is greater 
 than the parts. In the vast majority of these tem- 
 ples the case is reversed, and the parts are greater 
 than the whole. Soon you find yourself kneeling 
 down to admire the delicate work on a bronze, or 
 marveling at the exquisite designs in red and gold 
 on a lacquered shrine, or lost in delight over the 
 flowers and arabesque work in panel after panel of 
 the ceiling. Neither would it be fair to the genius 
 of a people who express themselves in detail rather 
 than in mass to do otherwise. Not so much one 
 commanding mind as myriads of exquisitely delicate 
 craftsmen, you feel, have wrought this beautiful re- 
 sult. For years on years, in such structures as the 
 mortuary temples of leyasu aud lemitsu in Nikko, 
 
54 JAPAN 
 
 thousands of the most artistic, sesthetic-fihred, 
 patient, consummately skilled workmen the world 
 ever saw were kept unintermittingly at their task. 
 Thus, inevitably, the mind becomes overpowered by 
 the simple historical fact, and says : " Well, if I 
 cannot see the woods for the trees, then I will see 
 the trees by themselves. There is a whole world 
 of cunning beauty in their bark, their clinging 
 vines, their lichens, their buds, leaves, and flowers ! " 
 It is the work, then, of a rarely endowed people, 
 instead of the work of a few exceptional men of 
 genius, that one admires in these temples. The 
 impression they leave on the mind is far more artis- 
 tic than religious. The Japanese mind, be it re- 
 peated, is the perfection of the finite. It has no 
 brooding, infinite element in it, and expresses little 
 of this in its architecture. Now and then an image 
 of the Buddha is so beautiful in its serene peace, is 
 so lost in supersensuous contemplation, that you 
 feel yourself in a Catholic church in Italy, with an 
 image of the redeeming Saviour before you. But 
 this was a type already fixed in India ages before it 
 reached Japan. No, the distinctly Japanese contri- 
 bution to their temples is that of the grace, variety, 
 charm, joy, of the world of birds, vines, flowers. 
 Is not a peacock or a pheasant a glory of iris- 
 hued color ? Is not a spray of cherry blossoms a 
 ravishment to the eye ? Is not a school of fishes, 
 as they swirl in graceful curves through the water, 
 something to arrest and fascinate and make one 
 gaze forever ? To work out these ideas, with naive 
 delight, in the most exquisitely wrought, colored, 
 
THE NIKKO TEMPLES 55 
 
 and gilded wood-carving; in the chasing of every 
 brass jointure of a beam ; in the superb gilded 
 candelabra of lotus leaves and flowers; in gold- 
 based screens covered with chrysanthemums, wistaria 
 vines, wrens, herons — here lies the work in which 
 the Japanese are as happy and at home as children 
 reveling in the meadows and woods of springtime. 
 
 If, then, I were called upon to express my own 
 personal feeling as to the impression wrought by 
 the actual temples of Japan in comparison with 
 that of the groves, avenues, and quiet, secluded 
 gardens environing them, it would be in some- 
 what the following fashion that I should have to 
 set to work. I enjoy immensely visiting many 
 a temple ; but I enjoy it very much as I should 
 visiting a transfigured and sublimated curio shop, 
 exquisitely harmonized in its details. I dote on 
 lacquer. I am as crazy as any woman over em- 
 broideries. My finger-tips itch with kleptomania 
 at the sight of choice bronzes. Screens painted 
 with herons, wild geese, cherry blossoms, and wis- 
 taria vines, delight me with their life and grace ; 
 and as for a polished floor, — a limpid pool for the 
 exquisite reflection of ceiling, gilded pillars, magni- 
 ficent altar, — I could drown myself like Narcissus 
 in it. Over the gilded and painted open-work, 
 wood-carvings of flowers, peacocks, cranes, doves, 
 monkeys, dragons, and griffins, I could delight to 
 linger, in such places as Nikko, Tokyo, or Kyoto, a 
 couple of hours every morning for a month, examin- 
 ing them bit by bit. But the interiors are, as a 
 rule, too small to produce any overpowering effect ; 
 
56 JAPAN 
 
 and no great central religious idea dominates the 
 infinite variety and contrariety of the details. 
 Indeed, very often I feel a half-humorous smile 
 playing over my face when, after a season of real 
 communion with a serenely beautiful Buddha seated 
 on the lotus leaves above the altar, his eyes closed, 
 his face suffused with a sense of ineffable peace 
 in interior withdrawal from the world of sense, I 
 suddenly become aware of all the splendid elabora- 
 tion of minute and varied detail around me. Has 
 the inwardly Illuminated One, after aU, closed his 
 eyes a-purpose, that he may shut out the bewilder- 
 ing distraction of the finite multiplicity of his own 
 temple, to lose himself in the oneness of the immu- 
 table and unchanging ? 
 
 In accordance with this spirit in which they 
 are conceived and adorned, the temples in 
 Japan are something widely different in use and 
 purpose from the churches in Europe and America. 
 Set, as they are, in the midst of immense spaces 
 and superb groves, they furnish the parks, the play- 
 grounds, the places for picnics and pilgrimages for 
 the people. Temple and tea-house meet and kiss 
 one another. The ceremonial worship is conducted 
 by the priest, while the men and women who, as 
 devotees, come up to say their prayers are, as a gen- 
 eral rule, quickly through with it. They clap their 
 hands to notify the god they are there, mumble a 
 few unintelligible repetitions of words the original 
 meaning of which is now lost, then clap their hands 
 again to notify the god that they have done and he 
 
POPULAR USE OF THE TEMPLES 57 
 
 may go, and themselves adjourn for rice, tea, and 
 chat. Indeed, immense numbers of the prayers are 
 simply written out for the worshipers on slips of 
 paper, and then hung on the gratings of shrines. 
 So far does this go that in many of the Shinto 
 temples the awful-looking war-gods and gods of 
 thunder and hurricane who guard the entrance are 
 seen literally covered with innumerable spit-balls 
 thrown by devotees who have first chewed up their 
 paper prayers and then discharged them with force 
 enough to make them stick to nose, chest, or leg. 
 Thus have the worshipers attested that they 
 " mean business," and that the god shall have no 
 excuse for pleading he did not know they had been 
 there. The earnestness is certainly praiseworthy, 
 only, one would think, a little at the cost of devout 
 reverence. 
 
 Very much of the same piece with the exter- 
 nality, rather than spiritual inwardness, of all this, 
 is the impression made by certain immense octago- 
 nal structures, filled with all the writings of Bud- 
 dhist literature and made to revolve on a kind of 
 capstan fitted with handspikes, one sees in many a 
 temple. The most ignorant peasant who turns this 
 once round is entitled to the same "merit" as 
 though he had read every one of the sacred writ- 
 ings stored within. One cannot but feel what a 
 labor-saving device for professors it would be if at 
 least one of these could be imported and set up 
 in each theological school in America. A single 
 turn of the capstan, and, lo ! the stupidest fellow at 
 Princeton or Andover has got all the good out of 
 
58 JAPAN 
 
 " Edwards on the "Will," Hegel's " Philosophy of 
 Eeligion," or Lotze's " Microcosmos " ! The whole 
 cruel innuendo would at once be taken out of the 
 old Greek saw, " There is no royal road to know- 
 ledge." Still, historically, one cannot but be 
 touched at the loving and pitiful spirit for the ig- 
 norant and disinherited manifest in so many of 
 these mechanical devices for bridging the painful 
 abyss between the learned and the simple, the re- 
 cluse student and the treadmill toiler. And, after 
 all, how many an arid pedant, who passes muster 
 for the " merits " of whole libraries devoured by 
 him, has all his life only been working the capstan 
 of just such a machine. 
 
 The more one journeys about Japan, the 
 more is he impressed with the unique sim- 
 plicity of the type of civilization it presents. Let 
 him once grasp a few of the fundamental ideas that 
 underlie it, and he has the key that interprets 
 nearly everything before his eyes. Of the bewil- 
 dering complexity of European civilization there is 
 little to perplex the mind. Leaving out the changes 
 wrought in the last thirty years, the same plough 
 that turned up the soil one thousand years ago 
 turns it up to-day, the same junk that furrowed the 
 waters a thousand years ago furrows them to-day, 
 the same order of architecture that reigned a thou- 
 sand years ago reigns to-day. 
 
 Go to Venice, for example, and at a glance of 
 the eye see how one grand dynasty of architec- 
 ture has succeeded another, the Byzantine giving 
 
SIMPLICITY OF CIVILIZATION 59 
 
 place to the Lombard, the Lombard to the Gothic, 
 the Gothic to the Saracenic, the Saracenic to the 
 Renaissance. Here, on the contrary, one single 
 order has maintained its own for ten or twelve cen- 
 turies, — originally an importation from China 
 through Corea. It is the Tartar order, derived, no 
 doubt, in the beginning from the old Tartar tent, 
 with the immense curving and overhanging roof, 
 and often series of roofs, with which every child is 
 familiar from geography pictures of Chinese pago- 
 das. On large buildings this roof is very effective, 
 its great height, great sweep, and the facility it, 
 offers for the ornamentation of its ridge, eaves, and 
 beams, giving it the elements of a distinct and 
 noble form of construction. But what, by degrees, 
 oppresses the mind is the monotony of its repeti- 
 tion, making one often close his eyes to relieve the 
 weary sense with changeful memories of Greek 
 porticos, Roman arches and domes, Gothic aisles 
 and spires. Not only is this Tartar order the one 
 unfailing feature of the temples, but it is equally 
 that of all the feudal castles and keeps remaining 
 for inspection to-day. Mounted on the angles of 
 the immense cyclopean walls that formed the forti- 
 fications, the castles are all simple modifications of 
 the Chinese pagoda. Evidently, in this so artistic 
 people there was no spirit of initiative to conceive 
 a new architectural idea ; or rather, perhaps, this 
 perpetual repetition is an instructive bit of history, 
 proving the inevitable result of being for ages cut 
 off from contact with any but a stereotyped nation 
 like the Chinese, instead of lying open, as Europe 
 
60 JAPAN 
 
 did, to the manifold influences of Egypt, Persia, 
 Phoenicia, Greece, and Rome. 
 
 I dwell at some length on this illustration from 
 the architecture of Japan for the sole purpose of 
 emphasizing the simplicity and lack of complexity 
 characteristic of this people. The same principle 
 runs through everything. The traveler's duty is 
 neither to praise nor to blame, but simply to try to 
 comprehend. If a nation has been cut off from 
 the advantage of a liberal education in the human- 
 ities at the great world-university, why, then, it has 
 been cut off from such advantage ; and all is said. 
 The only fair thing is to weigh and appreciate and 
 be grateful for what they have done with their own 
 opportunities. But this is not the spirit in which 
 so much has been written about Japan. Rousseau's 
 outcry of joy over his discovery of the archetypal, 
 altogether adorable savage who was to regenerate 
 sophisticated Europe by his artless ways, was only 
 a forerunner in effusiveness of the outcry raised 
 over the discovery of Japan. Japan was the ori- 
 ginal Eden before the Fall, — the Fall in Architec- 
 ture, Painting, Poetry, Refinement, Instinctive 
 Touch with Nature. sancta simplicitas / 
 
 I cannot quit the solemn groves of the 
 Nikko, or, indeed, of any of the great Jap- 
 anese temples, without a word about their bells, 
 with all the deep, mysterious, mighty murmur of 
 the ocean in them. Wherever one may wander 
 under the giant cryptomerias and among the moss- 
 grown tombs of abbots and monks, the low, rich, 
 
JAPANESE BELLS 61 
 
 powerful undulations of these bells come rolling 
 in on the ear like the sound of harmonizing billows 
 on the shore. Enormous in size and weight, hung 
 in low pagodas but a few feet above the ground, 
 and struck only by ponderous beams of wood 
 swung outside, they are always free of access to 
 any passer-by. 
 
 To stand beneath, and in part within, the dome 
 of one of these great bells is an experience for a 
 lifetime. The lightest stroke of a knuckle, and 
 like a vast beehive the ponderous mass is in in- 
 stant billion-fold molecular vibration. How it 
 hums and hums and hums ! How massive, how 
 deep, how sweet, how prolonged, the tone ! The 
 ear lingers and lingers on it, and it will not die 
 away. One feels at the soul centre of a vibratory 
 world, from which stream out undulations that set 
 pulsing and throbbing the whole surrounding grove, 
 and whose tremulous wave motions float on and out 
 through a responsive universe. Matter, in every 
 material sense, is dissolved away. With the mind's 
 eye one sees, clearly as did Sir Isaac Newton, that 
 all the atoms of matter that go to make up the 
 solar system might be "shut up in a snuff-box," 
 — so free, so elastic, and such planetary spaces 
 apart do they swing. 
 
 Ah, the symbol of our human life heard pulsing 
 here in this great bell ! The natures we have re- 
 vered and loved, because capable of rich, deep, pro- 
 longed reverberation, how in the spirit are they 
 drawn about us now ! — the souls in whom, grati- 
 tude once kindled, sympathy touched, devoutness 
 
62 JAPAN 
 
 moved, these divine emotions vibrate on through 
 life. In contrast with this, beings there are whose 
 whole response to the impact of love or sorrow 
 seems but as the petty click of a spoon on the rim 
 of a teacup. Lingering resonance is there none. 
 The momentary click, and all is by ; while these 
 deep ones, like the great bells, at each touch of 
 renewing memory hum and reverberate in every 
 spiritual molecule. Devout idolater does one be- 
 come, as he breathes the prayer, " Oh ! for the 
 capacity of long, rich reverberation like thine! 
 Without it, how shallow, how fleeting all human 
 experience." So at least is it murmured in the 
 ear by the deep-hearted bells of Japan. 
 
A SINGLE Boston truckman has a vocabulary 
 of vituperation that would more than suf- 
 fice for the whole city of Tokyo, with its million 
 and a half of inhabitants. As for jinrikisha men 
 here, if they chance to collide abradingly to scalp 
 or skin, they graciously smile on one another as 
 though it were but one more of the amenities of 
 the profession. The most ordinary meetings and 
 partings on the street are accompanied by profound 
 obeisances enough for a court presentation. Ex- 
 ternally, then, there are few visible signs of fric- 
 tion. Of the swarms of children, no one evinces 
 the slightest addiction to pulling the hair of another, 
 at any rate in public, and where there is any sanc- 
 tuary of retirement , for doing it in private is more 
 than eye can make out. Amiably the smallest tot 
 of a six-year old girl carries her twenty -pound little 
 brother tied to her back, as though he were born 
 there, so careful of her burden, as she plays ball 
 with her mates, that rarely a collision of shaven 
 heads occurs. To crown all, it has roundly been 
 asserted that even Japanese babies are never guilty 
 of the impropriety of crying. But this is untrue. 
 They do cry, and that lustily. But then, they are 
 so very young! Perfect manners at six months 
 would be an unreasonable expectation even in 
 Japan. 
 
64 JAPAN 
 
 What is the meaning of all this ? one begins to 
 ask. Are these people so much kindlier, more 
 considerate, more sympathetic, than we are? For 
 the first week in Japan the new-comer is actually 
 under strong enough illusion to be capable of be- 
 lieving this ; so fascinating, so charmingly acted, 
 is the comedy of manners played before his eyes. 
 He recalls our own brusque ways at home, and 
 thinks, " Oh ! that we might ever hope to be as 
 innately courteous as these people." The fact is, 
 he has simply knocked the brains out of his judg- 
 ment on the near bottom through an attempt to 
 dive to profound depths in a pool not over two 
 inches deep. It is the mistake one is forever mak- 
 ing in Japan through taking outside for inside, 
 expression for impression. 
 
 Americans are too direct, even blunt, in their 
 ways, to know much about the philosophy of acting, 
 especially where the acting is so perfect as to have 
 become a kind of substituted second nature, en- 
 tirely able to dispense with any original first nature. 
 " If you want to make me weep, you must first weep 
 yourself," said Horace. " Not a bit of it," replies 
 Delsarte, the great authority witb modern French 
 actors ; " on the contrary, if you want to make me 
 weep, be sure to keep your own eyes dry. Your 
 weeping would spoil aU. Train your artistic per- 
 ceptions, and then attend strictly to the outside pre- 
 sentation. If you can work to such imitative per- 
 fection facial muscles, gasping respiration, convul- 
 sive action of voice, as to look as though you were 
 suffering, then will you have me, my tender wife, 
 
JAPANESE MANNERS 65 
 
 and my ingenuous children, dissolved in floods of 
 tears, even though all the while you are impassive 
 as an oyster, or as cool as a cucumber. Once abso- 
 lutely master the external signs, and they need no 
 more vital connection with the state of mind within 
 than the false face with which a child convulses 
 with laughter or frightens into hysterics his little 
 mates." 
 
 For a thousand years Japan has been under tu- 
 telage to an omnipresent Delsarte, working from 
 outside to inside, — or little matter about inside. 
 From Mikado at the top to coolie at the bottom of 
 the social scale, one undeviating standard of man- 
 ners has been held before the eyes of the most 
 instinctively imitative people on the face of the 
 earth. Originally an importation from China, this 
 standard has been elaborated through centuries of 
 study into ceremonial etiquette which, through con- 
 stant repetition, has ended by becoming automatic. 
 No one ever saw anything else, no one ever dreamed 
 of anything else. There was one way of saluting 
 a superior, one of saluting an equal, one of salut- 
 ing an inferior ; and anybody's head would have 
 been cut off who should have ventured to depart 
 from it. 
 
 From his earliest impressionable years, then, the 
 Japanese child saw nothing but prostrate artisans 
 saluting Samurai, Samurai saluting Daimios, Dai- 
 mios saluting Shoguns, till the whole ceremonial be- 
 came organized into him as thoroughly as are their 
 now instinctive habits into our setters and pointers, 
 — perhaps the best-mannered of our own population. 
 
66 JAPAN. 
 
 Little girls of ten will one see in good families, 
 whose finish of breeding would have awakened the 
 envy of a duchess at the court of Louis XIV. 
 Female servants will one be lost in marvel over, at 
 a dinner in the house of a Japanese gentleman, 
 whose grace and quiet dignity are the quintessence 
 of lady-like refinement. " Trifles make perfection, 
 but perfection is no trifle," is the motto. 
 
 Now if it meant all it says, the angels in heaven 
 could not live up internally to what this code of 
 manners expresses externally. Happily, no one 
 is expected to live up to it internally. It is a 
 purely artistic production, made to gratify the in- 
 stincts of an artistic people, ceremonially evolved 
 to smooth life of its asperities, to render the com- 
 edy agreeable, and to flatter by the perpetual in- 
 terchange of surface courtesies. The knave goes 
 through its motions quite as creditably as the 
 saint ; the liar, thief, or ruffian quite as effectively 
 as the gentle or sincere. Nor is it to be denied 
 that it renders things vastly attractive on the out- 
 side, and even exercises a strong inhibiting power 
 over outbreaks of petulance and rude passion. 
 But the moment the mind goes deeper, it is felt at 
 what a frightful cost all this is purchased. It 
 falsifies the nation to the very core. It kills the 
 sense of the relation that should subsist between 
 genuine impression and corresponding expression, 
 and perpetually suggests the idea, "All that is requi- 
 site is as good a heart as can be made of a head." 
 Thus, after a while, every man of frank, unconven- 
 tional nature begins to hate this manner for its 
 
JAPANESE MANNERS. 67 
 
 false, its shallow, its monotonous excess, and in 
 his wrath to say, " Till the Japanese have worse 
 manners, they will never learn genuine courtesy ! 
 Till they get rid of their masks, they will never 
 understand the social charm of the free play of 
 joy, love, sorrow ! " 
 
 For all its ceremonial elaboration, the gamut of 
 expression in Japanese manners is a very restricted 
 one, comparing in range and variety with the 
 best European about as a child's one-octave toy 
 piano, with tinkling glass keys, as over against the 
 compass of a Steinway Grand, with its sounding- 
 board and resonant bass and treble. It makes 
 more show at first, while in reality the range of 
 shifting light and shade that lights up with gen- 
 uine love, humor, intelligence, sympathy, reverence, 
 a fine face with us is in comparison as an orchestra 
 to a tinkling guitar. 
 
 This must be so. There is nothing behind the 
 Japanese face — politically, morally, intellectually, 
 reverentially — that can hold a moment's com- 
 parison with that which is behind the faces of 
 those who are free-born heirs of our complex, 
 magnificent historical past. Strange ignorance 
 of this is it which has led so many travelers to at- 
 tribute to the Japanese a depth of quality that in 
 the nature of things, the order of evolution, can 
 in no way belong to them ; and until one sees into 
 the simplicity and even monotony — albeit a " mo- 
 notony of endless variety " — that is character- 
 istic alike of their literature, their poetry, their 
 architecture, their music, their politics, and even of 
 
68 JAPAN. 
 
 their art, he will never read them with discrimina- 
 tion. They evolved a wonderful miniature civili- 
 zation, but a miniature one it ever remained till 
 they were brought into contact with races of a 
 higher strain and a grander inheritance, — with 
 what ultimate result, it remains yet to be seen. 
 
 Would one form a vivid conception of the 
 ideals with which the aspiring youth of 
 any country fires its heart, there is no better way 
 than to visit the tombs of those canonized as the 
 foremost heroes, sages, or saints of the land. Is 
 one in Italy ? Then to the tombs of Dante, St. 
 Francis, Mazzini, let him go. In England ? 
 Then to those of Shakespeare, Cromwell, Nelson. 
 In America ? Then to those of Washington and 
 Lincoln. For like insight, whither shall one be- 
 take himself in Japan ? Without question to the 
 graves of the Forty-Seven Eonins, who so loyally 
 and ferociously avenged their Feudal Master. 
 There will he find young men burning incense on 
 a scale as nowhere else. And why ? Because the 
 heroic moral standards of Japan are as much 
 bound up with purely feudal ideals as were once 
 those of the Scotch Highlanders, and because of 
 the popular response to the idea that the supreme 
 end of fidelity to the chief sanctifies any means 
 in the way of the most savage cruelty, of wholesale 
 suicide, of the sacrifice even of wifely chastity. 
 Eead, in Mitford's Tales of Old Japan, the story 
 of the " Forty-Seven Eonins," as inspiring and 
 as revolting a commingling as the annals of any 
 
HEROIC MORAL STANDARDS. 69 
 
 people can show of magnificent self-abnegation, 
 with tiger cruelty ; of the stoical endurance of 
 year-long hunger and outlawry, with capacity to 
 keep at a white heat the fixed fanatical idea of 
 avenging a wrong done a master ; yes, and of 
 absolute consecration of wifely love to a husband's 
 honor, along with glorying in the degradation of 
 her womanly purity as a means to subserve his 
 ends. The man who can read this story without 
 high-wrought admiration for such qualities of 
 loyalty, courage, and fathomless contempt of self, 
 has no sense in him of the heroic ; as equally the 
 man belongs back in the realm of savagery who 
 does not shudder at such Moloch sacrifice, on a 
 blood-reeking feudal altar, of all other graces and 
 sanctities of life. 
 
 Here again we have Japan through and through, 
 the paucity of her ideas, the limitation of her range 
 of emotional response, her incapacity, so far, for 
 the complex and synthetic, as clearly revealed in the 
 narrowness of her heroic moral standard as in 
 the lack of harmonic depth in her tinkling music. 
 The wife of the Scotch Highlander outlawed in 
 the service of his chief would unshrinkingly have 
 faced with her husband starvation on the wintry 
 hills ; but once had it come to the issued of degrad- 
 ing her person, to supply him with means to carry 
 out his fell purpose, heroically would she have cried, 
 " Nay ! I will stab myself to the heart for you, 
 but pollute myself, even for you, never ! " Other 
 test is there none of the scope and elevation of a 
 nation's moral standards than the range and char- 
 
70 JAPAN 
 
 acter of the acts that — alike by its wives, its citi- 
 zens, its soldiers, its tradesmen, its statesmen, even 
 to save home or country — would be spurned in 
 abhorrence. 
 
 It was a lovely October afternoon on which 
 my friend and I visited the graves of the Forty- 
 Seven Ronins, the focal heart of the Japan of the 
 near past, as also of its burning present. Over- 
 head arched the great trees, and quietly near by 
 brimmed the clear pool in which, as triumphant 
 avengers, they washed the bloody head of their 
 master's insulter before depositing it on the mas- 
 ter's tomb, and then themselves inaugurating a 
 holocaust of harakiri. " After life's fitful fever, 
 they sleep well," while all about stand the great 
 stone lanterns, heaped in their interiors with the 
 , ashes of incense-sticks burned as tributes of rev- 
 erence. Yet in those ashes, I felt, still glowed 
 a devouring fire, with which Japan will have to 
 account. These worshipers, — they are the sons 
 and grandsons of the old Samurai, the former 
 feudal retainers. They are the educated classes 
 of to-day, the leaders in faction politics, the civil 
 and military officers, outwardly changed through 
 a thin veneer of Occidental culture, inwardly the 
 same at heart. Kely on them for splendid cour- 
 age and self-sacrifice, and you will get it. Rely 
 on them for savage partisanship carried over into 
 the new relations, for a spirit that will stick at 
 nothing, — not at the last extreme of calumny, 
 deceit, brutal violence, assassination, in behalf of 
 their party chiefs, — and equally will you get it ; 
 
HEROIC MORAL STANDARDS 71 
 
 nay, are already getting it. Not in vain do they 
 burn incense at the graves of the Forty-Seven 
 Renins. The Forty-Seven Eonins are their na- 
 tional moral ideal, as much as Garibaldi is the 
 Italian's ; Nelson, the Englishman's ; Lincoln, the 
 American's. Not that there are not noble excep- 
 tions, and many of them. I speak of the rank and 
 file. 
 
VI, 
 
 No form of art has ever become popular, 
 that is, a source of genuine pleasure to large 
 numbers, unless through ideally interpreting to 
 them ideas and sentiments deep-rooted in their own 
 experience. Back of the epoch of the great Greek 
 sculpture were the happy Olympian games, through 
 which thousands were educated to appreciation of 
 all the fine points of a developed human body, and 
 to keen delight in them. Thence the cordial wel- 
 come, hailing a beautiful statue. Back of the 
 epoch in Italy of the painting of Perugino and 
 Raphael lay the life and preaching of St. Francis 
 of Assisi, dowering all the hillsides of Umbria with 
 human countenances lit with the same mystic love 
 and rapture which these great masters later trans- 
 ferred to the canvas. Thence the devout greeting 
 of their works. Even where the artist himself did 
 not feel it, the people felt it. 
 
 Equally, would the mind surrender itself to the 
 peculiar charm of the painting of Japan, must one 
 first seek to get into living touch with what lies 
 behind it in the common heart, that is, into living 
 touch with a popular naive enjoyment of nature, as 
 instinctive as the delight of the bird in singing, of 
 the butterfly in palpitating in the sunshine. With 
 us at home there is so much affectation about 
 
SOURCE OF JAPANESE ART 73 
 
 nature on the part of many who hardly, without 
 yawning, can linger for ten minutes over the 
 loveliest view, as to make it at times a positive 
 relief to come across a man or woman bluntly 
 audacious enough to say, " I hate nature ! " It is 
 not so in Japan. Literally are the Saints' Festival 
 Days the days of the flowering of St. Cherry Blos- 
 som, St. Wistaria, St. Lotus, St. Chrysanthemum, 
 the holidays in the Church Year of Nature, when 
 thousands of devotees flock out to worship at these 
 incense-breathing shrines. 
 
 On St. Maple Day, when the gold and crimson 
 aureoles of all the saints of this communion are 
 transfiguring with the reflexes of their sheen hill 
 and mountain side, what a spectacle to wander out 
 into the country ! Thousands on thousands of 
 people, men, women, and children, are abroad. 
 Forth and back they trudge, perhaps twenty miles, 
 and all to see the tints and dyes of the maples, and 
 to bring home red and gold branches of them. In 
 America, we would thilik there must be something 
 going on as well worth attention as a fire or a 
 strike. No, it is nothing but the maples, and they 
 furnish sesthetie stimulus enough. How all day 
 long do the people enjoy themselves ! Is it any 
 wonder, then, they love an art that renders back 
 to them these happy sensations, and that revives 
 in their breasts such charming memories ! Of 
 this art, they ask for no hidden symbolism, no 
 inner mystic interpretation, — ask merely that it 
 shall renew for them their own delight in its orig- 
 inal. In their own minds, while in the presence of 
 
74 JAPAN 
 
 nature, all is undefined, floating, sensuous charm. 
 Let the artist feel this, and give it delicate expres- 
 sion. 
 
 A few themes, with endless variations per- 
 formed on them, — here lies the essential 
 characteristic of Japanese art. But how charming 
 these variations are ! Many the novelty-hunting 
 English and American tourist who is heard ex- 
 claiming that he is sick to death of cranes, and 
 would like to take a gun and blaze away at a thou- 
 sand or more superfluous screens decorated with 
 them. This a Japanese could never understand. 
 To him the crane is the same yesterday, to-day, and 
 forever. He enjoys him wading, patting the mud 
 with his feet, preening his feathers, alighting, ris- 
 ing from the shore, capturing a frog, whirling in 
 mid-air, and has continued thus to enjoy him for 
 no end of centuries. He wants him on his teapot, 
 his cup, his screen, his match-box, his wall picture, 
 his wife's dress, his bronze charcoal-burner, his 
 lacquered box or cloisonne vase. Too much crane 
 he cannot have. And exactly the same is his feel- 
 ing about lotus flowers, cherry blossoms, chrysan- 
 themums. 
 
 Such for ages was the one art demand of the 
 Buddhist prelates, the Daimios, Shoguns, and Mi- 
 kados ; while the artisan artists, their absolute de- 
 pendent subjects, lived on the merest pittance, and 
 devoted whole lives of patience, skill, and naive de- 
 light in natural objects to gratifying the taste of 
 the only classes who commanded wealth. With no 
 
VARIETY IN UNITY 75 
 
 hope to rise out of their narrow lot, no stimulus to 
 worldly ambition or covetousness, no distractions 
 to turn them aside to other interests and pleasures, 
 they found their sole enjoyment in art for art's 
 sake, and a little rice or millet to keep alive on. 
 Time was a matter of no importance ; for to them 
 there was no meaning in our American phrase, 
 " Time is money." No ; time is the leisure spirit, 
 to absorb and brpod over impressions, to work 
 them out quietly to perfect expression, to achieve at 
 last something that would please the Daimio. Of 
 high-wrought passion there is in Japanese art no 
 trace : of childlike delight in living close to nature 
 through art, no' end. Dante declared that his 
 verses made him lean. No Japanese could ever 
 say this, or even comprehend its meaning. A sub- 
 lime poet like Dante, agonizing over such a theme 
 as Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven, might well cry out 
 that it was drinking up his blood and making his 
 flesh to waste away ; but the artist, the beginning 
 and end of whose work is to invite one to mere 
 delight with him over the motion of a fish in the 
 water, needs to be but a genial, impressionable 
 child of nature, face to face with brook, tree, and 
 sunshine. 
 
 To take in all this, let one visit, for example, the 
 famous Nijo Palace in Kyoto, the palace of the last 
 of the Shoguns of the Tokugawa dynasty. What 
 an historical commentary, the building itself, on the 
 simplicity, the infinite variations on a few themes, 
 of all things Japanese ! One story high, and differ- 
 ing no whit in architectural structure from the 
 
76 JAPAN 
 
 plainest artisan's house on the street except in the 
 immensity of its ranges of apartments, to its rich 
 and splendid decoration it owes all its distinction. 
 The same style of framework, only constructed of 
 rarer woods ; the same sliding divisions between 
 the rooms, only painted by the greatest artists ; 
 the same open-work in the ramma, or ventilation 
 screens, only here translated into the most fasci- 
 nating carvings of birds and flowers ! Very mag- 
 nificent is the effect ; for the paintings on all four 
 sides of the rooms, from floor to ceiling, are on a 
 ground of gold, and the splendor of the lacquer- 
 work on the beams, together with the marvelous 
 beauty of their gilded jointures of chased metal, 
 awakens the sense of a universally diffused glory 
 of sunshine. And yet in everything is revealed the 
 Japanese simplicity of sensation. One thing at a 
 time, and without excitement or hurry. 
 
 Wander in imagination, on the other hand, 
 through the apartments of a European palace, and 
 recall how in each room attention is distracted by 
 an endless multiplicity of objects. The paintings 
 are here a landscape, here a cattle piece, here a 
 group of figures, here a portrait ; and the mind is 
 exercised with the distressing psychological prob- 
 lem of seeing how many things it can take in at the 
 same moment without missing any or enjoying any. 
 How different in the apartments of the Shogun's 
 palace ! Enter one of them, and you find its 
 pictured walls entirely given up to a single subject, 
 say, to marvelous delineations of wild geese, — 
 wild geese swooping down in a flock on a pond, wild 
 
VARIETY IN UNITY 77 
 
 geese startled with fright and beating the water 
 with their wings in their frantic attempt to rise, 
 wild geese floating gracefully on the limpid mirror 
 of the surface, in the double beauty of reflection. 
 Evidently, the subject of interest is wild geese them- 
 selves, and not a competition of attraction between 
 them and Cupids, elephants, the battle of Water- 
 loo, and Hamlet improving the occasion of Yorick's 
 skull for moral reflection. Now, the result of all 
 this is a calm, contemplative, wild-goose frame of 
 mind. You become absolutely fascinated over this 
 one realm of nature ; and, if you have a side 
 thought, it is only to wonder why Titian and 
 Raphael should ever have wasted their powers on 
 madonnas, saints, and Venuses, when they might 
 have consecrated them to wild geese. 
 
 Again, you enter another room. The artist who 
 here has the whole field to himself is evidently 
 a devout, mystical worshiper of bamboo. " There 
 is but one glory of the vegetable creation, — 
 bamboo ; and I am its prophet," is the substance of 
 his creed ; and in ten minutes he has converted you 
 to the only sound and orthodox faith. Why care 
 any more for riches, honors, luxuries, so long as 
 bamboo exists, " so exquisite in its grace," as the 
 French artist said, " that we can even forgive it for 
 being useful"? To live, move, and have your 
 being in the mind of such an interpreter of bamboo, 
 — this seems the one unspeakable privilege of life, 
 immediate revelation to you that the sole end of art 
 is to create a soul into you which henceforth shall be 
 one with the lilt of stem and dip and rise of ostrich- 
 plume foliage of such a plant as this. 
 
78 JAPAN 
 
 Here are but a couple of illustrations of hundreds 
 that might be given from this same Nijo Palace. 
 And yet, delightedly as I felt their beauty, had I 
 had along with me a bright, enthusiastic little girl 
 of seven, she would have felt it just as keenly. 
 While, in a Dresden or Florence gallery, she would 
 soon have yawned with weariness over so much be- 
 yond her reach of thought and feeling, here she 
 would have taken in everything as naturally as 
 though herself in the woods or on the shore of a 
 lake. Thus becomes clear the reason for the univer- 
 sal popularity of Japanese art, — the reason why, 
 sweeping all before it, it has informed and illumined 
 with its spirit every branch even of the humblest 
 manufacture. 
 
 Out of all this simplicity and lack of com- 
 plexity on which I dwell, there grew one 
 admirable result. Poor and rich, ignorant and cul- 
 tivated, could alike appreciate the kind of art the 
 land brought forth. With people in Europe and 
 America, it would be the sheerest absurdity to 
 say that anything like this is possible. The story 
 runs that Dante once burst into a blacksmith's shop 
 and pounded the blacksmith for presuming to sing 
 one of his own recondite sonnets. Wordsworth, 
 Tennyson, and Browning have their select circle of 
 readers, Raphael and Angelo their esoteric wor- 
 shipers, the Greek statues their limited groups 
 of sincere appreciators. But outside of such select 
 circles the works of these mighty spirits are severely 
 let alone. No farmer craves the Transfiguration 
 
INFLUENCE OF JAPANESE ART 79 
 
 on the side of his teapot, the Laoeoon on his cart- 
 harness, or the Prophets and Sibyls of the Sistine 
 Chapel on his wall paper. In Japan, however, the 
 exact reverse holds true. The deepest and most 
 beautiful thing any Japanese artist has produced 
 lies level in its essential spirit with the genuine ap- 
 preciation of every man, woman, or child who has 
 any fineness of sense-perception, any first-hand joy 
 in nature. Here, I repeat it, is an art that has made 
 itself a universal national possession. The young 
 girl wants its graceful forms and harmonious colors 
 on her skirt and belt ; the housewife wants them on 
 her cups, saucers, and tea-caddy. The boy wants 
 them on his kite ; the brazier wants them for his 
 pots, the joiner for his open-work carvings. In 
 fine, everbody wants them for everything ; and 
 everybody gets them. Go into the cheapest bazaar 
 of three to five cent articles, and they are all stamped 
 with the same sign manual of beauty. The very 
 cakes and confectionery are such exquisite render- 
 ings of scarlet maple leaves, or chrysanthemums, 
 that you would vow they had just been picked up 
 in the autumn woods or cut fresh from the plant. 
 
 Japan, in its whole extent and with all its 
 countless little islands included, is about as 
 large as North and South Dakota combined. Only 
 one twelfth of its soil is arable, and even that, in 
 large part, solely through the immense artificial 
 system of irrigation, on which depends its rice crop. 
 And yet its population is over forty millions. 
 Divide the possible product of the soil of one twelfth 
 
80 JAPAN 
 
 of North and South Dakota among forty millions 
 of people, and it is plain what a mouthful it would 
 give to each. And yet the country was for centu- 
 ries hermetically sealed against imports from foreign 
 countries. Patient, untiring industry in cultivation 
 was then the only safeguard against starvation. 
 So poorly fed a race could not work at a high speed. 
 It was unfitted for spurts. It must economize its 
 forces, and expend them at low pressure only. 
 Given centuries on centuries of this, and one order 
 of nervous fibre is determined, as much as, given 
 fifty years of working high-speed reapers, threshers, 
 winnowers, and elevators, another sort of fibre has 
 been developed among us. 
 
 With the artisan-artist class the same simplicity 
 of environment prevailed. They, too, were poorly 
 and monotonously fed. The demand made on them 
 for the products of their skill had little variety in 
 it. From father to son descended the same crafts 
 and technique, the same simple pleasure in exercis- 
 ing them. The patrons, moreover, for whom they 
 worked were the cultured classes of a race exqui- 
 sitely endowed with aesthetic judgment. For cen- 
 tury on century every rich temple eagerly added to 
 its wealth of essentially similar bronzes, lacquer- 
 work, vestments of brocade, embroideries, screens, 
 carvings, images, arid had its great fire-proof store- 
 houses in which the larger part of its treasures 
 was laid away. With the feudal lords the like 
 passion prevailed. Every castle boasted its im- 
 mense ancestral collection of rare and beautiful 
 objects, from which could be drawn at any time 
 
CONDITIONS AFFECTING ART 81 
 
 for inspection vases, porcelains, superb dresses, 
 arms decorated with every delicate fancy of carv- 
 ing or inlaid work. As there were no innovations 
 of new ideas, invention was stimulated simply in 
 the direction of imparting fresh grace and charm 
 to the old. 
 
VII. 
 
 As a general rule, it will be found that the 
 more dissolute and shameless the life an 
 American, Englishman, or German is leading in 
 Japan, the more conscientiously is he opposed to 
 missions, and the lower in the scale does he rate 
 the motives and character of missionaries. Eeally 
 pathetic, for example, is it to hear him enlarge on 
 the cruelty of introducing the standards of our 
 severe and ascetic American sisters among these 
 unconscious children of nature, their eyes not yet 
 open to the fatal knowledge of good and evil. 
 
 Along with these stanch champions of the prim- 
 itive Eden before the Fall into the lost innocency 
 of moral distinctions, one encounters another class 
 equally severe on missionaries. It consists of hyper- 
 sensitive, aesthetic natures, so ethereally organized 
 as to live in perpetual danger of " dying of a rose 
 in aromatic pain." They tremble lest under the 
 hot sirocco breath of the missionary, the aroma 
 will be dispelled from the flower, the dew exhaled 
 from the grass. 
 
 As, after the most exhaustive investigation, I 
 could never discover that any representative of 
 either of these classes had ever been near a mission, 
 I was forced to the conclusion that their judgments 
 were either too dissolutely or too aesthetically a 
 priori to be entitled to great weight. 
 
THE QUESTION OF MISSIONS 83 
 
 There is, of course, a sense in wHcIl it is per- 
 fectly legitimate for the modern man to hate mis- 
 sions. The old idea of a mission was that of a war 
 of extermination on the part of the votaries of a 
 foreign religion, refusing to recognize anything 
 divine or eternally human in the creeds it had come 
 to supplant. The new idea — the one that is just 
 beginning to dawn on the world — is that of a 
 courteous, loving compassion between two peoples 
 of the faiths and practices that seem to each most 
 sacred. It is founded on sympathy, founded on 
 the recognition of the great historico-divine influ- 
 ences which, through race, situation, institutions, 
 have shaped each nation. It is a simple libel to 
 say that this idea is not largely recognized by 
 the missionaries of to-day to Japan. They were 
 the first to introduce well-ordered schools, broader 
 female education, instruction in medicine, hospitals 
 presided over by men of real science, with a hun- 
 dred other good things. I say this all the more 
 willingly because, from my tenderest years, I was 
 brought up with a rabid hydrophobia against mis- 
 sionaries that would have staggered the resources 
 of Pasteur. Is there not, then, such a thing as 
 taking a broad, historical view of missions, — as 
 well of their past as their future ? 
 
 Like every other nation, Japan in the past was 
 indebted to missions for its highest religious and 
 material development. East Indian Buddhism, 
 Chinese Confucianism, these were the great theo- 
 logical and ethical influences that shaped its faiths 
 and codes of conduct. Emphatically as the land- 
 
84 JAPAN 
 
 ing of Gregory IV.'s missionaries in England meant 
 to the tlien barbaric island contact with Roman 
 civilization and law, contact with Christianity's 
 splendid inheritance through Judaea, Persia, Greece, 
 so, in the far-away past of .Japan, the landing of 
 Buddhist monks and Confucian teachers meant 
 contact with the profounder religious conceptions 
 and higher ethical codes of great races, with thou- 
 sands of years of thought and experience behind 
 them. So has it always been, and so must it con- 
 tinue to be. The race or nation which idly and 
 vainly boasts that it is sole creator of the best it 
 has is only a magnified and monstrous image of the 
 individual man, who, arrogantly calling himself 
 self-made, falls down on his knees and worships his 
 silly little creative self. 
 
 Japan has already given an enthusiastic welcome 
 to one class of missionaries — not very disinter- 
 ested ones, it is true — from the West ; that is, to 
 ship-building, railroad-contracting, factory-estab- 
 lishing missionaries. She has ardently received 
 the science, the mechanic arts, the materialistic 
 philosophy of the West ; and no wonder it has 
 seemed to her an " Arabian Nights " revelation. 
 But, to confine ourselves simply to the English- 
 speaking nationalities, is this aU America and 
 England have to offer, — America and England, 
 who have in their spiritual blood Isaiah, Jesus and 
 Paul, Plato and Aristotle, Marcus Aurelius, Epic- 
 tetus and Seneca, Newton and Leibnitz, Shake- 
 speare, Phidias, Raphael and Angelo, Kant and 
 Hegel, heroes, divines, sages, and saints innumei>- 
 
THE QUESTION OF MISSIONS 85 
 
 able ? No man who feels anything of devout grat- 
 itude for what all these magnificent influences have 
 been to him can have a moment's hesitation in say- 
 ing, it would prove an unspeakable boon to any 
 people, never yet in living contact with so grand a 
 hierarchy of powers, to be brought into vital rela- 
 tions with them. 
 
 Japan, alas ! has cause enough to say, on the 
 score of the brutal international treatment she has 
 received from England — though in a far less de- 
 gree from America, — " If all your splendid inher- 
 itance from the past has made you capable of no 
 nobler spirit than you have showed to us, we want 
 none of it ! " In one sense there is no answer to 
 make to such an arraignment. But, in another 
 sense, there is. Nationalities are as yet but big, 
 bullying brutes in their dealings with weaker pow- 
 ers. The higher influences pleaded for have so 
 far lifted individuals rather than corporate masses. 
 But individuals they have lifted by millions. Why, 
 then, should not the most advanced minds among 
 the nations exchange their highest ideals, pro- 
 foundest thoughts, deepest sentiments, aspirations, 
 and hopes, and so work on sympathetically for a 
 better future ? 
 
 No historical student who should attempt to 
 compare Japan's inheritance from the past with 
 that of Europe and America could for a moment 
 hesitate as to the enormously richer, higher, and 
 more complex character of the latter. Now, at 
 last, this new-found race of the East aspires to take 
 a place among the active, powerful, progressive 
 
86 JAPAN 
 
 nations of the Vorld. The day was in the far past 
 when Germany and England were stirred with the 
 like impulse ; and their end was effected only by 
 becoming heirs of the culture, order, and religion 
 of the christianized Roman Empire, with Greece, 
 Asia Minor, and Egypt behind them. Why must 
 not Japan go through some similar leavening pro- 
 cess, if she is to take coequal intellectual and spir- 
 itual rank? A grand historical ancestry in the 
 spirit she must have ; and, just as into this an- 
 cestry nation after nation in Europe was adopted, 
 till it became f reeborn child by assimilating all that 
 was best in its culture, so must it be with this new 
 aspirant among the nations. The world's highest 
 achievement is no monopoly, but the common 
 property of the world. Did Greece possess it once ? 
 did Judaea possess it once? did Rome possess it 
 once? It was but held in trust for Germany, 
 France, England, against the day when their ma- 
 jority should have come. Equally is it held in 
 trust for Japan. 
 
 Entirely apart, however, from every ques- 
 tion of proselytism, or of the extent of the 
 conversions to Christianity made by Protestants or 
 Catholics, — and they are increasingly large, — 
 no thoughtful observer can fail to recognize the 
 strength of the reaction that has set in within the 
 bosom of the Buddhist church itself. It is a false 
 idea that Buddhism is dying out in Japan, that is, 
 among the masses of the people. On the contrary, 
 under the stress of Christian competition, it has been 
 incited to a strong and salutary revival, born of the 
 
THE QUESTION OF MISSIONS 87 
 
 stimulus of contact with a more vivid religious faith 
 and with broader humanitarian ideas. As to the 
 government attempt to regalvanize Shintoism, and 
 to enact it into a national cult, it proved an abortive 
 failure. There was nothing vital in Shintoism to 
 regalvanize, unless a low form of hypnotic spirit- 
 ism rife among the most ignorant. The whole 
 idea of its revival was a sheer antiquarian fad, a 
 politico-religious masquerade in a frippery of worn- 
 out old semi-ecclesiastical clothes. 
 
 With Buddhism, however, it was otherwise. It 
 had a deep hold on the popular heart, ahke through 
 superstition and through elements in itself of depth 
 and spirituality. Among its monks and abbots are 
 numbered to-day men of the highest birth, the 
 noblest character, and the richest philosophical 
 culture in Japan. There is now building in the 
 city of Tokyo a Hongwangi temple, which in splen- 
 dor will rival any that Japan ever saw ; and it is a 
 curious fact that, in the work of hauling the beams 
 and other heavy material for its construction, six 
 great sets of cables, — woven entirely of the hair 
 of women who had shorn their locks to dedicate 
 them to this sacred service — have already been 
 worn out, while the seventh set of like cables is in 
 daily use. Certainly this attests in Buddhism the 
 survival at least of a force of capillary attraction 
 that would excite amazement e^'en in a treatise on 
 physics, and which surely were hard to surpass in 
 the annals of any other form of religion. 
 
 Yet it is these very women that have thus sac- 
 rificed to the temple service their crown of glory, 
 who are to be most deeply benefited by the revival, 
 
88 JAPAN. 
 
 which European Christianity, with its ineffahly 
 higher ideal of woman, is setting on in Buddhism. 
 Dear, gentle, patient beings, they need it, and, by 
 all that is ennobling and enriching, they ought to 
 have it. So ingrained is their sense of the inher- 
 ent inferiority of their sex, so much is there latent 
 in their sweet, self-sacrificing natures that has had 
 no chance of sympathetic development, so little do 
 they dream of what is hidden in the chivalrous, 
 romantic love of man to woman, that a marvelous 
 revelation is in store for them ; yes, and is already 
 breaking, through contact with the womanhood of 
 the Occident. 
 
 Here, in truth, in the work of noble Western 
 women yearning and toiling for the intellectual and 
 moral education of young girls, is a leaven that is 
 destined to permeate and uplift the family life of 
 Japan. The best thing now in this family life, the 
 most spontaneous and beautiful, is the love of the 
 little children. Japan is the paradise of childhood. 
 But the paradise of the wife it is not. Not for an 
 hour would a high-souled American woman endure 
 the indignity of the relation as on the average it 
 is found. No wonder then, that, with sensibilities 
 stung to the quick, such women feel it a sacred 
 obligation to strive to lift their sisterhood in the 
 East into the higher realm of dignity and honor 
 in which they themselves live. Truly, in contrast, 
 it is a bit exasperating to read so much that has 
 been written on Japan by Americans, — scienti- 
 fically keen-eyed, perhaps, but with about the reli- 
 gious endowment of monkeys — on the absurdity 
 and futility of every kind of mission. 
 
VIII. 
 
 Japan has just now readied her ebullient 
 Sophomore year in the world-university 
 curriculum. No doubt the Sophomore year is a 
 stage of inflation necessary to pass through before 
 arriving at the chastened dignity of the Senior. 
 But it has its temporary perils. Small wonder, 
 then, that at present the Japanese are topheavily 
 overladen with conceit. Only to think of it ! How 
 comparatively few the years since the Imperial 
 University of Tokyo was founded under the actual 
 title, " An Institution for Examining into the 
 Writings of the Barbarians," — Newton, La Place, 
 Watt, Lyell, and Darwin, all summed up under that 
 engaging category ! Yet already, having squeezed 
 whatever they knew out of German, French, Amer- 
 ican, English professors, have the Japanese quickly 
 sent home the majority of them, and themselves 
 taken their places ; as equally they have done with 
 European railway contractors, civil engineers, shii> 
 builders, and-locomotive builders, and are begin- 
 ning to do even with Teutonic brewers of lager 
 beer. Did the world ever see the like ! Very 
 natural the feeling that they have sucked the 
 whole contents of the Occidental scientific orange 
 and thrown away the skin. 
 
 Now, it would be entirely feasible to ship on 
 
90 JAPAN 
 
 board a New England coaster any bright young 
 fellow from Cape Cod, and, putting into his hands 
 a sextant and giving him a short run through 
 Bowditeh's Navigator, in a few days, to enable him 
 to take to a hair the schooner's exact position at 
 noon. Quite pardonable in him, moreover, would 
 it be, should he at first see himself in the light of 
 a full-fledged peer of Joshua, who commanded the 
 sun and moon to stand still, and they obeyed him. 
 None the less might not his mind be set down as 
 reverentially incomplete should he fail, on maturer 
 reflection, to admit that the Jacob's wrestle of Co- 
 pernicus, Newton, and La Place to wrest from the 
 heavens their secret was entitled to a modest share 
 of credit in the success of the observation. Any 
 skilled mechanic can make a sextant, any average 
 intelligent youth use it, but behind it lies a race 
 of intellectual giants and the sublime mathematics 
 of infinite space. 
 
 The art of war, the art of naval construction, 
 the art of engineering, the art of organizing com- 
 mon schools, universities, upper and lower houses 
 of legislation, all these have the Japanese borrowed 
 as achieved residts from more advanced nations. 
 It has been the most stupendous piece of ab-extra 
 imitation the world ever saw. But have they bor- 
 rowed at the same time the great germinal minds, 
 the inventive genius, the depth of character, the 
 centuries of political experience, out of which 
 these things have come, and which remain to- 
 day in Europe and America the potency and pro- 
 mise of a vast succession to foUow ? The golden 
 
THE CRUSADING SPIRIT 91 
 
 eggs Japan no doubt has, but has she the prolific 
 intellectual goose to go on laying new ones ? 
 
 Very superficially as yet does Japan take in this 
 weighty previous question. Dazzled with excess 
 of light reflected from the material triumphs of 
 modern European science, she mistakes this for 
 the whole core of Western greatness and force of 
 character. As she thinks with superior amuse- 
 ment of her old theory of ' earthquakes, how they 
 were caused by an enormous catfish nine hundred 
 miles long that underlay their main island and 
 every once in a while grew so mortally tired as to 
 have to flop over for relief on to his other side ; 
 and as she contrasts this now discarded theory 
 with the complete seismometrical apparatus at the 
 Imperial University for measuring the strength 
 and duration of every shake ; very properly is she 
 as proud as the Cape Cod youth handling his new 
 sextant. But what is going to be the outcome of 
 such a sudden revolution from top to bottom of 
 all old ideas and methods, the Japanese will never 
 know until experience shall have made it clear. 
 Europe quietly grew into these ideas, Japan 
 jumped heels over head into them. It is the sur- 
 face questions they have so far attacked. The 
 scientific broomstick drudge, after the analogy 
 of the old fairy tale, they have set to drawing 
 water, and he is deluging the house with it by the 
 bucketful; but the formula for laying him, be- 
 fore he drowns out the whole family, is another 
 matter. 
 
92 JAPAN 
 
 No one can watch the brilliancy and perfec- 
 tion of the evolutions of the Japanese troops, 
 can note her huge ironclads and the steady growth 
 of her commercial marine, can read her newspapers, 
 or catch the spirit of her young men, without feel- 
 ing, as it were, on the eve of a new crusade. I use 
 the word crusade deliberately. Japan is on fire 
 with the sense of a great historical mission. She 
 is the ordained champion of the new ideas of the. 
 West in their advance on the immobility of the 
 East. Not the French, when, after their own rev- 
 olution, their armies swept irresistibly over the rest 
 of Europe, to destroy the last remnants of Feudal- 
 ism and to inaugurate the new era of the Eights of 
 Man, were inflamed with a more passionate faith 
 in a special role of destiny. 
 
 The niercurial temperament has ever proved a 
 factor to be reckoned with in human history — 
 quite as much so as quicksilver in the thermometers 
 and barometers that measure temperature and at- 
 mospheric pressure. Again and again, in the story 
 of France, from the days of the Crusades to the 
 days of the French Revolution, has this tempera- 
 ment changed the whole current of European his- 
 tory. Quick to adopt new ideas, and chivalrous in 
 championing them, France has always been the 
 brilliant, even though quicksilver, Abelard of Eu- 
 rope, the intellectual Hotspur. Without the leaven 
 of her ever-fermenting spirit, how much more 
 slowly would have risen the heavier dough of Ger- 
 many and England! True, she has always had 
 the " faults of her qualities," and bitterly has she 
 suffered from them. 
 
THE CRUSADING SPIRIT 93 
 
 Now very keenly do the Japanese enjoy being 
 ealled the French of Asia, and not unnaturally, so 
 strikingly similar are their virtues and vices. Not 
 that the Japanese are in any way the national 
 equals of the French. Little do they take it in, 
 what a wealth of historic experience and of the 
 deepest and gravest thought in literature, morals, 
 and religion furnishes the make-weight to Gallic 
 lightness, mockery, and impetuosity. Still, much 
 is there in the old Samurai spirit of Japan — the 
 valor, the patriotism, the artistic courtesy, the loy- 
 alty, the contempt of gain — that could easily take 
 the place of the chivalry of France, as equally there 
 is in this same spirit much that would readily lend 
 itself to political experiments of fatal rashness and 
 to factional embroilments of internecine ferocity. 
 
 At the same time, along with this quicksilver of 
 the French temperament, the Japanese enjoy the 
 privilege of an insular position that gives them 
 substantially the same advantage in respect to Asia 
 that England has always held in respect to Europe, 
 and which will render them the great naval power 
 of the East. Centuries ago they beheaded the am- 
 bassador and destroyed the Invincible Armada of 
 the else irresistible conqueror Genghis Khan ; and 
 that, too, at a time when all China and much of 
 India submitted to his power and to that of his suc- 
 cessors. Thus, in the Japan of to-day do we see 
 a thoroughly warlike people at a crisis of their his- 
 tory in which they have been fused into a unit in 
 flaming patriotism and in the intoxication of new 
 ideas. In all this lies, I am sure, the prophecy of 
 
94 JAPAN 
 
 the coming national Peter the Hermit, who is to 
 launch the new crusade of the long-gathering hosts 
 of Western thought and civilization on the immo- 
 bility of the East.i 
 
 The Mediterranean has had its great day, 
 and still has it. The Atlantic has had its 
 great day, and still has it. Now is dawning the 
 great day of the Pacific. Face to face with one 
 another, on the opposite sides of this mighty ex- 
 panse, Japan and the United States, along with 
 Siberian Eussia, are destined to play an imperial 
 role on the stage of the coming future of Asia. It 
 is only the beginning of things that is witnessed 
 to-day ; but out of the shadowy future already loom 
 vague but overwhelming shapes of movements in- 
 volving a new destiny for hundreds of millions of 
 people. The United States opened this fifth act 
 
 ^ This was written before the outbreak of the Japanese-Chinese 
 war. Nothing in the results that have followed can surprise any 
 one who has studied the situation in the two countries. A fight 
 between Japan and China is like a race between two steamboats, 
 the one with a paddle wheel on either side, the other with a pad- 
 dle wheel on one side and a clumsy oar on the other. In China 
 everything is mongrel. She has adopted just so much of West- 
 ern science and civilization as has been temporarily pounded into 
 her by England and France, and despised the rest of it. Japan, 
 on the other hand, has adopted everything to the last military 
 shoestring. Moreover, in China, there is no patriotism and little 
 or no trust between men. The government is rotten to the core. 
 The of&cer has no faith in his soldier, nor the soldier in his officer, 
 nor has either faith that the report of the numbers, the ammuni- 
 tion, the provisions on hand, are not totally false. This is one of 
 the drawbacks of a system of universal cheating and lying, at 
 any rate when applied to the art of war. 
 
THE DAY OF THE PACIFIC 95 
 
 in tlie great drama of historic humanity when she 
 sent out Commodore Perry with his fleet, to force 
 Japan into the alliance of the nations. Little did 
 she dream what she was doing. Now, however, that 
 it is done, let the two powers cultivate the friend- 
 liest of relations, and feel themselves natural and 
 inseparable allies. Above all, outright must it 
 be recognized that the day is past for any longer 
 regarding Japan from the mere sentimental point 
 of view of a land of artistic impressionists. Her 
 artisan class, the most deftly-trained and the most 
 cheaply fed in the world, is soon to render her 
 a truly formidable competitor in the industrial 
 struggle of the nations. 
 
 Fascinating has been the experience of a 
 two months' stay in Japan, storing the mind 
 with delightful memories it will always be a happi- 
 ness to revive. The natural beauties of the land 
 no words can duly praise, — its chains of pictur- 
 esque mountains everywhere ; its seacoast lines, 
 varied in outline and steeped in as poetic an at- 
 mosphere as those of southern Italy ; its luxuriant 
 and profusely varied flora; its innumerable and 
 commanding temple sites at Tokyo, Kyoto, Navas, 
 everywhere, with their solemn Druid groves. Add 
 to all this ever present beauty of nature, the per- 
 petual open-air comedy going on in the street life 
 of the people, and it will be felt what elements of 
 fascination are ever before the eyes of the traveler 
 in Japan. So little apparent friction in the 
 crowded daily intercourse, such looks of childlike 
 
96 JAPAN 
 
 amiability on the faces of the young women ! Call 
 these, if you will, only skin-deep, still the skin is 
 about all we see of the great majority of our fellow 
 creatures, and how far pleasanter is it to look at 
 when rippling with smiles than when fretted with 
 careworn or angry lines ! In Japan one perforce 
 chimes in with Goethe's line, — 
 
 " Am fartigen Abglanz haben wir das Leben." 
 
 So, a loving good-by to the Flowery Kingdom, 
 the Land of the Eising Svm, and good-by to all 
 these lucubrations on her past, present, and future ! 
 She has broken away from the sleep and stagnation 
 of Asia, has quit the quiet security of her land- 
 locked Inland Sea, and tempted the open main. 
 Welcome to the richer and deeper, the far more 
 awful, far more sublime inheritance of the best in 
 the western world ! May she breathe around the 
 sterner elements of this inheritance something of 
 her own ineffable charm ! 
 
CHINA 
 
 After being subjected for two months, as in 
 Japan, to an unintermitting stream of novel 
 impressions, what a wonderfully restful experience 
 to feel one's self again at sea ! It is like putting a 
 tired child into the cradle, and gently rocking him 
 to sleep, — at least when kindly Nurse Pacific re- 
 frains from setting too thumping a Hibernian foot 
 on the rocker and rolling the baby from side to 
 side to the croon of a typhoon. No loving mother, 
 however, could have been more gentle with treadle 
 and lullaby than the Pacific with us, all the way 
 from Nagasaki, Japan, to Shanghai, China, and all 
 the way from Shanghai to Hong Kong. Oh, the 
 boon, each day, of the quiet monotony of the sea, 
 unbroken by the intrusion of a whale or a porpoise ! 
 How it sponges up all nervously irritating brain 
 impressions, and holds them in neutral solution ! 
 Indeed, a sea voyage round the world, all the way 
 by land, would result in chronic insomnia. So 
 blessings on the man who first invented for the 
 globetrotter's sanity the sleep of the China Sea 
 after Japan ! 
 
 In Shanghai we stopped but twenty-four 
 
 hours. This was long enough, however, to 
 
 furnish a few first-hand impressions of the more 
 
98 CHINA 
 
 salient points of difference between the Chinese and 
 the Japanese. In Japan one is perpetually inter- 
 ested in observing the ways in which the race has 
 worked iip into its own shapes the ideas, manners, 
 arts, manufactures, the architecture, philosophy, 
 and religion, originally derived from China through 
 Corea. Now at last the chance to see a little of 
 the rock from which these Japanese people were 
 intellectually and religiously hewn ! A rock, in 
 fact, it is in comparison with the sinuous, spark- 
 ling, restlessly mobile waters that have ebbed and 
 flowed round it for centuries in the Land of the 
 Rising Sun. Indeed, striking as is the contrast 
 one feels the first time he crosses the Channel from 
 France to England, between the lithe, vivacious, 
 socially charming characteristics of the one peo- 
 ple and the more heavily moulded and undemon- 
 strative nature of the other, far greater is the 
 contrast experienced on first setting foot on the 
 soil of China, after a run of thirty hours from 
 Japan. 
 
 In our own country we see but one variety of the 
 Chinaman, — the laundry variety, taken from the 
 lowest class of the indoor coolies, and cowed, too, 
 at that, by the democratic exuberance of our hood- 
 lums. He is no more like the breed at home than 
 if he had been boiled along with the shirts in 
 one of his own laundry-vats, and lifted out on a 
 stick shrunk and dripping. In his own land John 
 Chinaman is a big, portly fellow, who walks as 
 though he owned the earth. He could swallow an 
 average Japanese without looking larger. Vanity 
 
CHINESE CONSERVATISM 99 
 
 and conceit are no part of him, as they are of the 
 Japanese. Indeed, vanity and conceit imply a 
 measure of dependence on the estimate of others. 
 For four thousand years the Chinaman has lived 
 above this weakness, in an indomitable fortress of 
 pride. Realities are simply realities. Ages before 
 the European emerged from the lowest barbarism, 
 if, indeed, he has yet emerged from it, the China^ 
 man knew everything and possessed everything 
 worth having. He has simply to repeat the past, 
 as the planets their revolutions. As for Confucius, 
 he had looked into the whole matter of railroads, 
 telegraph lines, and the spinning-jenny, forty cen- 
 turies back, and dismissed them as beneath con- 
 tempt. 
 
 Now, in this light-minded world of ours, it is 
 very instructive to fall in with something thorough- 
 bred, to see a fundamental principle, like that of 
 the " wisdom of our ancestors," stoutly mounted, 
 and then ridden, spite of wall or ditch, straight 
 across country to its last break-neck logical conse- 
 quences. At home in America, we pride ourselves 
 on having evolved certain very creditably ossified 
 types of the conservative, — now in a sporadic pro- 
 fessor, now in a high and dry divine, here in an 
 Anglomaniac member of an exclusive club. In 
 China, the most obstinately-rooted of these, from 
 Boston or New York, would be set up on steeples 
 for weathercocks, the only function such variable 
 creatures would be thought fit for. 
 
 Never the doggedest aider and abettor of the past 
 with us, but inconsistently he will abandon the 
 
100 CHINA 
 
 whole principle by giving in to lucifer matches su- 
 perseding the flint and tinder box, to gas invading 
 the sacred realm of whale oil, or, finally to the 
 electric light advancing on the miore ancient reign 
 of gas. Dignify such thistledown mobility with 
 the august title of conservatism ! No ! there is but 
 one portrait of an Occidental conservative that 
 would awaken in the breast of a Chinaman an emo- 
 tion of respect. It was a caricature that was drawn 
 fifty years ago in Vienna, in which, on the Day of 
 Creation, Prince Metternich was depicted wringing 
 his hands in agony and supplicating Deity, " O 
 God, let us preserve the Chaos ! " The Chinese 
 would have taken this caricature in perfect serious- 
 ness, and have set it up in a temple for the edifica- 
 tion of the young. 
 
 Custom, then, in China, the thing that has been, 
 is the one immutable law of the universe, to be re- 
 spected as one respects summer and winter, night 
 and day. Do you foreigners cavil that our streets 
 are filthy and pestilential ? It is not our custom to 
 clean and deodorize them. Do you insinuate that 
 our frightful famines and inundations might be 
 stopped? It is not our custom to stop famines and 
 inundations. Far rather would we die of hunger 
 or be drowned out like rats than insult the wisdom 
 of our ancestors by such reflections on their time- 
 honored ways. Budge, then, the Chinaman will 
 not, more than a granite boulder, unless pried out 
 with fulcrum and crowbar. Here at last, thank 
 Heaven ! the philosophic tourist, weary of such 
 pitiful will-o'-the-wisps as we have at home, con- 
 
SHANGHAI 101 
 
 templates something as stable in comparison as a 
 fixed star to a flighty comet, a wood-tick to a devil's 
 darning-needle. 
 
 For fifty miles before reaching the north- 
 erly coast of China, one feels himself al- 
 ready developing a fairly " continental conscious- 
 ness." It is stirred up from the depths of one's 
 being in sympathy with the mud of the Yang-tse- 
 Kiang River, poured out on so stupendous a scale as 
 to lay down, in vast realms of oozy flats, the pro- 
 phetic foundations of a future rice-paradise for mil- 
 lions, and still further to spread its turbid flood over 
 countless square miles of otherwise bright blue sea. 
 The eye looks on with awe at so enormous a process 
 of world-building. Nothing, one feels, but a vast 
 continent, with far-away ranges of colossal moun- 
 tain chains, mighty river systems thousands of 
 miles in length, can furnish the material for such 
 work as this. Bread enough to feed four hundred 
 millions of mouths, and all this fertilizing mud to 
 spare ! surely this must be China ! 
 
 Sailing up one of the streams of the immense 
 delta, stretching along the coast a hundred miles, 
 our steamship anchored off Wusung to take in 
 cargo, while her passengers in a little steam-launch 
 ran up the river fourteen miles farther to Shang- 
 hai. 
 
 Europe and China hobnobbing! such is 
 
 the scene Shanghai presents ; only that the 
 
 hobnobbing is done arms-length, centuries-length, 
 
102 CHINA 
 
 race-length apart. Here, on the one hand, a beau- 
 tiful European city ; open to breeze and sunshine ; 
 with stately buildings and lovely gardens ; its 
 broad, park-like quay, shaded with rows of trees, 
 running along the river, and everything breathing 
 sweet and healthful air ! There, on the other hand, 
 a Chinese walled town of 200,000 inhabitants, its 
 streets narrow and filthy, its people pigging in to- 
 gether in tenements which are perpetual breeding- 
 places of disease ! Cheek by jowl, for fifty years 
 have stood these two cities ; the one steadily aspir- 
 ing after growing beauty, comfort, healthfulness, 
 the other serenely satisfied with its aboriginal per- 
 fection. Shakespeare and the Chinese are at one 
 in the feeling that — 
 
 " To gild refined gold, to paint the lily, 
 To throw a perfume on the violet, . . . 
 Is wastefuf and ridiculous excess." 
 
 As over against two such authorities, far be it 
 from me to express a personal judgment. I am a 
 simple reporter of impressions, a disinterested ob- 
 server of the ways of my fellow-creatures, as they 
 have been subjected to their varying planetary de- 
 velopment. All I see is the reason why these two 
 cities have not exerted a whit of perceptible influ- 
 ence on one another. The English, French, and 
 Germans still follow their own ever-chauffins: meth- 
 ods. If there is a new and promising-anti-cholera 
 mixture, they take doses of it, to decide which is the 
 better man, cholera or mixture ; a new germ-killing 
 disinfectant, they set on a free fight between it and 
 microbes ; a new astronomical or metaphysical the- 
 
SHANGHAI 103 
 
 ory of the universe, they import the book describ- 
 ing it, and here and there one of them, perhaps, 
 reads it. Of all this freakiness of the innovating 
 temperament, scarcely a trace in China town ! 
 Foul smells, cholera, bacteria, have their prescrip- 
 tive rights to be treated in accordance with the 
 wisdom of our ancestors, and are so treated, to the 
 mutual satisfaction, apparently, of germ and human 
 germinator, as they develop amicably together. 
 So long, then, as the two have mastered the art of 
 thus living in happy concord, why inaugurate be- 
 tween them the internecine warfare set on by the 
 Englishman ? 
 
 Now, to one just arrived from Japan, here is a 
 vastly instructive sight in the way of comparative 
 historical study. Through the force of a precisely 
 similar object lesson, the same fifty years in which 
 all this has been going on in Shanghai have revo- 
 lutionized the other country. The moment the 
 Japanese got a chance to see a better thing in the 
 way of disinfectant, Herbert Spencer Scott's Emul- 
 sion of Cod Liver Oil, astronomical observatory 
 for studying the real motions of the celestial bodies, 
 they adopted it. Peremptorily, on the other hand, 
 the Chinese despised and rejected it, on the abso- 
 lute ground that no good thing could come out of 
 the Nazareth of " outside barbarians " and " foreign 
 devils." Their logic was perfect, though their 
 premise may have been an instance of too hasty 
 induction. 
 
 Contempt is a dangerous, though no doubt a 
 soothing quality. Not that the Europeans do not 
 
104 CHINA 
 
 entertain it liberally toward the Chinese. But the 
 return contempt of the Chinese in their pig-sty city 
 for the dwellers in the clean, beautiful European 
 city is, in comparison, colossaUy vaster. It is a 
 contempt Atlas in height, continental in breadth, 
 oceanic in depth, — a contempt in ssecula sseculo- 
 rum. One is awed by it. One yearns for a mas- 
 siveness of nature capable of so Mt. Blanc a solid- 
 ity of contempt-sensation. I repeat it, something 
 sublime is there in beholding for once the virtue of 
 conservatism developed to Himalayan proportions. 
 If Confucius really did this, all of himself, then I 
 rank him next to the law of gravitation. 
 
 Kind, though no doubt nationally preju- 
 diced friends in Shanghai had strongly 
 advised my friend and me not to attempt an explo- 
 ration of the Chinese city. They said it was some- 
 times perilous to life and limb, and at all times an 
 exposure to infectious disease, and that for twenty 
 years they had not thrust their own noses inside 
 the walls. None the less we went, and went 
 alone, — • with reprehensible traces in our breasts, 
 I fear, of that physical contempt for Chinese 
 prowess engendered in the American mind by home 
 contact with none but the bleached-out laundry 
 species. For hours we strayed at our own sweet 
 will, penetrating all quarters, and frequently get- 
 ting hopelessly lost, only at last to find ourselves 
 again. The tastelessness and ugliness of the scene 
 to one fresh from Japan was the main impression 
 the sordid materialism of aspect everything wore. 
 
SHANGHAI 105 
 
 No doubt there were plenty of good, patient, excel- 
 lent people there. No doubt there was many a 
 learned pundit ruminating the Chinese classics in 
 many a house we passed, and, let us hope, thanking 
 Heaven he was not as either of those two " foreign- 
 devils " going by. Still, no use is there in at- 
 tempting to account for Chinese Shanghai on the 
 score of its being a seaport town, corrupted by the 
 imitation of foreign manners and vices. The 
 trouble with it is that it has imitated nothing, has 
 kept itself so simon pure in its ancestral nastiness. 
 None the less, how strong and cheerful the 
 people looked ! What an effective system here on 
 hand for killing off the sickly and feeble, and leav- 
 ing none but the cholera and small-pox-proof ! The 
 survival of the fittest for standing such conditions 
 of foul air, crowded quarters, barbaric medical 
 treatment, such was the principle of natural selec- 
 tion palpably at work. Still, one man's meat is 
 another man's poison ; as equally experiments in 
 natural selection require successive generations to 
 work in. So at last my friend and I began to doubt 
 our personal fitness to survive much longer. The 
 one predominant feeling with us both, as we 
 emerged from the gate, was a longing to be hung 
 out for a month on a clothes-line, in a gale of wind. 
 Carbolic acid and chloride of lime seemed perfumes 
 of a rarer fragrance than heliotrope or tea roses. 
 
 However, a drive of several hours out into 
 VI. 
 
 the country now effected an aeration quite 
 
 as brisk as hanging out on a clothes-line, along 
 
106 CHINA 
 
 with wider advantages for enjoying scenery. Very 
 depressing the aspect, it must be admitted, that is 
 imparted to the immediate surroundings of this 
 especial Chinese city by the enormous stretches 
 given up to burial-places for the dead. Here, if 
 anywhere in China, — especially when it is re- 
 called that ancestor worship is the devoutest form 
 of religion that prevails, — one would look for some 
 imaginative expression of sentiment, some touch of 
 beauty or ideality, as in all the cemeteries of Japan, 
 where a like ancestral faith is rife. No suggestion 
 is there of any craving akin to this. Few or no 
 trees, no charm of greensward and constant floral 
 offerings, no venerable moss-grown monuments, 
 nothing but low mounds of naked or weed-grown 
 soil, and these by the million ! Perforce, one calls 
 up the endless stretches of prairie-dog burrows on 
 the Colorado and Montana plains, oply to be filled 
 with the same dazed wonder there evoked as to 
 how each several prairie-dog household ever con- 
 trives to feel sure of its own domestic hole. With 
 such back-lying successions of departed ancestors 
 to keep in ever green remembrance, it must be a 
 liberal education in itself to know just where to 
 find them. 
 
 Once, however, out beyond these dreary wastes, 
 there opens up a sight that cannot but inspire deep 
 reverence for China. The marvelous cultivation, 
 the patient, untiring industry that wrings the bread 
 of millions out of the soil of these vast river bot- 
 toms, the cheerfulness and solid, practical good 
 sense of the farming people here is something to 
 
SHANGHAI 107 
 
 call out deep-rooted respect for millions of human 
 beings under such stern stress of the law, " In the 
 sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou 
 return unto the ground." 
 
 No wonder these people are averse to change ! 
 They have reached a state of stable equilibrium. 
 They have got adjusted like the patient ox to the 
 yoke, know just where it presses and how best to 
 ease it, and do not want to be readjusted to a new- 
 fangled one. Century-old products of these monot- 
 onous levels, these sluggish rivers and canals, these 
 uniform methods of cultivation, their muscles have 
 become solidly set to a plodding gait and their 
 brains to a gait equally plodding. Expatiate, if 
 you will, to a heavily moulded plough horse on the 
 exhilaration felt by the fast trotter, and invite him 
 on to the track to share it ! The plough horse 
 might be misguided enough to make a spurt for 
 twenty rods. Far more settled in his solid mus- 
 cular convictions, the plodding Chinese country- 
 man ! 
 
 No ! to do over again the same old thing in the 
 same old way, to think over again the same old 
 maxim in the same old way, this is to " possess the 
 earth." Nerves have they none. Of the heights 
 of ecstasy, the abysses of despair, these modern 
 physiological inventions entail on other unfortunate 
 people, they are stolidly oblivious. They can sleep 
 under a lullaby of gongs, and with wide-open 
 mouths full of meandering flies. What big bodies 
 and big bowling-alley-ball heads of real lignum- 
 vitae texture ! While European nations are ex- 
 
108 CHINA 
 
 hausting in excitement their nervous energies, these 
 fellows are storing theirs up ; lying fallow a few 
 thousand years, as did our vast western prairies 
 against the grain crops that should one day be de- 
 manded of them. True, their existence now is 
 commonplace and matter of fact, largely devoid of 
 ideality, devoid of imagination. Of anything like 
 the life of chivalrous love for woman, of consecra- 
 tion to an ideal of a great future for humanity, they 
 know little and care less. Still, one cannot but 
 feel there is latent in them the stuff of a giant 
 future, after once the mighty throes of revolution 
 that are at hand shall have steeped them in scald- 
 ing tears and chilled them in icy waters and forged 
 them under the trip-hammer blows of sure-coming 
 destiny. 
 
 Out there, far down the river, as we are 
 VII. . . . 
 
 driving back, we see looming up a huge 
 
 ironclad. It is Chinese. On the river-bank, 
 farther yet below, stretch the long lines of a power- 
 ful modern fort. It is Chinese. What do these 
 mean ? They mean that a power mightier even 
 than century-old Chinese conservatism is on the 
 field, that Europe has already invaded and par- 
 tially conquered China with the ideas of a new age. 
 True, these ideas had to be driven home by the 
 thunderbolt of war. They were never accepted 
 of free choice, as in Japan. When England and 
 Erance destroyed China's fleets of junks, took Can- 
 ton, took Pekin, then China had to begin to think 
 on new lines, had to submit to the crowbar prying 
 
SHANGHAI 109 
 
 out some of the sullen, dogmatic boulders deep 
 sunk in the tenacious soil of her mind. Hauling 
 down the imperial flag from the Pekin palace was 
 as nothing to hauling down the flag of the century- 
 old monomania of ancestral pride. But down it 
 had to come ; and perforce China sent to Europe 
 for military engineers, ship-builders, driU-masters 
 for her troops. Forts were constructed, arsenals 
 and shijp-yards founded, schools of instruction es- 
 tablished, — only of course to be suffered to fall 
 into gradual decay. None the less the iron wedge 
 of destiny had entered, and begun to split rifts in 
 the tough old gnarled log. And now to all this is 
 added the terrible gadfly of Japan anchored just 
 off her coasts ; the gadfly become a hornet on a 
 mission, with all the modern scientific apparatus at 
 its tail's end for stinging home the inflammation 
 of the new ideas. One stands hushed in awe to 
 reflect on what all this inevitably involves in the 
 future of four hundred million people. 
 
II. 
 
 It was a charming run of three days from 
 Shanghai, and never before in life did I 
 chant more rapturously the rarely quoted line of 
 Gray, " Where ignorance is bliss," than on sailing 
 at sunrise through the strait that winds its pictur- 
 esque way into Hong Kong harbor. About the 
 island of Hong Kong, whether it was flat or per- 
 pendicular, prosaic or picturesque, I knew abso- 
 lutely nothing. Suddenly, however, on stepping 
 out on deck, what should be the revelation but a 
 magnificent archipelago of islands like Mt. Deserts, 
 though on a hundredfold grander scale ! One 
 could have weeded out a dozen Mt. Deserts without 
 leaving the marine paradise before the eyes a whit 
 less attractive. Then came the sail through the 
 strait, a mile to two miles in width, and shut in 
 on either hand by mountains. The coloring was 
 indescribably beautiful. Largely naked of vegeta- 
 tion, their tops covered with dry bamboo grass, and 
 their flanks a mingling of red granite and of red, 
 yellow, and whitish clays and gravels, they fairly 
 palpitated in the glow of the semi-tropical sun. 
 Indeed, as I later found, this vivid glow charac- 
 terizes the aspect of the mountains all day long. 
 Look out over the harbor, even at noon, and you 
 
HONG KONG 111 
 
 would think tlie ranges, completely environing it, 
 were steeped in warm sunset light. At home we 
 find fault with our sunsets, beautiful as they are 
 while they last, because just as we are fairly yield- 
 ing ourselves to the rapture of them, the curtain 
 is rung down and they are gone. Here in Hong 
 Kong this little aesthetic objection is removed by 
 keeping them flushed and aglow all day long. 
 Perhaps, in China, even sunsets have grown con- 
 servative, and dislike to change. 
 
 Once through the strait and into the harbor, the 
 city itself is another delightful surprise. With 
 only a narrow selvage of level ground along the 
 water, its houses, many of them spacious and no- 
 ble mansions, with beautiful gardens, rise, terrace 
 on terrace, up the flank of an abrupt mountain, 
 eighteen hundred feet high, it topmost summit 
 crowned with villas and hotels in which Euro- 
 peans seek refuge from the overpowering heat of 
 the summer. One would think himself in Genoa, 
 so strikingly similar is the architectural effect. 
 
 Only forty years ago this beautiful island was a 
 nest of Chinese pirates. Even at a far later date, 
 a European took his life in his hand if he ventured 
 alone a mile out of the settlement, or embarked at 
 night in a sampan for his ship. To-day, in charm- 
 ing contrast, the most blind-drunk sailor, with just 
 consciousness enough left to know he wants to be 
 rowed out and put aboard at midnight, has the 
 aegis of his country lovingly extended over him 
 in the shape of a gilt-buttoned official taking the 
 number of the sampan, giving it just fifteen min- 
 
112 CHINA 
 
 utes to get back, and, in event of an instant's over- 
 stay, firing a signal that forthwith sets the harbor 
 swarming with armed launches. Thus by one 
 electric flash of the higher civilization is murder 
 discouraged in the Chinaman, and the mind of the 
 European seafaring man relieved from the cor- 
 rosion of anxiety as to just how much it may be 
 wisest to drink ashore. Why the superiority of 
 such a system is not immediately apparent to the 
 Celestial mind is a standing marvel. And yet the 
 sampan-scullers still insist that the older way was 
 the better. 
 
 Very curious does it seem, indeed quite inter- 
 national, to find that the policemen in Hong Kong 
 are big red-turbaned Sikhs from India. It gives 
 one a fresh conception of the resources England 
 has to draw on. Equally curious is it to inspect 
 the immense Chinese quarter of the city, with 
 nearly a quarter of a million of inhabitants, and 
 to see how much in the way of wider streets, 
 sweeter sanitation, and the subjection of small-pox 
 to the quill is possible. Not that it will do to 
 make too hasty an induction that this is one proof 
 more that the " quill is mightier than the sword," 
 for here the two divide the honors. The quill 
 has a hilt and a strong arm behind it to drive it in. 
 " Hinc illcB lachrymce " when the British doctors 
 go round ; along with some savage fights for " the 
 wisdom of our ancestors." But Hong Kong be- 
 longs to England, and here the "foreign devil" 
 has his own " outside barbarian " wiU. 
 
CANTON RIVER 113 
 
 Canton lies ninety-five miles away from 
 Hong Kong, up an enormous river, which 
 — for fear of misspelling it, should I attempt the 
 Chinese name — I will call, as the English do, the 
 Canton River. We embarked at five p. M. on a 
 fair-sized steamboat, the lower deck of which was 
 littered with a swarm of third-class Chinese, pigging 
 in together ; while the upper deck was set apart, 
 forward for respectable Chinese, and aft for Eu- 
 ropeans. The respectable Chinese furnished their 
 own bedding and opium, and lay, cheek by jowl, 
 beside one another ; while the Europeans had state- 
 rooms to themselves, with soap, towels, and other 
 foreign prejudices. 
 
 Scarcely had we started when an American lady 
 came up to me in anxiety, and asked, " What 's 
 the reason there is a sword in my room? " Indeed, 
 pistols and rifles were everywhere lying around 
 handy ; but the lady in question, who had never 
 at home observed on the Fall River boats this 
 especial kind of life-saving apparatus, seemed 
 greatly nonplussed. So, to relieve her feelings, I 
 was forced to tell her that the sword was for her to 
 defend herself with to the last gasp, if the Chinese 
 should attempt to seize the boat, murder the pas- 
 sengers, and loot their trunks : further calling her 
 attention to certain strong iron gratings that had 
 been let down and clamped over the gangways from 
 the lower to the upper deck. She at once became 
 composed, as the New England woman always is 
 when she learns the reason why. 
 
 These little preliminaries were not indications of 
 
114 CHINA 
 
 a purely sportive fancy on the part of our captain. 
 Many tlie steamboat that has been served this turn 
 by pirates in the guise of passengers, the last in- 
 stance occurring but two years ago. Our own trip, 
 however, proved entirely uneventful ; and we could 
 only hope that the swarm on the lower deck had 
 not had their feelings unduly hurt by the seeming 
 distrust implied in the iron gratings. Still, it was 
 to be set down as another agreeable and romantic 
 surprise to find piracy still so rife in these waters, 
 and to learn how many desperate encounters, 
 involving the destruction of whole fleets of pirati- 
 cal junks, it had taken to bring matters even to 
 so comparative a state of safety as the present. 
 Indeed, in Canton itself I found the native river 
 passenger-boats — stern-wheelers, worked not by 
 steam power, but by the leg power of coolies on 
 a treadmill — were armed to the teeth with cannon 
 and smaller arms in the way of cutlasses and guns. 
 It seemed odd to think of such a state of things 
 existing on the interior water-ways of a vast em- 
 pire, until I began to ask myself how long ago 
 it was since Dick Turpin was distinguishing him- 
 self in the immediate neighborhood of London by 
 overhauling reverend bishop on Hounslow Heath. 
 Furthermore, one of our party made disagreeable 
 allusions to holding up trains and looting their 
 passengers on some of our own American railways. 
 But these last are only infrequent interludes, when 
 the cowboys are feeling a little playful. Here they 
 are the chronic thing. 
 
CANTON RIVER 115 
 
 ^ Never to be forgotten is the scene presented 
 by the Canton Kiver population. Here in 
 their sampans and larger boats are born, live, and 
 die a quarter of a million of people. They have 
 no dwelling-place ashore. A diminutive section 
 of the stern of the boat, covered with a matting, 
 and often not over seven feet by four, is parlor, 
 kitchen, bedroom, birth-chamber, death-chamber, of 
 the whole family. With her baby tied on her back, 
 the mother sweeps the heavy scull, while the older 
 children take as naturally to the oar as ducks to 
 their web-feet. Indeed, the women, as a general 
 rule, command the boat, steer it, and make the 
 bargains. As the phrase runs, "She bosses the 
 boat, and her husband bosses her." But boss the 
 boat she does, and a delectable sight it is to watch 
 her skill. A ripple of indication that there is a 
 fare of any kind, and fifty sampans dash for the 
 spot like a flight of Florida turkey-buzzards sud- 
 denly cognizant of a dead dog. The melee that 
 ensues is simply indescribable. Babies' heads, 
 on the backs of their mothers, rolls round like a 
 planetary system of bowling-alley balls, the centri- 
 petal force, however, so exactly balancing the cen- 
 trifugal as to prevent their flying off into space. 
 Sampans clash, thrust, and lever one anothgr. 
 The smaller children sit, or are jounced, in pa- 
 tient, impassive. Oriental imperturbability, while 
 the father and the older ones poke with bamboo 
 poles or fling themselves on their backs and skill- 
 fully kick at critical stages of the maternal tactics. 
 Each family is a cooperative unit, for success 
 
116 CHINA 
 
 means rice or no rice. Thus for miles the surface 
 of the great river seems one successive human ant- 
 heap, wriggling, with bamboo poles for antennae 
 and oars for nimble legs. 
 
 Arriving as we did in Canton at the break 
 of day, we had the best of chances to witness 
 the religious devotions of the countless river swarm, 
 consisting in the discharge of fire-crackers from 
 each separate boat, to scare away the devils. Never 
 before had we seen on so impressive a scale the 
 practical application of the maxim, " Fight the 
 devil with fire ! " and the spectacle inevitably led 
 to certain profound speculations on the relation 
 between business and religion. To supply the need- 
 ful missals and breviaries for the morning devotions 
 of such millions, the manufacture of fire-crackers 
 in China must be on an absolutely colossal scale. 
 Imagination refuses to grasp the numbers of powder 
 and paper miUs thus literally " rooted and grounded 
 in the faith." Should foreign missionaries convert 
 the millions of their customers to a creed prescrib- 
 ing a less noisy and more inward form of morning 
 worship, total financial ruin would at once stare 
 no end of manufacturers and workmen in the face. 
 Forthwith would they band together to a man 
 to destroy in blood the " execrable superstition." 
 New and vivid light thus broke on Saint Paul's 
 rough experience in Ephesus with the makers of 
 images of Diana, till, just as the streets of that city 
 rang with the cry, " Great is Diana of the Ephe- 
 sians ! " so one seemed to hear all over China a 
 
THE SHAMIEN 117 
 
 mob of ferocious voices shouting, " Great is the 
 Fire-cracker as a Devil Fighter ! " 
 
 To see a familiar Scripture passage — worn so 
 threadbare by repetition in the common pulpit — 
 thus suddenly lighted up with such a blaze of fire 
 and bang of emphasis, acts as a powerful imag- 
 inative stimulant to the traditional mind. Besides, 
 it enlarges charity. If as sympathetic a tear as 
 Laurence Sterne could shed comes stealing down 
 the cheek for the ruined paper and powder manu- 
 facturers of China, why should it be thought un- 
 christian to indulge in another as genuine over 
 Alexander the coppersmith, and his poor fellow- 
 craftsmen in Ephesus ? Nay, were it venturing 
 on a yet more reprehensible latitudinarianism of 
 stricture to aver that even the little tots of the 
 Chinese children on the sampans evinced a live- 
 liness of interest in the morning devotions, not 
 always manifest in those of the same immature age 
 at family worship at home ? Yet, we are forever 
 insisting on the supreme importance of making 
 religion attractive to the young. 
 
 In Canton, we were to be the guests of old 
 and dear American friends, living in the 
 large and beautiful park, the Shamien, the conces- 
 sion ceded by the Chinese government for the resi- 
 dence quarter of foreigners. This park, a mile and 
 a quarter in circumference and surrounded on all 
 sides by the river and by wide canals, makes a 
 little bit of heaven in contrast with the crowding 
 and squalor of the city within the walls. To it we 
 
118 CHINA 
 
 were rowed down through the hurly-burly of the 
 river, and oh ! the blessed change of getting ex- 
 tricated from the mob of boats, mounting the steps 
 of the high stone wall, and finding ourselves greeted 
 under the banyan-trees, and again in the big, wide- 
 verandahed, hospitable house, by such true-hearted 
 friends. Breakfast announced, how eagerly we fall 
 to work discussing a tender beefsteak and stiU ten- 
 derer memories of loved ones at home ! Beautiful 
 as the lotus flowering out of the mud, such, and 
 more than such, the sight, out of the mud of the 
 relation between man and woman in China, of a 
 loving American husband and wife, and a bevy of 
 sweet children to kiss. 
 
 No doubt the grace of charity is a beautifiil 
 thing, but ever with the proviso that a line is some- 
 where drawn between it and self -stultification. It 
 does not, then, seem to me invidious to say that the 
 man who has ever had a mother, sisters, a wife, 
 daughters, and lived with them in the richer, deeper 
 relations habitual among ourselves, who does not 
 start back as before an abyss of spiritual bru- 
 tality at the contemplation of what, in comparison, 
 even the ideal of these relations stands for in China, 
 is simply to be ruled out of court as incompetent 
 to express any comparative social judgment. Not 
 that there need be one whit of praise or blame, one 
 ascription of personal merit or demerit in such 
 judgments, more than in comparing a rose with a 
 cabbage. None the less there breathes an atmos- 
 phere of sentiment around the one that is wanting in 
 the other ; and just this prosaic lack of any atmos- 
 
CANTON 119 
 
 phere of sentiment is what makes China the cabbage 
 of the nations. 
 
 Breakfast over, we found that ample pro- 
 vision had been made by our host for our ex- 
 ploration of Canton. Four chairs on long bamboo 
 poles, with three coolies apiece to bear them on their 
 shoulders, stood ready, — one for the guide, one 
 for our host, and one each for my friend and my- 
 self. Soon we were mounted aloft, and away 
 trotted our coolies out through the leafy Eden of 
 Shamien into the Inferno of Canton. On entering 
 the walls of the city I took it for granted that the 
 inscription over the gateway must read, "All 
 hope abandon, ye who enter here ! " 
 
 It is useless to try to describe an experience of 
 seven hours within the walls of Canton. The thing 
 must be seen, heard, felt, and smelt. I desire to do 
 absolute justice to this mighty city of a million in- 
 habitants, the Paris of China, as it has been called, 
 and so freely admit at the outset that Shanghai 
 seemed to me to bear off the honors in the variety 
 and differentiation of nauseous snieUs engendered. 
 In Canton the effect produced is, if I may use the 
 term, more composite, — a blending of all the va- 
 rieties in one heavy, fetid odor, akin, I take it, in 
 an inverse way, to what is aimed at by French 
 chemists in the perfume called "Mille Fleurs." 
 But analysis is useless in such cases. I can only 
 say that the smell of Canton is more massive, more 
 metropolitan. 
 
 Even in our sparsely settled country, it is often 
 
120 CHINA 
 
 said that tliere are too many people in the world. 
 Ah ! to what nightmare dimensions the sense of 
 this grows in Canton ! The streets are from five to 
 eight feet wide, the houses on either side are high, 
 the slit of sky above is shut out by mattings, and 
 the throngs pouring along are ceaseless, repulsive- 
 looking, offensive to the touch. Of course, we, 
 lifted on high on the shoulders of our coolies, es- 
 caped the push and elbowing, and, like the gods on 
 Olympus, could look down serenely on the steaming, 
 struggling humanity beneath us. Now and then 
 we would meet the chair of some other Olympian 
 mandarin like ourselves, coming the other way ; 
 and then the question of squeezing by threatened 
 to become international. 
 
 Such, in outward aspects, was for hours our pas- 
 sage through the enormous city. There were few 
 open squares, no park oases of trees, flowers, and 
 water, no fine architectural effects, no ample and 
 beautiful temple grounds. The largest open area 
 embraced the dwelling and gardens of the former 
 Manchu governor, which the English, on taking 
 Canton, had insisted should be ceded, in token of 
 submission, as the site of their own consulate. Per- 
 haps the next area in size surrounded the Temple 
 of Horrors, full of life-sized figures undergoing the 
 tortures of the Buddhist hell, an area so crowded 
 with hucksters, fortune-tellers, gamblers, beggars, 
 and thieves as to elicit from my friend the remark 
 that the " hell outside was as striking as the hell 
 within." But we had made up our minds to do 
 Canton, declining no invitation to go anywhere but 
 
CANTON 121 
 
 to the execution grounds to see some heads chopped 
 off. To the vermin-ridden prisons we did go, in 
 which among other wretched beings in heavy chains, 
 we saw one poor woman enduring a ten years' sen- 
 tence. On my asking a high civil official what had 
 been her offense, he answered that it was because 
 her son had committed murder. Whereat, to my 
 further query as to why she was thus punished for 
 his crime, he replied, " Because she did not give 
 him better advice." This seemed to me the patri- 
 archal system of China with a vengeance. I may 
 have drawn a wrong inference from the words, but 
 do not think I did, as the law-officer spoke admira- 
 ble English, and seemed to think the reason ought to 
 satisfy any rational mind, as it failed to mine, for 
 lack, no doubt, of a due sense of my own mother's 
 responsibility for aU the scurvy things I have done 
 in life. 
 
 And yet, in contrast with all this outward ugli- 
 ness, what a different world was opened upon visit- 
 ing one after another a series of the little manufac- 
 tory shops. Oh, the exquisite silks and satins that 
 were unrolled, the fairy-like ivory carvings that 
 were brought out, the delicate filigree work in gold 
 and silver, the beautiful embroideries we saw grow- 
 ing under deft fingers before our eyes ! The bronzes, 
 the porcelains, so marvelously finished, so harmo- 
 nious in tints and dyes ! And to reflect that all 
 this had been going on centuries ago as to-day, go- 
 ing on when we as peoples were sunk in barbarism ! 
 What a beehive of industry the mighty city ! What 
 legions of patient, cunning, tasteful craftsmen. 
 
122 CHINA 
 
 wdrking their twelve and fifteen hours a day ! 
 What temperamental phlegm of calm in every fibre 
 of body and mind, along with such quiet cheerful- 
 ness ! 
 
 True, there is no indication of any high spirit- 
 ual ideals of the beautiful or of the sublime in 
 the models they so deftly imitate. Again, as in 
 Japan, comes the thought " Great in little things, 
 little in great." While in Greece and in Grecized 
 Italy, hosts of just as clever workmen reproduced 
 in endless number the statues of Phidias and 
 Praxiteles, the paintings of Apelles, till the poorest 
 households possessed them in niches and on their 
 painted walls, here nothing is reproduced but nests 
 of carved ivory balls delicate as gossamer, grace- 
 ful designs in lacquer, grotesque dragon shapes 
 in bronze, wavy sheens in silk. The contrast is not 
 raised for censure, but for clearness of impression. 
 China never evolved anything in the shape of an 
 artist sublimely inspired in thought or imagination. 
 Prosaic in the presence of this higher world, what 
 poetry she has works itself off in pretty and gro- 
 tesque fancies. The great models of a nation, not 
 its skillful imitators, is it that determine its stand- 
 ing in the realms of art, literature, philosophy, and 
 religion. 
 
 No sight in all Canton is so full of interest 
 
 and so explains the genius, or rather lack of 
 
 original genius, of this mighty nation, as what, for 
 
 want of a better expression, might be called the 
 
 Examination Halls of the countless candidates for 
 
CANTON EXAMINATION HALLS 123 
 
 positions in the civil service, the one opening to a 
 career in China, from the grade of the most ordi- 
 nary functionary to that of prime minister. China 
 has no hereditary nobility. The highest place is 
 free to the lowest man, and all through education. 
 An ideal programme truly ! — if carried out in the 
 spirit as well as in the flesh. 
 
 To call up before the untraveled American a 
 vivid picture of the Examination Halls of Can- 
 ton, the most practical thing would be to refer 
 him point blank to the cattle-yards of Chicago, 
 covering with their acres on acres of pens such vast 
 areas of space. Then, should he mentally subtract 
 from each several pen its ox, and substitute for him 
 a Chinaman with ink and hair-pencil and paper, he 
 will realize the whole scene as distinctly as if he 
 were on the spot in China. In Canton, there are 
 12,000 of these pens, one for each of the 12,000 can- 
 didates. In this he is shut up by himself for three 
 days and three nights, then let out for three, then 
 returned for three more, at the end of which time 
 he is supposed to have written out all the answers 
 to the examination papers. Not infrequently a 
 candidate is found to have died in his pen of 
 anxiety and exhaustion ; but there are plenty to 
 take his place. Indeed, fairly appalling is the 
 stress of competition. Sometimes, out of the 
 12,000, not over one or two hundred pass the or- 
 deal which enrolls them among the literati, and ren- 
 ders them eligible to place in the public service. 
 StiU, the contest is renewed, till it is no very un- 
 common thing to find men of over eighty, and at 
 
124 CHINA 
 
 times of over ninety, once again volunteering in 
 the forlorn hope. The mind is awed at an illus- 
 tration of the struggle for life on a scale as stupen- 
 dous in the world of letters as that of the codfish 
 and herring for survival in the sea. 
 
 What, however, is the nature of this terrible 
 ordeal .through which the successful candidate 
 must pass? In what classes of studies is he ex- 
 amined, and with what probable results on intel- 
 lect, character, imagination, and ideal of life ? The 
 Chinese classics, the work of national sages who 
 lived thousands of years ago — these, with the enor- 
 mous commentaries on them, are the fountain- 
 heads of knowledge from which the candidate is 
 supposed to derive all his light. Great men were 
 these sages, who digested many a pregnant thought, 
 but who along with this elaborated a system of 
 ceremonialism in manners so vast and intricate, a 
 labyrinth of artificial formalism so confusing, that 
 it is the study of a lifetime to know just what to 
 do and what not to do on each public or private 
 occasion, while yet it is civil and moral death to 
 fail to know it. Fifty French dancing-masters 
 condensed into one would remain a composite un- 
 tutored barbarian in etiquette, in comparison with 
 what is demanded of an average Chinese candidate. 
 Memory is, then, the one intellectual faculty that 
 counts most. The slightest departure from pre- 
 scription, worse than a crime, is a ceremonial 
 blunder, and a ceremonial blunder outweighs in 
 deep-dyed guilt a whole catalogue of crimes. 
 
 Here, then, is a principle of natural selection 
 
CANTON EXAMINATION HALLS 125 
 
 that weeds out from the start all variations from 
 the permanent specific type. Variations are the 
 black sheep of the flock, to be killed off outright, 
 lest they should affect the uniform color of the in- 
 tellectual wool. Should, by any freak of nature, a 
 single pen be found infected by the presence of a 
 sporadic youthful Harvey haunted with a new idea 
 of the circulation of the blood, by a sporadic youth- 
 ful Jenner mentally poisoned with the virus of 
 vaccination, his career would end on the spot. As 
 for a youthful Goethe, venturing in his examina^ 
 tion paper on the wild suggestion that the human 
 skull might be shown to consist of modified verte- 
 brae, measures so stringent would at once be taken 
 with his own vertebrae, that, in his case at least, 
 no further demonstration of the truth or falsity of 
 the theory would be available. No ! every trace 
 of innovation, every hint of a new idea, is the 
 worse than worthless girl baby to be incontinently 
 drowned. Thus is the Chinese man's head sub- 
 jected to the same kind of aborting clamp as the 
 Chinese woman's foot, with the like result of a 
 life-long intellectual toddle. 
 
 Discouraging, then, to anything akin to origi- 
 nality of mind as this stupendous system must be 
 admitted to be, bread and butter, career, wealth, 
 dignities, all turn absolutely on never deviating 
 into originality. The very name of originality is 
 but the synonym not for mere lack of veneration, 
 but for positive delirious desire to trample on the 
 sacred images of Confucius and Mencius. None 
 the less for the attainment of the great practical 
 
126 CHINA 
 
 object it has in view, namely the grand anti-Dar- 
 winian demonstration of the permanence of species, 
 at least in China, this vast educational system be- 
 longs among the most impressive spectacles in hu- 
 man history ; achieving its end more perfectly and 
 on a vaster scale than have any of the most potent 
 educational systems — the Spartan, the Venetian, 
 even that of the Catholic Church with its priest- 
 hood — the world has ever seen. While it weeds 
 out originality, — the one bane of the immutable 
 conservatism it would maintain, — it none the less 
 unerringly selects the class of minds most effective 
 for the end it has in view : men of strong health 
 capable of enduring the severest strain ; men of 
 powerful memory of endless details ; men of horse 
 logic never troubled about premises ; men in whom 
 automatic repetition of the most intricate system 
 of ceremonialism has replaced every impulse to 
 spontaneity; men, in fine, who can decorously in- 
 troduce more in the way of unimpeachable moral 
 maxims into the preamble of the worst government 
 " squeeze " than elsewhere can be paralleled. Thus 
 has been fashioned the chilled steel die with the 
 irresistible weight of pressure to force it home, 
 through which one authorized image and super- 
 scription has been stamped on the mental coin of 
 the empire. 
 
 Plato's dream, in his Republic, of a gov- 
 ernment administered solely by philosophers 
 has in China been brought down from the sky of 
 fanciful speculation into the solid world of beef and 
 
A GOVERNMENT OF PHILOSOPHERS 127 
 
 pudding. Concrete in every atom, as soon would 
 the Chinaman think of separating a boulder from 
 the force of gravitation inherent in it, as theory 
 from practical every-day embodiment. No need, 
 therefore, for him to go with Plato to Syracuse to 
 hunt up an amiable, progressive tyrant to serve for 
 a poit sto from which to work his philosophic 
 lever. He takes his stand just where he is, and 
 begins to pry away. 
 
 Now this ideal of a government by philosophers, 
 or saints, or the two combined, is one that through- 
 out human history has exerted a spell of fascination 
 over the higher order of minds. To them it has 
 stood for the legitimate reign of reason over chaos, 
 of virtue over vice, — the only reign worthy the 
 allegiance of a noble nature. Stupendous the scale 
 on which the Brahmins strove to carry out this 
 ideal in India ; the Egyptian priesthood, in the 
 valley of the Nile ; the mediaeval Catholic Church, 
 in Europe ; although in each of these great instances 
 philosophy was inseparably bound up with theology. 
 Here, in China, on the contrary, the colossal experi- 
 ment has been on a purely mundane foundation. 
 " Respect the gods, but keep them at a distance ! " 
 Heaven is their realm, China ours. Let them hoe 
 their row, while we hoe our own ! 
 
 Sooner or later, every great race gets a lawgiver 
 or prophet made in its own image, while reacting 
 in turn on the race itself through the mass and 
 momentum of his own greater personality. Mo- 
 hammed was, tooth and nail, the fiercest Bedouin 
 in all Arabia, though a highly sublimated Bedouin. 
 
128 CHINA 
 
 Gautama Buddha was the most absolute type of 
 pessimist in all India, though carrying the habitual 
 cheerfulness that is so unfailing a characteristic of 
 pessimists to greater lengths than is possible with 
 men in whom traces of optimism still survive. 
 Look now at Confucius, the colossal man in whom 
 first embodied itself the vast Mongolian race, only 
 to be reacted on by the weight of his enormous 
 return pressure ! China, always traditional, made 
 him, and then he re-made China. Impossible is it 
 to speak of the man but in terms of wonder, rever- 
 ence, and love ; as equally impossible is it to 
 escape a half humorous smile at the prosaic, mat- 
 ter-of-fact, dead-level respectability of certain sides 
 of his intelligence and character, — the measure, 
 no doubt, of traditional Mongolian alloy requisite 
 to fit his fine gold for a circulating medium tough 
 enough to withstand the wear and tear of China. 
 
 Confucius said of himself — too much reverence 
 for the wisdom of his ancestors had he not to say 
 it ! — that he was " not an originator but only a 
 transmitter." Of the sin of originality — literally 
 the " original sin " of China — he sought to shake 
 his skirts clear from the start. Yao and Shun, cer- 
 tain impossible paragons of perfection in the way 
 of mythical Chinese kings of the past, were held 
 responsible for all his ideas, — kings apart from 
 whose august sanction he would never have ventured 
 on the impiety of entertaining ideas at all. Very 
 much with the same solemnity of conviction might 
 Newton have averred, of his own relation to the 
 law of gravitation, that he was simply a transmit- 
 
A GOVERNMENT OF PHILOSOPHERS 129 
 
 ter of the long-established goings-on of the ancestral 
 planetary system, indeed, had never gone a hair's 
 breadth beyond a literal statement of what had 
 been its venerated custom from the beginning. 
 Well, if Confucius was not an original mind, an 
 original character, an original forecaster of human 
 destiny, then the doctrine of evolution should be 
 allowed its own sweet will in resolving back all 
 human personalities into the aboriginal pregnancy 
 of the nebular mist ! 
 
 The grand, wise, humane man, so benevolent and 
 compassionate, so sagacious, so sweet and humor- 
 ous, so consecrated to his mission, so devout, too, 
 in his deep, though unimpassioned way! More- 
 over, such a sincere believer in Yao and Shun, and 
 in the doctrine that manners make the man and 
 that the two are one and inseparable ; in fine, in 
 the immutable truth that there are at least three 
 thousand external postures which, being reveren- 
 tially assumed, become so many channels for the 
 inflow into the soul of corresponding interior graces 
 of genuine courtesy ! So exceptionally rich, too, in 
 the man was his native soil of goodness that no 
 doubt he could live up to every one of the three 
 thousand external postures and inform them all 
 with the spirit, whatever may be said of the dry 
 rot of formalism and insincerity they have set on 
 in the hearts of his countrymen. 
 
 Such a literal and matter-of-fact believer in the 
 kingdom of heaven on earth as Confucius, the 
 world never saw. Heaven meant to him an om- 
 nipotent, ever-embodied, tangible presence in the 
 
130 CHINA 
 
 world now and here of a grand, orderly, beneficent 
 law that need only be recognized and obeyed, and 
 lo ! its kingdom, the kingdom of heaven, was on 
 hand. Here was the sublime side of the great 
 sage. Profound was his insight into the laws of 
 nature which alone can establish the well-founded 
 state and family, and for all this China owes him an 
 immeasurable debt. But now comes in the racial 
 and personal limitation of the man, namely, his 
 overpowering faith in the method of working from 
 outside to inside. People at large, to use his own 
 favorite expression, are like so much water, which 
 always assumes the exact shape of whatever dish it 
 is poured into. If only, then, he could fabricate 
 the right kind of morally-shaped dish out of a few 
 rules, all the rest desired would follow of itself. 
 In all this, in his own lofty, way, he believed as 
 profoundly as the most commonplace pie-maker in 
 his own power to make all his pies come out alike, 
 if only he can subject their common dough to one 
 and the same fluted tin-cutter. 
 
 Unhappily, on just this fatal inheritance from its 
 mighty sage is founded the vast Chinese system of 
 education for a government by philosophers. Of 
 course it requires an immense supply of philoso- 
 phers to fill all the offices of so immense an empire, 
 while alas ! by definition, a philosopher is a man 
 who thinks, and yet most men do not think except 
 in a sadly lopsided way. Not for a moment, how- 
 ever, does the practical Chinese mind suffer itself to 
 be balked by any such purely theoretical difficulty. 
 First-hand thinking enough, it says in substance, 
 
A GOVERNMENT OF PHILOSOPHERS 131 
 
 has already been done, and done supremely well. 
 Tlie moral-sage dish has been shaped to absolute 
 perfection. Now squeeze into the mould, like so 
 much clay, all candidates aspiring for place, and 
 they will be turned out so many regulation-sized 
 philosophic bricks, each one of them an exact copy 
 of Confucius, repeating the same thoughts, never 
 deviating from the same methods, and all able to 
 imitate to a hair the same endless posturings. Thus, 
 the most careless mind can hardly fail to be struck 
 with certain salient points of difference between this 
 brick-yard system pursued at Canton and the freer 
 system adopted, say, at Harvard. Truly, a serious 
 comparison of the Canton examination papers with 
 those in use at any American or European coUege 
 furnishes one of the most comically interesting and 
 instructive historical studies that can be indulged 
 in ; and, if entered on soberly and discreetly, — a 
 state of mind not so easy to maintain, — will throw a 
 flood of light on China not to be gained from read- 
 ing a dozen portly volumes. Let me modestly com- 
 mend it to teachers of history in Harvard, Yale, 
 or Columbia. Specimens of Chinese examination 
 papers are easy to get at ; for example, " The China 
 Review," vol. Ariii. No. 6. 
 
 That such a system, carried out on so stupendous 
 a scale, should prove a potent cause of national ar- 
 rest of development is of course inevitable. Not 
 that among the literati of China there have not been 
 in every generation acute thinkers, g,nd men of pro- 
 found feeling and lofty character. No system can 
 utterly destroy in powerful natures the germs of 
 
132 CHINA 
 
 intellectual curiosity and native love of virtue, 
 that, spite of every obstacle, will assert themselves. 
 European scholars long resident in the country 
 assert that from time to time books appear — 
 secretly circulated indeed and hard to get hold of 
 — that are characterized by strong, independent 
 thinking. Indeed, such scholars further insist that, 
 just as when great, overshadowing forests are cut 
 down, an immediate regrowth of trees of a different 
 species sets in, trees already on hand as plantlets 
 and only awaiting a chance at sun and air, so woidd 
 it prove in China with the upspringing of a new 
 and vigorous mental growth, could only the present 
 great Mandarin forest have the axe laid at its roots. 
 Meanwhile, however, this forest continues to spread 
 the deadly mildew of its shade over every tiny 
 nursling, and thus does the mind and heart of the 
 average educated Chinaman become mere punk and 
 powder, while outwardly he flourishes like the green 
 bay tree, through the simple activity of his external 
 bark. 
 
 Such, then, is the system of education that sets 
 its stamp on the politico-literary officials of China, 
 the men who impart the tone to the ideas and pol- 
 icy of the empire. Thence spreads to the people 
 at large insincerity and deep-rooted distrust be- 
 tween man and man. From top to bottom, as is 
 admitted on all hands, government is honeycombed 
 with corruption. The one honest service in the 
 empire is the collection of customs, and that is ad- 
 ministered by Europeans and Americans, because 
 there China cannot help herself. With no concern 
 
A GOVERNMENT OF PHILOSOPHERS 133 
 
 with government, the people scarcely know the 
 meaning of patriotism ; indeed, when the English 
 and French were besieging Pekin, cities all round 
 made private terms for themselves, supplying in 
 return provisions, buUock-carts, and coolies, — the 
 same thing as if, were Boston besieged, Salem, 
 Lynn, and Worcester should agree to furnish all 
 the beef, hay, and horses the enemy needed, so only 
 that they themselves were let alone. Thus so hol- 
 low a shell as the Chinese Empire nowhere else 
 exists ; while none the less bodily and in latent men- 
 tal capacity the Chinese are one of the most power- 
 ful races on the globe, — far the superiors of the 
 Japanese in solidity of mind, in business capacity, 
 in potential depth of thought and persistence of 
 will, in almost everything but artistic sensibility.^ 
 
 1 And yet a conflict between China and Japan has turned out 
 like a fight between an ox and a hornet, in which the hornet, able 
 to get in everywhere and the ox nowhere, the big, helpless boTine 
 runs bellowing across the plain. So much will stereotyped rou- 
 tine and too protracted addiction to Yao and Shan do with a 
 mighty people. 
 
THE TROPICS 
 
 From Hong Kong, on a radiant December 
 morning, we set sail on the German steam- 
 ship Oldenburg for Singapore ; and as the bracing 
 winter weather had depressed the mercury as near 
 the freezing point as 80° Fahrenheit, we got away 
 in a fine exhilaration of spirits for the veritable 
 Tropics. That Kaiser Wilhelm II. had close at 
 heart keeping warm tender memories of the Vater- 
 land in the breasts of his subjects, even in the 
 farthest East, was made clear, not alone by the 
 lively fluttering of the national flag aloft, but by 
 the stirring strains of the Wacht am Khein from a 
 German brass band, and, deeper yet, by the broach- 
 ing on deck of a keg of ice-cold Bavarian beer ; 
 this last a bit of symbolism as enthusiastically 
 repeated each morning and afternoon of the voy- 
 age as the sunrise and sunset salute of the colors 
 enjoined on the army at every military post. 
 
 Not, however, that due courtesies were not 
 equally shown to the deepest national sensibilities 
 of China. From our bows hung suspended an im- 
 mense festoon of at least two hundred and fifty 
 packs of fire-crackers ; and if ever the devils were 
 duly warned off from any ship, they were from 
 ours when these started their spitfire fusillade. As 
 large numbers of Chinese emigrants were steerage 
 
136 THE TROPICS 
 
 passengers, it was comforting to a humane mind 
 to feel that they no doubt were experiencing a 
 quietude of peace commensurate with the scale of 
 the noisy thaumaturgic manifesto. Thus West and 
 East met and kissed one another, as Teuton and 
 Chinaman were made happy, each in his chosen way. 
 
 Far back in early boyhood days, when 
 assiduously neglecting his studies at school, 
 one none the less may have received some single 
 impression which all through life has remained 
 indelible. It was wrought, perhaps, on the imagi- 
 nation by a little view in his " Pictorial Geogra- 
 phy " of the island peak of Teneriffe, — a view in 
 which a perpendicular, snow-crowned mountain 
 pierced sheer through the clouds into the upper 
 sky, while at its base lay a ravishing dream of 
 naked Negro boys, cocoanut-palms, sugar-cane, and 
 heavily-laden bananar-trees, all basking in a lan- 
 guishing atmosphere of peace, in which it seemed 
 impossible that school should ever keep. Many 
 the cent, no doubt, he had invested in bits of cocoa- 
 nut, and even in cocoanut-cakes. But here was a 
 land in which an ingenuous boy needed only duly 
 to aggravate a monkey to procure gratis in return 
 a voUey of the blessed nuts, and then retire to the 
 grateful shade, punch holes in the welcome mis- 
 siles, and drink their delicious milk. Cows, as 
 lacteal fonts, seemed prosaic in comparison. From 
 that date followed a veritable passion for the 
 tropics that haunted him through life. Such, at 
 any rate, was my own child experience. 
 
SINGAPORE 137 
 
 . In Singapore I felt sure of the genuine thing, 
 — no miserable compromise, like Florida, between 
 winter and summer, frost and fever, where a tiger 
 would be subject to pulmonary complaints or a 
 python too sluggish from cold to embrace with due 
 fervor a deer. The region I craved must lie close 
 to the equator and under the vertical sun. Its 
 inhabitants must be innocent of clothing, lest the 
 beauty of their bronze or jet-black bodies should 
 be impaired. Flaming red turbans and red loin- 
 cloths they might wear, to be in keeping with the 
 equally flaming flowers of the jungle, but beyond 
 this, nothing. The huts must be thatched with 
 palm-leaves, the bread must grow on trees, the 
 coffee-berries must thrust themselves in through 
 the windows and ask to be plucked, roasted, and 
 decocted ; cinnamon, nutmeg, and cloves must drop 
 spontaneously into the bread-fruit pudding, duly 
 to flavor it ; while mangoes, mangosteens, and pine- 
 apples should voice their bewildering rival claims 
 to furnish the luscious dessert. 
 
 Such was the blissful dream, as day after 
 III. . 
 
 day we floated over summer seas, without 
 
 the change of a degree in the direction or an 
 
 increase for an hour in the gentle pressure abeam 
 
 of the northeast monsoon. It was the poetry of 
 
 sailing, in which it seemed that captain, crew, ship, 
 
 and engines might all be lapsed in a long sweet 
 
 siesta and no harm could come on such charmed 
 
 waves. How tender and considerate, too, the 
 
 geological providence that, in thrusting out the 
 
138 THE TROPICS 
 
 Malay Peninsula a thousand miles, till it nearly 
 toucbed the equator, had made such kindly provi- 
 sion that no planetary pilgrim should be able to 
 girdle the earth without this tropical experience ! 
 
 Singapore, a possession of Great Britain, — 
 what does she not possess I — lies at the extreme 
 southern point of the Malay Peninsula, and is 
 only two degrees from the equator. I begrudged 
 the two degrees ; but one cannot have everything 
 in a world so imperfectly constituted. The actual 
 settlement is on a little island, not, however, so 
 far from the mainland that a tiger cannot swim 
 over from the domain of the Sultan of Johore, to 
 pick up an appetizing native whenever so disposed. 
 Visited with constant showers, it combines in its 
 blazing sunshine and abundant moisture the condi- 
 tions of the most exuberant tropical luxuriance. 
 A richer variety of nationalities, moreover, could 
 hardly be coveted by the most exacting ethnologist. 
 To specify a few, there are Achinese, Africans, 
 Arabs, Armenians, Bengalis, Burmese, Chinese, 
 Dyaks, Javanese, Malays, Manillamen, Parsees, 
 Persians, Siamese, Tamils. Singapore, in fine, is 
 the great central meeting-place for the trade of 
 China, Japan, Java, the Malayan Archipelago, 
 India, Arabia, Abyssinia, and Europe, and is full 
 of residents from each. 
 
 It was just after sunset that our steamship glided 
 into the harbor, and so late before we were finally 
 tied up to the pier that we hardly cared to venture 
 ashore for the night. Indeed, two young men, 
 who started out in search of a hotel, returned 
 
SINGAPORE 139 
 
 by midnight in a sadly demoralized nervous con- 
 dition. They had secured a sleeping-room, but 
 found that its tenancy was of the nature of the 
 Box and Cox arrangement, in the familiar farce. 
 Box was in occupancy. He was a huge serpent. 
 In vain the landlord offered another room. They 
 precipitately retired to the ship. None the less, 
 their report looked so promising in the tropical 
 way that the rest of us waited impatiently for the 
 dawn. 
 
 How beautiful the dawn, and what a story was 
 told to the finite little tourist as to his real posi- 
 tion on the planet by the great sidereal clock of 
 the heavens ! Close down to the horizon in the 
 north hung the pole star ; while at fifteen degrees 
 of elevation in the south stood the constellation of 
 the Southern Cross. Gradually, absorbed in the 
 excess of light of the rising sun, they vanished 
 from sight. 
 
 With sunrise began the bustle of day ; and, 
 as I looked out on the side toward the town, 
 the first grateful sight was a rude cart drawn by 
 a veritable pair of the cream-colored, humped- 
 back, reversed-horn cattle, so familiar to all fre- 
 quenters of Barnum's Circus. They were driven 
 by an almost coal-black Tamil, in a bright red 
 turban and red loin-cloth, — a piece of such fine 
 naked realism that the great moral showman 
 would have had essentially to modify it before pre- 
 senting it to the decorous American public. None 
 the less, over the cattle I could not help exclaim- 
 
140 THE TROPICS 
 
 ing : " They look as natural as though under their 
 native tent on the Back Bay, Boston ! " On the 
 other side of the ship, however, was soon revealed 
 a spectacle such as Barnum in his most inspired 
 hour would never have ventured on. Immense 
 barges, filled with sacks of coal, each Swarming 
 with fifty or more naked fellows, equal in anat- 
 omy to any of the gladiatorial saints in Michel 
 Angelo's Last Judgment, and who would have 
 driven the austere and self-contained master wild 
 with enthusiasm, had come out to coal our ship. 
 £!x tempore scaffoldings were erected, on the 
 various stages of which the men stood in ranges, 
 heaving from one to another the heavy sacks. No 
 conceivable attitude of grace, strength, and agility 
 but was struck ; and such pure, unmitigated enjoy- 
 ment of superb legs, and loins, and backs, and 
 sinewy shoulders, I never reveled in before. Ah ! 
 why do not our artists come oat to the tropics to 
 pursue their studies ? We talk of our life-schools 
 in New York and Boston, where a few fatty, aca- 
 demically posing, half-asleep models are set up to be 
 drawn from at so much ah hour. Life-schools ! 
 Schools of death, in comparison with what is here 
 before the eyes! These fellows, lifting, tossing, 
 catching, re-tossing the two-bushel sacks of coal, 
 have never heard of the Greek Laocobn, or the 
 Discus-thrower, or the Athlete with the Scraper. 
 But they are spontaneously enacting them at every 
 turn, as free and unconscious in doing it as 
 the runners and wrestlers Phidias looked on and 
 sketched at the Olympian games. 
 
SINGAPORE 141 
 
 The first thing on leaving the pier was to 
 hire a gharry, — a small carriage drawn by 
 a wiry little pony, capable of eight miles an hour 
 under a heat of ninety-five degrees. The gharry 
 has a thick roof, and is open on all sides, with 
 slat-screens to draw for protection against the sun. 
 As for the driver, he is simple perfection in the 
 way of the picturesque, whatever he may be in mor- 
 als. Malay by race, with a large piece of highly 
 variegated silk wound round his waist, and falling 
 in folds as a petticoat, with a scrupulously white 
 tunic over his shoulders, and a red turban of stu- 
 pendous dimensions on his head, he looks an 
 Oriental sovereign cabman, with whom one feels 
 at first as chary of bargaining as with the Grand 
 Sultan. So figurative is he, however, in the style 
 of his first financial proposition that one soon sees 
 it would be utterly prosaic and Occidental to take 
 him literally. A reduction to one third of the 
 original amount is finally agreed on ; and then his 
 Magnificence mounts the seat, and starts off the 
 little pony like a shot. 
 
 What a drive we took ! The road was excellent, 
 as it always is where imperial England or imperial 
 Rome rules the province. On we whirled past the 
 spacious, beautiful bungalows of the Europeans, 
 the porches wreathed with a wealth of purple 
 bourgainvillia vines, and splendid with flaming 
 poinsettias and hibiscus, and picturesque with 
 palms ; past the villages of Malay houses, set up 
 on piles in swampy districts ; past the clay huts of 
 the country people, thatched with palm-leaves and 
 
142 THE TROPICS 
 
 buried in thickets of banana, bread-fruit, and jak- 
 trees, lightened up with the infinitely varied colors 
 of the crotons. The last native town we had seen 
 was heart-sickening Canton, its depressing mem- 
 ories and smells still clinging to the skirts of mind 
 and coat. Now everything was sunny, happy, 
 open-air life. Poverty is nothing in such a cli- 
 mate. What need of care where one can bring 
 up a daughter to marriageable age for about three 
 dollars ! The more children, the merrier. At 
 every step my friend and I were pulling one an- 
 other right and left to say : " Did you see this ? 
 Did you see that ? " Now it was a young mother, 
 with such a glory of a little naked bronze child 
 astride her hips ; now an interior of Adamic in- 
 nocence around the common dish, into which all 
 dipped their five-pronged natural forks ; now a 
 fruit-seUer, with such a strange variety of luscious 
 specimens unknown by very name to us. 
 
 Then, too, the superb flora was all so noveL It 
 was a universal Kew Gardens with the glass roof 
 off. Jak-trees and calabash-trees bearing fruit so 
 heavy that it would brain Og, Grog, and Magog, if 
 it fell on their skulls ! Clumps of bamboo ninety 
 feet high and a hundred yards in circumference ! 
 Magnificent bread-fruit-trees, each separate leaf a 
 miracle of size, lustre, and beauty of form ! Ban- 
 yan-trees, striding across country each like a hun- 
 dred-armed vegetable Briareus, making after the 
 Titans, not on all-fours, but on all eager hun- 
 dreds at once ! Enormous rubber-trees, their whole 
 gigantic root system lying exposed above ground, 
 
THE BOTANICAL GARDEN 143 
 
 coiling and recoiling on themselves like an acre of 
 huge boarconstrictors ! Who but has wished at 
 times in life that some Titan might deracinate for 
 him a giant oak, and hold it up that he could 
 see at once the whole aerial superstructure, and 
 the whole terrestrial substructure, and marvel at 
 such a creation? Well, the grand, century-old 
 rubber-tree gives one just this sight. One would 
 think a Titan had torn it out of the ground, and 
 then set it up, balanced and supported on its roots. 
 The effect is that of Tennyson's " Flower in the 
 Crannied Wall" raised to the ten-thousandth 
 power, and with proportionate increase in the 
 volume of the religious awe inspired. Yes, the 
 school-boy's dream of Teneriffe had all come true ; 
 and the heart chimed in with Wordsworth's lyric 
 burst : — 
 
 " So was it when my life tegan ; . . . 
 So be it when I shall grow old, 
 Or let me die ! " 
 
 Among the most interesting sights in Singa- 
 pore is the Botanical Garden, in which are 
 brought together the greatest possible varieties of 
 tropical trees, shrubs, vines, and flowers. A great 
 botanical garden ranks as a sort of vegetable 
 anthology of the poetry of the natural creation, in 
 which, within comparatively narrow bounds, all the 
 choicest extracts from the genius of the Amazon, the 
 Indus, the Ganges, the Irrawaddy, and the islands 
 of the sea are brought together. Unassisted nature 
 tends to run aU to nutmegs, or cinnamon, or royal 
 palms, or bread-fruit, or bamboo ; and so art must 
 
144 THE TROPICS 
 
 step in to insist that every one of, say, two hundred 
 and fifty varieties of palms shall have a chance to 
 reveal its glories, and that perambulating banyans 
 shall not be permitted to stride at will over the 
 whole country. Permanent aboreal settlers there 
 have their rights, as well as irresponsible vegetable 
 tramps. The Botanical Garden, moreover, possesses 
 another immense advantage in the way of mental 
 peace. There, while the pleasure-seeker is inspect- 
 ing the trees, he isireed from the necessity of stand- 
 ing up to his waist in a Borneo swamp, or keeping 
 one eye out for an emulous boa-constrictor, or mis- 
 taking the stripes down a tiger's back for the sheen 
 of a clump of small golden bamboos, and thus 
 falling one more unwary victim to that dishonest 
 " imitative principle in nature " so fitted to deceive 
 the very elect. The aesthetic gain is immense. 
 
 All the voyage south from Hong Kong, my 
 traveling companion and I had been reading 
 with keen delight Wallace's " Malay Archipelago." 
 How infinitely more vivid in interest every page 
 now that we were actually entering on the vast 
 island regions of Borneo, Celebes, Sumatra, Java, — 
 that veritable El Dorado of the East which the 
 Portuguese fought for from 1500 to 1600, the 
 Dutch from 1600 to 1700, and the English through- 
 out the present century ! In none of the chapters 
 of Wallace's book had we found greater pleasure 
 than in the descriptions of his hunts in Borneo 
 after the orang-utan, and his studies of the ways of 
 that Caliban of the forests. What, then, was our 
 
A BORNEO PHILOSOPHER 145 
 
 delight at finding in the grounds of the Singapore 
 garden a full-grown specimen of the brute ! 
 
 The especial Borneo gentleman in question 
 stands four feet two inches in height, while his fore 
 arms more than touch the ground as he walks erect, 
 after the most monstrous biped-quadruped fashion 
 one could dream out in a nightmare. Covered with 
 long, black, matted hair, and adorned with a red 
 beard, he is further dowered with protruding jaws 
 powerful enough to chew up whole cocoanuts and 
 spit out the shells as easily as ours crush grapes 
 and get rid of the skins. This, however, is but the 
 Caliban side of the creature, the lower, elemental, 
 evolutionary force that is now in travail with a 
 higher spiritual force. Immense, then, was our 
 surprise, on studying him more closely, to iind that 
 above his brute jaws arched a noble, philosophic 
 brow, and under it lay a pair of profound, medita^ 
 tive eyes that irresistibly reminded one of Immanuel 
 Kant. The contrast was fairly startling. Here, 
 then, in epitome, was the whole creation groaning 
 and travailing in pain until now, waiting for the 
 adoption, to wit, the redemption of the brute body ! 
 
 Our Borneo philosopher occupied an apartment 
 twenty feet each way, with a bare tree in the mid- 
 dle, and shut in on the four sides and at the top by 
 heavy iron gratings. In his periods of contempla- 
 tive abstraction, the attitude assumed for his medi- 
 tations differed from that I have read of as char- 
 acteristic of any of the great German metaphy- 
 sicians. Clinging to the centre of the iron grating 
 at the top by one fore hand and one hind hand, the 
 
146 THE TROPICS 
 
 other fore arm was swung clear round the back of 
 his head to support its cerebral weight, while the 
 still remaining hind arm grasped the fore arm 
 employed in actual suspension, the whole resulting 
 in a perfection of pendent equilibrium which one 
 felt must most essentially conduce to the harmoni- 
 ous balance of his intellectual faculties. Irresisti- 
 bly he suggested the famous picture, in the Clouds 
 of Aristophanes, of Socrates suspended in the bas- 
 ket and lost in aerial contemplation. From time 
 to time a mischievous little monkey would run 
 across the top of the grating and twitch the hair of 
 the brooding philosopher, who then would slowly 
 turn his head and look at him with an abstract 
 gaze that saw and yet saw not. 
 
 Absolutely convinced were my friend and I that 
 the great book on the true philosophy of evolution 
 was then and there being brooded out. Thousands 
 of years may elapse before it shall be permitted to 
 issue from the press ; but then will it assert itself 
 as the work of one subjectively and objectively 
 authorized to expound the vast theme, of one having 
 all the slime and the lotus flower, all the brute and 
 the angel, in his own compoimd organization. For 
 now, in an instant, a revelation of the two contra- 
 dictory elements in our arboreal Immanuel Kant ! 
 In the levity of our own minds growing weary 
 of such protracted meditation, we would ask the 
 keeper to bring a lot of paw-paws, when, lo ! in a 
 flash, the Caliban would dominate the philosopher ; 
 and down the gratings would he climb, working 
 across the floor with an inconceivable monstrosity 
 
A BORNEO PHILOSOPHER 147 
 
 of brute awkwardness, and cramming the paw-paws 
 into his terrible jaws. The brute in his nature laid 
 to rest, again would the profound thinker resort to 
 his aerial suspension, and resume the thread of 
 broken contemplation. Oh, that Robert Browning, 
 with his deep psychical insight, could have seen 
 him ! There was material there for a profounder 
 poem than " Caliban on Setebos." Browning's 
 Caliban had no outreachiug, prophetic element in 
 him. In this Caliban it was impossible not to feel 
 it working, — an elemental, slowly differentiating, 
 secular force ! 
 
CEYLON 
 
 J There is a Mohammedan legend that, after 
 their expulsion from the Garden of Eden, 
 Adam and Eve were penally transported to Ceylon. 
 How inconceivably beautiful must Eden have been 
 if Ceylon was looked on in comparison as a sort of 
 Botany Bay ! Personally, I would brave the conse- 
 quences of barrels of forbidden fruit for one day of 
 exile there. As to the truth of the legend I cannot 
 vouch, further than to attest that the shallow strait 
 dividing Ceylon from India is called Adam's Strait, 
 and one of the highest of the mountains Adam's 
 Peak. Readers of the Indian epic, the Eamayana, 
 will further recall that this was the strait bridged 
 by the king of the monkeys, to enable heroic Rama 
 to rescue his stolen wife, Sita. 
 
 On our voyage from Singapore, all the way 
 through the Straits of Malacca and across the great 
 southern ocean, we carried with us the same beau- 
 tiful weather and smooth seas that had favored 
 us the entire course from Japan. December 21 
 we sighted Ceylon in the late evening, and before 
 ten o'clock the next morning had skirted the whole 
 southern coast of the island, then turned northward, 
 and rounded the great breakwater into the harbor 
 of Colombo. Very beautiful was the sight from 
 our steamship's deck. The handsome Renaissance 
 
150 CEYLON 
 
 architecture of the great hotels and government 
 buildings along the quay, the immense, sweeping 
 curves of the rose-tinted beaches, backed by forests 
 of cocoanut-palms, and behind them the lofty peaks 
 of the mountains of the interior, combined in a 
 charming picture. 
 
 How one envies England the possession of so 
 superb an island as Ceylon, two thirds as large as 
 all Ireland ! And how one must praise the mag- 
 nificent way in which she administers its affairs ! 
 She is the legitimate successor of imperial Rome. 
 Ruthlessly may she conquer, but in the train of 
 conquest follows the broadest, the wisest, the most 
 humane and tolerant statesmanship the world has 
 ever witnessed. To be humbled by her is to be 
 exalted by her. For back of the greedy, unscru- 
 pulous, mercantile adventurers and half pirates 
 that are the first aggressors, lies the great truth- 
 speaking, justice-loving, Christian civilization of 
 the home nation, ever with its Edmund Burke, or 
 kindred moral genius, to voice the deeper sentiment 
 of the people for righteousness and mercy. What 
 a noble breed of men the proconsuls she has sent 
 out to rule a realm like India, — men heroic in 
 courage, supremely loyal to duty, enlightened in 
 intellect, devout in feeling, an honor to humanity, 
 their biographies a more than modern Plutarch ! 
 Blessed the nation that has such constellations of 
 worthies with which to fire the soul of its more 
 generous and aspiring youth ! 
 
AN ARYAN PEOPLE 151 
 
 The first drive on the island, one unbroken 
 succession of fascinating tropical pictures, 
 alike in the luxuriance of the vegetation and the 
 grace and color of the Singhalese and Tamil men, 
 women, and children, brought home to my friend 
 and myself one exidting feeling, to which both gave 
 hearty expression. " Heaven be praised ! we are 
 once more among an Aryan people ! Blood is 
 thicker than water ! " Here were our own features, 
 our own caste of thought and feeling, our own 
 image cut in bronze or ebony. What if we did set 
 out from our common home countless centuries ago, 
 one branch of the family wandering to the farthest 
 confines of India, and the other bringing up at 
 last in San Francisco ! Across the vast abyss had 
 we ever, consciously or unconsciously, yearned in 
 thought and aspiration, and when at length our 
 great literatures came together, we found we had 
 the same fond words for father and mother and 
 hearth and home. I felt like hugging and kissing 
 the whole Aryan race. For, be it confessed, the 
 dreary weight of the vast Mongol-Malay race had 
 for months been oppressing my soul with nightmare. 
 Wherever I had struck it and whatever I had read 
 of it, whether in Thibet, Tartary, China, Mongolia, 
 Corea, Japan, or the fairly continental Malay 
 Archipelago, it had seemed to me one and the same 
 thing, devoid of deep inwardness of feeling, an 
 exterior mask of manner, incapable of any of the 
 achievements that are dearest to us, — the epic and 
 drama of Homer and Kalidasa, of Dante and Shake- 
 speare, the music of Beethoven and Mozart, the 
 
152 CEYLON 
 
 sculpture and architecture of Asia Minor, Persia, 
 and Greece, the chivalrous worship of woman, the 
 philosophy of Germany and India, the religion that 
 has dowered Syria, India, and Europe with its 
 hierarchy of saints. All in vain is it to say that 
 the majority of Aryans know nothing of all this. 
 They do : it is in their blood, in their literature, in 
 their common speech, in their whole spiritual edu- 
 cation, and ever ready to flower out afresh. But 
 in the vast Mongol-Malay stock so wanting is it 
 that, whether any given American, German, or 
 Italian traveler is capable of analyzing the matter 
 or not, or can only express his sentiments by pro- 
 fanity ; he feels the ethnological fact by instinct, 
 recoils from it, and is oppressed by it. 
 
 However brief his stay in Ceylon, the trav- 
 eler generally spends a few days in Kandy, 
 some eighteen hundred feet above the sea, among 
 the mountains of the interior. Kandy is now 
 reached by a railway, — a marvel of engineering 
 skill, hardly to be surpassed by anything the world 
 shows ! Indescribable the view, as one skirts the 
 flanks of the mountains, and looks down into an 
 enormous gorge, its sides clad with the most varied 
 and luxuriant foliage, and its streams winding 
 among the trees and level bottom lands below, 
 transformed into cascades and lakes of the ex- 
 quisitely delicate green of the young rice ! In- 
 deed, in Ceylon the glory of the tropics fairly cul- 
 minates. One would not believe it possible that 
 such a sense of indescribable happiness could be set 
 
KANDY 153 
 
 welling and gushing from the worn and weary heart 
 by the mere presence of this luxuriant exuberance of 
 nature. The influence is irresistible. Life's pain 
 and grief seem absorbed into it, swallowed up by it, 
 mantled all over, as it so quickly mantles its ruins 
 with gorgeous flowering vines and stupendous trees. 
 Arrived in Kandy, one finds himseK by the shore 
 of a charming little lake, its banks embowered in 
 wide-branching tamarind-trees and royal palms, 
 and, above, diversified by the vine-clad bungalows 
 of the European tea^planters. Close at hand is the 
 picturesque little Malagawa Buddhist temple, the 
 most sacred shrine on earth of Buddhism ; for there 
 is preserved for veneration an actual tooth of Bud- 
 dha, which, though once sacrilegiously stolen by 
 the Portuguese, and carried to Goa in India, and 
 there solemnly burned to lime in the presence of a 
 great concourse of ecclesiastics, still offers its merits 
 for the edification of the faithful. As the tooth is 
 two inches and a half long and one inch and a quar- 
 ter broad, skeptics have doubted its human authen- 
 ticity. Their cavils left me unmoved. Already 
 had I seen, in two widely separate places, footprints 
 of Buddha in granite, six feet, at least, in length. 
 So far, then, from finding anything disproportion- 
 ate in the size of the tooth, it served as a confirma- 
 tion of my wavering faith in the footprints. Of 
 far greater importance, however, is the fact that 
 in this temple are preserved the ancient Pali texts, 
 which bring the student of to-day into the nearest 
 contact with original Buddhism that can now be 
 had. 
 
154 CEYLON 
 
 It was on Christinas Eve that we arrived 
 in Kandy, and by sunrise the next morning 
 I was out to greet in the tropics the blessed day. 
 Child of the wintry North, where was I ? No 
 sound of sleigh-bells jingled on the frozen air. 
 No frost-nipped imagination suggested overcoat or 
 mittens. The charming little lake close at hand 
 breathed, indeed, its invitation — not, however, to 
 skim with skates its icy surface, but to jump into 
 its bosom for a delicious swim. In circuit a mile 
 or more, it was overhung with royal palms, — the 
 the most beautiful of all the palms, — and with 
 century-old tamarind-trees, dipping the feathery 
 tips of their branches into the water. A wealth of 
 flowering vines — scarlet, purple, gold — climbed 
 every tree-trunk and festooned every cliff. Close 
 at hand was the Buddhist monastery, and on its 
 steps the yellow-robed monks and acolytes chanting 
 their hymns and prayers. Men, women, and chil- 
 dren on the road greeted me with a winning charm 
 unknown to our angular race, their beautiful eyes 
 suffused with a Nirvana-like peace, which, though 
 their lips uttered no Merry Christmas, yet breathed 
 its loving spirit on the air. Thus gently saunter- 
 ing along, I completed the circuit of the lake to 
 where its waters overflow in a plunge thirty feet 
 down into a lovely pool. Then what a picture ! 
 
 Men, women, and children were reveling in 
 their early morning bath, — the men and boys 
 rioting in splendid somersaults from the cliffs ; the 
 women huddled together more apart, but laughing 
 and chattering in the merriest way. And now 
 
CHRISTMAS IN KANDY 155 
 
 the genuine Christmas-gift spirit reviTed in my 
 heart. No pent-up Utica of presents, as at home, of 
 fur gloves and knit hug-me-tights longer contracted 
 my powers. My soul expanded in tropical exuber- 
 ance. I yearned to be an Indian prince with 
 ample means to create crystal-clear Diana baths 
 like this for happy people in Massachusetts to 
 leap into on every early morning of December 25, 
 — the blessed season of the year, when, as all New 
 Englanders so weU know, the air is so deliciously 
 warm, the water so seductive in its invitation, and 
 the pleasure so exquisite of lying out in the golden 
 sunshine to dry. 
 
 On Christmas Day, if ever in the year, a prin- 
 ciple of pure disinterested sympathy with the joys 
 of others should be the dominant note of the soul. 
 Yet, how much easier is it to be thus unselfish 
 under certain conditions than under others ! No- 
 where, for example, the man who shares a more 
 absolute faith than I in the tonic virtue of a zero 
 winter climate, — especially shares it when lying 
 out in luxurious ease in the tropics. That day, 
 then, I felt so disinterestedly glad for aU the dear 
 ones in America, so thankful that they were expe- 
 riencing the fine exhilaration of the snow and ice 
 tingling in their blood, and that their cheeks were 
 so ruddy and their appetites so whetted as with a 
 scythe-stone. No trace of envy breathed a stain 
 on the smooth mirror of my soul. Their super- 
 abundant energy, their freedom from any desire 
 for a moment's rest, their magical power of extract- 
 ing sunbeams from anthracite, their capacity to 
 
156 CEYLON 
 
 get pleasure out of one little evergreen bush, in 
 alleviation of the bare, wind-lashed oaks and 
 maples around them — yes, it seemed so graciously 
 delightful to lie stretched out under a tamarind- 
 tree, and to contemplate aU this as the happy lot of 
 others. Whole groups of them could I see, in my 
 mind's eye, holding on tight to their hats and 
 bonnets as they staggered out from their front 
 doors to face the blizzard, while congratulatingly I 
 cried : " Ah ! that is the making of a hardy, brave, 
 virtuous, and much-enduring people. Long may 
 you be subjected to it ! " 
 
 In the tropics, the sense of the sweetness of rest 
 carries with it a primal, elemental meaning it can 
 rarely share in a far northern climate. In Mas- 
 sachusetts, for example, it is Tennyson's poem of 
 "Ulysses," the gray-haired old mariner, who at 
 eighty is too nervously restless to sit down in 
 quiet for an hour by his fireside to reflect on past 
 experience, but must be projecting some new seal 
 or walrus voyage to Baffin's Bay or beyond ; it is 
 the "Ulysses" that carries the day in attraction 
 over any poetry of dreamy rest like " The Lotos- 
 Eaters." While "The Lotos-Eaters" is an ex- 
 quisite rendering of the inmost essence of the Bud- 
 dhistic ideal of Nirvana, the only ideal of Nirvana 
 that appears to sanction repose to the average 
 American housekeeper, haunted by seven dust 
 devils that will not go out of her, or harried by 
 her exacerbated conscience into an endless vortex 
 of committee meetings, seems to be the final goal 
 of fairly earned collapse in nervous prostration. 
 
CHRISTMAS IN KANBY 157 
 
 Then first is her moral being temporarily at peace. 
 " I would if I could ; but, if I cannot, how can 
 I ? But ache hard, O head, and pain wearily, O 
 spine, that I may feel myself justified in the eye 
 of heaven and earth in submitting to the mortifi- 
 cation of trying to compass a little rest ! " This 
 is not the view entertained in Ceylon. 
 
 No, aU day long I could not but feel I was in a 
 Buddhist land, — a land in which the natural ap- 
 peal of climate to dreamy repose had been lifted 
 by a great spiritual genius into the realm of an es- 
 pecial religious faith. It was Christmas Day, but 
 of this the people all around me knew nothing. 
 Had they kept holiday, it would have been in 
 commemoration of their own saviour, the Buddha. 
 No end of angel songs over his coming into the 
 world had they wherewith to celebrate his advent 
 day. He was, moreover, the nearest akin to 
 Jesus, in the spirit of merciful compassion, of all 
 the founders of the great world religions. It was, 
 indeed, no such ideal of rest as Jesus revealed, — 
 rest in the everlasting arms of omnipotent Wis- 
 dom, Holiness, and Love ; but it was a rest none 
 the less unspeakably sweet and tranquillizing, — 
 rest from the care and fret of the finite, deliverance 
 from the power of the external to perturb the 
 mind's serenity or to wound with heart-ache. 
 
 Ah! the Occident and the Orient! — how pa- 
 thetically do they need one another ! The Western 
 mind roots so in the finite and manifold that life 
 becomes to it a fitful fever ; while the Eastern so 
 absorbs itself in the invisible and immutable that 
 
158 CEYLON 
 
 finite life evaporates in dream and illusion. Each 
 sense is needful to temper the stress of the other ; 
 each is indispensable for sanity and for inward 
 peace. 
 
 A pleasant drive's distance from Kandy lie 
 the famous Peradeniya Botanical Gardens. 
 They contain, as an instance, two hundred and fifty 
 varieties of palms, with everything else on the same 
 magnificent scale. Why make a futile attempt to 
 detail at length the joy of wandering in them ? A 
 description of a clump of bamboo, one hundred feet 
 in height and one hundred and fifty feet in circum- 
 ference, its clustered polished reed columns sur- 
 mounted by a world of feathery ostrich plumes, is 
 a piece of barren statistics. The sight of it is a 
 marvel forever. Enough that the traveler from the 
 far north is enraptured with the single sense, 
 " Behold new heavens and a new earth ! " Eor all 
 is new. Instead of the apple there comes up the 
 mango-tree, and instead of the oak the rubber-tree. 
 Poor, sad-hearted Lessing, weary of the monotony 
 of the ever-recurring spring, one day broke out, 
 " Oh, that for once, instead of in the same eternal 
 green, it would come out attired in red or orange 
 or purple ! " Had he but gone to Ceylon, be would 
 have found the exhilarating sensation of change he 
 craved. An absolutely new flora seems to imply 
 an absolutely new life in man. The caterpillar in 
 his nature changes into a silkworm, the homely 
 robin into a bird of paradise. Adam and Eve 
 combined, and in their first fresh honeymoon in 
 
AN ECCLESIASTICAL INTERVIEW 159 
 
 Eden, could not have felt more supremely happy 
 than I in wandering round and pocketing poetic 
 nutmegs and cloves instead of prosaic hickory-nuts 
 and filberts, in chewing a twig of spicy cinnamon 
 instead of a twig of ordinary sweet-birch, — ay, 
 and in going up to a cinchonartree and slicing off 
 a bit of the bark, and taking my quinine au natu- 
 rel, instead of seeking out a duly hcensed apothe- 
 cary shop and buying a dozen highly sublimated 
 pills of the same extraction. The fall in Adam 
 was condoned and blotted out. I was restored to 
 Paradise. All controversy over the original site 
 of Eden for me was ended. It was there that 
 " the Lord God planted a garden, and out of the 
 ground made to grow every tree that is pleasant 
 to the sight and good for food." 
 
 Before leaving Kandy, it seemed evidently 
 the proper thing that a solemn international 
 ecclesiastical interview should take place between 
 the high priest of Buddhism, presiding over the 
 most sacred shrine of the faith on earth, and the 
 peripatetic representative of a body that thinks 
 itself the most enlightened in the Athens of 
 America. So, procuring an interpreter, — whose 
 theological attainments, I am sorry to say, did not 
 reach beyond the rule of three, and his linguistic 
 not so high, — I went with my traveling compan- 
 ion to the monastery; and, sending in our cards, 
 we united with them the petition that we might 
 have the privilege of a conference. The favor was 
 at once conceded. Very likely, as Mrs. Besant 
 
160 CEYLON 
 
 had lately been in Ceylon, assuring the natives of 
 the immense superiority of Buddhism over Chris- 
 tianity, the high priest regarded us as equally 
 hopeful subjects. 
 
 Curious was the scene that followed. The mon- 
 astery was very humble in its appointments, but 
 with a dreamy atmosphere of all-day siesta about it. 
 On a rather dilapidated sofa sat the high priest, en- 
 wrapped in the traditional yellow of the Buddhist 
 monk, his right arm and shoulder bare, and no 
 apparent underclothing beneath the single sheetlike 
 garment, — a style of apparel which, in the sweep 
 it afforded the bare arm over the whole surface of 
 the body, seemed, in a climate in which relief is 
 often sought from cutaneous irritations, eminently 
 conducive to tranquillity of mind. He was seventy 
 years old, his skull as close-shaven as a cannon-ball, 
 and was, moreover, one who had certainly attained 
 the goal of Nirvana as far as teeth have any fur- 
 ther power to ache. Around were gathered six or 
 eight young monks, one or two of them alert and 
 eager to join in the fray, as the talk proceeded. 
 As my traveling companion is a veteran editor, 
 our party was fully equipped with a rapid-firing 
 Gatling gun for the discharge of volleys of ques- 
 tions. 
 
 The discussion of nice metaphysical distinctions 
 through the medium of an interpreter so flagrantly 
 ignorant as to be graveled even over such a bagatelle 
 as the points of difference between the homogeneous 
 and the heterogeneous, is not wont to be conducive 
 either to sweetness or light. So the interview 
 
AN ECCLESIASTICAL INTERVIEW 161 
 
 proved of attraction rather in the way of picture 
 and atmosphere than of positive illumination. 
 
 We began, of course, with an inquiry as to the 
 high priest's view of Nirvana, whether a conscious 
 or unconscious state, present or a future. He 
 answered that it was too deep a question to be 
 discussed in a short interview. We then passed on 
 to the subject of creation and Creator. He replied : 
 " The world never was created. It was not made, 
 it grew," — an answer that while unimpeachable 
 evolutionary orthodoxy, sounded oddly, from the 
 way it was enunciated, like Topsy's in " Uncle 
 Tom's Cabin," — "I warn't made : I jist growed." 
 Next we asked for a succinct statement of the es- 
 sential principle of Buddhism. He gave it in five 
 negative prohibitions against killing, lying, steal- 
 ing, and unchastity. Then we passed on to Chris- 
 tianity, inquiring if he had ever read the Gospels. 
 He said he had, and had found their teachings very 
 contradictory, — not half so plain as Buddhism. 
 I finally thought I would try him as to the extent 
 to which he would follow his five principles. " Sup- 
 pose a cobra should come into the room here," I 
 said; "would you kill him? " " No," he replied. 
 " What would you do ? " I asked. " Eemove him." 
 This was accompanied with a gentle motion, as 
 though he had taken up a broom and was quietly 
 sweeping out a bit of paper. After all, the tone of 
 voice and the quiet attitude with which this was 
 expressed were the one memorable thing in our 
 conversation. Could we have really come to close 
 quarters intellectually, no doubt the venerable man 
 
162 CEYLON 
 
 would have lost us in a labyrinth of metaphysical 
 subtleties from which we could hardly have found 
 our way out to the light of day. But here was 
 something better. Here was the deepest thing in 
 Buddhism, its sense of the one universal Hfe, its 
 feeling of compassion with the vast sentient struggle 
 going on from the serpent on his belly to Buddha 
 lapsed in Nirvana, its identification of self with the 
 all in all. How I longed to see a cobra come 
 gliding in, then coil himself and rear his terrible 
 poison-fanged head for a stroke, while the yeUow- 
 robed old patriarch should quietly rise, and with a 
 feather-duster in hand as gently " remove " him as 
 that dear old English Buddhist, Uncle Toby, did 
 the fly, when he opened the window for him with 
 the loving word, " The world is wide enough for 
 thee and for me." Not for a moment did I doubt 
 that in the spell of his religion the quietistic old 
 man could tenderly have done it ; whereas if either 
 of us two devout Christians had undertaken the 
 removal, even with a street-sweeper's broom of 
 birch twigs, such enmity would have been set on 
 between serpent and " seed of the woman " that 
 the issue of the conflict would have been problem- 
 atical to the last degree. ' 
 
INDIA 
 
 I. 
 
 The voyage of thirteen hundred miles from 
 Ceylon to Calcutta is pleasantly broken by 
 a short stay in Pondicherry and in Madras, — some- 
 times also, it is true, unpleasantly broken by fright- 
 ful typhoons, cyclonic mast and funnel twisters 
 that extract by their roots these mighty columns of 
 wood or iron as easily as a prairie stump-puUer the 
 fangs of pines and oaks. But still we sailed over 
 the same summer seas. 
 
 Truly, if anywhere that saddest of thoughts, " it 
 might have been," strikes home with sharp historic 
 pang, it must be to the Frenchman disembarking 
 at Pondicherry and looking around him at about 
 all that remains of his country's once magnificent 
 dream of Indian empire. There first the splendid 
 genius of Desaix divined India, and flashed out 
 in every detail the . amazing, but entirely feasible, 
 programme carried into execution by the practical 
 minds of Clive, Hastings, Wellington, and Napier. 
 Not Alexander starting out from Macedonia with 
 a handful of disciplined Greeks to fling them on 
 the millions of Asia, and to swell his forces with 
 fresh armies of sepoys as he marched along, ever 
 had a more prophetic eye than Desaix. As late 
 
164 INDIA 
 
 even as 1802, Napoleon, with his passion for the 
 " barbaric pearls and gold " of the East and his 
 fascination by the cyclonic careers of the Ghengis 
 Khans and Tamerlanes of Asia, was stiU nursing 
 the same imperial dream. 
 
 Yet to-day in all effete and decaying Pondi- 
 cherry, the most attractive thing the traveler finds 
 to do is to go outside the settleijaent at sunrise 
 to the public fountains and watch the beautiful 
 young Indian women drawing the day's supply of 
 water. The lithe and gracefid Caryatides, each 
 with her gauzy sheet of sky blue or scarlet girt 
 round her waist and falling in folds to her ankles, 
 the other end thrown over one shoulder and down 
 the back, leaving exposed her bronzed sides and 
 arms to support the shapely vase of brass poised 
 on her head, — here is a life-school for the artist 
 that might tempt him to many a lingering month 
 of stay. Ah ! sighs the enraptured gazer, why 
 cannot use and beauty, work and play, thus always 
 be made to harmonize ? Doubtless, with our own 
 boasted advent of the scientific age of plumbing, 
 enabling each gracious damsel to draw, for herself 
 and by herself, her prosaic pail of water at the 
 kitchen sink, there came a deal of saving in the 
 way of time and strength. But alas! for the 
 sunshine, laughter, and gossip that went out with 
 it. Where, under such a disenchanting dispensa- 
 tion, would have been the romantic idyl of Isaac 
 and Kebecca, with all the wealth of poetry that 
 has shed its halo around Indian, Syrian, Arabian, 
 Persian maidens gathered at the public fountains 
 to draw their vessels of crystal water ? 
 
THE HOOGLY 165 
 
 Our plan, on arriving in Calcutta, was to 
 strike at once northward to visit the Hima- 
 layas, and then return to see the city. As fit prepa- 
 ration for a sight of these stupendous ranges, and to 
 give the mind the requisite geologic stretch to take 
 them in, commend me to a sail up the Hoogly, 
 one of the mighty streams through which the hun- 
 dred-mouthed Ganges pours out into the ocean its 
 continental waste. " By their works ye shall know 
 them." Here, then, before the eyes are the works 
 of the Himalayas, of their vast storehouses of snow, 
 of their enormous rainfall, of their stupendous sup- 
 plies of disintegrating material. What a process of 
 world-building ! — enormous islands of mud form- 
 ing in a day, and forthwith under the generative 
 force of the tropical heat breeding dense jungles of 
 vegetation and spawning for them their broods of 
 serpents and tigers. Yet, dangerous for poor little 
 man to tempt his fate amid such colossal operations 
 of nature. The terror of rivers is the Hoogly to the 
 sailor. Nowhere else do pilots receive such pay. 
 Even Csesar there would be too subdued for brag- 
 gadocia, and humbly admit that no matter whether 
 they carried him or the obscurest tourist, each 
 would prove an equally insignificant midget in the 
 face of such overwhelming forces. And the bluff 
 John Bull pilot, too, would take him at the same 
 lowly estimate. Experience of but a month back, 
 and the pilot for to-day's run is turned into a 
 superannuated Methuselah, so perpetually are shoal 
 and current shifting. Touch bottom anywhere for 
 a moment and so afford a pivot in the keel, and over 
 
166 INDIA 
 
 and over does the mighty tide shoulder and roll 
 ship and freight, whirling them under to destruc- 
 tion. Yes, here are the works of the Himalayas ! 
 How one longs to stand in their overwhelming 
 presence ! 
 
 Three hundred and fifty miles due north 
 from Calcutta lies Darjeeling. In the little 
 mountain province of Sikkim, thrust in between 
 Bhotan to the east and Nepal to the west, it af- 
 fords a superb platform, some seven thousand feet 
 in height, from which to survey the Himalayas. 
 Dear, likewise, to the English mother's heart as a 
 place of refuge for her fair-haired, blue-eyed little 
 Saxon boys and girls from the slaughter of the 
 innocents decreed by the feller than Herod fury 
 of the sun of India ! 
 
 For the first three hundred miles the railway 
 runs across the vast dead level of northern India, 
 — a plain which, on an enormously greater scale, 
 bears the same relation to the Himalayas as Lom- 
 bardy to the Alps. Substitute for the Po the 
 Ganges and its tributaries ; for the vine and mul- 
 berry, rice and jute fields, palms and bananas ; and 
 for Monte Rosa, Mt. Blanc, and the Jungfrau, peaks 
 like Mt. Everest and Kinchinjanga, whose actual 
 snow-line only starts at an elevation higher than the 
 summit of Mt. Blanc, — and some slight estimate 
 may be formed of the comparative geologic scale 
 on which nature has wrought in the two regions. 
 
 These first three hundred miles of the journey I 
 pass over, till the station of Silliguri is reached. 
 
DARJEELING 167 
 
 From this point to Darjeeling, fifty miles away, the 
 ascent of over seven thousand feet is made by a 
 narrow gauge railway, in open observation cars. 
 The road is a marvelous piece of engineering skill. 
 Seven hours are occupied in the ascent, but nowhere 
 else in the world can so much of tropical beauty 
 and mountain glory be crowded into the same space 
 of time. The track winds and rewinds upon itself, 
 now in mile-long serpentine curves, and now in lit- 
 tle loops ; but everywhere it opens views down into 
 ravishing valleys and gorges, clad with the most 
 luxuriant and varied vegetation of palms, bananas, 
 tree ferns, thirty feet high, banyans, laurels, rho- 
 dodendra, magnolias, evergreen oaks. Thus from 
 zone to zone of steadily changing flora, one rises 
 hour by hour. 
 
 The exuberant jungle life of the lower half of 
 the ascent beggars description. It is a struggle 
 for life between vine and tree, plant and parasite, 
 in which each is victor ; for all seems to triumph, 
 and nothing to die, or, if it does, at once to rise 
 again in new arboreal resurrection and ascension. 
 To the topmost crest of the giant trees climb the 
 enormous vines, mantling the trunks with their 
 huge leaves, flinging out like banners their spikes or 
 sprays of flowers, leaping across to seize hold of 
 and overrun new giants or sending down a multitu- 
 dinous rain of aerial roots to seek the earth again 
 and with centripetal force begin afresh the fight of 
 the strangling python vines with the mighty forest 
 Laocoon. The fable of Antseus, his strength born 
 again each time he touched his mother earth — here 
 
168 INDIA 
 
 is no more a stale literary iUustration. In the tro- 
 pics vine and tree alike have learned this secret. 
 Plants are there which begin their career fifty feet 
 aloft as parasites. Then down to the earth they 
 drop their aerial roots, fill vein and artery with the 
 fructifying sap that steads them for an upward 
 growth of limbs and crest, tiU, surrounded on aU 
 sides, the parent tree dies, rots, vanishes away, and 
 the parasite alone is left, scaffolded fifty feet high 
 on roots from whose original starting-point aloft 
 first begins the trunk and limbs of the now victo- 
 rious heir. Perforce one sees a sly vegetable innu- 
 endo at certain radicals at home, so bent on a dis- 
 play of roots as to dwarf any suggestion of foliage 
 atop to correspond. 
 
 Higher up, in a zone from three to five thousand 
 feet in elevation, succeed the great clearings of the 
 tree plantations, terraced step on step in gigantic 
 flights of stairs up the flanks of the mountains ; 
 though, far above them, begins again the forest 
 growth, now largely consisting of evergreen oaks, 
 rhododendra, and magnolias. Thus, after nearly 
 six hours of the highest wrought delight, we had 
 reached the point at which was to open upon us, 
 and be carried with us to the end of the ride, the 
 full glories of the Himalayas. So far the moun- 
 tain we had been slowly climbing had lain between 
 us and them, but now with a single curve all was 
 to leap in sight. 
 
 Alas! if ever I was tempted to believe in the 
 Prince of Evil and his merciless malignity, now 
 was his hour of triumph. Up along the flanks of 
 
AGAIN MONGOLIANS 169 
 
 our mountain came stealthily climbing tte ob- 
 scuring mists. Thicker and thicker they grew, tUl 
 'we were immersed in them, and all was blotted 
 out. " I told you so ! I told you so ! " was now 
 the mocking voice that filled the air. In pessimis- 
 tic love had a dozen kindly friends in Calcutta 
 prophesied to us before we left, " You will have a 
 fatiguing journey, bury your heads in the clouds, 
 and come back sadder, even if wiser men about the 
 Himalayas." That such people should live and be 
 justified in the end seemed the insoluble enigma 
 of mortal life ! 
 
 Well, we had reached Darjeeling, and had 
 some hours of daylight to spare, Why care 
 for snow peaks ! The proper study of mankind is 
 man ! Were there not Nepalese, Bhoteans, Thibe- 
 tans, in crowds to study? Were we not on the con- 
 fines of mysterious Thibet, the unriddled country 
 which, though it will let no man in — unless he can 
 contrive to sew up his eyelids and to accumulate on 
 his person solid stratifications of dirt so as to pass 
 for a plausible native — still lets many of its people 
 out? We had struck Mongolians again. In vain 
 had we fled from the presence of the mighty yel- 
 low race, — fled from it in Japan, China, the Ma^ 
 lay Archipelago. There were once more before us 
 the flattened face, the broad cheek-bones, the nar- 
 row, oblique eyes, the black stiff hair, the peculiar 
 tallowy hue of this vast Asian people. Wonder 
 ceases at the careers of the Attilas, the Ghengis 
 Khans, the Tamerlanes, with such countless hordes 
 
170 INDIA 
 
 to draw on. So swift for the bazaar we steered, to 
 see, while daylight lasted, otir yellow fellow-crea- 
 tures and their baffling alloys, with all the coin of 
 humanity that passes current among these Hima- 
 layan hill tribes. 
 
 In the vast migrations to and fro of the human 
 race, a certain strain of Tartar blood seems to have 
 been poured into the veins of all these hill tribe 
 peoples. Nepalese, Bhoteans, dwellers in Sikkim, 
 though they have had beauty enough to drown out 
 much of the Tartar ugliness, still — great numbers 
 of them — suggest the suspicion that somewhere 
 back there was a Tartar in the wood-pile. Crowds 
 of the people, however, were pure, unadulterated 
 Thibetans, ugly enough to satisfy the claims of the 
 portrait the Eomans drew of Attila. Tartarus ! no 
 trouble longer about the origin of the word. No 
 question, either, that this same great race had 
 a hand in fashioning our Esquimaux and North 
 American Indians. There was a railroad once 
 across Behring Straits, in some earlier geologic 
 epoch. 
 
 From a religious point of view, these Thi- 
 betans offer a field of study, if not spirit- 
 ually elevating, still intensely interesting. His- 
 torically, their own land furnishes the most ex- 
 traordinary example of a pure theocracy — minus 
 a God, but with no end of devils — existing in the 
 world. King, priest, magistrate, tax-gatherer, 
 doctor, executioner, every function is exercised by 
 a lama, the generic name of priest or monk. 
 
THE APOTHEOSIS OF MACHINERY 111 
 
 Strange to say, the people are all Buddhists ; and 
 among them the great Indian Buddha had a sec- 
 ond incarnation. Most certainly he needed it, to 
 get rid of his previous conceptions ; for in his 
 second incarnation he had abandoned every trace 
 of inwardness, and surrendered himself, root and 
 branch, to sheer externalism. Of all the heels- 
 over - head travesties of the whirligig of time, 
 surely Thibetan Buddhism is the oddest. Now 
 first I came in contact with literal, unadulterated 
 machine-praying. Long before, I had thought to 
 encounter this strange phenomenon in certain 
 clergymen at home ; but always, with them, the 
 machine was the man himself. Here, however, 
 the machine was wholly extra-human, — a small 
 copper cylinder, internally filled with yards of 
 roUed-up prayers, revolving on an upright handle. 
 It goes with the speed of a top. Indeed, the 
 devout Oxford clergyman whose standing bet it 
 was that he could give any other man in England 
 to Pontius Pilate and then beat him through the 
 service, here would have found Othello's occupa- 
 tion gone. Every revolution is the whole service, 
 liturgy and Athanasian creed included ; and the 
 revolutions are two hundred a minute. And yet 
 these little cylinders, plentiful as rattles in babies' 
 hands, were for private devotions only. In the 
 temples we saw them three feet high and eighteen 
 inches in diameter, capable of holding miles of 
 prayers, and run by the hour by man-power. 
 Water-power is often substituted where a fall can 
 be secured, and is just as efficacious. In fact, 
 
172 INDIA 
 
 tlie very winds are subsidized for devotions, as in 
 Holland for windmills to grind the corn. From 
 thousands of poles flutter long streamers on which 
 the prayers are written, and every flutter says 
 them all. In our own boasted land, we have but 
 begun to grasp the higher applications of machin- 
 ery. 
 
 In previous chapters I may have seemed some- 
 what unjust in my strictures on the lack of in- 
 wardness and the tendency to ceremonialism of 
 the whole Mongol-Malay race, from Japan in the 
 north to the Malay Archipelago in the south. I 
 felt it by instinct three days after I was in Japan. 
 I was utterly oppressed by it in China, where 
 government, manners, education, literature, are one 
 great outward web of ceremony divorced from 
 inward organic life. And now, in my next en- 
 counter with this self-same Mongol race, I had 
 found the whole thing gone to seed, — dry hay 
 for succulent grass ; not so much as lip-service, 
 only machine service, for the devout overflow of 
 the heart. By ceremonialism I mean simply the 
 divorce between expression and impression, the 
 parrot-like repetition of conventional formulae sub- 
 stituted for the living man. Symbolism, on the 
 contrary — symbolism raised to the pitch of de- 
 lirium — is the root religious vice of India ; and 
 soon in Benares on the sacred Ganges shall we see 
 it displayed in its most luxuriant jungle growth. 
 But, of the two, the emaciated, trance-struck fakir 
 is more attractive than the machine-twirling Bud- 
 dhist of Thibet. 
 
A LAMA'S WIFE 173 
 
 Fain would I describe an introduction we were 
 favored with to a lama and his wife. Such a 
 jolly personality, she, and such a living illustration 
 of the line, " Religion never was designed to make 
 our pleasures less " ! On her head she wore a 
 crown of red coral set with big unpolished tur- 
 quoises, while her cheeks were smeared with pig's 
 blood, — a rouge which certainly effects its pur- 
 pose. The face loomed round as a full moon ris- 
 ing red in a smoky autumn horizon ; and as her 
 religion entitled her spouse and herself to one 
 tenth of the income of the flock, she evidently felt 
 it a fitting outcome of the second incarnation of the 
 Buddha in Thibet. Not yet had she experienced 
 the depressing effect of what in New England is 
 called the " decrease in reverence for the clergy." 
 Should her husband die, a fierce contest would 
 ensue among his devout followers for a hair of his 
 head, a paring of his fingernails, to wear as a 
 charm in an amulet, or for one or the other of his 
 thigh bones to make a horn of, through which to 
 blow the praises of the faith. Alas ! as I thought 
 in contrast of many a sweet, patient minister's 
 wife in Massachusetts, nagged by cross-grained 
 parishioners I could not but exclaim, " How 
 blessed thy lot, O woman ! " Not a female in her 
 parish advanced enough to begrudge her her coral 
 crown set with turquoises, or even so much as to 
 raise the question whether she were not a trifle 
 too extravagant in the use of pig's blood on her 
 cheeks ! 
 
174 INDIA 
 
 The clouds and mist that had prevailed on 
 our arrival in Darjeeling continued on 
 through the afternoon and evening, and we went 
 to bed sadly impressed with the fickle and moody 
 temper of mountain ranges. Orders were left, 
 however, that should the sky be clear we should 
 be called half an hour before sunrise. Half an 
 hour before sunrise there came a tap at our door 
 on the ground floor of the hotel, and we knew the 
 day was saved. Swift was our response ; for it 
 was the Himalayas calling us, and not Ameer, our 
 servant. So, jumping at once into warm clothing 
 and each swallowing a hot cup of tea (always in 
 India brought to one's bedside on awakening), we 
 stepped out on the broad terrace in front of the 
 hotel. 
 
 The terrace stood on the steep flank of a 
 mountain higher than the top of Mt. Washington, 
 the mountain itself dipping down into a pro- 
 found valley beneath, but one abyss in a billowy 
 ocean of like mountains. All below was in im- 
 penetrable darkness, through which no distinct 
 object could be made out ; but over across the 
 abyss, and seemingly floating on the upper sky, 
 stood — hung rather — the snow-white peaks of 
 Kinchinjanga (next to Everest the highest moun- 
 tain in the world), dominating the colossal group 
 of five called The Treasuries of the Snow. The 
 white at first was of an almost spectral sheen, 
 lucent, yet etherealized ; and the elevation at 
 which, perfectly defined, it hung above the vast 
 lower darkness filled the mind with a sense of awe 
 
THE HIMALAYAS 175 
 
 as before a spectacle wholly detached from the 
 earth. Then the summit of Kinchinjanga began 
 to flush with rosy light, the flush gradually de- 
 scending till it touched the tops of all five sister 
 peaks. And now ensued the beatific vision of 
 God's glory. To right and left, over a circle of 
 nearly ninety degrees, peak after peak began to 
 flame, the lowest at an altitude of over twenty 
 thousand feet, whUe still the darkness lingered on 
 in the whole nether world. Often as the compari- 
 son has been made between the great discover- 
 ers, poets, and prophfets of the ages — the New- 
 tons, Dantes, Isaiahs — and the supreme mountain 
 peaks heralding the advent of the sun while yet 
 the rest of the world is wrapped in darkness, never 
 before did I so feel its solemnity. How long, how 
 long, did these mighty monarchs keep solely to 
 themselves their light and glow, or but sympathet- 
 ically share it with one another's kindred spirits, 
 before the broadening illumination spread over the 
 foothills and penetrated down into the valleys ! 
 But at last it reached them, dyeing in rich maroon 
 the vast rolling sea of the inferior intervening 
 mountains. When it is recalled that Kinchinjanga 
 is over twenty-eight thousand feet high, and the 
 group it dominates twenty-five thousand, it readily 
 can be conceived that nowhere else on the globe 
 can this sublime phenomenon so impress the im- 
 agination. In the presence of so grand a specta- 
 cle, time loses its petty finite measures ; minutes 
 assume the character of slow-moving secular dura- 
 tions. One holds his breath in awe at the sense of 
 
176 INDIA 
 
 how long before the earth beneath has broken its 
 sleep of night, these glorious heralds of the day 
 have seen and greeted with their jubilees the far- 
 away rising of the sun. 
 
 We could not linger, however, too long on 
 the terrace, for, to profit to the fullest by 
 the early hours of the morning, we were to ascend 
 fifteen hundred feet higher to the top of Tiger 
 HiU, from which Mt. Everest would be opened up. 
 Chairs were waiting for us, each with six Thi- 
 betan coolies, four for constant service and two 
 for reliefs. Soon we were on their shoulders, 
 moving at a swift and steady pace. Admirable 
 mountaineers, accustomed to carry heavy burdens 
 over the Himalayan passes, the lowest of them at 
 an elevation of fifteen thousand feet, they made 
 light work of us. Of all the luxurious methods 
 of steadily surmounting heights and at the same 
 time drinking in the prospect, commend me to the 
 chair on the shoulders of four sure-footed carriers. 
 The mind is disengaged and free. No more al- 
 ternation between longing to abandon one's self 
 to the glory of the transcendent scenery and the 
 fear of spraining an ankle or breaking one's 
 neck. 
 
 The path wound along the flank of Tiger Hill, 
 through woods of magnolias, laurels, rhododendra, 
 and evergreen oaks, with constant vistas of the 
 whole Himalayan range. Arrived at Senchal, the 
 abandoned site of an old military cantonment, Mt. 
 Everest had already loomed up in the far distance. 
 
THE HIMALAYAS 111 
 
 while at the summit of Tiger Hill we enjoyed the 
 delight of distinctly making out all three peaks of 
 this highest mountain on the globe. Twenty-nine 
 thousand and two feet ! For round numbers the 
 two might have been spared, but who would belittle 
 such an altitude by subtracting an inch ? The 
 three clustered peaks were over a hundred miles 
 away, though so clear was the atmosphere that they 
 stood out in perfect distinctness. Anyhow, we 
 had seen Mt. Everest, and so in all after life could 
 use it as an all-round-the-world club to beat down 
 the pride of any who should presume to boast of 
 Mt. Blanc in our majestic presence. 
 
 None the less, the real glory of the scene lay in 
 the stupendous Kinchinjanga group. It, too, was 
 forty-five miles away, though it seemed but ten. 
 Indeed, on first getting into the presence of the 
 Himalayas, one has to go through a fairly revolu- 
 tionary mental process in grasping the proportions 
 of things. A mountain, in the foreground, twice 
 the height of Mt. Washington, is only an insig- 
 nificant foothill. It has still three thousand feet 
 to grow before reaching the level of the snow-line, 
 and then, to become a peer of the great ones, 
 would have to add from nine to thirteen thousand 
 feet of snow. Mountains, in sight, over twenty- 
 two thousand feet in height are thick as trees in 
 the woods. Thus, for an ordinary mortal, it is no 
 small feat to evolve a mind to match the moun- 
 tains. Notwithstanding the educational advan- 
 tages we started with, it took my friend and me 
 fully twenty-four hours to do it. 
 
178 INDIA 
 
 Comparisons, it is said, are odious. That 
 depends. If the object of the comparison 
 be light, and not heat, it is often a very helpful 
 thing. Therefore, in comparing, for example, the 
 Alps with the Himalayas, one would have to admit 
 freely that the Alps, with their emerald green up- 
 land pastures contrasted with their snow-crowned 
 domes and peaks, are far more beautiful. This 
 grows partly from the fact that they are so much 
 more easily manageable by mind and imagination, 
 and do not so tensely stretch the mental tether. 
 The Himalayas, so to speak, make an immense de- 
 mand on the intellectual as well as the aesthetic 
 imagination. 
 
 To grasp any adequate idea of their magnitude, 
 the mind must expand to the conception that they 
 are in reality two colossal ranges, the one fifty miles 
 behind the other, and that in the continental abysses 
 of the valleys between them are gathered the wa- 
 ters of the mighty Indus and the Brahmapootra, 
 the first flowing round by their western flanks and 
 the second by their eastern, to enter India, while 
 all along down their southern slopes stream the 
 thousand affluents of the Ganges. Then, to com- 
 plete the picture, imagination must evoke the lim- 
 itless expanse of the vast South Pacific Ocean, 
 the feeder of the ever-renewed treasuries of their 
 snows. For the six months of summer, the steadily 
 blowing southeast monsoon conveys the enormous 
 evaporation of such an ocean under the fuU blaze 
 of a tropical sun, — an evaporation pouring down 
 in deluges of rain on the plains, and falling in per- 
 
THE ALPS AND THE HIMALAYAS 179 
 
 petual snow as it strikes the frozen elevations of 
 the mountains. Easily, then, will it be seen in 
 contrast that, to form an adequate conception of 
 the Alps, alike of their beauty and their structure, 
 no such immense demand is made on the powers. 
 Further, among the Alps the eye takes in at a 
 single glance an infinity of beautiful detail. It 
 revels in the emerald sheen of the velvety upland 
 pastures, and is transported with the amethystine 
 blue of the glacial ice. It follows with charm the 
 exquisite outlines of the snow-crowned Jungfrau 
 and Silberhorn, or commands, far below, the poetic 
 beauty of the Lauterbrimnen vaUey. No such 
 thing as this is possible among the Himalayas. It 
 would demand a telescopic eye. 
 
 Further back, I spoke of the necessity of evolv- 
 ing a mind to match the mountains. This holds 
 true whether the mountains be Alps or Himalayas. 
 And yet, to achieve a consummation so devoutly to 
 be wished, I know of no so feasible way as to sup- 
 ply a Raphael or Mozart to voice the gracious 
 beauty of the Alps, a Michelangelo or Beethoven 
 to interpret the overpowering sublimity of the 
 Himalayas. And yet, as the whole day long the 
 same crystal purity of the atmosphere continued to 
 prevail, and as on the following morning the same 
 miracle of a sunrise was repeated, we could not 
 but feel that two humble mortals at least had 
 added many a cubit to their aesthetic and geologic 
 stature. A stupendous sensation, constituting a 
 veritable epoch in our lives, had we enjoyed. 
 
II. 
 
 Calcutta, the English part of it, is a bril- 
 liant European capital, with immensely pic- 
 turesque Asiatic adjuncts. Its enormous parks and 
 stately avenues for riding and driving at once call 
 to mind London, yet suggest a striking tropical 
 contrast. Instead of elms and oaks, the trees are 
 palms, banyans, bho-trees, tamarinds ; and instead 
 of red-faced, plush-clad John Bull coachmen and 
 footmen, the drivers of the handsome private car- 
 riages are dark-skinned Hindus, in dress a splendid 
 conflagration of scarlet and gold, before which even 
 the flaming poinsettias and bourgainvillia vines 
 pale their ineffectual fir,es. How infinitely becom- 
 ing a scarlet and gold turban to a finely chiseled, 
 well-nigh black face ! Indeed, the English ladies 
 and gentlemen within the carriages would hardly 
 subject themselves to such a contrast if they knew 
 it to be so aesthetically damaging. How anaemic 
 and bleached out they look, as though they had 
 grown in cellars ! And yet how assuredly they look 
 the real lords and masters ! At a glance is read 
 their superior force of body and mind, their cour- 
 age, imperial might of will. A lion among a herd 
 of timid d^eer could not more emphasize the fact. 
 Clive's victory at Plassey, — it is here explained in 
 a flash. Then look out to the right or left across 
 
CALCUTTA 181 
 
 the park. Here a game of cricket is going on, 
 here one of golf, here one of polo. The English- 
 man is keeping up his muscle. Inevitably, comes 
 to mind Wellington's saying that Waterloo was 
 won on the foot-ball field at Eton. 
 
 Yes, one is in Bengal. The streets swarm with 
 the motley colored population. Ten men dart to 
 pick up your handkerchief, should you chance to 
 drop it ; a dozen to open the carriage door, should 
 you chance to stop. Meanwhile, fifty are elbowing 
 one another to sell you something. Five are sure 
 you want a barber ; ten, you want a pen-knife ; all 
 the rest, that you want photographs, flowers, a hand- 
 mirror, a pair of embroidered slippers, a model of 
 a temple, a scarf-pin. From the swarms that unite 
 their frantic efforts to heave up the steps of the 
 hotel your traveling bag, — in weight, perhaps, six 
 pounds, — and then individually apply for a money 
 recognition of their exhausting toil, you would 
 think yourself present at the transportation of a 
 colossal Egyptian sphinx from the quarries of the 
 Lower Cataract to far-away Memphis. Up to your 
 very bedroom they stream, each salaaming as before 
 a Mogul emperor. What exuberant tropical imag- 
 inations, in the glamour of which the naked fact 
 that they actually got within six feet of the hand- 
 bag is glorified into an eternal obligation of reward ! 
 You wax angry, and order them out of the room. 
 StiU more profound the obeisances. At last the 
 Tamerlane begins to rise within you, as you snatch 
 a trunk-strap and feel like lashing the " pampered 
 jades of Asia." Finally, you effect a deliverance, 
 
182 INDIA 
 
 and slam the door in their faces. With what beau- 
 tiful Oriental patience do they wait outside ! Time 
 is an illusion of the senses which has no objective 
 existence to the Indian mind. Are we not ever 
 sunk in the immutable and eternal ? You emerge 
 from the apartment, and there they are ! Now, for 
 the first time, you get to the bottom of the Parable 
 of the Unjust Judge, who feared not God, neither 
 regarded man, but had to give in none the less to 
 the persistent clamor of the widow. Had he been 
 the whole Supreme Court of the United States, 
 Chief Justice Marshal included, you would not 
 have the heart to blame him. 
 
 I dwell on incidents like these because from 
 1^- the outset they are needful for any vivid 
 interpretation of India. Human life here is ant- 
 cheap, if not dirt-cheap. Go into the dining-room 
 of the hotel — each guest has his private servant 
 behind his chair. Walk through the passage-ways 
 of the hotel after bedtime — a servant is sleeping 
 on a mat before each door. A clap of the hands 
 inside, and in a second he is on his feet. Self-help 
 soon ceases to be so much as a reminiscence. Here 
 am I, a man who, in democratic America, has been 
 wont to tend his own furnace, and in all grave do- 
 mestic crises to stand ready to act as second girl ; 
 but in India it is a struggle to be allowed to tie my 
 own shoestrings or brush my own teeth. A knock 
 at the door in the morning, and tea and toast are 
 brought to my bedside, the bath is pronounced 
 ready, and with difficulty, after falling back upon 
 
HINDU TRAITS 183 
 
 the Declaration of Independence and proclaiming 
 that aU men are born free and equal to handling a 
 towel, am I then permitted to dry my own skin. 
 I am getting demoralized. India is steadily under- 
 mining my manhood, emasculating my will, as she 
 did with the early Aryans, the Moguls, the Afghans. 
 Soon I shall not so much as know the meaning of 
 a shoe-brush, a furnace, a second girl. Sunk in ef- 
 feminacy, I shall hand over aU the affairs of state 
 to my slaves and eunuchs. Then a fresh irruption 
 will break in from the barbarous, hardy north ; and 
 a new Afghan or Mogul dynasty will be founded 
 on my ruins. Thus, in the disintegrating effect 
 wrought on one's own personality does a man soon 
 get aU the needful historical data for the interpre- 
 tation of the century-long story of India. A week's 
 experience of such demoralization is more edifying 
 than reading whole volumes of history. One be- 
 comes history. De tefahula narratur. 
 
 With such a teeming population as that of 
 Bengal, millions of families of six living on 
 a wage of fifty cents a week, utter subserviency of 
 body and mind, evincing itself in abject prostration 
 before man and the gods, is what must be looked 
 for. The way to favor with the strong has always 
 been groveling in the dust before them, and the 
 strong on earth and the strong in heaven are one and 
 the same to the Hindu mind. Hence the rankest 
 jungle growth of superstitions ; hence religious rites 
 among the lower orders so hideously obscene that 
 one could hardly fathom how they could have origi- 
 
184 INDIA 
 
 nated but by recalling how hideously obscene were 
 the lives of the earthly rulers these poor grovelers 
 worshiped as their sole ideals of might and glory. 
 The painted brothels of Pompeii are slirines of 
 purity alongside the orgies of lust portrayed in the 
 carvings of many a Hindu temple. The apotheosis 
 of a beast, animal or human, — of a cobra, a 
 jackal, a foul and bloodthirsty tyrant, — one per- 
 fectly comprehends it now. And yet among the 
 higher classes of the Indians are encountered men 
 of the loftiest and purest theistic faith, men at once 
 of the rarest mimificence of charitable action and 
 of the devoutest spirit of contemplation. And the 
 range of such characters is constantly growing, 
 as familiarity with Western thought and organized 
 charity spreads more widely, and supplements the 
 overpowering tendency of the Indian mind to ab- 
 straction from all terrestrial interests. 
 
 How overpowering this tendency still remains is 
 even to-day attested in acts that strike the Occiden- 
 tal mind with wonder. In Calcutta, in any of the 
 great cities of India, it is no unusual incident to 
 see a man who has made himself a millionaire be- 
 coming by the age of fifty so utterly world-weary, 
 so tired with aU the fret of the finite, as to throw 
 up business, make over his property to his children, 
 and himself wander forth naked but for a loin- 
 cloth, a staff in his hand, and a beggar's bowl at 
 his girdle, to spend the rest of his days in the for- 
 est in the contemplation of the infinite. Think, in 
 contrast, of the consternation on Wall Street, had 
 it suddenly been announced in the "Herald" or 
 
HINDU TRAITS 185 
 
 " Tribune " th^-t Jay Gould, weary of the long fret 
 of the finite involved in wrecking railroads, had 
 thrown up his millions and started out, a naked 
 mendicant, to devote what remained of his life to 
 absorption in the Absolute. Bloomingdale Asylum ! 
 would have been the exclamation on every lip. 
 And yet, in any higher sense of the word, which of 
 the two were the saner seems hardly open to ques- 
 tion, — certainly it would not be in India. 
 
III. 
 
 Our first objective point on leaving Cal- 
 cutta was Benares, on the banks of the sacred 
 Ganges. It lies some four hundred and fifty miles 
 away, in a northwesterly direction, the holiest city 
 in India to the Hindus, as formerly to the Buddhists. 
 Hither, five centuries and more before the Christian 
 era, came Sakya Muni, after receiving his illumi- 
 nation under the bho-tree in Gaya, to preach the 
 new faith in the very Jerusalem of Brahmanism. 
 Buddhism passed away long centuries ago, and not 
 a shrine remains in the city as a relic of its former 
 power. But still Benares keeps on the Mecca of 
 the Hindus. In vain the Moslems destroyed it in 
 1194, razing to the ground one thousand temples 
 and building mosques in their place. The faith 
 or superstition of the people proved too strong. 
 For Benares was the city of the sacred Ganges, the 
 threefold divine river that runs through heaven, 
 hell, and earth. To die on its banks, to have one's 
 ashes cast upon its waters, was the highway to the 
 realms of peace. A thousand miles, barefoot, hun- 
 gry, and sleeping by the roadside, will the poorest 
 peasants travel to bathe in its flood and drink its 
 water. Troops of them — men, women, and chil- 
 dren — one constantly meets, journeying toward the 
 holy city, or returning home with vessels filled at 
 
BENARES 187 
 
 its sacred stream. To it are the feetle and dying 
 carried, that they may pass away on its banks ; and 
 even, if too far inland for the journey, a portion of 
 the body is sent to be burned to ashes and thrown 
 on its swelling flood. 
 
 As a result of this faith, innumerable temples 
 stretch for miles along the river side. From the 
 elevation on which they stand descend superb 
 flights of stone steps, called ghats, hundreds of feet 
 broad and fifty feet in length, to the river brink. 
 Along with the temples are solid palaces, con- 
 structed by princes of the different provinces, in 
 which they or the members of their households may 
 await the hour of death, while multitudes of poorer 
 people lie tossing under the blazing sun till their 
 lingering diseases quit their hold and the supreme 
 hour of life's privilege arrives. 
 
 Strange, indeed, is the spectacle, as one 
 elbows and squeezes his way through the 
 narrow, crowded streets among the temples. The 
 countless pilgrims, arrayed in their holiday attire, 
 light up the scene with the tropical splendor of a 
 flower garden. As each temple is an infallible cure 
 for some specific disease, or of atonement for some 
 form of ceremonial sin, a regular round of visitation 
 is prescribed ; and, besides, the greedy Brahman 
 priests in each must get their share of the spoils. 
 What a sight to watch the crowds around the holy 
 well, gulping down great draughts of the nasty, 
 sacred liquid ! As immense masses of flowers are 
 thrown in as votive offerings, to ferment and rot 
 
188 INDIA 
 
 there, tlie water has the consistency and smell of 
 a thick, fetid vegetable soup. Chemically analyzed, 
 the formula would be one third dysentery, one 
 third diphtheria, and one third cholera, with a trace 
 of water. Indeed, could certain holy wells like this 
 and the one at Mecca be put in charge of a duly 
 qualified Sanitary Deity, in the opinion of physi- 
 cians the scourge of cholera might be stamped out. 
 And yet, to the entranced devotees, the nectar of 
 the gods could not furnish a more delicious draught. 
 Such a triumph of faith over eye and nose could 
 hardly be credited till seen in practical operation. 
 
 Meanwhile the gay-colored crowds are swarming 
 through the narrow streets. Slow is one's pro- 
 gress at best, but the struggle is rendered tenfold 
 harder by the large number of sacred cows that are 
 meandering round at their own sweet will. Like 
 all unduly privileged religious beings, — whether 
 popes, grand lamas, fakirs, or venerated monkeys, 
 — these cows take on insufferable airs of pre- 
 scriptive sanctity. Ordinary human piety and 
 humility are as nothing in their supernal sight. 
 Now, undulating sideways and on the full . trot, 
 comes one of them, straight down the narrow, 
 densely packed street. Eight and left fall back 
 the pilgrims, pressing into open doorways, jammed 
 against walls, or knocked down and run over, as 
 may be. Anyhow, the cow gets through, which is all 
 she cares for. Then, a second sacred cow is seized, 
 this time with a contemplative fit. Evidently, she 
 is mastered by an impulse to meditate the Abso- 
 lute, as straight across the narrow street, seven 
 
THE GHATS 189 
 
 feet wide, she plants herself, — a sacred dam, heap- 
 ing up the great human current. How the pro- 
 fane mind yearns to twist her holy tail ! But 
 to do so would mean to get one's own neck in- 
 continently twisted. There is but one course, — 
 patiently to wait till her mood of contemplative 
 abstraction is over, — unless, perhaps, some devotee 
 can divert her mind to earthly considerations by 
 tempting her with a sacred cake from a temple, 
 and so luring her round lengthwise to the street. 
 
 _ An hour or two at a time of this seething 
 caldron of humanity is as much as any 
 ordinary mortal, however interested in his species, 
 can endure. So, working his way out of the press, 
 he at last reaches the river-bank, and hires a boat. 
 Ah ! the relief to enjoy free elbow room and drink 
 in a fresh breath of dehumanized air ! It is a mar- 
 velous spectacle now before the eyes, as one rows 
 along the ghats. For mUes stretch the profusely 
 carved towers of the temples and the lines of solid 
 structures in which the richer pilgrims await the 
 glad summons of death. Here and there are 
 massive piles of ruins, attesting the power of the 
 Ganges floods to undermine and topple down the 
 heaviest masonry. Though marvelously picturesque 
 from a distance, seen close to all wears a dilapidated 
 look, with the exception of the superb stairways of 
 the ghats themselves. On these are gathered thou- 
 sands on thousands of devotees in holiday attire, — 
 a splendor of color ia the brilliant sunshine such as 
 it is rarely given a mortal to see. Down to the 
 
190 INDIA 
 
 river-bank they stream, throwing over themselves 
 ample white, sheet-like coverings, from under which 
 they slip off their gayer clothes. Then they wade 
 into the heavenly polluted stream. How they 
 plunge under the surface again and again ! How 
 they drink great double handfuls of the nauseous 
 water, thick with the ashes of the funeral pyres ! 
 Too much of it outside and inside, they cannot 
 absorb. Then, with what radiant faces do they 
 emerge from the holy flood, — tottering old women, 
 happy husbands and wives, laughing children ! 
 They will talk of this hour to their dying day, in 
 villages a thousand miles away. 
 
 Meanwhile, on great bare spaces between 
 the ghats, is going on the perpetual burn- 
 ing of the dead, the real euthanasia of the favored 
 of Krishna. At the sides stand enormous piles 
 of wood, while into the open spaces between them 
 are borne, on bamboo poles and wrapped in 
 sheets, the bodies to be burned. For a while, for 
 full baptism, the body is left immersed in the 
 river, while the relatives are driving a cruel bar- 
 gain with the sacerdotal wood-sellers and the 
 especial sanctified wretch who has a monopoly of 
 the sacred fire. Some have died rich enough to 
 afford a cord of wood for the pyre, some a half- 
 cord, some only a quarter. No matter. To all 
 alike it means floating down the earthly river to 
 where it joins the heavenly. The bargain struck, 
 the wood is built up into a pyre, the body laid on 
 it, more wood heaped on top, bits of sandal-wood 
 
BURNING THE DEAD 191 
 
 thrown on for perfume, oil poured upon the whole, 
 the sacred fire applied, and up leap the flames into 
 the air. All around, like so many crows, perch 
 on walls and pediments the troops of mourners ; 
 and, while their special pyre is burning, the ashes 
 of a dozen extinct ones near it are being raked 
 down by busy hands into the sacred flood. It is 
 a ghastly sight. But all along the ghats below 
 are thousands of ecstatic men, women, and chil- 
 dren laving in the stream and drinking its divine 
 waters. Here truly is witnessed India's tropical, 
 jungle growth of religious imagination raised to 
 its highest pitch. 
 
 On one pure outsider such was the impression 
 left by the sights and scenes of holy Benares. 
 But what can an outsider know of what was go- 
 ing on in the minds of these countless pilgrims? 
 They did not see the filthy Ganges I saw. They 
 saw a shining crystal stream flowing on to the land 
 of Beulah. They did not shudder as I did at the 
 cruel devouring flames. They sang, " Agni greets 
 Agni ! " our " Fire ascending seeks the sun ! " 
 Some inkling of this even I got. Not wholly 
 ghastly, but partly solemnizing was the scene. 
 As I floated along the current of the mighty 
 symbolic river and looked off at the stupendous 
 spectacle, in constant refrain came sounding 
 through my mind the solemn imagery of the 
 hymn, — 
 
 " One army of the Imng God, 
 To his command we bow. 
 Part of the host have crossed the flood, 
 And pait are crossing now." 
 
192 INDIA 
 
 One harrowing sight, however, we did not 
 witness, nor does any man in these days, 
 since it has been put down with an iron hand by 
 the British government. I refer to Sati, or the 
 self-immolation of the widow on the funeral pyre 
 of her husband, an act of self-sacrifice so rooted 
 in the admiration of the Hindu world that for a 
 century government dared not face the wrath any 
 attempt at its suppression would be sure to evoke. 
 That there could have been any sublime and heroic 
 side to such a ghastly superstition, few Occidental 
 minds can conceive. So, as an illustration of the 
 difference between the outside and the inside view 
 of any venerated custom, I quote from the pages 
 of a thoroughly emancipated Hindu writer a rem- 
 iniscence of his own childhood days. Readers fa- 
 miliar with the Alcestis of Euripides will admit 
 that the humble prose of the Hindu writer fairly 
 matches, in the scene it calls up, the pathetic 
 beauty of the Greek tragedian. It is, at any rate, 
 a comfort to find a fresh illustration of the adage 
 that there is a soul of goodness in things evil. 
 
 " When I was a little boy," says the Hindu 
 writer, " my attention was one morning roused by 
 hearing from my mother that my aunt was ' going 
 on a Sati.' I pondered in my mind what the word 
 ' Sati ' could mean. Being unable to solve the 
 problem, I asked my mother for an explanation. 
 She, with tears in her eyes, told me that my aunt 
 was ' going to eat fire.' . . . 
 
 " I ran down to my aunt's room ; and what 
 should I see there but a group of sombre-complex- 
 
WIDOW-BURNING 193 
 
 loned women, with my aunt in the middle. . . . 
 She was evidently rapt in an ecstasy of devotion, 
 earnest in all she did, quite calm and composed, as 
 if nothing important was to happen. It appeared 
 to me that aU the women assembled were admiring 
 the virtue and fortitude of my aunt, while not a 
 few, falling at her feet, expressed a fond hope 
 that they might possess a small particle of her 
 virtue. Amidst all these surroundings, what sur- 
 prised me most was my aunt's stretching out one of 
 her hands and holding a finger right over the wick 
 of the burning lamp for a few seconds, until it was 
 scorched and forcibly withdrawn by the old lady 
 who bade her do so, in order to test the firmness 
 of her mind. The perfect composure with which 
 she underwent this fiery ordeal convinced all that 
 she was a real Sati, fit to abide with her husband 
 in Boykinta, — paradise. . . . 
 
 "The body was laid on a charpoy. My aunt 
 followed it, not in a closed, but in an open palki. 
 She was unveUed; and regardless of the conse- 
 quences of a public exposure, she was, in a man- 
 ner, dead to the external world. In truth, she 
 was evidently longing for the hour when her spirit 
 and that of her husband should meet together and 
 dwell in heaven. 
 
 " The dead body being placed on the pyre, my 
 aunt was desired to walk seven times round it, 
 which she did, while strewing flowers, cowries, 
 and parched rice on the ground. . . . The Daro- 
 gah stepped forward once more, and endeavored 
 even at the last moment to deter her from her 
 
194 INDIA 
 
 fatal determination. But she, at the very thresh- 
 old of ghastly death, the fatal torch of Yama be- 
 fore her, calmly ascended the funeral pile, and, 
 lying down by the side of her husband, with one 
 hand under his head and another on his breast, 
 was heard to call in a half-suppressed voice, ' Hari ! 
 Hari ! ' (Krishna ! Krishna !), — a sign of her firm 
 belief in the reality of eternal beatitude. ... A 
 great shout of exultation then arose from the sur- 
 rounding spectators, till both the dead and living 
 bodies were converted into a handful of dust and 
 ashes." 
 
 In submitting this heroic and pathetic story and 
 simply leaving it to make its own impression, I can 
 only humbly trust I shall not be subjected to the 
 suspicion of being in secret a perfidious advocate 
 of Sati, or Hindu widow-burning. 
 
IV. 
 
 OuE first stopping-places after leaving Ben- 
 ares were Lucknow and Cawnpore, — Luck- 
 now the scene of the heroic defense of the Ee- 
 gency under Lawrence and Havelock; Cawnpore 
 that of the revolting brutalities exercised on the ill- 
 fated men and women who, under General Wheeler, 
 surrendered themselves to the tiger mercies of 
 Nana Sahib. As the terrible ordeal of the Indian 
 mutiny of 1857 brought out the indomitable quali- 
 ties of British character even more signally than 
 the original conquest, we naturally desired to see 
 some of the memorable spots where these qualities 
 had been illustrated at their highest pitch. In 
 reality, the reconquest of India meant quite an- 
 other thing from the conquest ; for now it was a 
 fight, not with cowardly and undisciplined natives, 
 a host of whom would run in panic from a cor- 
 poral's guard, but with Sepoys thoroughly trained 
 in modern tactics, armed with the best weapons, 
 inspired with fanatic, racial, and religious hate, 
 and who had seized upon the great depositories of 
 treasure, artillery, shot, and shell, and of cavalry 
 and infantry equipment. No prairie fire, started 
 at a hundred centres, and suddenly converging in 
 a universal sheet of flame, could have surpassed in 
 speed and fury this terrific outbreak. 
 
196 INDIA 
 
 Lucknow, a city of over a quarter of a million 
 inhabitants, was the luxurious capital of the kings 
 of Oude till the last of them was deposed by the 
 British and sent to Calcutta to linger out life on 
 a pension of fifty thousand dollars a month and 
 three hundred dancing-girls. Now, for the first 
 time, one finds himself on strictly Mohammedan 
 soil. The mosque with its slender minarets, onion- 
 shaped domes, and severer Saracenic forms has 
 mainly superseded the fantastic, nightmare delir- 
 ium of the Hindu temple. Further, as the later 
 kings of Oude were consumed by a regal passion 
 for dancing that outdid Nero in his for acting and 
 Commodus in his for gladiatorial fighting, highly 
 interesting is it to inspect his palace, with its for- 
 mer endless zenana quarters for bewitching Nautch 
 girls and mirrored halls for them to dance in, — 
 the king himself ever graciously pleased to en- 
 courage their modest efforts with saltatory accom- 
 paniments of his own august heels ; historically 
 instructive, too, as showing how, just as the ex- 
 treme of fondness for this graceful pastime kindled 
 fires in the blood that enabled the daughter of 
 Herodias to dance off John the Baptist's head, so, 
 with their witcheries, these Nautch girls danced off 
 the head of the last king of Oude, as grown too 
 vertiginous with savagery and lust to be longer fit 
 for affairs of state ! Thus a lascivious art which, 
 with us, has been reduced to a pale and bloodless 
 abstraction is in the East so very concrete as to 
 explain much history, political and religious. 
 
LUCKNOW 197 
 
 It is one thing to read about the defense 
 of the Kegency of Lucknow, even under 
 the inspiration of Tennyson's heroic poem ; but it 
 is quite another to be on the spot, and see the 
 shattered ruins that testify to the literal hell-fire 
 to which the short-handed garrison and crowd of 
 helpless women were for five long months exposed. 
 The Regency had formerly been an outlying pal- 
 ace of the king of Oude, with numerous groups 
 of buildings for zenanas, barracks, festival haUs, 
 and the other appointments of an Indian court. 
 Around all these, inclosing the great gardens, ran 
 a ten-foot stone wall. But close up to this wall 
 pressed on two sides the solidly built houses of the 
 city, while on the other sides were eminences and 
 fortress-like mosques, from which was completed 
 the circle of flame. Night and day, without inter- 
 mission, the roar and havoc went on. 
 
 Before being in Lucknow, I was familiar with 
 the picture left by a town shattered by an earth- 
 quake ; but it presented no such scene of destruc- 
 tion as this Regency. The buildings were simply 
 riddled with shot and shell, and pitted as if with 
 small-pox from the rain of rifle-balls. At any 
 time the garrison of men could have cut their way 
 out ; but, alas, there were the women ! Too well 
 was understood the fate that awaited them should 
 they fall into the hands of the Sepoys. And so 
 for five long months, under the blaze of the sum- 
 mer sim of India, decimated with dysentery and 
 cholera, devoured by swarms of flies, drinking hot 
 and putrid water, their wounds refusing to heal, — 
 
198 INDIA 
 
 the women as heroic as the men, — the sublime 
 defense went on. The way in which Tennyson 
 weaves into his poem all these sickening details 
 furnishes a striking illustration of the marvelous 
 sense-perception of a poet's eye. A prosaic mind 
 would no doubt have omitted the plague of flies as 
 too undignified to allude to in company with burst- 
 ing shells and exploding mines. In reality, this 
 plague of flies was more terrible than shells and 
 mines. They swarmed down upon the sick, the 
 wounded, and the well, as though already carrion. 
 The air and the ground were black with them, and 
 it was a perpetual fight not to be eaten up alive. 
 
 And yet this scene of destruction, with its awful 
 memories, was no mere tragic or pathetic sight. 
 How could it be on such a resplendent day, when, 
 as with the sun shining on the evil and on the 
 good and the rain descending on the just and on the 
 unjust, the exuberance of tropical nature was mak- 
 ing haste to cover havoc and ruin in such robes 
 of green and scarlet and gold that death seemed 
 swallowed up in victory. Every memory, too, was 
 bracing to the spirit. Had we met under ordinary 
 circumstances the men and women who faced this 
 stern ordeal, how tiresome and commonplace would 
 the majority of them have seemed ! What dreary 
 garrison gossip should we have had to listen to, 
 what reiteration of the grumblings that constitute 
 the main wellspring of happiness to the British 
 mind ! what vulgar liberties taken with the letter 
 " h " ! But, when the crisis came, how magnifi- 
 cently all flamed out in valor, self-sacrifice, absolute 
 
CAWNPORE 199 
 
 devotion to one another, in the angeKc care of the 
 ■wounded and cholera-smitten, and in an heroic for- 
 titude no stress of misery could break. Bracing, 
 indeed, such witness that underneath our common- 
 place, of the earth earthy, humanity there lie such 
 possibilities. It helps every one to hope of his own 
 poor self, " Perhaps, after all, at the root of me I 
 am not such a pitiful whipster as on the surface ! " 
 Deeply one feels this as he stands in the great 
 vaulted cellar in which the women were shut up for 
 protection, and thinks of them, crowded in there, 
 and, after high Boman fashion, searchingly debat- 
 ing whether, if the worst came to the worst, they 
 would be justified in killing themselves to save their 
 purity, or as Christians should endure to the end 
 every horror permitted by the inscrutable will of 
 God! 
 
 To be fair, brave, too, were the Sepoys, worthy of 
 all praise for their desperate valor. But here was 
 a fight of civilized reason with blind fanaticism, of 
 stable order with weltering chaos ; above all a fight 
 of chivalrous men for helpless women against a 
 swarm of wretches, rather than fall into whose pol- 
 luting hands they would have chosen the tender 
 mercies of tigers. Cawnpore was soon to show the 
 world from what fate these women were saved. 
 
 In Cawnpore, however, the scenes could 
 
 call out no sentiments but those of pity 
 
 or wrath. The flimsy, wretched intrenchment of 
 
 earth which the " worst rider on the worst horse 
 
 could have jumped over," into which were crowded 
 
200 INDIA 
 
 the soldiers, women, and children ; the imbecility 
 of their general, brave and devoted, but too old for 
 decisive action ; the one well from which at night 
 — women and children continually shot down in 
 the service — they could draw their scant supply 
 of water in such torrid heat ; the other well just be- 
 yond the intrenchment, into which after dark, and 
 equally under fire, they stealthily flung their mul- 
 tiplying dead, — all this presented the conditions 
 of a slaughter-pen too horrible to revive in imagina- 
 tion. Then, after twenty-three days, followed the 
 surrender, on the written pledge from Nana Sahib 
 of a safe passage down the Ganges to Allahabad. 
 It was written, not with a human hand, but with a 
 tiger's claw. 
 
 A couple of miles away on the river side lies the 
 ghat, or broad flight of stone steps descending to 
 the Ganges, to which the wretched victims were 
 marched. At first all seemed to show that Nana 
 Sahib was faithful to his pledge. The boats were 
 on hand, and into a number of them were loaded 
 the prisoners, and one after another started down 
 the river. Soon, however, it was noticed that only 
 the older women were allowed to embark, while the 
 younger were kept back. " We are betrayed ! " 
 groaned General Wheeler; and his head sunk on 
 his breast. Forthwith, at a given signal, a blaze of 
 fire burst forth on the ghat, and from the trees on 
 the river-bank along which the boats were passing. 
 The native boatmen had already jumped into the 
 river, and were swimming ashore. In an instant 
 General Wheeler and his staff were shot dead; 
 
CA WNPORE 201 
 
 while the merciless fire from the bank poured in 
 upon the poor men and women that had embarked, 
 and set the boats in flames. 
 
 To more than hint at the fate, for the next twenty 
 days, of the younger women, then marched back, 
 would be too revolting. Stories are told on the 
 spot which will never get into any of the public 
 histories. Even the avenger, in the shape of Gen- 
 eral Havelock and his little army, came too late for 
 them ; for, on the first defeat of his forces. Nana 
 Sahib ordered in the town butchers with their 
 knives to slaughter the wretched women and their 
 children, who were then, dying and dead, thrown 
 into an adjoining well. Two hours later Havelock 
 and his army were on the spot. Ah, Christian 
 hero and so-called Christian soldiers, in the jungle 
 of your hearts lurks the bloodthirsty tiger as in the 
 Indian jungle ! Vanished from sight the last faint 
 glimpse of the compassionate one on the cross with 
 his " Father forgive, they know not what they do ! " 
 AH hell broke loose in the hearts of the cursing, 
 hysterically weeping soldiers, and yet this heU 
 seeming a flame of sacred fire from heaven, the car- 
 nival of vengeance now set in. " General Neale, 
 you wiU see these prisoners properly executed," 
 sternly commanded Havelock. Neale rolled up his 
 sleeves, and gave his order : " First drag these 
 devils through Christian blood ! " It was obeyed, 
 and over the pools of the still warm blood of the 
 so lately butchered women the men were trailed. 
 Then, scores by scores, they were blown from the 
 mouths of cannon, or hung from the branches of a 
 
202 INDIA 
 
 neighboring tree till it could bear no further weight 
 of its ghastly fruit. 
 
 Like looking down from the rim of a crater into 
 the pit of fiery lava below, was it to stand on the 
 very spot and listen to the tale of this volcanic out- 
 break of human passion from the lips of an old 
 soldier who had come in with Havelock's force, and 
 been an eye-witness of this scene. 
 
 Three ineffaceable memories will always linger 
 in my mind as interpreters of these tragic scenes. 
 The first, the Hindu temple which stands on the 
 top of the ghat descending to the Ganges, and from 
 the banks beside which the murderous fire was 
 poured into the boats. The temple itself is carved 
 and painted with obscenities so hideously revolting 
 as to seem fit shrine to inspire such atrocities. The 
 second wiU be that of the inscription over the gate 
 of the cemetery, where beneath pabns and feathery 
 acacias sleep the majority of those who perished in 
 the siege. The words were simply, " Tread softly." 
 The third, the pathetic fitness of the Scripture 
 passage chosen for the monument over the well 
 into which were thrown the butchered women and 
 children. It is from a verse of the Psalms, the 
 startling realism of whose imagery of the wood- 
 chopper and his chips had a thousand times im- 
 pressed me, and which now seemed to revive its lit- 
 eral sense : " Our bones are scattered at the grave's 
 mouth, as when one cutteth and cleaveth wood 
 upon the earth." 
 
 Immense, however, as was the cost of the recon- 
 quest, and terrible as were the passions let loose, 
 
CA WNPORE 203 
 
 every day one spends in India convinces him more 
 profoundly of the infinite boon it is to this vast 
 population to be held in subjection by a power at 
 once so strong, enlightened, and humane as that of 
 Great Britain. To leave once again to themselves 
 these peoples of such diverse races and fanaticisms 
 would be like opening aU the cages in a menagerie, 
 and letting jaguar, leopard, lion, rhinoceros fight 
 out the question of supremacy among themselves. 
 The beast that would end off king would be the 
 tiger ; and, as has significantly been added, the 
 tiger would be the Mohammedan. 
 
V. 
 
 As one travels by rail across the vast fer- 
 tile plains of northern India, and every now 
 and then comes out on a city, with its temples, 
 mosques, and palaces of Maharajas, or of wealthy 
 merchants, the whole social and political history 
 of India is explained at a glance. As a rule, 
 there is but one step from the hovel to the pal- 
 ace. Eude as the tepees of our North American 
 Indians are the majority of the huts of the natives. 
 Built, as a general rule, of dried mud, with no 
 opening to the light and air but a door-frame 
 minus a door, the roof a thatch of palm or bamboo 
 grass, they literally swarm with children, and, no 
 doubt, countless other tenants. Fifty or sixty of 
 these huts are commonly huddled together, yet 
 not so closely but that they are shaded with pic- 
 turesque bananas, palms, and mangoes, the light 
 and shade of which are glorified with the scarlet, 
 green, and gold of the dresses of the women, and 
 turned into an Eden of primeval innocence by 
 the beautiful naked bodies, the animated bronze, 
 of the children. Undue sympathy, however, for 
 little boys and girls devoid of clothes is at 
 once checked by the thought how vastly more 
 comfortable they are without than with them. 
 Besides, another happy reflection comes to the 
 
ORIENTAL SAVINGS-BANKS 205 
 
 rescue. If too poor to wear cloth.es, there are 
 none of them too poor to indulge in jewelry. 
 Rarely a naked little tyke that has not silver 
 bracelets on his wrists and silver anklets on his 
 feet. 
 
 " I can get along without necessities, but I must 
 have luxuries," is in India no mere witty Gal- 
 lic paradox. It is hard, practical common sense. 
 To sell a nose-ring for a dress would be to an 
 Indian woman a far wilder freak of insanity than 
 for an American woman to sell her dress for a 
 nose-ring, and would draw down upon her graver 
 censure from her sex. Accordingly, many the ex- 
 tremely poor Indian woman one meets, carrying 
 on her head an unsightly load of dried cakes of 
 cow-dung, the principal fuel, with both her arms 
 six inches deep in bracelets, and both her an- 
 kles six deep in anklets, not to speak of stone- 
 set rings in both flanges and the central cartilage 
 of the nose, together with a miscellaneous collection 
 hanging from the upper circles and the lobes of 
 the ears. 
 
 In all conscience, this would seem jewelry 
 enough for any reasonable woman in distressingly 
 limited pecuniary circumstances to care to disport. 
 Not at all. On the road one falls in with great 
 troops of gypsies, who in addition wear on each 
 toe a ring with a little tinkling bell attached, thus 
 picturesquely illustrating the song, " She shall have 
 music wherever she goes." Inevitably, is one car- 
 ried back in imagination over two thousand years, 
 as now in all its vividness is lighted up to him 
 
206 INDIA 
 
 the stern denunciation o£ Isaiah : " Because the 
 daughters of Zion are haughty, and walk with 
 stretched forth necks and wanton eyes, walking 
 and mincing as they go, and making a tinkling with 
 their feet : . . . therefore the Lord will take away 
 the bravery of their tinkling ornaments, . . . the 
 bracelets, ear-rings, and nose jewels," together, in 
 the sacred text, with a catalogue of other feminine 
 adornments I have not had the good fortune to 
 encounter even in India, but which most likely 
 prevail in circles from which, on grounds of faith 
 and practice, I am unhappily debarred. 
 
 But these poor, half-fed women I have been 
 describing the subliine prophet coidd never have 
 had the heart to denounce. The one and only 
 savings-bank they have ever heard of is the nose, 
 ears, wrists, ankles, and toes of a woman. There 
 they store away their ancestral inheritance, their 
 hard-earned savings, the future portion of their 
 children. Scarcely would starvation induce them 
 to break in upon the sacred hoard. And yet 
 they, with a family of six, are living on two dol- 
 lars and a half a month. Poor things, let them 
 tinkle as they go ! Not of them, but of their wan- 
 ton Nautch-girl sisters in the zenanas, did Isaiah 
 speak. 
 
 Continually, as we journeyed on, would the 
 
 question arise, "Are these poor people at 
 
 heart as miserable as their surroundings would 
 
 seem to argue ? " It is a great relief to say that 
 
 probably they are not. Theirs is a passive tem- 
 
INDIAN PESSIMISM 207 
 
 perament ; their work is a quiet routine, no demon 
 of machinery goads them on to keep pace with its 
 whirling wheels. With plenty of leisure for talk 
 and laughter, they have no sons to put through 
 Harvard; their daughters are married at ten or 
 twelve ; they enter on the Nirvana of grandfather 
 or grandmother at twenty-six ; and finally their re- 
 ligion affords them, with its ceremonials and pil- 
 grimages, a constant imaginative delight, broken, 
 it is true, by some frightful nightmares. Few, 
 indeed, the farmers, mechanics, or clerks who, 
 with us, could get off for such week-long holiday 
 tramps as they, to the temples of favorite deities 
 or saints, — tramps on which they take along with 
 them their wives and children and neighbors and 
 friends, all seeing the world together, and at the 
 same time washing away their sins. In fact, what 
 Saratoga, the White Sulphur Springs, Newport, 
 are to the well-off with us, that and more than 
 that are Benares, Jagannath, and a host of other 
 shrines, to millions of the poorest of the poor in 
 India. 
 
 Of course in the past history of India, wars, 
 harryings, and burnings must have wrought inde- 
 scribable misery. And yet in a country like this, 
 and with such a people, devastations are rapidly 
 recovered from. Human nature adapts itself to 
 anything ; and I am inclined to think that, in the 
 case of such a people, it is a good deal as with 
 the hawks and the sparrows. The hawk pounces 
 down, and there is a wild fluttering and screaming. 
 He secures his victim, and flies away. Soon all 
 
208 INDIA 
 
 is forgotten, and the little birds are twittering and 
 singing on the branches as before. 
 
 In fine, what is so widely characterized as the 
 deep-rooted melancholy and pessimism of India 
 is a passive rather than an active, a soothing 
 rather than an embittering, sentiment, at the last 
 remove from the misanthropy of a Dean Swift 
 rushing madly from a hateful world to "die of 
 rage like a poisoned rat in his hole ;" nearer akin, 
 indeed, to Jaques in the Forest of Arden, with 
 his, " I can suck melancholy out of a song, as 
 a weasel sucks eggs. More, I prithee, more." 
 Rather does it take the form of a vague and 
 dreamy sense of the evanescence of human life 
 and of tranquil indifference to what it has to 
 offer. All this coil is not worth the price. Toil 
 is pain, care is fever, dreamy rest alone is sweet. 
 As opium to the nerves, such is religion to the 
 spirit, the delicate haze that dissolves the hard out- 
 lines of reality, the sense of the serene universal 
 life that quiets down all fret of the finite. 
 
 No wonder, then, that in India opium and reli- 
 gion are craved by the peasant as the two great tran- 
 quillizers. Thus among the causes of the final utter 
 extinction of Buddhism in the land of its birth, 
 and the rehabilitation in public favor of its rival, 
 such scholars as Barth are disposed to rank chief 
 the morbid monotony, in its later developments, of 
 the Buddhistic insistence on an utterly pessimistic 
 view of human existence along with a return to 
 ascetic practices, all at the cost of the present 
 realized peace so beautifully illustrated in the life 
 
SNAKES 209 
 
 of its founder. Indeed, in original Buddhism, 
 pessimism served but as the negative to a positive, 
 but as the vanishing point of the finite for entrance 
 on non-finite blessedness. It was the Oriental 
 solution of the paradox of losing the life to find it, 
 of the paradox of St. Paul, " poor, yet making 
 many rich, having nothing, and yet possessing aU 
 things." And so it became a gospel of present 
 salvation from all consciousness of the ills of ex- 
 istence to millions, alike of the poor and ignorant 
 who in such a climate crave mainly the feeling of 
 sensuous — not sensual — repose, and to the wealthy 
 and powerful who were wooed by it to turn away 
 from the greeds and ambitions that heat the blood 
 and fret the spirit toward the interior enjoyment 
 of those gentle and kindly feelings in which alone 
 tranquillity and peace abide. 
 
 Back in our own childhood days, many the 
 moral drawn for our improvement from 
 the bellicose propensities of cats and dogs in con- 
 trast with the loving spirit that should prevail in 
 well-regulated households of little boys and girls. 
 In India one often wonders whether the stupen- 
 dous scale upon which this lesson is illustrated on 
 the part of the whole animal creation has not had 
 a vast deal to do with the depth of the national 
 reaction in favor of mental peace. While the men, 
 women, and children are vegetarians, all the other 
 members of creation, from the Bengal tiger to the 
 most invisible gnat, are not. Such apparatus of 
 stings, claws, fangs, suction-tubes, incisors, all ex- 
 
210 INDIA 
 
 quisitely contrived for the partition and assimilation 
 of flesh and blood, hardly elsewhere can be par- 
 alleled. And yet nowhere else does such aversion 
 prevail against taking life. When one sees great 
 troops of stark-naked fakirs and mathematically 
 calculates the area of surface they expose in invita- 
 tion to mosquitoes, gnats, ants, ticks, and chigres, 
 — not to speak of the graver temptations opened 
 up to snakes, leopards, and lions, — one is lost in 
 admiration of the positive refusal on the part of 
 the fakir to retort in kind. In reality can he tran- 
 quilly " meditate the absolute and immutable " on 
 an outdoor carpet of ants and under a canopy of 
 gnats and feel " I am Brahma, and fiery skin and 
 stinging pismire are but figments of a dream," 
 while, with us, a single fly is enough to take all the 
 tenderness out of a love-letter, the soundness out 
 of a legal brief, nay, all the devoutness even out of 
 a sermon ? If he can, then what a joint miracle 
 of interior absorption and exterior cuticular indu- 
 ration ! The Occidental world needs such men as 
 missionaries. 
 
 In view, then, of the richness and variety of 
 the animal kingdom in India, and of its probable 
 psychologic connection with certain of the most 
 striking traits of the inhabitants, it would seem 
 invidious on the part of the traveler to omit his 
 meed of tribute to such divisions of it as espe- 
 cially have interested and instructed him. So 
 personally I feel moved to devote a few words to 
 snakes. 
 
 In Ceylon more people are killed by falls from 
 
GAUBIUM CERTAMINIS 211 
 
 cocoa-nut palms than perish from snake-bites. Not 
 that this is to be construed in mitigation of snakes, 
 but it does seem to emphasize the moral respon- 
 sibility of one portion of the globe for another 
 in thus so clearly connecting every little cocoa- 
 nut-eating boy at home in guilty complicity with 
 the awful fate of widowhood in India. None the 
 less, snakes abound everywhere, especially hooded 
 cobras, so enshrined in religious veneration that 
 not even the loss of a favorite child wiU induce 
 any but the lowest caste Hindus to kill one of 
 them. 
 
 From these low-caste Hindus is it that are re- 
 cruited the ranks of the so-called snake-charmers, 
 itinerant showmen whose main charm consists 
 in cutting out the fangs and poison sacs of the 
 brutes before disporting with them in public. Even 
 then the hateful reptiles maintain a certain pres- 
 tige of horror which sets fascinating cold chills 
 running down the back as, spite of the loss of 
 their venomous weapons, they still keep striking 
 out in the most vicious manner. That the moral- 
 ity of every act lies solely in its intention is made 
 plain to the obtusest ethical observers. Still, no 
 intelligent traveler is willing to content himself 
 with cobras with their fangs cut out, more than 
 with tigers lapping gruel instead of blood. He 
 wants to see the frightful reptile in all his terror 
 and aU his malignity, and this, if he wiU pay the 
 price, the snake-charmers wiU give him a chance 
 to witness in a fight between a full-fanged cobra 
 and a mongoose. 
 
212 INDIA 
 
 So imperfect are the sympathies of the 
 average man with the cobra that from a 
 purely spiritual point of view a fight between him 
 and a mongoose has none of the drawbacks in the 
 way of wounded sensibilities attendant on an en- 
 counter between two creatures of the higher rank 
 of dogs. Spite of his adoption of the hood of a 
 devout Carmelite, the cobra remains at heart a 
 sinuous, slimy, pestiferous brute, whom hardly the 
 Buddha could take home to his bosom and love. 
 He glides into the arena, moreover, guilty of the 
 blood of at least ten thousand men, women, and chil- 
 dren a year in his native land. His adversary, on 
 the other hand, is a lithe, mercurial, lightning-swift 
 little lemur, of ferret or weasel build, — an electric 
 flash of intelligence and aim irresistibly remind- 
 ing one, in temperament and fibre, of the miracu- 
 lous French scholastic champion Abelard, all on a 
 quiver for an intellectual set-to with the most re- 
 doubtable swash-buckler of Nominalism or Real- 
 ism, William of Champeaux or other. The very 
 prince of subtle acumen, ready to let fly in an in- 
 stant and with unerring aim at every joint in the 
 armor of his antagonist, the mongoose sails into 
 battle like the marvelous Frenchman, a derisive 
 smile playing around his white teeth that prophe- 
 sies victory from the start. 
 
 Plainly at the very outset the cobra is gravely 
 disconcerted and would be glad to slink out of 
 the controversy through any knot-hole. The con- 
 vincing logical categories on which hitherto he 
 has relied so confidently seem inconclusive in the 
 
GAUDIUM CERTAMINIS 213 
 
 presence of an intelligence so much more acute. 
 But there is no escape. Every hair erect with 
 metaphysical frenzy and eyes blood-shot with bat- 
 tle-flame, electric Abelard is circling round him. 
 So out the cobra lashes with his terrible fangs in 
 what is meant to be a mortal argument. Lightly 
 the mongoose springs aside or leaps whole feet into 
 the air, and the fangs strike idly into invulner- 
 able space ; while before the cobra can recover 
 himself his quicksilver antagonist has got in on 
 tail or body an irritating argumentative nip with 
 his ferret teeth. 
 
 So far, all this on the mongoose's part is but 
 a pleasant by-play of logical fence. His intuitive 
 mind is simply preluding with the graver issue. 
 Just where the force of his adversary's major pre- 
 mise lies is to him as plain as day, and that it lies 
 not in his body or tail but in his brain. An un- 
 guarded movement, a promising opening, and with 
 a lightning-swift spring through the air, the infal- 
 lible logician has seized the cobra just back of the 
 head where the turn is too short to bring the fangs 
 to bear. Master of the situation, intellect and 
 teeth are now concentrated on the single point at 
 stake. All in vain the infuriated cobra writhes his 
 coils round the mongoose's body, rolls him over 
 and over along the arena, and thrashes him on the 
 ground. Not for a moment is the clearness of his 
 mental vision distracted by such specious sophis- 
 tries. Steadily he hangs on to the major premise, 
 gnawing his way ever higher and higher up till 
 at last his keen-ground metaphysical teeth have 
 
214 INDIA 
 
 pierced tlie brain. The quick of the controversy 
 is reached and forever silenced. William of Cham- 
 peanx lies stark and still, while without waste of 
 further breath, victorious Abelard quietly with- 
 draws from the university arena, leaving the as- 
 sembled students lost in admiration at the bril- 
 liancy of his controversial tactics. 
 
 Surely, if fighting there must be, here is a kind 
 in which the intellectual element so dominates 
 the brutal as to render it distinctly educational. 
 Wholly beyond, moreover, and realms above its 
 mere dazzling brilliancy is felt its profound ethical 
 and historical significance ; for, presumptuously as 
 has been challenged for itself by another world- 
 famous exhibition the title of the " Greatest Moral 
 Show on Earth," this fairly may claim its right to 
 the proud appellation. Frivolous, indeed, must be 
 the nature on whose imagination the scene does 
 not impress itself as a sublime piece of symbolism 
 in which nothing less momentous is typified than 
 the elemental struggle of light and darkness, good 
 and evil. " Ah ! " soliloquizes the more reflective 
 mind, — " ah ! that instead of poor, scatter-brained 
 mother Eve our ' first parent ' had been the mon- 
 goose. How different, then, the issue of the primal 
 battles with the serpent, and how changed the sub- 
 sequent event of human history ! " 
 
VI. 
 
 Before going on to record the impressions 
 left by Agra and Delhi, the two most splen- 
 did capitals of the Mogul dynasty, a brief historical 
 sketch may not be out of place. 
 
 Several chapters back, a comparison was made 
 between the Alps and the plain of Lombardy on 
 the one hand and, on the other, the Himalayas 
 and the enormous level stretches of northern India, 
 the object being to show on how vastly more colos- 
 sal a geological scale India was fashioned. Pre- 
 cisely the same overpowering impression on the 
 imagination is made the moment one tries to form 
 an adequate conception of the relation in which 
 India has ever stood to the enormous races and 
 nationalities environing her for thousands of miles 
 to the west and the north, — in Arabia, Persia, 
 Afghanistan, Turkestan, China, Tartary. 
 
 As one reads the story of the fall of the Roman 
 Empire, he is awed at the thought of the hordes 
 of Goths, Vandals, Lombards, Teutons, that stood 
 ready to pour down on that narrow fringe of civili- 
 zation around the Mediterranean; but how petty 
 in numbers and range were these in comparison 
 with the inconceivably vaster hordes — when once 
 they should become unified under a conquering re- 
 ligion — to be drawn from the enormous expanses 
 
216 INDIA 
 
 of western and northern Asia ! One little swoop 
 of their swarms in the far-back days of Attila came 
 near destroying the Roman Empire ; and yet this 
 was but as a single wave of the ocean to the succes- 
 sive myriads of them breaking on and over the 
 northern rock-barriers of India. Indeed, in think- 
 ing of Asia in comparison with Europe, one is 
 perpetually reminded of a saying of Alexander the 
 Great after he had embarked on his career of 
 Oriental conquest : " When I get a dispatch from 
 my little kingdom of Macedon, reporting to me the 
 taking of some insignificant hill town or of a suc- 
 cessful fight for the capture of a ford, I seem to be 
 reading of the battles of the frogs and mice." 
 
 Through the birth and religion of Mohammed, 
 who died in 632 a. d., came the flash that was to 
 set aflame, not in one, but in century-successive, 
 prairie fires, these vast inflammable areas of races 
 and nationalities. Here was a religion which made 
 paradise and plunder, loyalty and looting, one and 
 indivisible, — an entrancing harmony of the ferocity 
 of nature with the attractions of grace. " The pos- 
 sessions of the infidel are the inheritance of the 
 faithful," had been the proclamation of the Prophet 
 himself. What sanguinary Afghan, bloodthirsty 
 Turcoman, ugly, squint-eyed Tartar, but would 
 yearn to become a child of Allah when the news 
 of such a gospel should reach him in his rugged 
 mountain fastnesses, or on his wide, grass-waving 
 steppes ? 
 
 Well-nigh from the outset of the rise of the 
 Mohammedan power, India was the Eoman Empire 
 
ELIMINATING THE TARTAR 217 
 
 of the south of Asia, on which the covetous eyes of 
 the faithful were fixed. " Lieber Gott ! " cried out 
 rough-and-ready General Bliicher, when he first 
 saw London, " what a city to loot ! " What might 
 not have been said of India, with its mines of gold 
 and jewels, its temples heaped with treasures, its 
 cities teeming with manufactories of silks and 
 tissues of gold, its palaces of kings and princes ? 
 As early as 650 began the invasions from Arabia, 
 while meantime conquests were pushed through 
 Persia and clear up to the Hindu Kush. For cen- 
 turies the struggle went on, ever increasing in fury 
 and weight of numbers as the vast hordes of the 
 north came under Mohammedan sway. Province 
 after province was conquered and securely held, 
 while at times devastating incursions like that of 
 Timur, the Tartar, in 1398, swept everything help- 
 lessly before them. Not, however, till the invasion 
 of Babar, sixth in descent from the terrible Timur, 
 was anything like the foundation laid of a perma- 
 nent Mohammedan dynasty ruling all India, — the 
 famous Mogul dynasty, which continued on, in 
 shadow at least, tiU, in the Sepoy rebellion, the 
 last of its princes were dragged out from the sub- 
 terranean chambers of their ancestors' tomb and 
 shot dead by brutal Hodson of Hodson's Horse. 
 
 The term Mogul dynasty can easily become 
 
 misleading, suggestive as it is of the stifE- 
 
 haired, yellow-faced, squint-eyed Tartar. Long 
 
 before the consolidation every trace of this kind 
 
 of physical, mental, and moral strabismus had 
 
218 INDIA 
 
 been' drowned out of the royal family in overpower- 
 ing mixtures of Afghan, Persian, Circassian, Sara- 
 cen, Jewish, even Christian blood. Whatever the 
 pros and cons as to polygamy, one thing is cer- 
 tain, — polygamy of the extrarracial kind is good 
 for the Tartar. Cut off from, or sesthetically es- 
 chewing, Tartar wives, he is enabled steadily to 
 efface himself for the benefit of his posterity. 
 What with Aryan and Semitic wives at freest 
 command, — the only two that, historically, are 
 ■worthy of consideration, — he, in the course of 
 generations, ultimately reduces to zero his horse- 
 mane hair, squint eyes, and tallow face, and along 
 with these their corresponding intellectual, aesthetic, 
 and moral qualities. Then scratch his skin, and you 
 will not find the Tartar. With the addition of 
 the plural for the singular, the adage now proves 
 true that a man owes all he is to — his mothers. 
 
 No, you will not find the Tartar in the emperors 
 of the so-called Mogul dynasty. Swiftly they estab- 
 lished a brilliant, cosmopolitan, and, in many ways, 
 wise and scientific administration. In 1556, only 
 sixty years after Babar's conquest, began the won- 
 derful half -century reign of Ahbar the Great, which 
 inaugurated the renaissance age of India. Art, 
 literature, philosophy, the spirit of cosmopolitan 
 tolerance, all took a new start. Max Miiller, in- 
 deed, pronounces Akbar the first founder of a " com- 
 parative study of the religions of the world" — 
 even anticipating Chicago ! Nothing so delighted 
 him as to assemble learned Brahmans, Mussulmans, 
 Zoroastrians, Jews, Jesuit padres, and skeptical 
 
ELIMINATING THE TARTAR 219 
 
 philosophers, and to hear them argue with one 
 another. " Gradually," says a bitter Mohammedan 
 hater of his. "spirit of inquiry, opposed to every 
 Islamitic principle," — " gradually there grew, as the 
 outline on a stone, the conviction in his heart that 
 there were sensible men in all religions and abste- 
 mious thinkers." No mere intellectual critic, but 
 a man profoundly devout in heart, Akbar finally 
 built up a religion of his own, — a combination 
 of all he thought wisest and best in Brahmanical 
 teaching, Zoroastrian fire-worship, Mohammedan 
 morality, and Christian dogma, even substituting 
 for the usual formula, " BismaUah," etc., of Islam, 
 the rather compound one of 
 
 " thou whose names are Jesus and Christ, 
 We praise thee ; there is no one heside thee, God ! " 
 
 As one reads the story of Akbar's attitude 
 toward the rival religions, impossible it is, spite 
 of Max MiiUer's assertion, not to call to miud 
 King Solomon, and to raise the historical query 
 whether the title of first founder of the study of 
 comparative religions does not more fitly belong 
 to him. The cases are strikingly parallel. The 
 old desert faith of the Hebrews had weakened ; 
 contact with Egypt and Assyria had brought rival 
 religions into comparison ; equally excellent wives 
 from Tyre, Sidon, Babylon, Thebes, and Mem- 
 phis, had softened the heart of the wisest of kings, 
 and rendered him tender toward their respective 
 creeds ; and, besides all this, Solomon was himself 
 a man of restless and subtle intellect. Akbar's 
 was, no doubt, the devouter nature of the two ; 
 
220 INDIA 
 
 yet still the renaissance in India and the renais- 
 sance in Judsea were such essentially similar phe- 
 nomena, and so equally bound up with the individ- 
 uality of two highly intellectual and widely married 
 Oriental sovereigns, that it may not seem pre- 
 sumptuous to submit even to a Max MiiUer the 
 propriety of a reconsideration of his statement. 
 Certain it is that Akbar's Christian wife Mary 
 exerted over his life an influence at once liber- 
 alizing and exalting, and so inclined his heart 
 towards her creed. The subject at any rate opens 
 up a novel chapter in the study of the part woman 
 has played in the historical development of reli- 
 gion. 
 
 In Agra, Akbar the Great built for his 
 glory and pleasure a gigantic fortress-palace 
 a mile and a half in circuit, its massive crenelated 
 walls seventy feet in height, entered on four sides 
 by stupendous gateways, in themselves at once forts 
 and sumptuous palaces. Within the vast inclos- 
 ure there is room not merely for storehouses 
 against a siege, barracks for the soldiery, dormi- 
 tories for the retainers and troops of servants, 
 grounds for horse-exercise, sports and elephant- 
 fights, but immense areas for mosques, audience- 
 halls, gardens, baths, zenanas. For air and fresh- 
 ness, along the top of the massive sandstone walls, 
 are exquisitely wrought towers of pure white mar- 
 ble and ranges of apartments for noonday siestas ; 
 while on the marble surface of their level roofs 
 above stretch wide spaces for gatherings in the 
 
AGRA 221 
 
 cool of tlie evening or for lying out and sleep- 
 ing under the stars. All command broad views 
 over the richly cultivated country, the river Jumna 
 winding in great sweeps through the landscape. 
 It is, in fine, the Alhambra of India, the fortress 
 for safety ; the audience-halls for the administra- 
 tion of justice and the reception of ambassadors ; 
 the mosque for the worship of Allah ; the zenanas 
 for the beauties of Cashmere, Persia, Syria ; the 
 palaces for splendor, luxury, repose ; the gardens, 
 fountains, canals, and baths for coolness, perfume, 
 murmuring sounds. 
 
 Apart from the mosques, the Saracenic Moham- 
 medan architecture of India has one unfailing char- 
 acteristic. It makes a rich, sensuous appeal to 
 common human nature, and requires for its full 
 appreciation no spiritual elevation of soul. Every 
 man who, hot and thirsty, has felt the rapture of 
 a plunge into a cool brook or of a long, delicious 
 draught from a bubbling spring, has in himself 
 the fundamental elements of sense and feeling to 
 which this architecture and its surroundings are 
 addressed. Every man, furthermore, who as he 
 walks by the seashore delights to pluck a hand- 
 ful of bayberry leaves and eagerly inhale their 
 aromatic perfume ; every man who on a hot July 
 afternoon feels the luxury of a dreamy siesta in 
 his hammock, with a delicious breeze stealing over 
 him ; every man who finds it paradise to have his 
 inamorata take her guitar and sing soothing songs 
 to him while he reposes his weary Olympian brow 
 on a sofa-cushion, — is, just in so far, perfectly 
 
222 INDIA 
 
 capable of appreciating the sesthetic sense of an 
 Akbar the Great or a Shah Jehan, when — 
 
 " In Xanadu did KuUa Khan 
 A stately pleasure-dome decree, 
 Where Alph, the sacred river, ran 
 Through caverns measureless to man 
 Down to a sunless sea." 
 
 In India the climate is tropical. Air and shade 
 are the primal requisites. There must be no stair- 
 cases to climb. Apartment must succeed apart- 
 ment on the same level. The roofs, too, must be 
 utilized for ample spaces for the enjoyment of 
 the starlight and the moonlight and the sweet sleep 
 to be had on them. Still other airy buildings must 
 be set a-top these roofs for wider outlook or yet 
 more sequestered privacy. Screens of openwork 
 marble, cut in exquisite patterns of vines and 
 palms and lilies and pomegranates, shall be the 
 sole walls of these buildings, that the jessamine- 
 scented breezes may steal through them, and the 
 brighter sunlight be transfigured into a golden 
 twilight, and the moonlight into mysterious dream- 
 light. 
 
 Such, then, was the fairy-land, the midsummer- 
 night's dream, that Akbar the Great undertook 
 to make reality within the fort of Agra, and which 
 his successors, Jehangir and Shah Jehan, carried 
 to completeness. The yearning of Abt Vogler to 
 arrest and make permanent the ravishment of his 
 manifold music there found its genii to achieve the 
 task. The fullness of time had come. Long be- 
 fore had the beauty-loving Saracenic genius, seiz- 
 
INFLUENCE OF WOMAN 223 
 
 ing upon the treasures of Greek and Koman archi- 
 tecture in the East, developed out of them bewitch- 
 ing architectural types suited to embody its own 
 inborn cravings. Syria and Persia were full of 
 master-builders ; and from Italy, too, they could be 
 drawn without stint. In India there were trea- 
 suries of gold and silver, and millions of subjects 
 to toil for a pittance. Over all presided the un- 
 dying genius of Greece in imperishable architect- 
 ural forms that needed only modifications through 
 the Saracenic arch, the extension of an inclined 
 piazza roof for shade, and the freer use of grace- 
 ful minarets and open cupolas, to evolve a new 
 order, which for symmetry, grace, and appeal to 
 the pleasure-craving, dreamy side of human nature 
 is without rival in the world. 
 
 Even in our own country, the relation 
 borne by woman to architectural construc- 
 tion has been made a subject of grave comment 
 by philosophic minds, — especially in its bearing 
 on the multiplication of closets and corresponding 
 shrinkage of size in the living and sleeping rooms, 
 to leave space for the closets. In the Orient this 
 influence becomes stiU more marked. A man with 
 three hundred wives requires, of course, a domes- 
 tic establishment differently arranged from that 
 of a man with only one. Take, for example, the 
 single instance of adequate provision for bathing. 
 Were there but one little bath-room in so hot a 
 climate, and did each several wife insist on lying 
 in the tub half the day and the rest of the day on 
 
224 INDIA 
 
 a Persian rug beside it, it will readily be seen 
 that serious domestic complications might arise. 
 Construct, on the other hand, immense marble 
 halls, with swimming-pools of marble thirty feet 
 long, and large areas of marble floors, on which 
 could be laid a hundred rugs, whereon the beau- 
 ties of India, Circassia, and Syria might stretch out 
 and doze or gossip or eat sweetmeats, then what 
 enhanced prospects of marital peace would at once 
 ensue ! Inlay the marble walls of these halls with 
 exquisite designs in precious stones, and roof them 
 with delicate mirror-work overrun with fairy-like 
 marble traceries of vines and lilies, and why should 
 not all be satisfied with bathing, dozing, telling 
 stories, and doing nothing all day long ? 
 
 Again, for an example of the influence of woman 
 on architecture, take the so-called Jasmine Tower, 
 erected by Shah Jehan for his favorite sultana. 
 It overhangs the wall of the fortress, and is in- 
 wrought with such indescribable beauty of open- 
 work marble screens as to drive the fancy wild. 
 Now Shah Jehan was extremely fond of playing 
 chess with his prime vizier ; but, like most Orien- 
 tal sovereigns, he was also fond of mitigating the 
 asperities of too protracted thought. So, on the 
 floor of the court before the Jasmine Tower, needs 
 must he have a chess-board constructed of marble 
 flagging, each flag-stone large enough for a man 
 or woman to stand on freely. Then, at a signal, 
 the requisite numbers of his wives, gorgeously ar- 
 rayed as kings and queens and bishops and knights 
 and pawns, would file out of the zenana, while, 
 
THE OASIS 225 
 
 luxuriously seated on their divans, Shall Jehan 
 and the vizier would direct with finger or word 
 the complicated movements of the game of living 
 chess. In this way was taken off the perhaps 
 too severe intellectual edge of an otherwise so 
 exacting pastime. 
 
 Such little straws as these must serve to show 
 which way the wind blows in the Mohammedan 
 domestic architecture of India; and I must leave 
 it to the imagination of my readers to carry these 
 hints out into all the details of gardens and foun- 
 tains and successive halls of splendor, and pools 
 and marble canals mirroring and repeating in their 
 transfigured reflections the dream-world above. 
 This Saracenic Mohammedan architecture, as I 
 have said before, is the apotheosis of sensuous 
 sestheticism. It has no lift to it, no ideal beyond 
 what it sees already perfect. " If paradise be any- 
 where it is here, here, here ! " wrote Shah Jehan 
 over one of the portals. A man living under such 
 conditions would, I should think, struggle fiercely 
 never to die. What could there be to his sense- 
 restricted imagination in the vision, "Eye hath 
 not seen, nor ear heard, neither heart conceived the 
 things God hath in store " ? No. " If paradise be 
 anywhere, it is here, it is here ! " 
 
 In the fiery, sun-blistered deserts of Arabia, 
 in which Mohammedanism took its rise, the 
 physical basis of all imaginative visions of the para- 
 dise yearned after was the oasis. Paradise, indeed, 
 was the oasis when the tongue -parched wayfarer 
 
226 INDIA 
 
 struggled, faint and exhausted, out of the burning 
 sands, and flung himself down under the shade of 
 its palms and mimosas, and drank deep draughts 
 from its delicious springs. Allah had there done 
 his supremest creative feat, and revealed himseK 
 in the highest to his creatures. What more divine ' 
 could he bring to pass in reward of the faithful 
 than to make just this kind of experience everlast- 
 ing, — with the entrancing addition of the houris? 
 Such, then, was the vision of the celestial home ; 
 and the next step was to try to make it come on 
 earth, even as it lay awaiting in paradise. 
 
 This primitive idea of the oasis has dominated 
 the mind of Mohammedanism wherever the faith 
 has spread ; and Saracenic domestic and, I may 
 add, mortuary architecture is but its full and final 
 flower. la it are the original sense-impressions of 
 the blissful change from the glare of the desert to 
 the shade of the palms and the refreshment of the 
 springs, but raised to the seventh aesthetic heaven. 
 In his infinite mercy, had it not pleased AUah to 
 create for the faithful a substance called marble, 
 snowy white as his own purity; among stones, a 
 kind of precious stone enduring as granite and yet 
 capable of being made translucent as amber, and 
 wreathed all over with the most delicate traceries 
 of vines and flowers ? Then, further, to relieve its 
 perhaps too great monotony of white, had it not 
 equally pleased Allah to create the beryl, the onyx, 
 the jasper, the lapis lazuli, wherewith to inlay it, 
 and to assure delightful variety of hue and sheen ? 
 Still more, that all suggestion of glare might 
 
THE TAJ MAHAL 227 
 
 utterly be removed, had not Allah caused to grow 
 the palm, the tamarind, the cypress, the banyan, 
 the orange, wherein to embower and relieve the 
 shining white, and, along with these, made pure 
 crystal waters to leap up in fountains, and fill the 
 pools of courts, and reflect from the mirrored sur- 
 face the porticoes and minarets and domes, and 
 houris arrayed in robes of cashmere or unarrayed 
 in aught but their own surpassing charms ? 
 
 Now, it is in this ineffable unity of gardens, 
 terraces, canals, fountains, minarets, snow-white 
 domes, that lie the witchery and seduction of 
 India's Saracenic architecture. All is dissolved 
 into one melodious music, every object transfigured 
 into element of one fairy-land. The eye is fed with 
 gracious forms, the ear with murmuring sounds, the 
 scent with delicious perfumes. Alternate sensations 
 of languorous heat and refreshing coolness, of thirst 
 and of oranges hanging down to slake it with, of 
 invitation to rest with appeal to wander leisurely 
 on, sensuously appeal to blended body and soul. 
 
 There are two buildings in Agra which it is 
 considered a mark of barbarism not to rave 
 over, — the one, the Pearl Mosque within the walls 
 of the fort ; the other, the Taj Mahal, on the curv- 
 ing bank of the river Jumna, a mile or more away 
 from the fort. The latter is the memorial tomb 
 of Shah Jehan's favorite wife, Muntaz Mahal, 
 " Chosen of the Palace." Taj is but the diminu- 
 tive, the pet name of endearment for Muntaz, as 
 we should say NeU for Ellen. 
 
228 INDIA 
 
 Now, in respect of the first of these two, the 
 Pearl Mosque, no fear of aesthetic excommunication 
 will prevent my saying that it suffers most severely 
 from the lack of just that which is the crowning 
 fascination of most Saracenic buildings. The glare 
 of the desert, the fatal monotony of the unrelieved 
 whiteness of marble, the absence anywhere of the 
 oasis, with its springs and overshadowing trees, 
 render it a place almost intolerable under the sun 
 of India. Surpassingly beautiful are its outlines, 
 with its pillared aisles, its three snowy domes, and 
 its delicately carved cloisters surrounding the sides 
 of the open court-yard ; and in the rosy flush of 
 early dawn, or under the dream-spell of moonlight, 
 one might love to linger there, but not when the 
 sun is riding high in the heavens. Then the direct 
 smiting rays or their equally blinding reflections 
 pierce everywhere ; and one can conceive of none 
 but a half-crazed fakir, making a merit of a crema- 
 tory of the living flesh, ever seeking it as a place 
 of prayer. 
 
 But of the Taj Mahal, in contrast, what shall I 
 say ? It is by thousands of judges pronounced the 
 most beautiful building in the world ; but never a 
 one of them who has first drunk its intoxicating 
 soma juice is ever again competent to pass a calmly 
 reasoned verdict, whether it is or is not. Nor does 
 it make any difference who beholds it. The most 
 ideal young American girl, the driest student of 
 comparative architecture, the most commonplace 
 British Philistine, the emptiest-headed globe-trotter 
 who has raked together money enough to go round 
 
THE TAJ MAHAL 229 
 
 the world and return home the same, only a bit 
 more confused than he set out, — all are equally 
 carried away, all lifted to the seventh heaven of 
 their respective (short or long) celestial Jacob's 
 ladders. 
 
 The Taj is not a building. It is an Arabian 
 Night's dream, in which a building plays a queenly 
 part. It is a tropical orchestra, in which earth, 
 sky, grove, waters, flowers, precious stones, moon- 
 orbed domes, snowy pinnacles, blend and flow into 
 one Mozart symphony. AU along on the way from 
 Calcutta to Agra I had seen alabaster models of 
 the Taj, and said to myself sadly, " Is that all ? " 
 The models left out only the golden clouds from 
 around the sinking sun, the shining waters from 
 beneath the rising moon, the lover's soul from the 
 spell of his mistress's song, — only that, and no- 
 thing more ! 
 
 One enters the inclosure of the Taj by a superb 
 gateway, through whose lofty arch he looks along 
 the sky, grove, and dome reflecting surface of a 
 marble-paved canal, bordered on either side by wide 
 pathg and beds of flowers and flanked by lines of 
 dark, spiry cypress-trees, backed with groves on 
 either hand. In vista at the end of this magic 
 avenue, and repeated in transfiguration in the 
 water, stands the Taj. How siiperb a setting ! 
 The marble platform on which it rests is a square 
 three hundred and thirteen feet each way and 
 eighteen feet in height. From each of the four 
 corners mounts high aloft an indescribably graceful 
 minaret, relieved in its ascent by three hanging 
 
230 INDIA 
 
 galleries and surmounted by the beautiful Saracenic 
 cupola. There in the middle of the grand plat- 
 form rises the Taj, itself like the pinnacles, all of 
 snowy, exquisitely carved marble, the finial of its 
 marble dome two hundred and twenty feet aloft in 
 the blue sky. Further, as one still looks out from 
 the gateway, stretch to the right and left the great 
 tropical gardens, beautiful with palms, mimosas, 
 and tamarinds, lighted up by the splendor of the 
 plumage of darting paroquets, and with a glory of 
 scarlet, purple, and gold in the trailing vines. 
 
 I do not know whether the Taj is the most 
 beautiful building in the world or not. I never 
 want to know. If Euclid demonstrated to me in 
 ten immutable axioms and ten immutable deduc- 
 tions from them that it was not, it would make no 
 difference. I only know that in its combination 
 with earth and sky it presents the most fairy-like 
 scene on earth. Thought is not : in enjoyment it 
 expires. 
 
 I saw the Taj by early morning light, by sunset 
 light, and by moonlight, when every trace of ma- 
 teriality was so dissolved in ethereal spirit that 
 it seemed as though all material barriers were 
 melted away, and the living here and the living 
 there must float together and feel neither out of 
 sphere. And yet no glare, even of fiercest noon- 
 day, has power to break the poetic spell. Peren- 
 nial oasis in life's so frequent waste, against it ver- 
 dure, wellspring of delight, lotus land of dreams, 
 no Libyan desert can prevail. And just as within 
 its inmost shrine, illuminated not by windows, but 
 
THE TAJ MAHAL 231 
 
 only through the graceful openwork sprays of vines 
 and flowers chiseled in marble screens, the blaze 
 of the midday sunshine is transfigured into a 
 soft, golden haze, so equally there the harshest 
 sounds are transformed into melodious music. Let 
 a strain be sung by the most discordant voice, 
 even were it a snatch of a simple song, and forth- 
 with is it taken up as by a choir of angels and 
 sent circling and circling through the tremulously 
 vibrating vault above, sweet and jubilant, as over 
 Bethlehem the "Hymn of the Nativity." No word 
 is repeated; only, as it were, the theme of the 
 musician is taken up and revealed in its divine 
 intent, revealed as he, too, shall later hear it, 
 stored away and enriched in the sanctifying mem- 
 ory of God. All seems imbued as by an instinct 
 of chaste purity that wiU be sullied by nothing 
 discordant or profane, but which ignores it, and 
 soars above it into a celestial realm. Even the 
 sleeping woman there, the wife and mother who 
 died in childbirth pangs, and in tender memory 
 of whom all this miracle of beauty was evoked, 
 suggests no thought of pain. 
 
VII. 
 
 What more fitting preface to the little I 
 shall have space to say about Delhi than 
 the passionate cry of the French savant, James 
 Darmesteter ? " Delhi the royal ! Delhi the im- 
 perial ! Delhi the bleeding ! I have had but four 
 days to wander among thy ruins and thy tombs : 
 it will be the eternal regret of my life. Eor two 
 thousand years has the heart of India beaten 
 there, whatever the color of the blood — Aryan, 
 Turk, Afghan, Mogul — that the waves of invasion 
 rolled thither. Whosoever would breathe with 
 one breath the India of Brahma and the India of 
 Allah, let him traverse, stone by stone, the forty- 
 five square miles which Delhi in succession, along 
 the banks of the Jumna, has peopled with ruins 
 and phantoms." 
 
 Yes, the India of Brahma and the India of 
 Allah, the awe-imposing phantoms of both are 
 there. Thither Shah Jehan, sated with the mag- 
 nificence of Agra, removed his court, and built 
 a new Alhambra, rivaling in splendor and luxury 
 the one he had left behind, while all about him 
 in the area of forty square miles lay the ruins of 
 the earlier perished cities of Afghan, Tartar, Per- 
 sian conquerors, and of the far-back Hindu rulers. 
 Ruined and deserted capitols, tenanted now but 
 
DELHI 233 
 
 by bats, owls, and fakirs, are the historical land- 
 marks of India, teUing in monotony of repetition 
 the story of the ravages and insane caprices of 
 tyrannic and irresponsible power to which has been 
 subjected this veritable " Niobe of nations." Next 
 to the passion of conquest, the passion of building 
 strikes the deepest root into the world's great 
 despots, — manifesting itself in all varieties of 
 ways, from rearing pyramids of skulls with Timur 
 to rearing pyramids of Gizeh with the Egyptian 
 Pharaohs. The world must hold in everlasting 
 remembrance the virtues of such benefactors ; and 
 to this end, in exquisite irony of logic, one after 
 the other they demolish the records of the virtues 
 of their predecessors, to rebuild with their mate- 
 rial, only in turn to have their own demolished 
 that other phantoms may commemorate their 
 imperishable glory. Did Akbar the Great have 
 some premonition of this ironical smile in the 
 sleeve of Fate, when at Fatehpur-Sikri, after 
 building a magnificent city, — now deserted, — in 
 remembrance of a great victory of his grandfather 
 Babar, he inscribed over its stupendous gateway : 
 " Isa (Jesus), on whom be peace ! said, ' The 
 world is a bridge ; pass over it, but build no house 
 on it '" ? 
 
 Delhi has been called the Rome of India. In 
 vastness and impressiveness of ruins it is a hun- 
 dred Homes. When, in comparison, one recalls 
 the walls of Rome as they exist to-day, he credits 
 with entire historical faith the story of Romulus 
 killing his brother Remus for the little innuendo 
 
234 INDIA 
 
 implied in a hop, skip, and jump over them. Had 
 Eemus tried the like feat with the Cyclopean walls 
 of Tughlakabad, one of the abandoned cities of 
 Delhi, it would have been his own feelings that 
 felt hurt and not those of Romulus. No : here is 
 the work of giants. Hundred-armed Briareus, with 
 gangs of Titans under him to quarry and heave, 
 must have taken the contract for these stupendous 
 towers and battlements. Deserted now for centu- 
 ries, blackened with age, shaken with earthquakes, 
 the city once within eaten out by the mordant tooth 
 of Time, nothing left behind but a vast crater — how 
 they overwhelm the mind, as, ant-like, one creeps 
 along their awful base ! Then the mausoleum of 
 ferocious old Tughlak himself, " the bloody king," 
 outside the south wall of the city, and once sur- 
 rounded with a lake ! It looks an impregnable 
 fortress in itself. So terrible his record and so 
 dire the estimate of the fate before him in the 
 world to come, that his successor piously purchased 
 at great expense written quittances of all he had 
 cruelly outraged on earth and stored them in an 
 iron chest at the head of the tomb, to be close at 
 hand against the Day of Judgment. But, even with 
 these authentic receipts in full, the sanguinary old 
 tyrant seems to have looked forward with smaU 
 relief to the call of the Mohammedan angel of the 
 resurrection. How he barricaded himself in with 
 gigantic walls and battlements, as though dynamite 
 itself should never blow his dogged feoul out of its 
 fastness, and summon it before any tribimal short 
 of its own ferocious will ! 
 
DELHI 235 
 
 Four miles from there, under the shadow of the 
 superb five-storied tower, the Kutb Minar, one 
 comes upon another wilderness of Titanic ruins. 
 Each fresh conqueror must found a new city to 
 perpetuate his glory. Why should a taste for 
 building have been implanted in the heart by Allah, 
 and millions of cunning workmen put at one's 
 disposal, but to create something with them that 
 shall add an eighth wonder to the world ? Besides, 
 is not this the site of the original Hindu city of 
 Dilli, where idolaters have spent centuries in mak- 
 ing all magnificent with temples ? Tear them down ! 
 Why go to the rude quarries for stone when Allah's 
 blaspheming enemies have already hewn it for the 
 faithful into walls and pillars? Only with divin- 
 est patience first mutilate every face of myriad 
 carved god or goddess ; for is it not written, " Thou 
 shalt not make unto thyself any graven image"? 
 Enough will then remain of Hindu, Buddhist, Jain 
 glories of architecture — first piously smitten hard 
 enough in the teeth to satisfy the sacred precept of 
 the law — wherewith to rear magnificent cloisters. 
 Then at the end of the vast court build a stupen- 
 dous mosque, with five lofty Saracenic arches open- 
 ing up its interior, all towering as high above 
 the rest as Allah above the gods of the infidel. 
 But, to make his divine supremacy sure, to proclaim 
 it to sight for miles and miles around, rear on high 
 the mighty Kutb Minar. Such a tower ! Can the 
 round world equal it? It and Giotto's in Flor- 
 ence are the two that utterly overpeer all others. 
 Nearly fifty feet in its base diameter and rising to 
 
236 INDIA 
 
 the height of two hundred and forty feet, broken at 
 intervals by five beautiful corbeled balconies, the 
 first three stories of red sandstone and the two 
 upper ones of white marble, its superb shaft pow- 
 erfully incised with alternate angular and rounded 
 flutings and decorated with bands of inscriptions, 
 it excites the mind with such positive invigoration 
 as to call out literal shouts of admiration. To have 
 built it seems greater than to have stormed Delhi. 
 
 Here are but passing glimpses of two of the 
 ruined cities of these forty-five square miles of his- 
 toric stones. Of Ferozabad and Indrapat I cannot 
 stop to speak, vast and overwhelming as they are 
 in their lonely and massive desolation. But the 
 whole country around is strewn with ruins. Trav- 
 elers speak of the profound impression left by the 
 Appian Way of Rome ! The tomb of Cecilia Me- 
 tella would go unnoticed here. There are miles of 
 three-domed, mosque-like tombs in which it could 
 be hidden away as a toy. Then, too, the exquisite 
 beauty of many of them, burial-shrines of poets, 
 saints, daughters of kings, with such pathetic in- 
 scriptions as, for example, this : — 
 
 *' Save the green herb, place naught above my head : 
 Such pall alone befits the lowly dead." 
 
 Often they are of purest white marble, inclosed 
 by snowy openwork screens, wrought in infinitely 
 graceful carvings of vines and tendrils. 
 
 All passes away, and naught remains. Pride 
 and glory, they are dust and ashes. " A thousand 
 years in thy sight are but as yesterday when it is 
 past, and as a watch in the night." How often 
 
DELHI 237 
 
 we prate this overpowering thought ! But not in 
 Delhi. No ; here we feel it, know it, as everlast- 
 ing yea and amen. The heart beats not in pulses 
 of seconds, but in pulses of centuries. The mind 
 is arrested not by the fleeting aspects of the hour, 
 but is swayed by the flow and ebb of centuries. 
 The very story of to-day, as we stand on the spot 
 at Humayan's giant tomb, from which, in the 
 Indian mutiny, brutal Ilodson dragged out the 
 last trembling descendants of Tamerlane, and shot 
 them out of hand, — what was the thrice-repeated 
 ring of that carbine but the thrice-repeated knell 
 of the mighty Mogul dynasty? The mob of infu- 
 riated Mohammedans, with arms in their hands, 
 that hung around the rufiian trooper and his hun- 
 dred mounted men, and never dared to lift a hand 
 while the last princes of their emperor's blood, pit- 
 eously begging for their lives, were shot dead, — 
 what a change from the days when their terrible 
 ancestor had burst in like a cyclone from the north, 
 sweeping everything before him ! To-day in its 
 place stands Great Britain's imperial dynasty. It 
 needs but to lift a finger, and from the Himalayas 
 of the north to Tuticorin in the south its will is law. 
 But has this fleeting show of power and pomp any 
 more abiding root ? In Delhi one cannot believe 
 it. Mournfully on every passing breeze sighs the 
 strain, " Thou carriest them away as with a flood : 
 they are as a sleep." 
 
vin. 
 
 From Delhi to Jeypore, the change was 
 as great as from the solemn movement 
 of Sir Thomas Browne's " Religio Medici " or of 
 his chapters on Urn-Burial to a comic opera of 
 Sullivan's. Stretched alongside a Jeypore street, 
 Boston Public Garden in tulip-time would look 
 gray and sombre. Such a feast of color in the 
 red, orange, green, blue, white, gold dresses of 
 the men, women, and children ! It was a perpet- 
 ually revolving human kaleidoscope. One did not 
 so much as have to turn it ; it turned itself. Even 
 the elephants had caught the color infection. En- 
 tirely apart from their splendid trappings, their 
 heads and trunks were painted in charming ara- 
 besques. Nor, considering the fact that an ele- 
 phant is quite as much a colossal monument of 
 architecture as he is a moving quadruped, did this 
 decoration seem any more out of place than on the 
 front of a temple. 
 
 Then, too, how kind the people of Jeypore ! 
 At least two splendid public wedding processions 
 did they extemporize for our sole benefit. Oh, 
 the contrast from crawling ' into a dozen black 
 hacks, then closing the blinds, and driving to a 
 roped-in chtirch, as is the mournful marital custom 
 
JEYPORE 239 
 
 in America ! No ; marriage was never intended 
 for a selfish private affair between a sequestered 
 man and woman. It should be celebrated out- 
 doors in brilliant sunshine, and always with the 
 accompaniment of elephants ! Without elephants 
 what union can ever hope to prove permanently 
 happy ! 
 
 One of the processions we witnessed was of a 
 promising little boy of eleven and a bride presum- 
 ably of seven, though her we were not permitted 
 to see. But as the boy husband had most likely 
 scarcely set eyes on her himself, we could not, as 
 total strangers, feel seriously aggrieved. It was 
 a pleasant feature of the cortege that the invited 
 guests were for the most part lovely children, in 
 order, I take it, that the company might not be 
 too grown-up for the miniature bridegroom. First, 
 there came a huge scarlet-and-gold-caparisoned ele- 
 phant, with a celestial troop of children high aloft 
 in the howdah. Next succeeded carriage after car- 
 riage filled with equally ravishing-looking children. 
 Then mamma and her older daughters, with no- 
 thing to detract from their Oriental beauty but the 
 jewels in their noses, — worse misplaced there than 
 jewels in the head of a toad, even though the Ee- 
 vised Version will insist that it was a nose-ring and 
 not an ear-ring that Isaac bestowed on Rebecca in 
 the effusion of his romantic love. Then a caval- 
 cade of led horses, resplendent with cloths thick-set 
 with gold or silver bosses, and on each horse the 
 perfect picture of a little Oriental prince or prin- 
 cess of from six to ten years old. What followed 
 
240 INDIA 
 
 next had some symbolical meaning which I did not 
 understand. Two wiry, active men, in red from 
 head to foot, kept leaping and slashing harmlessly 
 at each other with long curved knives. Perhaps 
 the occult idea was that evil would surely come 
 should the happy couple ever draw on each other 
 that sharpest of all edged knives — a railing tongue. 
 But the boy husband himself ! Horse and he 
 were all of shining gold, while long gold tassels 
 hung down over his face, to hide, I suppose, his 
 too tumultuous feelings. The rear was brought 
 up by a troop of singing, dancing girls, literally 
 with "rings on their fingers and bells on their 
 toes; " while, to impart due solemnity to the close, 
 a final elephant, grave as a judge on the bench, 
 rolled ponderously along. 
 
 Certainly, it was a bit sad to reflect that, should 
 the pretty boy husband of eleven chance to die at 
 the age of twelve, the poor little bride of eight 
 could never remarry, but must end her days a de- 
 spised, maltreated widow, at the mercy of a tyrant 
 mother-in-law. While in America mothers-in-law 
 are often found the tenderest and most self-sacrifi- 
 cing of women, in India there is to the young widow 
 no such name of terror. In many a case in by- 
 gone days even Sati, or widow-burning, was not a 
 leap out of the frying-pan into the fire, but out of 
 fifty years of frying-pan, held over the coals by 
 a remorseless mother-in-law, into flames that in- 
 volved but ten minutes of agony, and all was stilled 
 forever. 
 
AMBER 241 
 
 The Maharajah of Jeypore has the repu- 
 tation of being very polite to strangers. 
 Certainly he was to my friend and me, fairly 
 overwhelming our sensibilities by sending a gi- 
 gantic elephant to take us to Amber, a ruined 
 city several miles away on the mountain side. 
 No vulgar omnibus elephant for Tom, Dick, and 
 Harry, this ! but the' Oriental equivalent of a di- 
 rector's private Pullman car all to ourselves, — 
 we monarchs of all we surveyed, which seemed a 
 quarter of an acre when we got on the animal's 
 back. Then the gracious condescension with which, 
 on seeing how small we were, the lowly minded 
 mammoth went down on all fours, and suffered a 
 ladder to be placed against his side ! Many the 
 carved relief I had seen on Hindu temples of a 
 midget of a man apparently worshiping an ele- 
 phant, but this absolute reversal of the scene in 
 the worship of the midget by the elephant was a 
 lesson in humility time wiU never dislodge. True, 
 when he got up it felt for a moment earthquaky ; 
 but can it rationally be expected that a two-story 
 house, with a pillar at each corner for a leg, shall 
 rise from its knees without somewhat discomposing 
 the feelings of two quiet gentlemen in the second 
 story ? 
 
 It was a glorious ride the self -abnegating elephant 
 gave us. Though he had been over the ground a 
 hundred times himself, he knew it was all fresh to 
 us, and never for a moment slighted the scenery by 
 departure from the judicial dignity of his walk. 
 Amber lies on a slope of the mountain side, its for- 
 
242 INDIA 
 
 tifications picturesquely rooted on a rocky base 
 reflected in a lake below. There, from the days 
 of Ptolemy, and how much farther back no man 
 knows, had stood the capital of Jeypore, rich in 
 multitudinous palaces and still more multitudinous 
 temples and tombs, until in 1728 the site of the 
 capital was removed six miles away to the level 
 plain. The superb palaces of the Maharajah are 
 still preserved in their former glory, while every- 
 thing else has been suffered to fall into ruins. Any 
 attempt to describe these palaces would be only 
 to try to do again what was vainly tried for those 
 in Agra. Enough that here again was the acme 
 of the aesthetic Mohammedan paradise, a few short 
 years of which one would think would suffice to 
 reduce the Archangel Michael to a sensual imbe- 
 cile. Cato himself, had he come to live here at 
 eighty, would have become a warning to aU young 
 men before he had reached the age of eighty- 
 four. 
 
 The most impressive sight of all, however, was 
 to look ofiE from the level marble roofs of the 
 palaces over the ruined city. Fifty Pompeiis 
 could not leave an equal impression of majestic 
 desolation. Euins become, as a rule, the haunts 
 of bats and owls. In India they become also the 
 haunts of fakirs, — naked, covered with dirt, muti- 
 lated with austerities, their matted hair hanging 
 down to their loins. Extremes meet ; and the 
 natural reaction from the Mohammedan paradise 
 is the brooding, self-torturing fakir, face to face 
 with the emptiness, dust, and ashes of all earthly 
 
AMBER 243 
 
 glory. Here in Amber is before Hs eyes a per- 
 petual sermon from the text, Sic transit, which the 
 comment of the most eloquent preacher could only 
 serve to weaken. 
 
 Were I a fakir, I would live in Amber as surely 
 as, had I been a sculptor in the palmy days of 
 Greece, I would have gone to Athens. No scen- 
 ery of earth, luxurious landscape, arid waste, wreck 
 of by-gone glory, is ever deeply interpreted to the 
 feeling apart from living presences, animal or hu- 
 man. What vultures are to the Parsee burial- 
 tower, or jackals to the ruined porticoes of Pal- 
 myra, such are fakirs to an abandoned Indian 
 city. Already had I become acquainted with, seen, 
 handled, smelled, and explored with every sense 
 the genuine fakir, — whole troops of them at once. 
 In Cawnpore an intelligent missionary had given 
 me free introduction to large groups of them, and 
 furnished me in the flesh the most living commen- 
 tary on the letters of St. Jerome I had ever read. 
 Naked but for an iron chain around their loins, 
 perpetually throwing dust over their grimy bodies, 
 their hair like strands of tarry rope-yarn, half 
 idiotic, stupefied with bhang to help on religious 
 vision, — so melancholy a spectacle of mental de- 
 gradation I never saw outside an insane asylum. 
 And yet just such a spectacle as this — minus the 
 bhang, I doubt not — was for many years, before he 
 broke loose from asceticism, and before his interior 
 illumination, the world-saviour, Sakya Muni, the 
 Buddha of countless millions. Singularly enough, 
 I saw at the same time a Christian convert, a man 
 
244 INDIA 
 
 of thirty, with wonderfully beautiful eyes and a 
 radiant glow of love in his face, who had himself 
 for many years been a fakir, and at last found his 
 enlightenment under the sacred bho-tree of the re- 
 ligion of Jesus. In two so utterly different worlds 
 had he lived, and so vivid was his analysis of the 
 mental states of each, that a long talk with him 
 gave me more insight into the soul experiences 
 of Sakya Muni than aU the books I have ever 
 read. 
 
 The professional tramp in America and the pro- 
 fessional tramp in India, the one secular, the other 
 sacred, what a study in human nature to compare 
 the two ! So unlike and yet so like ! Each, in 
 sheer physical inertia, seeks Nirvana, the Nirvana 
 of deliverance from the moil and strain of life ; the 
 one to invite it with vagabond society, lewd stories, 
 whiskey, tobacco, and stolen freight-car rides to 
 sunny climes in winter and cooler ones in summer ; 
 the other, in equal abnegation of every social duty, 
 with opium-dreams, and vague reveries of a super- 
 nally quietistic infinite, lapsed in immutable siesta. 
 Each testifies alike to his pessimistic creed — the 
 one reasoned, the other unreasoned — that this 
 world of trouble exists but to be renounced. Yet 
 the American type is despised, brutally arrested, 
 and set to breaking stone for the highways, while 
 the Hindu is venerated as having chosen the better 
 part. Nothing can more forcibly emphasize the 
 contrast between an industrial civilization like ours 
 and a reverie-bound, supernaturally overpowered 
 civilization like that of India. Yet of the two 
 
MT. ABU 245 
 
 tramp types, give me the Hindu I From our own 
 we can hope no Buddha. 
 
 From Jeypore we journeyed on to Mt. Abu, 
 to visit there the famous Jain temples. The 
 ride of seventeen miles from the station is by jin- 
 rikisha, with six coolie power to propel the con- 
 templative man inside. Not the "weeping phi- 
 losopher " himself could have taken that ride 
 without all along making the rocks ring with 
 peals of laughter. Oh, the monkeys in the trees ! 
 The blessing of Sancho Panza on him who first 
 invented them ! A man of one language, said 
 Goethe, is a man of no language. Equally, the 
 man who has never seen the monkey but in a cage 
 has never seen the monkey. As the rose is naught 
 without its setting of green leaves and coruscat- 
 ing dpwdrops, so is the monkey naught without 
 cliffs and trees to furnish him with spring-boards 
 and natural flying trapezes for his splendid evolu- 
 tions. 
 
 The peculiar species that so kindly turned out 
 to beguile with their antics the tedium of our 
 ascent of the mountain were about three feet in 
 height, ashen-gray in color, with a three-foot tail, 
 white hair and beard, and a face as black as char- 
 coal. To come suddenly on a group of a dozen 
 or more of them, seated aloft on an acacia-tree 
 eagerly eating the pods, and then to raise a shout, 
 produces a scene that Ijeggars all description. In 
 an instant the whole tree is all a-quiver with the 
 rattling pods, while one detachment of the mon- 
 
246 INDIA 
 
 keys scampers like mad to the tips of the branches 
 and swings off in magnificent leaps of twenty or 
 thirty feet to the branches of neighboring trees, 
 and another makes headlong dives into the thick- 
 ets below. The most diverting sight of aU is to 
 watch the mother monkeys, their little coal-black 
 babies clinging by aU four hands to the fur on the 
 maternal stomach, thus leaving mamma free play 
 of all her limbs for the execution of the most be- 
 wildering leaps. For an emergency — say a house 
 a-fire and a natural desire on the maternal part to 
 grab up as many silver spoons as possible before 
 taking flight — monkey babies understand better 
 how to keep out of the way than the most highly 
 evolved of human babies. 
 
 I have introduced this monkey episode, and es- 
 pecially the latter part of it, not in a spirit of tri- 
 fling, but for its serious architectural and, I may 
 add, theological bearing on the immediate object 
 we have in view. We are ascending Mt. Abu to 
 see and interpret the famous Jain temples there. 
 In their infinite elaboration of carvings of figures, 
 animal and human, they present what I might 
 fitly call an opium or hasheesh delirium of sym- 
 bolism. Nothing stands for what it is, from the 
 wing of a butterfly to the trunk of an elephant, 
 btit ever and always as suggestion of some un- 
 derlying mystic meaning. Fortunately, it had so 
 happened that only a few days before I had been 
 reading the record of a controversy which took 
 place ages ago between two rival Hindu sects. 
 It was on the world-old subject of grace and free- 
 
MT. ABU 247 
 
 will, so familiar to us all along from the days 
 of St. Augustine. The Hindu champion of pure 
 grace argued in a style that would have drawn 
 applause from Jonathan Edwards. To man was 
 allowed no single initiative in the work of his sal- 
 vation : desire, will, act, all were outright work of 
 God in him. What, however, was the crowning, 
 triumphant illustration of the relation of the soul 
 to Deity which the Hindu theologian employed? 
 Precisely the one I had just been witnessing with 
 my own eyes in the relation of the baby monkey 
 to his mother. The baby monkey, he argued, sim- 
 ply clings by an instinctive act of faith to his mo- 
 ther, while she bears him safely over dizzy preci- 
 pices, and rescues him from peril by flying leaps 
 from tree to tree. But is not this clinging the in- 
 dividual act of a free agent? the caviler might ask. 
 No, responds the profounder theologian, it is all 
 free grace. The mother eats for him, drinks for 
 him, assimilates for him, and through her milk 
 pours into him instinct, desire, strength. Cut off 
 from this fountain-head, he would at once be re- 
 solved into the nothingness of nothingness. The 
 whole spectacle, went on the devout controversial- 
 ist, is a piece of pure symbolism, enacted before 
 man's eyes as he wanders in the woods, to reveal 
 to him the interior relation of the soul to God. 
 Would, then, the Occidental mind ever hope to 
 penetrate into the inner shrine of Hindu mystic 
 theology, at a glance it becomes clear how abso- 
 lutely necessary it is to learn to take the monkey 
 seriously ! 
 
248 INDIA 
 
 To all this, the ordinary cut-and-dried, totally 
 unimaginative Yankee tourist is as blind as a bat. 
 On entering a Hindu temple, the first carving 
 that arrests his eye is, perhaps, precisely that of 
 a mother monkey leaping across an abyss with 
 her baby monkey tight a-hold of the hair of her 
 stomach ; and forthwith he goes into fits of laugh- 
 ter. A precious lot these Hindus, he says, to let a 
 graceless scamp of a stone-carver cut such monkey- 
 shines as this in the house of God! Little he 
 dreams that in this monkey-shine, as he calls it, 
 the devout Hindu beside him is adoring a most 
 touching symbol of the free grace of God safely 
 bearing the soul of man across the abyss of sin. 
 The Yankee might argue thlt the Hindu was lack- 
 ing in sense of humor. The Hindu would retort 
 that the Yankee lived but on the surface, and was 
 devoid of all deeper insight into the symbolip mean- 
 ing of the All. 
 
 Anyhow, I have used this long illustration sim- 
 ply to strike the keynote as to the only way in 
 which the Western mind can ever learn to inter- 
 pret sympathetically a Hindu temple or to see in 
 it anything other than a kind of menagerie sud- 
 denly let loose by an earthquake. In their orna- 
 mentation the Mt. Abu temples are, as I have 
 said, a veritable hasheesh delirium of symbolism. 
 Beautifully situated in a vast mountain crater, 
 four thousand feet high at its level, and sur- 
 rounded by picturesque mountains, they seem lit- 
 erally out of the world. So they are, and so they 
 always have been, only that for centuries on cen- 
 
MT. ABU 249 
 
 turies countless thousands of pilgrims have visited 
 them. Dating back, the older of them to 1032 
 A. D. and the newer to 1197, and constructed in 
 their cloisters and shrines of white marble that 
 now has the color of ivory, one marvels at their 
 state of preservation. The older temples are sim- 
 pler in their style, and so, to my eye, far more 
 beautiful; but in the newer is witnessed the per- 
 sistent tendency of the Hindu to lose all simplicity 
 of form in rampant symbolism. Just as in the for- 
 ests of India when a noble tree falls, a stately col- 
 umn in itself, it is forthwith buried out of recogni- 
 tion in ferns, cactuses, orchids, and pepel vines, so 
 has it been with the history of Hindu architecture. 
 The cloisters here are set three-aisle deep with pil- 
 lars ; and every pillar and every bay above and 
 every doorway to the successive shrines are wrought 
 with such a wilderness of figures that the world 
 does not seem old enough to have allowed time to 
 carve them. So with the pillars-set court-yard, so 
 with the temple itself. The wildest hallucinations 
 of fever dreams never take on such multitudinous 
 and fantastic shapes. 
 
 Truly, nowhere so much as in its architecture 
 does the inmost spirit of a people so incarnate, so 
 materialize itself. Even more than in a Hindu 
 epic does the mind of Hindu India reveal itself in 
 the temple. There it stands all at once before the 
 eye, the Ramayana, the Mahabharata, petrified — 
 nay, rather, spiritually arrested — in stone. 
 
 Is all this beautiful? Fantastic certainly, his- 
 torically impressive certainly, ushering, as it does, 
 
250 INDIA 
 
 the mind into a realm thus arrested in stone, whose 
 imagery never before coursed through a Western 
 brain but in the delirium of fever. How simple to 
 us looks the world, its genera and species of trees, 
 birds, reptiles, and beasts dominated by our scien- 
 tific categories and reduced to an order so easily 
 and yet so shallowly grasped ! Not a little boy 
 with us who cannot resolve it all into mineral, 
 vegetable, and animal. But to the Hindu what 
 a mystery, what a phantasmagoria, what a cloud 
 dissolution of form into form, what an all and no- 
 thing, what a play of illusion where nothing is 
 but what is not ! Thence, what a world of sym- 
 bols from serpent and tiger, from ant and elephant, 
 from fly and hawk, from burrowing mole and cliff- 
 scaling goat, to express its multitudinous infinity ! 
 Thence, what a bewilderment of deities to tell 
 the story of the sources of aU its terror and 
 peace, its beauty and hideousness, its harvests and 
 pestilences, its devastating passions and refuges of 
 prayer ! 
 
 Yet, it helps one to be plunged into the abysses 
 of such a world. It awes and deepens him. It 
 dissolves away the hard and fast outlines of the 
 finite. Spite of the little of the symbolic enigma 
 he can interpret, he feels in the presence of a uni- 
 verse freighted with occult meaning, in contrast 
 with which how literal and prosaic the world in 
 which too habitually he dwells ! Still, here the 
 whole process has been so deliriously overwrought ! 
 Plainly in such wanton abnegation of all law of 
 limit has the line of sanity been passed. Imagina- 
 
AHMEDABAD 251 
 
 tion has grown monomaniac. The muse of inspira- 
 tion has been nurtured, not on nectar and ambrosia, 
 but on hasheesh. As with all Hindu literature 
 and philosophy, — an epoch in the life of every 
 man when first he drinks the soma juice of its 
 intoxication and is made to feel how no one can 
 be truly sane till first he has become insane, — so 
 equally is it with the purely Hindu architecture. 
 Structure is buried out of sight by accessory, unity 
 sacrificed to lawless multiplicity, the Pantheon 
 transformed into the pandemoniimi. 
 
 A great deal, however, is to be seen in In- 
 dia of what may strictly be called Hindu 
 architecture which is yet free from the reproach 
 of the symbolic hallucination characteristic of the 
 temples. But it is work done under the control of 
 their earlier Mohammedan masters, men dominated 
 by the severer and simpler taste of Semitic doc- 
 trine and ideals. Under the Sultans of Gujarat, 
 in Ahmedabad, — a city visited by few Europeans, 
 but which for wealth of architectural beauty ranks 
 certainly next to Agra and Delhi, — legions of 
 Hindu architects and armies of native workmen 
 were set to work in the construction of one of the 
 most magnificent capitals in the world. But the 
 hand of the Arab prophet was laid sternly on their 
 shoulders. " Look ye ! no graven image or like- 
 ness of any thing that is in heaven above or on 
 earth beneath or in the waters imderneath. Flow- 
 ers, yes, and trailing vines, arabesques, graceful as 
 ye can make them ! But idols none ! " 
 
252 INDIA 
 
 Historically impressive is it to see the law of one 
 great ettnical faith thus laid in stern restriction on 
 the deepest-seated instinct of another, and to note 
 the architectural result. Cut off at a stroke from 
 all his pandemonium of gods and deAdls, from all 
 his tangled overgrowth of symbolic bats and owls, 
 the genius of the Hindu architect achieved crea- 
 tions of beauty that proved how his need of needs 
 is the authoritative imposition of some sane law of 
 reason and law of limit on the Saturnalia of im- 
 agination. The buildings he erected for his Mo- 
 hammedan masters are mainly tombs, mosques, and 
 marvelous underground structures for the storage 
 of water, structures acres in extent and built gal- 
 lery on gallery of pillared stories. But how noble 
 in construction, how exquisite in ornamentation ! 
 As for the memorial tombs, such temples in them- 
 selves, it would be peace in dying to tliink of being 
 laid to rest in a scene of such tranquil, cheerful 
 beauty. 
 
 As one wanders around amidst all this architect- 
 ural fascination in Ahmedabad, what a symbol is 
 before the eyes both of the fate and of the deep- 
 est-rooted need of this Hindu people ! It is the 
 Hamlet of the nations, sicklied o'er with the pale 
 cast of thought, yet so attractive, so profound, so 
 pathetic in its incapacity for action. A thousand 
 years before our era, the plummet of its thought 
 had sounded the deepest abysses in the ocean of 
 speculation, yet how impotent to-day to guide itself 
 were it left alone ! Its Mohammedan rulers taught 
 it many a lesson of practical administration and 
 
AHMEDABAD 253 
 
 regard for material realities, albeit they wrought 
 such havoc with their rapacity and sensuality, and 
 in degrading the former higher estate of woman 
 laid the hand of pollution on the most sacred re- 
 lation of society. Then, too, its Mohammedan fel- 
 low-subjects set the example at least of a simpler 
 faith and of a more practical and self-regulated 
 life. But the two races mixed no more than oil 
 and water. 
 
 To-day England rules, and has brought to bear 
 upon India the stupendous apparatus of Western 
 thought and science. Railroads have been built 
 and canals dug, manufactures established, famines 
 largely stopped, population immensely increased. 
 Hospitals have been founded, and schools and uni- 
 versities endowed, all based on recognition of hu- 
 man control of the unchanging laws of nature. 
 Hundreds of thousands have been trained in the 
 iron school of military discipline. The Hindu 
 youth have flocked into the colleges, bringing their 
 subtle intellectual acumen to deal with all the ques- 
 tions of European literature, jurisprudence, phi- 
 losophy, and science. Thus, no such range and 
 depth of influence has ever been exerted before. 
 Will it serve as a make-weight to the imbridled 
 imagination of India ? Will it lead on to the most 
 deep-seated of all the needed reforms of India, the 
 education and elevation of woman ? Ah ! happy 
 people, did they but know it, in being under the 
 sway of the one nation of the world that can help 
 them, an Aryan people like themselves, the first 
 to recognize the depth and beauty of their highest 
 
254 INDIA 
 
 achievement in literature, philosophy, theology, yet 
 seeing with absolute clearness, and alone able to 
 supply, just what as a nation they perish for the 
 lack of. 
 
EGYPT 
 I. 
 
 As the ever-varying diorama of a journey 
 around the world keeps unrolling itself 
 before the eye, Goethe's saying, "Wouldst thou 
 know the soul of a poet, visit the land of his 
 birth," makes an increasingly vivid impression. 
 So it proves with everything one had previously 
 thought to get out of books alone. The first 
 Oriental woman, prostrating herself and touching 
 the ground before one with her forehead as in the 
 presence of a superior being, teaches more history 
 in a single sensation than can be learned from all 
 John Stuart Mill's volume on the Subjection of 
 Woman. The first experience of getting inextri- 
 cably tied up in a network of trailing vines, with 
 a general dank smell of orchids and a haunting 
 suspicion of snakes and tigers, reveals more of the 
 tropical jungle than all Wallace, Darwin, and 
 Kipling have written. So with the feel of the 
 swarming millions of Asia at one's first contact 
 with Canton's river population or with the dense 
 masses of pilgrims in Benares. 
 
 Equally true does all this hold of the Desert, the 
 indispensable mental preparation for getting in 
 touch with Egypt. To know it, you must wade 
 
256 EGYPT 
 
 knee-deep in its sand, be blinded with its glare, 
 feel your cheeks tingle with the blowing silex 
 grains, breathe sand, and grit it between your 
 teeth. Then all at once you become intimately at 
 home with the habitat of Abraham, Isaac, and Re- 
 becca, of Moses and the Hebrews, of Mohammed 
 and Ayesha, and last, but not least, of the camel, 
 — all equally natural products of the desert, all as 
 much indebted to it for their university training as 
 are the patterns cut into our decanters and wine- 
 glasses to the fiercely flying atoms of the sand-blast 
 tool. For ages has the desert, with its cyclone- 
 driven sands, been, in the hand of the Almighty, 
 an irresistible historical etching - needle, cutting 
 deep and persistent ideals and passionate faiths 
 into the very brain substance of whole races. 
 
 As far back as when he first sails into the savage 
 jaws of the harbor of Aden on the southwestern 
 extremity of Arabia, Egypt begins to stamp its 
 first vital impression on the mind of the thoughtful 
 traveler on his way by the Arabian Sea, the Red 
 Sea, and the Suez Canal to that mysterious land. 
 To the right and to the left of the entrance, 
 divided only by a couple of miles of salt water, 
 rise naked, fiercely rifted mountains, from one to 
 two thousand feet in height. But every idea of 
 verdure, seclusion, brook, and waterfall we are 
 wont to associate with mountains is consumed in 
 fire. Scorched, blasted, fairly writhing in the in- 
 tolerable glare, they suggest the counterpart in 
 nature of Dives in hell beseeching the poorest 
 Lazarus of a beggar for a drop of water to cool his 
 
A SUN-SCORCHED LAND 257 
 
 burning tongue. The very sands of the seashore, 
 driven by the winds into the ravines, choking them 
 up, and pursuing them aloft into their remotest 
 windings, take on the mocking shape of descending 
 glaciers, only glaciers of fiery sand. So literal is 
 the resemblance that it is hard to dislodge the idea 
 that the cruel deception was intended by malign 
 Djins as a last refinement of torture. 
 
 For a hundred miles from Aden, as one skirts 
 the western coast of Arabia, he carries with him 
 the same series of sun-scorched, desiccated moun- 
 tain ranges, and he knows what lies behind them. 
 There are here and there gorges in which a little 
 moisture is collected, and a struggle for life main- 
 tained by a few stunted shrubs. There are, be- 
 sides, in part of the vast peninsula, comparatively 
 fertile tracts, from which was derived the name 
 Arabia Felix. But it takes very little in the way 
 of verdure to make some people happy, particu- 
 larly Arabians, habituated to a too monotonous 
 strain of sun, sand, and calcareous hardpan. As 
 is sometimes irreverentially said by rival religion- 
 ists, "Your God is my devil," just in the same 
 way might it be retorted by rival nationalities, 
 " Your oasis is my desert." 
 
 But, after all, what a place in which to 
 breed a Semitic prophet ! All along I had 
 felt Mohammed beginning to burn himself into 
 my brain, as I imaged him hiding himself in these 
 blasted mountains to have out the terrible wres- 
 tle from which he emerged aflame with the faith, 
 
258 EGYPT 
 
 "There is one God; and I, Mohammed, am his 
 prophet." Day by day had he had the awful mon- 
 otheistic sun to help burn in the thought of unity 
 and resistless sovereignty. That Allah, at least, 
 endured no rival near the throne ! A consuming 
 fire, none could hide from his all-devouring eye. 
 Terrible his wrath, as every withering grass-blade, 
 every heat-riven rock attested. Nothing in all 
 nature breathed a polytheistic word of nymph or 
 triton. Submit, seek shelter under the shadow of 
 a mighty rock, or meet annihilation ! 
 
 AU authorities in Oriental studies are now 
 agreed that Mohammed derived his monotheistic 
 idea from the Jews. But this was little. It was 
 the consuming passion with which this son of the 
 desert embraced it, — the irresistible iconoclastic 
 will with which he made it one with the burning 
 sands and flaming hearts of Arabia, in which lay 
 the secret of his power. To what among such 
 races would an abstract idea of unity amount ? To 
 no more than an inert bullet or bombshell, without 
 a magazine of explosives behind it to give it an- 
 nihilating momentum. Mohammed, besides being 
 a great unitary intellect, as demonstrated in his 
 power to grasp and hold unshaken the simplicity 
 of a thought as sublime and all-pervading in the 
 religious world as gravitation in the physical, was, 
 more than all, a man of volcanic energy of pas- 
 sion. 
 
 Why is it, somewhere says Emerson, that the 
 reasoned conclusions of a mind like Plato's can 
 never carry with them the same sense of authority 
 
ARABIA 259 
 
 that pierces in the shriek of an Arab prophet? 
 As well ask why a breeze gently wafting over the 
 cornfields of Indiana can never work the effect 
 of a cyclone whirling the disintegrated atoms of 
 the desert into gigantic sand-spouts, before whose 
 fury all goes down in prostrate suffocation or in 
 literal entombment under the billows of a sea of 
 desert fire. Every little circling vortex of sand 
 one sees waltzing across the desert is more than 
 a symbol, is a literal illustration of the career of 
 Mohammedan religious conquest. The hot sirocco 
 breath breathed into the Bedouin by Mohammed, 
 at once of faith in Allah and his moral law, and 
 of lust, rapine, and annihilation of the infidel, finds 
 its perfect physical counterpart before the eye. 
 
 Mecca and Medina one does not see : first, be- 
 cause he cannot, as they lie far inland ; and, second, 
 because the ship now steers so far from shore that 
 they would not be visible even if the sacred cities 
 were thoughtful enough of tourists to stand directly 
 on the coast. Still, it is a kind of historical com- 
 fort to feel them in the neighborhood. It helps 
 imagination. 
 
 The first land sighted after quitting the more 
 southerly coast of Arabia is, a day and a half later, 
 the peninsula of Arabia Petraea, among whose sun- 
 scorched peaks lies Mt. Sinai. It looks just as fit 
 a place to bring the desert to bear on another and 
 vastly earlier Semitic prophet, with his chosen peo- 
 ple, as that already spoken of. Let it be clearly 
 understood that the desert means two things, — 
 here arid, desolate mountain ranges, and there arid 
 
260 EGYPT 
 
 and desolate levels of sand and hardpan. Their 
 one point of amity is that, as far as possible, no- 
 thing shall grow on them. By this time the Eed 
 Sea is rapidly narrowing into the Gulf of Suez, 
 and approximating the shores of Egypt and Ara- 
 bia. To the east now stretch vast sand levels, while 
 to the west runs the range of low mountains behind 
 which lies the valley of the Nile. Then Suez is 
 reached, and the ship enters the great canal shov- 
 eled out of the thirsty sands ever ready to drift 
 into it again and pack it solid, as the snows into a 
 cut through which a railway runs. Here and there 
 a few lakes offered spells of relief to the terrible 
 digging. 
 
 Before I had kept gazing eastward hour by 
 hour, I could not have believed that mere 
 stretches of sand coidd ever impart so indescrib- 
 able an exhilaration ; yet I perfectly shared the 
 enthusiasm of the poor old countrywoman who, on 
 first being taken to the seashore, cried out how 
 glad she was to see for once in her life something 
 there was enough of. The smallest oasis would 
 have been an intrusion. The rim of the horizon 
 was just such a perfect circle as embraces the 
 ocean. AU was straw-colored sand-sea, with a blue 
 dome a-top. But what is a sea without ships ? Ah ! 
 the desert has its ships. "Ships of the desert" are 
 the camels called; and soon great convoys of them, 
 heavily freighted to the sand-line, would heave into 
 sight, never a clipper ship or fancy yacht built on 
 more perfect lines for its especial work. 
 
THE DESERT 261 
 
 Camels in the desert are no intrusion. They 
 simply enhance the sense of its loneliness and deso- 
 lation. Gaunt, withered, silent-footed, a root out 
 of the dry ground, with no form nor comeliness, 
 they look as natural a product of its forces as 
 Mohammed of old or a Mahdi of to-day. Simply 
 blown together in a loose-jointed way by the winds 
 creatively playing with the whirling sands, do they 
 seem. You feel absolutely sure that they eat sand, 
 drink sand ; that currents of sand circulate through 
 their veins ; that, even when their baby camels 
 suckle them, the queer, long-legged, knock-kneed 
 little things only draw in a flow of sand, to them as 
 nutritious as any other mother's milk. 
 
 Now for the first time the full sense of the 
 meaning of the desert masters the imagination. 
 From far away eastward in Arabia to the thou-, 
 sands-of-miles-distant Atlantic coast of Africa to 
 the west, it reigns, almost unbroken but by the 
 long narrow oasis of the valley of the Nile. You 
 feel the desert — I repeat it — like a vast ele- 
 mental Dives-thirst in hell for a drop of water to 
 cool its burning tongue. Does it lie in the physi- 
 cal resources of the earth that any conceivable 
 snow-crowned mountain ranges, any deluges of 
 tropical rains, should suffice to feed a river thirty- 
 three hundred miles long, and to force it, a vast, 
 fructifying tide, through a thousand miles of these 
 gaping sands and stones, and yet so brimming * 
 over, three months in the year, as to lay under 
 water the whole long, narrow valley and the ninety- 
 mile-wide expanse of the delta? This is the stu- 
 
262 EGYPT 
 
 peudous feat of the Nile, which every day at " High 
 Nile " pours more than seven hundred thousand 
 million cubic metres of water into the Mediterra- 
 nean Sea, besides all that the parching soil has 
 drunk to slake its thirst. To take all this in, it 
 is infinitely more impressive to approach Egypt by 
 the way of Aden in Arabia and the Eed Sea than 
 by the Mediterranean. First feel the desert, and 
 then can you feel the Nile, — feel it physically, and 
 feel it historically also. For, hot as is the thirst 
 bred in its sands by the burning sun, hotter yet 
 the passions of greed and envy to snatch from its 
 lips the brimming cup that were bred in the sons 
 of the desert, as they looked down from the bor- 
 dering mountains of their scorpion fire-land on the 
 luscious green of the wheat-fields and groves of 
 date-palms of that miraculous oasis. 
 
 The landing-place for passengers from India, 
 via the Suez Canal, is Ismailia, about sixty 
 miles northward from Suez itself. It is a little 
 town that grew up as a depot during the cutting of 
 the great canal ; and, as a small fresh-water canal 
 was opened to the distant Nile to bring down a 
 supply for the workmen, it furnishes to the novice 
 an interesting exhibition, on a miniature scale, of 
 the way of making the " desert blossom as the rose." 
 Every tree makes one think of cattle driven to the 
 river to drink, only that the trees do not budge and 
 the river has to be driven to them. But drink they 
 do, like trees " planted by the rivers of water, whose 
 leaf also does not wither ; " and they prosper fairly 
 
ISM A ILIA 263 
 
 well. But a man does not journey from the tropical 
 luxuriance of Boston Common to see little parks 
 kept from dying of thirst in Ismailia. The grand 
 attraction is the people, who are, perhaps, half 
 Arabs and half Fellahin, or native Egyptians, with 
 a small percentage of Turks. 
 
 Among the Arabs, one sees in little Ismailia 
 more magnificent-looking men in a day than he 
 would see in New York in a year, if ever. The 
 patriarch Abraham is met three times in every 
 hundred yards, perfectly capable of entertaining 
 the angels in his, tent and then bowing them a gra- 
 cious farewell with manners as celestial in dignity 
 as their own. Such noble heads and fine-cut, 
 bearded faces, such flowing robes, so superb a 
 gait ! One wants to follow each one of them round 
 all day, simply to keep looking at him. Infinite 
 possibility of statesmen, warriors, or prophets does 
 there seem in them ; and in comparison they make 
 Europeans look cheap, fussy, and contemptible. 
 To be able to maintain such manners on ten cents 
 a day is to a foreigner a standing miracle. 
 
 At the end of each street, however, shine the 
 glowing sands of the desert; and an irresistible 
 attraction leads one out to gaze over it again. 
 There are found the wandering Bedouins, driving 
 in their long trains of camels, forcing them to kneel 
 down, and unloading them of their heavy burdens. 
 How vividly are Old Testament and, later, Moham- 
 medan scenes lighted up at every turn ! Rebecca ! 
 She was no such bedizened princess as painters 
 give us. She was just such a pretty camel-girl as 
 
264 EGYPT 
 
 you see before you, drawing water out of a well. 
 Ayesha, Mohammed's young virgin love, after Ka^ 
 dijah grew as old and wrinkled as the desert-aged 
 women you see about you, — Ayesha, — why, there 
 she stands by her camel ! She will smile on you 
 quite bewitchingly out of her lustrous eyes, as you 
 communicate with her by signs and gestures, — 
 the only dialect of Arabic at your command, — yes, 
 and alas ! wiU beg you for haksMsh, whether an in- 
 novation introduced into her circle of ideas since 
 Mohammed wooed her my erudition is too scant to 
 say. The thousand, the three thousand years of 
 interval vanish ; and you are standing in the midst 
 of identically similar scenery and personalities. Be 
 sure, however, to keep a civil tongue in your head. 
 Never lift a finger in menace against an Arab. He 
 may be clad in rags, but a Chevalier Bayard is la- 
 tent under them, who flashes fire like a flint struck 
 by steel. 
 
 How different with the Fellahin, — the pea- 
 sant-class descendants, however mixed in 
 blood, of the old Egjrptians ! Significantly enough 
 has Egypt been called the " Land of the Rod." 
 " Spare the rod and spoil the child " nowhere else 
 has received so stupendous an illustration. The 
 rod, with backs to apply it to, built the Pyramids, 
 dug the canals, collected the taxes, and to this day, 
 though the English government is striving to abol- 
 ish it, is taken as the natural and immutable order 
 of things. To see a crowd of perhaps fifty natives 
 surging down on a dozen or more tourists, each of 
 
THE LAND OF THE ROD 265 
 
 the fifty yelling the merits of his donkey, and wild 
 to have it taken, and then to watch the sight as 
 two or three men leap from the boat and begin to 
 belabor the poor devils with sticks, is certainly a 
 novel and, to a free-born American, a painful 
 sight. Eight and left fall the resounding blows 
 on heads and noses, and shoulders and loins, till 
 your own skull and shoulders ache sympathetically. 
 But not a particle of resistance is offered or the 
 slightest sense of outrage manifested. A practical 
 demonstration on such a scale of the results of the 
 doctrine of non-resistance would excite every bel- 
 ligerent propensity in the most placid Quaker to 
 the bull-dog pitch. Holding a hand to his half- 
 cracked crown or battered jaw, each, as he falls 
 back, keeps on yelling the praises of his beast : 
 " Him buUy donkey ! Him General Grant don- 
 key ! Him Mark Twain donkey ! " and, to empha- 
 size the truth, a dozen of them are shoved pell-mell 
 at you. To try to stretch your legs over one is to 
 find two or three others thrust imder you in a 
 breath. Then another charge of the whackers, and 
 a clearing is made sufficient to enable you to be- 
 stride not more than a couple of donkeys at once ; 
 and gradually you contrive so to contract your leg- 
 compasses as to embrace but one. 
 
 Yes, you understand now how the Pyramids 
 were built ; and the whole atmosphere of Egypt in 
 the past echoes with the reverberation of thwack ! 
 whack ! on the muscles and bones of the poor 
 wretches, whose works you, as an idle tourist, are 
 going to see. It would be very interesting to read 
 
266 EGYPT 
 
 a statistical table, at the hands of some such com- 
 petent Egyptologist as Marietta Pasha or Maspero, 
 of how many thousands of cords of rods were used 
 up on the bodies of the one hundred thousand 
 workmen whom it took twenty years to build the 
 one pyramid of Cheops. At the same time fresh 
 light is thrown by the scene on the asperities of 
 brick-making among the Bedouin Hebrews, who at 
 last revolted and went out under Moses. Savory 
 as were the leeks and onions of Egypt, one begins 
 to understand how even the desert might present 
 counterbalancing attractions. Broken heads and 
 bones are bad, but a broken and abject manhood is 
 worse. It was high time, if the world were to get 
 any future Isaiahs out of the tribe, that the tonic 
 of the desert should be brought to bear on it, 
 where, disciplined by a predatory life of semi-star- 
 vation, it should be got in train to fall like fam- 
 ished wolves on the lands of the Canaanites. 
 
 Well, here is a long way round to get to Egypt ; 
 but often the longest way round is the shortest 
 way home. I am but writing personal impressions ; 
 and this is the manner in which the actual experi- 
 ence impressed me. Just as one must be hot and 
 thirsty before he can appreciate a delicious drink 
 from a spring, so must he be hot and thirsty of the 
 desert before he is sensitively ready for the brim- 
 ming cup of Egypt. The desert and the Nile have 
 been perpetually co-working factors in the evolu- 
 tion of civilization, religion, art, conquest, and com- 
 merce. 
 
n. 
 
 Feom Ismailia by rail it is a four hours' 
 ride to Cairo. The only peril besetting the 
 first part of the way grows out of a possible stam- 
 pede of camels across the track in the van along 
 its line. To this we personally were treated. Of 
 course, to encounter the like phenomenon with 
 cows, one does not need to leave America. But 
 cows are commonplace, while derailment by a 
 camel stirs the romantic element within the breast. 
 Certainly, for stretch of legs and speed, when once 
 headed straight down track, the performance of a 
 herd of camels makes that of a herd of cows seem 
 tame. In appeal to imagination, there can be no 
 comparison. Such close approximation of the cam- 
 els of Abraham and the locomotive of Stephenson 
 is significant ; indeed, in its lively way, a symbolic 
 parable on legs of the stampede of the Orient be- 
 fore the Occident. 
 
 A couple of hours and one is out of desert and 
 semi-desert, plunged right into the heart of the 
 land of Groshen. Oh, how green it looks ! Such 
 leeks, such onions, such a growth of alfalfa clover, 
 such beauty of the graceful date-palms, such pic- 
 turesque-looking clusters of square flat-roofed mud 
 huts, overhung with palms, — buildings so fascinat- 
 ing to the artist, so Oriental to the tourist, and so 
 
268 EGYPT 
 
 fetid to live in ! As the train would stop for a 
 while before one of these villages, a curious specta- 
 cle was always at hand which might be of historic 
 import. Indeed, what is the use of traveling if 
 everything one sees does not take on historic di- 
 mensions ? Well, the Egyptians have been called 
 the most patient of peoples in the world. This pa- 
 tience, does it root in their impassive nervous fibre, 
 or is it the result of self-control? Certain it is 
 that one sees no end of babies of six months, their 
 faces thick with swarming flies, and each eye itself 
 constantly run over by the legs of at least a dozen, 
 who never so much as wink, much less lift a tiny 
 hand to brush the pests away. Many the minister 
 at home, a man of ascetic moral training and high 
 spirituality, who is yet more carnally exercised, 
 even in the full fervor of his discourse, by a sin- 
 gle jly persistently disporting around the sensitive 
 flanges of his nostrils, than are these little inno- 
 cents by swarms of them. Under like aggravation, 
 an American baby would make the welkin ring. 
 The historic question, therefore, inevitably precipi- 
 tated by such a nervous phenomenon is whether 
 American babies, already so high-strung and rebel- 
 lious at the age of six months, could ever develop 
 into a race capable of building the Pyramids ? 
 
 No, all this infantile example means something 
 of the gravest import. Here is a race in which 
 in certain directions the ordinary reflex action of 
 the nervous system has shrunk to practical atro- 
 phy. This child, in whom the legs of a fly cours- 
 ing round his nostrils do not call out a reacting 
 
NILE HINTS 269 
 
 muscular twitch, is father of the man in whom 
 a blow does not call out an answering blow, who 
 will, without a finger lifted in resistance, suffer 
 himself to be knocked down, kicked, and jumped 
 on. Nothing perfectly analogous in the animal 
 world is witnessed but in the conduct of the span- 
 iel. Does this mean that if the odds are contin- 
 uously and overwhelmingly against man or dog, 
 the spirit at last succumbs, and even the physical 
 instinct of nervous reaction dies of inanition ? 
 Rod enough and flies enough, will the very nerves 
 at last throw up the sponge ? Ah ! here lies the 
 pathetic heartbreak of so much one sees in Egypt. 
 
 I do not mean to say anything about Cairo 
 now, but first to go up the Nile, and pre- 
 liminarily to throw out a hint or two that may 
 prove of use. 
 
 Until the accession of Thomas Cook & Son to 
 the vacant throne of the Pharaohs of Egypt the 
 old way of ascending the Nile was by small sail- 
 vessels called " dahabiyehs." For fear of unguard- 
 edly misspelling them, I shall henceforth call them 
 simply boats ; but in this individual instance the 
 spelling can be relied on as abreast with the latest 
 scholarship in Arabic English. These boats re- 
 quired a party of eight or ten to share expenses, 
 and, moreover, a whole winter at one's disposal to 
 meet delays. It was undoubtedly the ideal way of 
 seeing the Nile. Finally, however, Pharaoh Cook 
 built a fleet of steamers ; and by these almost all 
 people travel to-day. The passengers on board 
 
270 EGYPT 
 
 form what is called a " personally conducted party." 
 They have their own dragoman, who provides don- 
 keys, routs donkey boys, and gives imperfect expla- 
 nations of hieroglyphical and mythological myste- 
 ries that might baffle the untutored mind. 
 
 The day was when the thought of ever becom- 
 ing a member of a "personally conducted party" 
 would have made me shudder from sea to sea. 
 Had I not too often been startled in the Vatican by 
 the sudden, noisy irruption of the Cook barbarians, 
 heard the regulation hand-clap from the leader 
 for silence, and then listened to his inane routine 
 remarks as he personally conducted his victims 
 round from statue to statue ? Had I not equally 
 reveled in the blessed stillness that followed when, 
 the short-lived tumult over, I was left alone once 
 more to the serene Olympian companionship of 
 Juno, Minerva, ApoUo, and Zeus ? And now 
 should I actually live to become a Cookite myself, 
 and that, too, in Egypt ? No ! by Isis and Osiris ! 
 by jackal-headed Anubis and ram-skulled Kneph ! 
 No ! by sun-crowned Ea ! 
 
 Well, I want to take a great deal of this frankly 
 back, — at least in so far as Egypt is concerned. 
 There are uninteresting reaches in the river which 
 the steamer carries one quickly by. Meanwhile 
 on board there are the satisfactions of excellent 
 fare, clean beds, attentive service, and perfect hon- 
 esty of treatment, while among so many passen- 
 gers one makes sure of agreeable companionship. 
 Of course one sighs that he cannot have Egypt 
 more to himself. Still, driven to sufficient desper- 
 
NILE HINTS 271 
 
 ation, man is ricli in individual resources toward 
 securing peace and quietness. On long excursions 
 one may urge his donkey far ahead of the madding 
 crowd, or imaginatively afflict him with such spavin 
 as to serve as a pretext for mercifully keeping him 
 iu the rear. One may learn to spot and shun the 
 various types of bores, as, in especial, the man 
 whose sole interest in visiting Egyptian temples is 
 to distinguish the cartouches, or seals, of the dif- 
 ferent kings, and who, for all the glorious architec- 
 ture, would be quite as well off at home with a stick 
 of sealing-wax, a candle, and a collection of authen- 
 ticated scarabsei dies to stamp with. 
 
 Still, for the quietly ruminating man who yearns 
 to have his temple to himself, the device of devices 
 to study is how to keep out of sight and sound 
 of the dragoman and his rabble Comus rout who 
 want to have their minds improved. Providen- 
 tially, the enormous size of the temples renders this 
 quite feasible. The dragoman, as a general rule, 
 is an Egyptian of very imperfect French or Eng- 
 lish articulation. He has scraped a purely busi- 
 ness acquaintance with Isis, Anubis & Co., and 
 thinks he knows them by their trade-marks. Old 
 Egyptian mythology, however, is dreadfully con- 
 fused. The numberless gods, goddesses, cults, 
 and symbolic signs crossed, invaded, and annexed 
 one another in a way that, in comparison, would 
 make the genealogical tables of the HohenstaufEen 
 and Hapsburg emperors easy reading. Indeed, 
 often would it seem, on visiting a fresh temple, 
 as though Amen-Ra, Horus, Kneph, Nit, Thoth, 
 
272 EGYPT 
 
 and the rest had been startled out of a deep sleep 
 by the footsteps of the party, and, suddenly seizing 
 and putting on, higgledy-piggledy, one another's 
 crocodile's, cat's, ram's, or hawk's heads, had jumped 
 up and plastered themselves against the walls, so 
 as all to get into plausible shape to confound our 
 erudition. In the long, narrow passages, however, 
 of the underground tombs, these resources fail. 
 There is, then, nothing for it but to be as patient 
 under suffering as an Egyptian baby beset by a 
 swarm of buzzing flies. Calmer hours of reflection 
 will come later, in which memories of all you have 
 seen there will emerge beautiful as reborn dragon- 
 flies that have sloughed off and left behind their 
 rent and desiccated Cook strait-jackets. 
 
 The departure from Cairo for one's voyage 
 up the Nile presents for the first two or three 
 hours a succession of fascinating pictures. The 
 city itself, crowned by the great citadel of Sala- 
 din, and at its summit by the five-domed mosque 
 of Mohammed-Ali, with its two slender, sky-pier- 
 cing minarets, smiles a gracious good-by and God 
 speed for a voyage of wonders. Into the very city 
 thrusts itself a great arm of the desert; and out 
 from stretches of straw-colored sand rise, like ex- 
 halations, the ruins of the beautiful tombs of the 
 Khalifs, to me the most charming of all the archi- 
 tectural glories of Cairo. In color the stone of 
 which their walls and domes are built differs little 
 from the unbroken sands around them, imparting, 
 as one sees them in the quivering glow of the sun- 
 
THE GIZEH PYRAMIDS 273 
 
 shine, the sense, not to be reasoned with, that the 
 desert genii have built them out of sand and gra- 
 ciously shaping winds, as with us the like sem- 
 blance of temples is created of snowdrifts and win- 
 ter storms. Further, from all quarters of the city 
 rise at a hundred points the fanciful minarets of 
 the Mohammedan mosques. 
 
 Past the palaces of the Khedive and past the 
 long, narrow island of Roda, with its Nilometer and 
 the traditional spot where Moses was found in the 
 bulrushes, one follows the great curves of the river 
 till the enormous pyramids of Gizeh rise up in 
 naked distinctness from the desert. 
 
 Already had my friend and I visited these from 
 Cairo and climbed Cheops. It is an instructive 
 thing to do once ; but I defy any one, even with 
 the steadiest head against dizziness, to get any 
 emotional pleasure, any sense of the lapse of the 
 ages, anything but execration of the present, out 
 of it. Each climber is obliged by law to take with 
 him three Bedouins, — two to pull, and one to 
 push. From start to finish it is one unintermitting 
 yell for iakshish. With this they keep on tearing 
 the ears of their victims. Personally, I had but 
 two emotions, — the one that the old Egyptians 
 were the most intolerable stair -builders in the 
 world, the other that, were I on the jury, I would 
 vote to , acquit on the spot any tourist who had 
 killed his Bedouins. Mine, strict justice forces me 
 to admit, had one, perhaps exceptional, linguistic 
 accomplishment. They had been taught by some 
 misguided American (Allah reward him according 
 
274 EGYPT 
 
 to his works !) to sing the tune and words of "Yan- 
 kee Doodle ; " and, perforce, must I, two thirds up 
 the pyramid of Cheops, join hands with these yell- 
 ing Ishmaelites, and dance and sing this most triv- 
 ial of all national anthems. Anything for peace ! 
 And so I did it, with a lingering sense of shame 
 that " forty centuries were looking down " upon 
 my caperings. Indeed, time which heals so many 
 wounds, has never had the least effect in mitigat- 
 ing the exasperation of that climb of Cheops. It 
 would have been such bliss to lie off half the day 
 and muse. The blind, fierce pertinacity of flies 
 settling on a festering sore was the only fit symbol 
 of these human flies so fiercely preying on a fester- 
 ing spirit. If only I could come to look back hu- 
 morously on the scene ! But I cannot. Never 
 does it revive in memory but I feel murder in my 
 heart. 
 
 And yet, I repeat it, it is a good thing once and 
 forever to have gone through this purgatory, — to 
 use the milder word. A cairn of gigantic blocks 
 of stone, covering at the base over thirteen acres, 
 and rising to a height of nearly five hundred feet, 
 built solid moreover, with the exception of a few 
 narrow passages, from skin to core, is certainly the 
 most stupendous feat of the wrestle of mind with 
 brute matter the round world can show. Further- 
 more, as psychologists assure us, the role played by 
 the muscular sense in all adequate appreciation of 
 phenomena of weight is indispensable as a mental 
 standard. Therefore, given a solid stone staircase, 
 with risers averaging four to five feet, and a twenty- 
 
THE GIZEH PYRAMIDS 275 
 
 eight-incli stretch of legs to surmount them with, 
 and, before one is up three hundred and fifty feet, 
 he has developed into a self-conscious derrick and 
 apparatus of blocks and hawsers that will thence- 
 forth enable him to weigh to a hair every colossal 
 column or architrave he later on encounters in 
 Egypt. The moment his eye lights on one, the 
 consciousness will revive of just how many tons 
 of matter and emotion it physically and mentally 
 stands for, and the sense of awe will expand pro- 
 portionally. 
 
 Seen, however, from the river, as one now sees 
 the Gizeh pyramids in his voyage up the Nile, all 
 one's old associations of reverence and mystery 
 come back again. One is at rest and in peace. 
 No Bedouin yell lacerates his ears, and the Hotspur 
 in his blood is no longer " stung with pismires." 
 Around these mighty cairns and behind them is the 
 awful desert, and at their feet the Sphinx, time- 
 worn and broken with her century-long brooding 
 over the mystery of existence. Anywhere else but 
 thus set in the naked simplicity of the desert they 
 would lose their great effect. For they are not 
 beautiful or sublime in the sense that a Greek or 
 an Egyptian temple is beautiful or sublime. There 
 is not range and variety enough of thought in their 
 creation; no thought, indeed, unless of enduring 
 construction that shall defy war and earthquake 
 and outdate time. 
 
 One does not, therefore, in the least wonder 
 that so many scientific minds of a speculative cast 
 have written elaborate books, such as " Our Inheri- 
 
276 EGYPT 
 
 tance in the Great Pyramid," to prove that these 
 vast structures were built for purely geometrical 
 and astronomical purposes, and stood for the inde- 
 structible standards of the old Egyptian metric 
 system instead of being built as the Gibraltars of 
 a single royal mummy. There to all ages they 
 stand foursquare, a terrestrial apotheosis of the 
 immutable axioms of geometry, colossal- memorial 
 tributes reared as to the mind of Euclid. Rever- 
 entially, and not lightly, does it seem as though 
 the hieroglyphic inscription on them ought to rec- 
 ord that superb demonstration, "The square of 
 the hypothenuse is equal to the sum of the squares 
 of the other two sides." So enduring a feat of 
 reason, was it not far worthier of embodiment in 
 an everlasting pyramid than the memory of any 
 battle? 
 
 In the mind of the non-mathematical tourist, 
 however, such nineteenth - century heresy as this 
 does not linger long. Rather, he broods over the 
 long, deep sleep of King Khufu in his silent in- 
 most chamber ; over the "dxone of the priestly 
 masses that for more than two thousand years were 
 still kept up for the repose of his soul; over the 
 impressive material-spiritual faith that incarnated 
 itself in such enormous structures ; over the hun- 
 dred thousand slaves who for twenty years were 
 under the lash, quarrying and upheaving these gi- 
 gantic blocks to make sure that after life's fitful 
 fever one fellow-mortal should sleep well ; over 
 ^the successive dynasties — Egyptian, Hyksos, As- 
 syrian, Persian, Greek, Roman, Saracen, Turkish, 
 
MEMPHIS 27T 
 
 French, English — that have risen and perished 
 like successive waves beneath a sea clifE at the 
 base of these indestructible monuments. Yes, as 
 one broods and broods, he gets back again the Pyr- 
 amids of his early awe, — immutable standards, in- 
 deed, of measurement, — not, however, of the boun- 
 daries of farm lands nor of the bulk of granary 
 stores of wheat, but of the epochs of human his- 
 tory. Up to their summits he ' gazes through the 
 eyes of Khufu and Abraham, and Rameses, and 
 Moses, and Cambyses, and Herodotus, and Alex- 
 ander the Great, and Plato, and wanton Cleopatra, 
 and Saladin, and Napoleon. The last trace of the 
 discord of the yelling Bedouins lapses silently out 
 of his mind ; and he thanks God that in its place 
 has succeeded the solemnizing pendulum-beat " For- 
 ever, Never ! " of what seems the sidereal clock of 
 the universe. 
 
 An hour or two past the Gizeh Pyramids, 
 and the boat stops at Sakkarah. " Now 
 comes my fit again ! " Of course, the bank is 
 black as a crow-roost with braying donkeys and 
 screaming donkey boys. Sic itur ad astra in 
 Egypt, and as well might a dying dog hope to 
 expostulate with the awaiting buzzards. So let 
 this once for all suffice. You fight your way 
 through the surging mob of arms, shoulders, hoofs, 
 and tails, and, somehow or other, find yourself 
 astride a beast. In the interim of waiting one 
 frantic Egyptian is thrusting a scarabseus under 
 your nose, another a mummy's foot, and so on and 
 
278 EGYPT 
 
 on till you are appealed to with the individual at- 
 tractions of freshly manufactured antiques enough 
 to set up a pseudo-Bulak museum. 
 
 At last you get away ; and, as on this special 
 occasion there were about eighteen miles to ride, 
 with stops for refreshment only at tombs, the pace 
 adopted was severe. StiU, it proved exciting till 
 gradually it was brought home, by seeing friend 
 after friend take a header, how little the Egyptian 
 donkey has made of his " Inheritance in the Great 
 Pyramid " in the way of standing foursquare on 
 his base. Mine own especial donkey, Rameses II., 
 while on the full tear, came down in a pile, with 
 an abruptness that shot me over his head in a 
 splendid parabolic curve that might have brained 
 me but for the buffer of my inch-thick cork hel- 
 met. 
 
 As soon as possible, however, after getting away 
 one must do his best — it is the only hope in Egypt 
 — to retire into the depths of his inner conscious- 
 ness, and there wall himseK in as tight as old 
 King Khuf u in his Gizeh Pyramid. Much in the 
 way of saving wear and tear of spirit can thus be 
 achieved. Even as in a siege the mother with her 
 babe can learn to sleep sound under a cannonade, 
 and awaken only when the little one begins to fret 
 for milk, so in Egypt itself can a well-disciplined 
 mind learn to abandon itself to day-dreams under 
 a fusillade of bakshish, and yet be all on the spot 
 the moment an appeal is made to its tenderer his- 
 torical or architectural emotions. 
 
 At first the way led along canal embankments 
 
MEMPHIS 279 
 
 and through fields of the richest garden culture, 
 while beyond lay the shining calcareous cliffs and 
 hot shifting sands of the desert, — the contrast of 
 never-failing interest to the traveler in Egypt. 
 
 An hour or more and we were now on the site 
 of Memphis, on the site and on nothing else. 
 Not a trace remains of this once splendid metrop- 
 olis, founded, so runs tradition, by Menes, the 
 first recorded Egyptian king, and, even so late as 
 the day when Herodotus visited it, stiU the most 
 magnificent city in the kingdom. Sovereign after 
 sovereign enlarged and beautified it with temples, 
 groves, lakes, colossal statues, and tombs ; while 
 within its vast necropolis, stretching over a region 
 of forty-five miles, lay all the seventy pyramids of 
 Egypt, from Abu Roash on the north to Medum on 
 the south. But to-day, over the ground on which 
 stood this luxurious capital, one rides through un- 
 broken fields of wheat and barley and maize and 
 onions to the edge of the desert, and finds as me- 
 morials of all this glory of the past but two muti- 
 lated colossal statues of Rameses II., now prone on 
 their backs, but nearly fifty feet in height when 
 they stood erect. 
 
 We had come, however, not to look at cornfields 
 growing where once stood a mighty city, but to 
 ride on into the desert to visit the scene of desola- 
 tion presented by the ruins of the eleven pyramids 
 of the Sakkarah plateau, among them the Step 
 Pyramid, built not in triangular shape, but in three 
 great stages. It is the oldest of all the pyramids, 
 its present height from the base about one hun- 
 
280 EGYPT 
 
 dred and ninety-seven feet. What a wilderness of 
 ruins ! " The abomination of desolation,"' — here, 
 of a truth, it is revealed ! In many a land the fall 
 to destruction of a. great monument is but a signal 
 to loving and bountiful nature for beautiful trees 
 to root in its ruins and for birds to sing among 
 their branches, for mosses and ferns to drape its 
 flanks, for bluebells and columbines to nod their 
 graceful flowers from its cornices. But in the des- 
 ert to f aU in ruins is the fate of the caravan dying 
 of thirst in the burning sands. Bare, bleached 
 bones are the only record. Around or on top of 
 these gigantic ruins not a grass-blade grows, not a 
 dry root out of the ground lifts a withered head ; 
 and the solemn burial service to read over aU is, 
 not " dust to dust, ashes to ashes," but " desert to 
 desert, sand to sand." 
 
 It was the custom of the Egyptians to found the 
 necropolis always in the desert behind the city, and 
 never upon the fertile plain, as with our own beau- 
 tiful cemeteries. Two main reasons determined 
 this, — to get above the reach of the inundations 
 of the Nile, and to secure in the cliffs the hard 
 rock strata into which to cut chambers and gal- 
 leries. Still another reason was security against 
 body-snatchers, a form of robbery infinitely more 
 tempting in a land where untold wealth of gold 
 and jewels was often buried with the dead than in 
 a land where no other use could be made of the 
 mortal booty than to sell it to the doctors. Over 
 thousands, however, of these rock-cut tombs have 
 the winds of a hundred centuries swept the sands, 
 
KNIOHT-ERRANTS OF THE SHOVEL 281 
 
 till every trace of their site is lost. Thus what 
 has heen unveiled in Egypt is as nothing to what 
 still lies buried. Beneath the sands over which 
 one rides are endless cities of tombs forever hid- 
 den, — cities that, while Memphis itself hardly bal- 
 anced deaths by births, doubled generation by gen- 
 eration their own ghostly population, still dreamily 
 living on in mansions more spacious and costly 
 than ever tenanted by those in the sunshine above. 
 One sighs for the boon Harriet Martineau craved 
 of some mighty god, to be made Boreas, with cy- 
 clones at command, to sweep away these sands. 
 The boon was never granted. What was accorded 
 was bestowed on a humbler, but more heroic, class 
 of patient toilers. 
 
 To the patient digging of brave archaeolo- 
 gists do we owe almost all our knowledge 
 of the ancient glories of Egypt. They alone lifted 
 the veil from the face of this mysterious Isis. 
 Truly, of all the forms of modern heroism few are 
 more worthy of applause than the patience, the 
 courage in facing greedy ferocity and peril of life, 
 the stern endurance of loneliness, privation, and 
 the furnace of fiery heat displayed — no ! hidden 
 — summer and winter, year in, year out, by num- 
 bers of these devoted men. Foremost of all was 
 the Frenchman, Mariette. Never knight of old 
 more chivalrous and indomitable in rescuing from 
 enchanted castle the imprisoned maiden there than 
 he in delivering from the dungeon of the engulfing 
 sands the pride and glory of the Egypt of old that 
 
282 EGYPT 
 
 had been the torch-bearer of civilization to the be- 
 nighted nations of the world. 
 
 In the course of the ride over the toilsome sands 
 one comes to the lonely house where for so many 
 years this knight-errant of the desert had lived. 
 Close by it are his two great discoveries in this 
 region, — the Serapeum, or Apis Mausoleum, and 
 the Tomb of Thi. How he divined them hidden 
 beneath the sand is a story it would be pleasant to 
 tell did space permit. But divine where they were 
 he did, and then, with his army of laborers, pain- 
 fully dug them out, the wind oftentimes undoing in 
 a night what it had taken a month to effect. To 
 our modern minds, in which the rooted tendency of 
 by-gone ages to identify symbol and reality as in- 
 separably one no longer exists, it seems irreveren- 
 tial to have to translate so high-sounding a title 
 as "Apis Mausoleum" into "Memphian Westmin- 
 ster Abbey for Departed Bulls." Such, however, 
 not in plain prose, but in national veneration, it 
 really was ! The bull, sacred to the god Apis, was 
 to the initiated priests a symbol of power ; to the 
 ignorant multitude, a divine incarnation in horns, 
 hide, and hoofs. "He dwelt," says Kawlinson, "in 
 a temple of his own near the city, had his train of 
 attendant priests, his harem of cows, his meals of 
 the choicest food, his grooms and curry-combers, 
 his chamberlains who made his bed, his cup-bearers 
 who brought him water, and on fixed days was led 
 in a festive procession through the main streets of 
 the town, that the inhabitants might come forth to 
 make obeisance. When he died, he was carefully 
 
KNIGHT-ERRANTS OF THE SHOVEL 283 
 
 embalmed and deposited, together with magnificent 
 jewels, statuettes, and vases, in a polished granite 
 sarcophagus cut out of a single block and weighing 
 between sixty and seventy tons. The cost of an 
 Apis funeral amounted sometimes, as we are told, 
 to as much as £20,000 sterling." 
 
 While we of to-day may smile at all this, it 
 would have been grim earnest had any one in the 
 old Memphian times looked superiorly askance at 
 this bovine divinity, this incarnation of the god on 
 earth. Thirty centuries later a Roman soldier was 
 torn in pieces by a mob for accidentally killing a 
 cat sacred to some other deity. Indeed, the most 
 sanguinary fights were always occurring between 
 rival townships, the one of which deified the croco- 
 dile, and the other of which despised the crocodile 
 and exalted the snake. Very curious was it — in- 
 deed involving a mental wrench in the attempt to 
 get into sympathy with the feelings of one's fellow- 
 creatures of five thousand years ago that put sore 
 strain on the imagination — to thread the great un- 
 derground passages in which, at wide intervals, had 
 been deposited twenty-four sarcophagi containing 
 the mummified bodies of these venerated animals. 
 What magnificent monuments of stone-work they 
 were ! — ten feet long, nine high, seven broad, and 
 a foot thick, each made out of a single block of 
 granite brought from five hundred miles away, cov- 
 ered by devout inscriptions, and all broken open 
 by sacrilegious thieves. But the whole outside cir- 
 cuit of the Serapeum, dug out so painfully by Ma- 
 riette, with its propylon, its crouching lions, its 
 
284 EGYPT 
 
 avenue of sphinxes, is now, alas ! sanded up once 
 more. Poor Keats in his despair wrote for his 
 own epitaph, " Here lies one whose name was writ 
 in water ! " What a dry wit commentary on this, 
 these shifting sands effacing all record of the he- 
 roic toil of poor Mariette ! 
 
 As devoted to the earthly and eternal in- 
 terests of a human being, the Tomb of Thi, 
 next visited, naturally took stronger hold on sym- 
 pathies rife in all hearts to-day than a tomb for 
 deified bulls. Truly, the world offers few more 
 impressive experiences than to be riding over an 
 expanse of barren sand-hills, and then, suddenly, to 
 come upon a vast excavation, to descend its incline 
 to the portal once on a level with the whole city of 
 the dead, and then to find one's self ushered into the 
 pictured interior of an Egyptian mortuary home. 
 "The Egyptians," says Diodorus, "call their houses 
 hostelries, on account of the short period during 
 which they inhabit them ; but they call their tombs 
 eternal dwelling-places." 
 
 Profoundly one feels this as he wanders through 
 the silent chambers, gazes on the infinitely varied 
 scenes depicted on the walls, and tries to get into 
 touch with a fellow-mortal, who, though he died 
 five thousand years ago, seems so on hand to wel- 
 come one to his abiding home. Yes, the home feel- 
 ing of the Egyptian tomb ! With us in America, 
 let a man become rich, his first desire is to build 
 himself a fine house above ground and straightway 
 make it a miscellaneous museum of Persian rugs, 
 
THE TOMB OF THI 285 
 
 Japanese bronzes, carved Indian furniture, and 
 Sevres china. Not so with the Egyptian. He 
 spent his life in a plain house, and concentrated 
 all his wealth, taste, and feeling for domestic com- 
 fort on his tomb, experiencing as palpable zest in 
 fitting it up as in England or America a wealthy 
 young fellow in arranging to his mind his snug- 
 gery, with its store of embroidered slippers and 
 smoking-caps, of Turkish pipes and Havana cigars, 
 of vellum-bound books, crested writing-paper, and 
 Italian pictures. In just such spirit did the wealthy 
 Egyptian spend half his lifetime, with an army of 
 quarrymen, statuaries, and decorative artists under 
 his command, in getting his tomb exactly suited to 
 his taste. I use the word taste advisedly, for in 
 the disposition of this tomb provision was made 
 for every comfort, every idiosyncrasy even of body 
 and mind. Further, while with us the bitter pang 
 to the rich man is that no sooner may he have got 
 ensconced in his costly mansion than death will 
 tear him away, the Egyptian counted securely on 
 at least three thousand years of undisturbed ten- 
 ancy. 
 
 As one wanders through the chambers of his 
 "eternal dweUing-place," and thinks of the keen 
 satisfaction the genial man must have taken in 
 watching, year by year, the progress of the work, 
 one fairly envies Thi. He had been poor, had 
 attained wealth and high rank, till finally he had 
 married into the royal family. But when riches 
 increased, he did not set his heart on them in any 
 but a supramundane sense. His, the solid, home- 
 
286 EGYPT 
 
 spun Egyptian way of interpreting the text, " Lay 
 not up for yourself treasures upon earth, where 
 moth and rust do corrupt and thieves break through 
 and steal." Such perennial dryness of desert situ- 
 ation he secured that no rust nor mould could in- 
 vade ; and as for his treasures, were they not laid 
 up thick, and earthquake proof, in his tomb, where 
 his ghostly double and their ghostly double — the 
 real and enduring essence of them both — would live 
 on face to face. How pleasant to contemplate the 
 pictures of these treasures on the walls, as Thi, his 
 wife, and sons are expatiating over their delights ! 
 Here he is watching his servants bringing in on 
 their shoulders sacks of grain or fattening his 
 fowls by thrusting pellets of meal down their 
 throats. Here he is inspecting his geese and 
 ducks swimming on a pond. Here he is overlook- 
 ing his Nile boats laden with jars of wine and bales 
 of goods. " Cows are crossing a ford, and cattle 
 browse in the meadows. Oxen are ploughing, the 
 seed is sown, the corn is reaped. Donkeys are 
 brought up with much fuss and use of the stick, 
 to carry away the sheaves to the farm-yard. Some 
 of the scenes are drawn with inimitable humor." 
 
 Yes, Thi would have his laugh as well as his 
 solid comfort in his "eternal dwelling-place." The 
 days had not yet come, as under the later empire, 
 when terrible pictures were portrayed on the walls 
 of tombs of the purgatories and hells of torment 
 through which the soul might have to pass. All 
 was happy trust that the best of life but prefigured 
 the best of after life. Alone or forgotten he would 
 
THE TOMB OF THI 287 
 
 not be. To his enduring mansion would come his 
 children, and his children's children, to feast in the 
 festival hall, and make him sympathetically enjoy 
 along with them, though after his own disembodied 
 fashion, the flavor and smell of the spiritual dou- 
 bles of the roasts they were consuming in their 
 ovine or bovine original. 
 
 In this naive way of portraying the tangible sat- 
 isfactions of the life to come there is, it must be 
 confessed, something very winsome. It made me 
 think of Rev. John W. Chadwick's poem, " Climb- 
 ing the Mountain," where the weary footfarer, 
 yearning for the vision of what shall be revealed 
 on the other side, at last reaches the top, only to 
 find the scene unrolled as homelike and sweet as 
 that he had left behind. Far more of a prosaic 
 photographer and less of a spiritual poet than Mr. 
 Chadwick, the Egyptian, but each equally human 
 in his faith. Ah! who but has felt a thousand 
 times that here in the beauty and affections of 
 earth are all the elements of the most beatific 
 vision of heaven, and that, if we could but keep 
 our dear ones tight-locked in our arms, with death 
 at bay and God close by, — could but go on cheer- 
 ing, illuming, and crowning with blessings one an- 
 other's days, — ^ we could dream no fonder para- 
 dise? 
 
in. 
 
 The characteristics of the scenery of the 
 Nile can be more easily realized from pho- 
 tographs than those of any other river in the 
 world, so simple is the Nile in its outlines and 
 so continuously the same from day to day. Beau- 
 tiful the river cannot be called in the sense in 
 which the Rhine and Hudson are beautiful. There 
 are no forest-clad mountains, no rolling hiUs, no 
 charm of variety afforded by pretty villages or 
 spire-tipped cities. A comparatively narrow sel- 
 vage of cultivation along the banks — a selvage 
 sometimes a few yards and sometimes a few miles 
 wide — is shut in on either hand by barren, sun- 
 scorched hills of limestone or by stretches of des- 
 ert sand. The shapes of these denuded hills or 
 semi-mountains are often very picturesque, and at 
 times abut on the river's edge in noble cliffs, pitted 
 all along their lines of harder stratification with 
 entrances to cave tombs, just as with us similar 
 cliffs are pitted with holes into swallows' nests. The 
 flora is the most limited conceivable. It consists 
 almost exclusively of mimosas, sycamore-figs, and 
 date-palms. With the rising or setting sun be- 
 hind their feathery tops, silhouetting them darkly 
 against a rosy or opalescent sky, these palms are 
 singularly beautiful. Indeed, everything in Egypt 
 
CHARACTERISTICS OF NILE SCENERY 289 
 
 silhouettes marvelously. A train of camels, with 
 their upward-curving necks, horizontal heads, and 
 long, gaunt legs, reminds one irresistibly of the 
 picture Coleridge draws in the "Ancient Mariner" 
 of the sun raking through the ribs of the phantom 
 ship. Ever on the air is the sound of the creak- 
 ing levers of the shadufs by which, standing tier 
 above tier, the natives lift from the falling river 
 the irrigating water. And yet, spite of this con- 
 stant monotony, a voyage on the Nile is singularly 
 fascinating. The air is sweet and invigorating. 
 The barren hills take on such varied colors under 
 the morning and evening lights as to transfig- 
 ure their arid reality into a fairy-land of aerial 
 mirage. 
 
 It would prove only tedious to the reader to at- 
 tempt to drag him round from tomb to tomb, from 
 temple to temple. A glance at a map of the Nile 
 wiU give the siteSj and a brief study of any illus- 
 trated books on Egypt the pictures, carvings, and 
 statues, as no pen can hope to reproduce them. AH 
 that the ordinary tourist can hope to do is to en- 
 liven the scene with some vividness of personal 
 impression, and to throw here and there a ray of in- 
 terpreting light on what looks so strange and gro- 
 tesque in pictured illustrations of the monuments 
 of Egypt. Indeed, the trouble with most caUow 
 travelers in Egypt, even with the objects before 
 their eyes, is that they get lost in such a wilder- 
 ness of details that they " cannot see the woods for 
 the trees." So exhaustive a knowledge do they 
 struggle after of just how many gums, spices, na- 
 
290 EGYPT 
 
 tron baths, amulets, sacred extracts, wrappings of 
 linen, and canvas went to the embalming of a sin- 
 gle mummy as to leave no brains for raising the 
 preliminary question of why the mummy ever was 
 embalmed at aU. With a competent outfit, per- 
 haps, for the position of an Egyptian undertaker, 
 they yet lack the first requisites for that of a ten- 
 tative historical or theological observer. 
 
 In the description given in the last chapter 
 of Thi's tomb at Memphis allusion was 
 made to the Egyptian doctrine of the double. 
 Now just as surely as in Dr. Edward E. Hale's in- 
 structive story, " My Double and How He Undid 
 Me," its unhappy writer was brought to grief by 
 not fully taking in the exact nature of his own 
 double, so equally wiU every embryo student of 
 early Egyptian conceptions of spirit-life find him- 
 self " undone " if he does not take in the exact 
 nature of the Egyptian's double. The double is 
 fundamental, as much a part of the man and his 
 belongings as are his own or their own shadows in 
 the sunshine. 
 
 The religion of the earlier days of far-away 
 Egypt was the most literally materialized system 
 of pantheistic animism the world ever saw. Such 
 a thing is there as a poetic system of pantheism 
 that sees and feels Dei by in high and beautiful 
 things, — in sky, mountains, lakes, noble and be- 
 neficent human lives, — but which finds itself dis- 
 inclined to indulge in the same devout emotions 
 over chairs, tables, brooms, crocodiles, snakes, and 
 
PANTHEISTIC ANIMISM 291 
 
 cats, — rather is secretly disposed to the belief 
 that, somehow or other, the devil had a hand in 
 them. This higher poetic system of pantheism 
 believes, indeed, in the body as the tabernacle of 
 soul, especially when body takes the shape of the 
 luminous eyes of a beautiful woman or of the 
 broad, meditative brow of a sage, but feels little 
 spiritual interest in such organs as the liver, spleen, 
 and pancreas, — indeed, is inclined to think, very 
 much as Emerson put it, that we could get on just 
 as well without them. If it dreams of continued 
 existence beyond the earthly life, this same poetic 
 system of pantheism yearns for such existence in 
 an etherealized shape, — in a state, indeed, in which 
 there shall be no more vulgar buying and selling ; 
 no more marketing for fish, flesh, and vegetables ; 
 no more pew-rents for spiritual consolation ; no 
 more doctors nor apothecary shops. And yet, in 
 the higher realm, it would retain Beulah moun- 
 tains and lakes, music beyond that of Beethoven 
 and Mozart, inspirers rapt in the visions of an Isar 
 iah, or a St. John at Patmos ; for these things seem 
 all divine. 
 
 Not at all in this sublimated way, however, do 
 the more ancient Egyptians appear to have felt. 
 In the mass they were the most prosaically im- 
 aginative people conceivable, shut up to celestial 
 yearnings for a sort of everlasting Dutch tulip 
 garden and a pipe beside a canal. For the ade- 
 quate enjoyment of this they wanted the body, 
 and the whole of it, — hair, nails, skin, viscera ; 
 for each of these had its double who, if they did 
 
292 EGYPT 
 
 not keep a sharp lookout, would be sure to undo 
 them. Therefore, no endearing little cherubs for 
 them, amputated just below the shoulders ! 
 
 I must be permitted the use of very plain lan- 
 guage or give up any attempt at being faithful to 
 fact. In truth, it is failure to resort to plain lan- 
 guage and plain corresponding ideas that makes 
 so much that is written about this land of marvel 
 hazy and unreal. An Egyptian's tomb was indeed 
 his spirit house, but, as any one can see with half 
 an eye, a house in which his spirit needed his ap- 
 petite, his bed, his three meals a day, his ser- 
 vants, his farm and kitchen-garden, his bath, his 
 cat and dog, even his doctor and his pills. All 
 these he could enjoy in a strange spiritual-material 
 way, for every one of these objects, even a carved 
 or painted figure of one of them, possessed or was 
 possessed by its corresponding double. Thus, a 
 chair that could be sat on by a living man weigh- 
 ing two hundred pounds had its phantasmal double 
 that could be sat on by a spirit weighing nothing, 
 each in his own especial way. Thus, a savory roast 
 of flesh, that could be inhaled with gusto by re- 
 sponsive material nostrils, could in its double be 
 inhaled by spiritual nostrils ; indeed, the meat it- 
 self or its etherealized Liebig extract equally well 
 masticated and digested by material or by spirit- 
 ual teeth and alimentary canals. But teeth and 
 alimentary canals of either kind there must be, or 
 a spirit would find himself as ill provided in his 
 tomb as a solid man in the flesh at his dinner-table. 
 Without realizing all this to our minds, after the 
 
PANTHEISTIC ANIMISM 293 
 
 most literal and downright fashion, we shall make 
 no step of headway in getting into touch with the 
 vast tomb-world environing us. It is the old Egyp- 
 tian we are talking about, not about ourselves. 
 Where we smUe, he was in dead earnest. 
 
 Now for the first time are we in position to un- 
 derstand why, in the Egypt of old, such enormous 
 sums were lavished on the fitting up of tombs, such 
 costly and elaborate processes of embalming re- 
 sorted to, such endless galleries painted with wall 
 pictures of all conceivable objects, the double of 
 each one of which stood in immediate relation with 
 the convenience or luxury of the double of the oc- 
 cupant himself, at last settled in his " eternal dweU- 
 ing-place." Just as literally as any one of us would 
 feel utterly nonplussed and miserable on returning 
 to his home in New York or Boston to find there 
 no chairs, no carpets, no cups and saucers, no meat 
 in the larder, no family to greet him, no books to 
 read, no Bridget in the kitchen, exactly in the same 
 way did the old Egyptian spirit feel about his 
 tomb. In wrath and exasperation would he haunt 
 and make unendurable the lives of the son or 
 daughter or wife who had subjected him to such in- 
 tolerable privations. And while the minute and 
 commonplace fidelity to details with which all this 
 was believed in and carried out often strikes our 
 minds in an irresistibly humorous light, to an 
 Egyptian it was a matter of such serious import, 
 that any neglect of it would have set his spirit as 
 much beside itself as the temper of the average 
 American householder, who, on returning of a cold 
 
294 EGYPT 
 
 nigM to tis home, should find just such, a carpet- 
 less, bed-less, meat-less scene of distraction as was 
 but now alluded to. 
 
 " A fellow-feeling makes us wondrous kind," and 
 of what use is historic imagination imless it can 
 be raised to a vivid enough pitch to enable one to 
 " put himself in the place " of a justly aggrieved 
 feUow-creature of five thousand years ago? But 
 when all went well, and wife and son were tender 
 and loyal, what comfort and satisfaction in the 
 dear home-tomb ! Truly life is sweet, and a plea- 
 sant thing is it to behold the sim. There the sun 
 still shone, the harvests waved, the birds sailed 
 through the skies, and the fishes leaped in the 
 Nile. Alas ! for the man who has not learned to 
 live into the heart of, to join in the wealth of, the 
 spiritual double in all things. Teach us, O Egyp- 
 tians, teach us the profundity of thy love ! 
 
 Very different is the impression made by the 
 tombs of the later dynasties. The priest- 
 hood has become a gigantic hierarchical power ; 
 and the change in the pictorial emblems on the 
 walls is as marked as in Europe between the earlier 
 spiritual conceptions of the Gospels and the em- 
 bodiment of all mediaeval theology in the HeU, 
 Purgatory, and Paradise of Dante. The body is 
 still embalmed, the tomb is still the double's home, 
 offerings are still made, and the old, familiar every- 
 day scenes are on the walls. No outright break 
 has been made with old ideas ; and they live on 
 in juxtaposition, no matter how incongruous with 
 
LATER TOMBS 295 
 
 one another. But the whole scale of proportion is 
 tipped the other way. The sense of personal ac- 
 countability for the life on earth is now the pre- 
 ponderating feeling. The gods have assumed more 
 definite attributes. The forty-two judges at the 
 awful day demand each his categorical answer as 
 to sins of lying, stealing, adultery, bearing false 
 witness. In the presence of the gods the heart is 
 weighed against a feather, emblem of truth and 
 right, that under no gust of passion must swerve a 
 hair. Thoth, the righteous judge, writes down the 
 record and passes sentence ; while Anubis watches 
 the indicator of the balance, and behind him stands 
 a devouring monster in waiting to seize upon the 
 wicked. The judgment over, here a soul is changed 
 into a hog for its sensuality, here is torn to pieces 
 by the "Devourer," here is led into the blessed 
 presence of Osiris. 
 
 Such, in million-fold forms, are the scenes now 
 presented, as one threads the long passages and 
 comes out into the pillared halls of tombs extend- 
 ing, perhaps, five hundred feet into the solid rock. 
 The figures are carved or stamped in low relief, 
 and colored. So incalculable their number, even in 
 the few burial-places that have been opened, that 
 one feels as though the entire population of Egypt 
 must have been engrossed in this one work, with 
 no time left for sowing or reaping. And yet the 
 marvelous thing to think of is, that all this Dres- 
 den or Munich gallery, finally completed by its 
 army of artists and artisans, was thenceforth never 
 further to be beheld by any human eye. Perils to 
 
296 EGYPT 
 
 the dead have increased. Strength of masonry can 
 no longer be trusted to, and concealment must be 
 the hope. The mummy once deposited, the en- 
 trance was stoned up, the cliff broken down, and 
 every possible trace of the whereabouts of the 
 tomb destroyed. There were no more reception- 
 rooms or festal halls. The days of the former 
 pleasant, social intercourse between the dead and 
 the living had gone, and the simple supramundane 
 had passed over into the supernatural. Amenti, 
 the heaven of the departed, now lay in remote re- 
 gions in the west, across the Libyan Desert. 
 
 Now, in perfect sincerity, what is the inevitable 
 impression made on a reflective mind of to-day by 
 these pictorial representations of death, arraign- 
 ment before the last tribunal, judgment, penalty, 
 introduction to the blessed abode of Osiris ? It is 
 and it must be the strangest conceivable admixture 
 of the pathetic and sublime witH the grotesque and 
 ludicrous. The first entrance is inevitably solem- 
 nizing. You pass in under the brow of the great 
 cliff. You thread rock-hewn passages and halls, 
 with the oppressive sense, so usual in caves, of the 
 weight of the superincumbent mountain. It is 
 pitch dark, and you light your way with a candle 
 held up close to the pictures to examine them. 
 Every now and then leaps out the flash of a bit of 
 burning magnesium wire. Eembrandtesque effects 
 of whitest light contrasted with blackest shadow 
 reveal in sharp distinctness long stretches of pic- 
 tured wall and ceiling. The great theme perpetu- 
 ally present with every one who, heir to the sense 
 
LATER TOMBS 297 
 
 of moral accountability, yet trusts in a final beati- 
 fic vision of God, is the theme before the eyes, as, 
 thousands of years ago, it engrossed the minds and 
 hearts of myriads of one's fellow-creatures. More 
 solemnizing thoughts, in their spiritual import, 
 than those that underlie these pictorial representa- 
 tions cannot be entertained by the human mind. 
 They are, as I said but now, the recognition of an 
 immutable moral law before which Pharaoh and 
 peasant alike must bow, and which here is seen 
 administered without fear or favor by divinities, 
 each one of whom is an incarnation of some aspect 
 of immutable law. He mugt be a brute, and not a 
 man, who does not feel a sense of awe in such an 
 Egyptian tomb. But now to turn to the other side 
 of the appeal made to mind and feeling. 
 
 " Thou art weighed in the balance, and found 
 wanting." How sublime and moving this judg- 
 ment, as it falls from the lips of a Hebrew prophet 
 over a once mighty king! We can understand 
 how a Washington Allston burned his life to ashes 
 in his vain struggle to give satisfying expression 
 to it on his canvas. But how, in contrast, did the 
 old Egyptian portray the scene of weighing the 
 value of a human heart? He presented it in a pic- 
 ture of a horizontal balance, such as was daily used 
 in the market for weighing grain or swine, with a 
 vase with a heart in it on the one platform, and on 
 the other an upright feather. The god Anubis, 
 who is touching the indicator with the tip of his 
 finger, — through what eyes is he reading the mo- 
 mentous record? Through the eyes of a jackal, 
 
298 EGYPT 
 
 set in the head of a long-eared jackal. Thoth, the 
 righteous judge of the great cycle of the gods, who 
 is writing down on a tablet the result of the judg- 
 ment, — there he stands, peering over his tablet 
 with the head and long bill of an ibis. Horus, a 
 man-headed bird who conducts the soul to the awful 
 bar of judgment, is himself a hawk-headed Mer- 
 cury. Osiris, the beatific vision of whom is finally 
 granted as the highest bliss of the soul, who would 
 ever want to see him, — a swathed and bandaged 
 mummy, with the crown of Upper Egypt a-top? 
 Ah ! what a remove from Shakespeare's " What a 
 piece of work is a man ! how noble in reason ! how 
 infinite in faculty ! in form and moving how ex- 
 press and admirable ! in action how like an angel ! 
 in apprehension how like a god ! " 
 
 Such a motley masquerade of animal-headed di- 
 vinities interferes sadly, it must be confessed, with 
 the due seriousness of mind with which one would 
 contemplate such awful subjects. Of course, one 
 knows that these animal substitutes for the regal 
 crown of the body in which reason is supposed to 
 be enthroned are to be taken symbolically. But 
 there are symbols and symbols. To the modern 
 man who has lost all vital touch with these, the 
 pictures so parody the solemn theme as to suggest 
 the final judgment-day of jackals and hippopotami. 
 The incongruity puts too severe a strain on the 
 average mind to leave it duly impressed with such 
 supernatural reasoners on "temperance, righteous- 
 ness, and judgment to come," and so makes the in- 
 terest largely archaeological. And yet these hawk 
 
LATER TOMBS 299 
 
 and jackal headed divinities go so seriously about 
 their business, and seem so naively unconscious of 
 how queer they look to us, that by degrees their 
 earnestness communicates itself to the feelings, till 
 the picture becomes, in a way, affecting. One's 
 own mind grows Egyptianized. It helps, too, to- 
 ward feeling with solemnity what these pictured 
 scenes meant to those who of old looked on them, 
 to read translations of the hieroglyphics written 
 above and beside them. These contain most touch- 
 ing prayers, records of just and righteous judg- 
 ments, summaries of the whole duty of man as 
 bound up in the command to do justly, love mercy, 
 and walk humbly with God. Still, in setting down 
 honestly the strangely contrasting impressions sure 
 to be made on the spectator, it must be clearly un- 
 derstood that one has first to accustom himself to 
 seeing, for example, Amen-Ra, the highest divinity 
 of Egypt, the one of whom, through whom, and 
 to whom are aU things, presented in the guise of 
 a naked man, a necklace on his breast, bracelets 
 on his arms, anklets on his legs, and a high feather 
 in his cap, and, that done, to reconcile, as best he 
 can, the picture with so sublime an invocation as 
 that of the following hymn : — 
 
 " Hail to thee, Lord God of law, 
 Thee whose shrine none ever saw ! 
 
 Forms to all the men that be. 
 Color and variety, 
 By his fiat are assigned. 
 Unto him the poor men cry. 
 And he helps them in distress. 
 Kind of heart is he to all 
 
300 EGYPT 
 
 Who upon him called, 
 
 God Almighty to deliver 
 
 Him that is afraid and meek 
 
 From the great ones who oppress, 
 
 Judging ever 
 
 'Twixt the strong and weak." 
 
 Many superior people at home who have de- 
 rived their whole idea of Egyptian religion and of 
 Egyptian conceptions of the realms beyond from 
 the most spiritual passages in the " Book of the 
 Dead," or from the profoundest comments of 
 Herodotus, Plato, and Plutarch, will perhaps be 
 shocked at expressions one has to use in simply 
 reporting what his own eyes see. After rising in 
 an exalted frame of mind from reading Plutarch's 
 " Isis and Osiris," such natures do not like to hear 
 that among the mighty dead of the Del-el-Bahara 
 cavern-tombs on the lonely Libyan hills, it was 
 found, for example, that Queen Uast-em-Khebit 
 was laid away to rest fully fitted out for the resur- 
 rection morn with a supply of curled and frizzled 
 wigs. Not, indeed, that curled and frizzled wigs 
 are much more incongruous with so triumphant 
 an occasion than, religiously speaking, are analo- 
 gous displays of head-gear that with us flower out 
 on Easter Sunday, or that we are especially war- 
 ranted in throwing stones at our poor mummy 
 sisters for feeling the ruling passion strong in 
 death! Only in Egypt, with such a background 
 of the ages, and when one has seen the individual 
 royal mummy that did it such seons since, the 
 levity strikes home in a more solemnizing, per- 
 
LATER TOMBS 301 
 
 haps a more pathetic way, bringing out in us the 
 Hamlet feeling over poor Yorick's skull : " Now 
 get you to my lady's chamber, and tell her, let her 
 paint an inch thick, to this favor she must come ; 
 make her laugh at that ! " 
 
 Yes, Egypt is the land of contrasts. Not for a 
 moment can the thoughtful man forget that he 
 stands on a soil where the initiated and elect could 
 declare of absolute Deity, " He is not graven in 
 marble. He is not beheld. His abode is not 
 known. No shrine is found with painted figures 
 of him. There is no building that can contain 
 him. . . . His commencement is from the begin- 
 ning. He doth not manifest his forms. Vaia are 
 all representations." Then, in contrast, as the 
 visitor opens his eyes and looks about him, lo ! 
 this wilderness of representations largely in what 
 are to us the most repulsive animal shapes ; this 
 nation of priestly undertakers reducing to a lucrar 
 tive trade the whole business of supplying the de- 
 parting spirits with circumstantial, extramundane 
 Baedekers, in which every inch of the sorely beset 
 way to the heaven of Osiris is mapped out, with 
 specific directions as to just what amount of bak- 
 shish is enough for this or that obstructing fiend, 
 and just what fulsome ceremonial titles will please 
 the ear and secure the favor of this or that celestial 
 protector. 
 
 Again and again has Robert Browning given 
 eloquent expression to his conviction that if the 
 glorious hope of immortality were degraded from 
 a sublime trust of the higher instincts of the soul 
 
302 EGYPT 
 
 into a dead-level sense-demonstration of external 
 fact, it would remove all that is most uplifting and 
 purifying. Too often, in Egypt, would he have felt 
 this conviction reinforced with the weary weight of 
 all the colossal stones piled on top of the material- 
 ized dogma. Excess of contact with its dusty prose 
 and dreary literalism would, I am sure, have broken 
 the wings of the spiritually soaring poet, till never 
 there could he have hailed his own arisen one in 
 the strain, — 
 
 " My lyric love, half angel and half bird ! " 
 
 So far I have spoken but of pyramids and 
 tombs ; whUe it is among the ruins of the 
 great temples of Abydos, Denderah, Edfu, Luxor, 
 Karnak, Philse, that the mind is bowed under the 
 overpowering sense of the colossal and fairly super- 
 human genius of the Egypt of the past. Again 
 and again one, shrinks at the thought of attempt- 
 ing to say anything about these temples, and goes 
 on to something else. Indeed, what can one say ? 
 There are certain sensations we are wont to call 
 elemental, so massive are they, so overwhelming, 
 so submerged in the very substance of feeling 
 never to be defined or analyzed. The ocean, the 
 Himalayas, the Book of Job, the "Fifth Sym- 
 phony," Rembrandt's " Night Watch," awaken in 
 us this elemental sense. Always in the effect pro- 
 duced there is involved the overpowering weight of 
 material mass ; here, in a Beethoven as in a press- 
 ure as of seven atmospheres of sound ; here, in 
 a Kembrandt as in the tangible presence of vast 
 
THE TEMPLES OF EGYPT 303 
 
 realms through which is enacting the colossal strug- 
 gle of light with darkness. It is the sense of thus 
 dealing with the elemental that stirs up from the 
 foundation the oceanic depths in genius, and fur- 
 nishes shaping substance for its stupendous con- 
 ceptions. For a more fitting expression, then, of 
 what this meant to the Egyptian of the far past, 
 I know not better where to turn than to the words 
 of one who, thousands of years ago, thus recorded 
 his own feeling on being led into the awful pres- 
 ence of the Pharaoh : "I was as one brought out 
 of the dark. My tongue was dumb, my lips failed 
 me, my heart was no longer in my body to know 
 whether I was alive or dead." 
 
 " The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wis- 
 dom," said the deep heart of the Hebrew race. 
 Without the sense of overwhelming awe, the sense 
 of nothingness, how shall the poor conceit of man 
 be humbled in the dust ? Yet, there is the pros- 
 tration of the cowering slave ; and there is the 
 prostration of the saint or prophet hushed in ad- 
 oration, and with no words on his lips but " Not 
 unto me ! " Never in any other temples reared 
 by the hand of man do mind and heart so feel 
 this sense of the finite overwhelmed by the in- 
 finite, in naked, dominating simplicity, as in the 
 Egyptian. It is aU there in the sublimest Gothic 
 cathedrals ; but it is there blent with beauty, up- 
 lifted by triumphant soaring, and glorified with 
 rainbow hues of vision. In Egypt it stands out 
 alone. 
 
 What a tiny ant crawling along the base of a 
 
304 EGYPT 
 
 mountain does a man feel himself as he enters a 
 temple like Luxor ! Colossal statues forty feet in 
 height, seated in the immortal calm of ages, con- 
 front him with their awful silence till his own finite 
 griefs and petty ambitions dwindle to the insig- 
 nificant trifles of an hour. He walks along ave- 
 nues of columns so enormous in mass and height 
 that the overthrow of one of them would crush 
 an army of such insects as himself; and yet all 
 around him they lie, fallen, fallen, fallen. His 
 thought is dealing with dynasties so remote, em- 
 bodied in royal shapes so colossal and in memo- 
 rial temples so stupendous, as to seem the record 
 of a story that shall never perish. And yet, in the 
 presence of eternity, nay, of time itself, what are 
 they to be likened unto but the dust blown from 
 the balance. It is, then, this sense of prostration 
 beneath what at first seems utterly incommensura- 
 ble with the grasp of the human mind that consti- 
 tutes the " fear of the Lord which is the beginning 
 of wisdom" in the appreciation of an Egyptian 
 temple. Not that it continues a slavish fear. 
 No! "He that humbleth himself shall be ex- 
 alted," and at last the exaltation comes. For is 
 it not witness of a spirit that has within itself the 
 keynote of vibration in harmony with all this 
 immensity, that man can finally so surmount the 
 sense of prostrate awe as to feel in aU this mighty 
 Presence but a symbol of his own eternity ? Luxor 
 and Karnak ! in such a presence the most average 
 mind is lifted into a realm in which it seems native 
 to think and feel in the strain of a Pascal : " Man 
 
THE TEMPLES OF EGYPT 305 
 
 is but a reed, the weakest in nature, but he is a 
 thinking reed. It is not necessary that the entire 
 universe arm itself to crush him. A breath of air, 
 a drop of water, suffices to kill him. But were 
 the universe to crush him, man would still be more 
 noble than that which kiUs him, because he knows 
 that he dies, while the universe knows nothing of 
 the power it has over him." 
 
 The first great Egyptian temple visited on the 
 way up the Nile is that of Denderah. In the ap- 
 proach to it one encounters what is the perpetual 
 marvel of the Egypt now revealed to-day. Here is 
 a vast structure that for ages was buried up from 
 sight. The winds of the desert blew in the sands. 
 Generation after generation of men built up their 
 habitations of clay about it, till the walls were 
 hidden ; and then generation after generation plas- 
 tered their mud huts, foul as crows' nests, over the 
 gigantic blocks of the roofs. Now all is cleared 
 away from within and without; and you thank 
 God for the sands of the desert and the potsherds 
 of the peasants, as the actual angels' wings that 
 sheltered these priceless treasures against the van- 
 dalism of nature and man. Fresh cut as of yester- 
 day come out the carvings. 
 
 This is not the place to describe the shape and 
 arrangement of the Egyptian temple. Familiarity 
 with these must be gained from engravings and 
 photographs. One does not, as a general rule, 
 enter their porticoes as he does the open porticoes 
 of Greek temples. A screen is built up half-way 
 high between the outer columns, all the way along 
 
306 EGYPT 
 
 the front, except between the two of them that 
 open up the entrance. They thus subserve the 
 end of portico-halls rather than of porticoes, — 
 a feature greatly enhancing their impressiveness 
 through the stupendous effects of light and dark- 
 ness. One enters. Physically and literally, the 
 breathing is arrested and the heart almost stops its 
 beating. Such a forest of gigantic columns, such 
 a Druid grove in stone, such mysterious depths in 
 the roofing overhead and in the vista of the halls 
 opening out beyond ! There are those who would 
 call this the feeling of the barbarian. Then glo- 
 riously confess the barbarian's love of prostration 
 beneath an overpowering sensation. Boldly say 
 that in comparison with the effect wrought by 
 such a portico-hall as that of Denderah, the effect 
 of any such famous portico as that of the Pan- 
 theon in Rome is but as that of a pretty cluster 
 of birch saplings to a California grove of giant 
 redwoods. When in the forest a group of tree- 
 trunks takes your breath away, when it awes you 
 with the sense of thousands of years of growth, 
 when you have to look up and up to cope with its 
 majestic branching overhead, when you behold its 
 mighty base in brilliant sunshine, and its dome 
 overhead a vault of darkness and mystery, then 
 first you get the sublime of what may fitly be 
 called elemental arboreal sensation. This awful 
 secret in stone the Egyptians knew as none that 
 have ever lived before or since. 
 
 All through the course of human history man 
 bears witness to the fact how keenly he suffers in 
 
THE TEMPLES OF EGYPT 307 
 
 presence of the overwhelming powers about him, 
 through the sense of physical littleness and limi- 
 tation. Against this he struggles with straining 
 heart. His arm is puny ; and, to supplement it, 
 he invents levers and cranes. His eye is feeble ; 
 and, to give it range, he thinks out the telescope. 
 His voice is weak and monotonous ; and, to impart 
 to it resonance and variety, he compasses the trum- 
 pet, the drum, the organ, the violin. Then he 
 rises into freedom. Mind no longer dominated 
 by brute matter, every force in matter becomes 
 an attribute of mind. This freedom the Egyptians 
 achieved through Titan power of handling enor- 
 mous masses, and shaping them into a Titanic 
 world. Their Pharaoh ! A block of granite fifty 
 feet in height, twenty to thirty in length and 
 breadth, and weighing a thousand tons, alone could 
 serve for the statue that should give adequate ex- 
 pression to the weight of his authority, the immov- 
 able foundation of his reign. For what did he 
 stand to them ? For a god upon earth. " Thou 
 art like the sun in all that thou doest. Shouldst 
 thou wish to make it day during the night, it is so 
 forthwith. If thou sayest to the water, ' Come 
 from the rock,' it will come in a torrent sud- 
 denly, at the word of thy mouth. The god Ra is 
 like thee in his limbs, the god Kliepra in creative 
 force." Therefore, when, in the Book of Exodus, 
 the God of the Hebrews hardens Pharaoh's heart, 
 it is that He may " show his power," even over so 
 awful a being, and " get glory of him." All this 
 awe and prostration before the Pharaoh's might 
 
308 EGYPT 
 
 the Egyptian temple bodies forth. The Egyptians, 
 too, hardened the heart of the rock, and made it 
 brute, sullen, and rebellious, that they might show 
 their power over it, and compel it to reveal their 
 glory. 
 
 And how the rock does reveal their glory ! 
 This is the dominating feeling, as one wanders 
 among the ruins of their temples, with at first a 
 feeling of dazed, prostrate awe, and at last a feel- 
 ing of exultation. The builders wiU touch no 
 stone that would not leave other builders aghast 
 at the bare thought of moving it. They roof with 
 slabs thirty feet long, seven wide, and four thick, 
 as we would roof with slates. Each column, each 
 capital, each architrave, each ceiling, carries with 
 it the sense of fear and trembling crowned with 
 triumph. Our very ignorance of the means em- 
 ployed adds the feeling of supernatural mystery, 
 till the giant colossi, seated immovable on their 
 thrones, seem but images in their natural size of 
 the sole beings who could rear such structures. 
 And yet, withal, how is all tempered with beauty ! 
 
 A few trivial figures sometimes help the mind 
 as scales of relative proportion, though personally, 
 I must confess, I have never felt profoundly in- 
 debted to the tape measure for more impressive 
 estimates of the sublime. Still, to try the experi- 
 ment on a single feature of one of the stupendous 
 columns in the " Great HaU " of Karnak ! It is 
 computed that on top of one of the lotus-leaved 
 capitals of these columns one hundred and fifty 
 to two hundred men could stand. Well, in imagi- 
 
THE TEMPLES OF EGYPT 309 
 
 nation set the dwarfed creatures up there like a 
 swarm of flies, and stand off for a look at them. 
 How maliciously would Dean Swift have reveled 
 in the sight, delectable as anything he devised in 
 Brobdingnag ! With what a sardonic smile would 
 he have doffed his shovel hat in deferential con- 
 tempt to the little midgets ! And yet in the very 
 act of degrading he would but have exalted them. 
 The midgets built the stupendous temple. 
 
 In this single hall there are twelve of these 
 massive columns, each thirty-six feet in circumfer- 
 ence and eighty feet in height, forming a central 
 avenue, and, on either side, one hundred and 
 twenty-two of only less gigantic dimensions dis- 
 tributed in aisles of seven, — one hundred and 
 thirty-four columns in aU. Atoms of the dust, did 
 you rear this ! Matter ! it is the stuff of man's 
 dreams as truly as of God's dreams, and mind a 
 power compelling its brute mass as the winds the 
 clouds. Orpheus singing into place the stones of 
 the sacred city with the music of his lyre, it seems 
 no idle fable. 
 
 Crowning marvel of aU, these temples were never 
 created for the multitude. They were but the 
 meeting-place of the Pharaoh god with the god of 
 the supernal realm. This temple of Karnak, from 
 outermost pylon in front to sanctuary in the rear 
 nearly a quarter of a mile in length, had no other 
 significance but as audience chamber of consulta- 
 tion between the Divine Majesty on earth and the 
 Divine Majesty in heaven. No wonder so super- 
 nal a conception demanded so supernal an embodi- 
 
310 EGYPT 
 
 ment ! Yet once this overwlielming temple stood in 
 direct connection by a broad sphinx-lined avenue 
 of more than a mile with the vast Luxor temple, 
 while equally over across the Nile, past the colos- 
 sal Memnon statues, and on and on to the temple 
 of Kurnah, the Ramesseum, and Medinet Habu, 
 great sphinx-lined avenues brought it into like con- 
 nection with these stupendous structures. Now 
 first one begins to feel Thebes in its day of glory. 
 All other ruins seem the ruins of little children at 
 their child-play sport of building sand castles on 
 the beach. 
 
PALESTINE 
 
 It is from Port Said, at the Mediterranean 
 end of the Suez Canal, that one embarks 
 for Palestine. After dreamy weeks spent among 
 the mysterious tombs and temples of the Upper 
 Nile, the contrast is startling in coming out upon 
 this congested highway of the traffic of the mod- 
 ern world. It is the Broadway, the Strand, along 
 which, eastward-bound, westward-bound, uninter- 
 mittingly stream the long files of steamships. What 
 a cut-off of a whole vast continent by a hundred 
 miles of digging, and what a concentration, as for 
 a view on dress-parade, of the commercial fleets of 
 the world ! 
 
 As a witness, however, to the unity of creation 
 and to the fact that no good is of merely private 
 interpretation, it is gratifying to record how from 
 the very start the fishes caught hold of the scope of 
 De Lesseps' idea, leaping at the thought of the 
 new epoch inaugurated by his enterprise for wider 
 piscatory as well as human intercourse ; those of the 
 Eed and Arabian seas at once rejoicingly plying 
 tail and fin for closer acquaintanceship with their 
 Mediterranean brothers, and those of the Mediter- 
 ranean for wider ethnological relations with their 
 congeners of the Orient. Who of enlarged benev- 
 olence but must rejoice oyer a millennial day in 
 
312 PALESTINE 
 
 which the languid Eed Sea mother-fish can now 
 start out from those tepid waters with her small 
 fry languid as herself, to brace their constitutions 
 with the tonic coolness of more invigorating floods, 
 while countless pulmonic sisters from the north, 
 dreading for their own small fry a like inheritance, 
 can thus secure a change, as beneficial, to the tropic 
 waters of the south. 
 
 On the voyage from Port Said, one first 
 touches Palestinian land at Jaffa. It has 
 no harbor, and as a heavy sea is generally running 
 the disembarkation into boats is more lively than 
 agreeable. One jumps headlong from the ship's 
 gangway into the arms of the boatmen, and reaches 
 footing by faith and not by sight. No boatman, 
 however, " muffs," and one cannot but admire the 
 dexterity with which they catch " on the fly " very 
 stout and hysterically shrieking elderly ladies. 
 
 Spite, however, of all this hurly-burly the well- 
 regulated mind contrives to store away in vivid 
 memory the picturesque promontory on which the 
 town is perched, and the ragged reef off its south- 
 ern end, over which the breakers leap in sheets 
 of spray. Such mental photographs are of lasting 
 value. Henceforth when one reads of the landing 
 of the cedars of Lebanon for the temple of Jeru- 
 salem ; of Jonah embarking for his eventful voy- 
 age ; of Dorcas, standing reproof to most of us in 
 that she " did what she could ; " of St. Peter's 
 vision of the sheet let down filled with clean and 
 unclean beasts ; of stout Judas Maccabeus assault- 
 
JAFFA TO JERUSALEM 313 
 
 ing the town; of the Crusaders again and again 
 landing there from the Venetian fleets ; and finally 
 of Napoleon raising such a problem in humane 
 casuistry through his heroic practice in poisoning 
 the sick and wounded in the military hospitals, — 
 all will have in it an element of reality otherwise 
 not to be felt. Yes, even Perseus and Andromeda, 
 after one has seen the very rocks to which the sea- 
 monster bound the forlorn maiden, who can longer 
 doubt their story? Does not Pliny attest that 
 even in his day the chains were still rusting there ! 
 And cannot we clinch his testimony by our own 
 attestation that the rocks are not yet gone ! 
 
 When Peter the Hermit and his fellow-pil- 
 grims went up to Jerusalem, it was under 
 volleys of curses and a hail of stones that tested 
 the metal of their faith. To-day one sneaks up by 
 rail. One cannot escape a haunting sense of hu- 
 miliation. Not that curses and stones would not 
 be plenty enough at this late date were the courage 
 equal to the will. One is on Mohammedan soil 
 and under the flag of the " unspeakable Turk," 
 but respect for the Christian's 'cannon overpowers 
 hate of the Christian's creed. Fanaticism can only 
 " think damn," not act it out. Back in Armenia, 
 happily, it is otherwise. There the faithful can 
 slaughter Christian men, women, and children, even 
 the soldiers lending a helping hand, and the gov- 
 ernors diplomatically denying the facts when Eu- 
 rope begins to murmur. But here into the train 
 one mounts without so much as ground for a ro- 
 
314 PALESTINE 
 
 mantic hope that a sporadic little fanatic of an Is- 
 lamite boy may throw a stone — not too large — 
 through the window. 
 
 Immediately on quitting Jaffa, the train plunges 
 into the great plain of Sharon, fertile, hut, after 
 the Nile vaUey, not very fertile ; for, under the 
 fiery sun of Syria and with no brimming river 
 wherewith to slake its thirsty lips, its broad wheat- 
 fields and fig, orange, and mulberry plantations 
 have no dependence but on the " earlier and later 
 rains " of spring. They had already fallen, and aU 
 was beautiful as one now looked backward over 
 the broad level of green relieved against the en- 
 croaching sea-sands, the snowy breakers, and the 
 sky-blue expanse of the Mediterranean. Spots in- 
 timately associated with Scripture story were now 
 pointed out on every hand ; but the only one that 
 struck home with any vivid sensation was the val- 
 ley of Ajalon. There, at five o'clock in the after- 
 noon, as we looked off over the valley, hung the 
 moon directly above it. Such the haze of the at- 
 mosphere that the entire disk was distinctly visi- 
 ble. The leap to the lips was instantaneous : " Sun 
 stand thou stiU upon Gibeon, and thou, moon, in 
 the valley of Ajalon ! " 
 
 After some twenty miles, the train begins to 
 climb the monotonous, barren mountains. Blunted, 
 rarely peaked in outline, the gray limestone rocks 
 broken into narrow lines of cleavage, without trees 
 except gnarled, century-old olives, there is little po- 
 etic charm in such scenery unless through aerial 
 effects of light and shadow. One startling sen- 
 
JAFFA TO JERUSALEM 315 
 
 sation, however, the aspect does awaken. Every- 
 where are the shattered rocks so sprinkled with red 
 poppies and red anemones, or relieved against col- 
 lective masses of them, as to suggest the idea of 
 flecks and pools of blood. The blood besprinkled 
 Mount of Sacrifice! It is impossible to rid the 
 mind of the impression. 
 
 One leaves the train at a spot that could not 
 have been selected better by mediaeval pilgrim or 
 modern artist for a first view of the Holy City. 
 On a level with Jerusalem itself three fourths of 
 a mile away, a deep abyss opening up between 
 the mountain on which it stands and the moun- 
 tain from which one looks, there sits the sacred 
 city, its walls, its thirty towers, its wilderness of 
 domes, and dome-vaulted dwellings. How seem- 
 ingly impregnable a situation for security, and yet 
 how irresistible an appeal to every heart that has 
 ever felt the aspiration and the tragedy, the degra- 
 dation and the glory of its age-long human history ! 
 Ah, the moans of despair, the yells of execration, 
 the anthems of triumph, with which these rocks 
 have echoed ! Spite of its abrupt and isolated po- 
 sition, there is a profound sense in which the city 
 cannot "sit solitary." It is compassed about by 
 too great a cloud of witnesses ever to be beheld 
 apart from its environment in imagination. David 
 is storming the citadel of Mt. Zion. Solomon is 
 adorning it with palace and temple. Shishak, king 
 of Egypt, is besieging and plundering it. Nebu- 
 chadnezzar is haling away, lamenting sore, its sons 
 and daughters to captivity in Babylon. Jeremiah 
 
316 PALESTINE 
 
 is plaining its woes, and Isaiah prophesying the 
 coming glory. Ezra is restoring it. Jesus is weep- 
 ing over it. Again Titus is razing it to the ground. 
 Constantine is re-adorning it. Khalif Omar is 
 breaking in from the desert to rear the mosque of 
 Allah on the site of the temple of Jehovah. Anon, 
 the ferocious Turks are clutching it by the throat, 
 and the Crusaders are wading in blood to their 
 saddle-girths through its courts, and Saladin is 
 once again planting the crescent on its battlements, 
 while to-day the Greek, Latin, Armenian, and Cop- 
 tic churches of Christendom are vindictively fight- 
 ing over its sacred relics as the Mohammedan looks 
 on in lofty scorn, and the Jewish remnant, a nest of 
 paupers, is supported by the pious alms of French 
 and German bankers. 
 
 Our quarters in Jerusalem lay just outside the 
 Jaffa Gate. Never to my dying day shall I cease 
 to be thankful for a quiet stroll of a couple of 
 hours that first evening around a portion of the 
 city walls. The fever of the day was over, and the 
 moon poured a flood of softest light over towers 
 and battlements and down into the valley of Je- 
 hoshaphat. Without and within all was a dream 
 of peace. The spiritual presence of Jesus, the 
 familiar paths his footsteps trod, the scenes on 
 which his eye daily rested, — all were blent in 
 one harmonious whole. Over yonder in distinct- 
 est outline across the abyss stood the Mount of 
 Olives, and low down to the right the Garden of 
 Gethsemane. Where in any religion is there a 
 symbol remotely to be compared with the story of 
 
SACRED CITIES 317 
 
 the passionate love, the mortal agony, the resur- 
 rection in spiritual triumph of the life of Jesus ! 
 Buddhism with its Nirvana of rest for him who in 
 abandonment of despair has seen into the depths 
 of the emptiness underlying the All, Brahmanism 
 with its thought-less, desire-less, imagination-less, 
 reabsorption into the Absolute, what are they be- 
 side Jesus' sublime trust in life eternal in the bosom 
 of God for the lowliest. Ah, that after that hour 
 dissolved in moonlight peace I had left Jerusalem 
 and seen no more ! 
 
 With the morrow came the sense of disillu- 
 sion. It had to be so. Sacred cities, call 
 them Buddhist, Mohammedan, Christian, call them 
 Benares, Mecca, Jerusalem, are one in essence. 
 Deriving their repute from the inspiration of some 
 prophet who thought to reveal higher spiritual 
 conceptions to the world, they become in the end 
 the gaping pilgrimage-resorts of millions of the 
 ignorant and superstitious. Nor is this the worst. 
 Whatever one's creed as to the spiritual worth of 
 the " merits of the saints " held in fee by any 
 church for eking out the demerits of the sinful, 
 no doubt of their financial value can be enter- 
 tained. As an investment in real estate, secure 
 for a thousand years from fluctuation on the 
 market, the tomb of a prophet eventually rises to 
 a higher rate per foot than the most advantageous 
 broker's site on Wall Street. It is idle to try 
 to blink these ugly facts. "Where the carcass 
 is, there will the vultures be gathered together." 
 
318 PALESTINE 
 
 Whether transacted in beef and pork, or in crosses 
 and crescents, business is business, baptize it in 
 whatever sacrilegious name one may. 
 
 Tens of thousands of pilgrims imply no end of 
 greedy lodging-house keepers, imply the sharpest 
 competition in driving a trade in candles, rosaries, 
 and relics, in the sale of farm products from the 
 country-people, and in the services of an army of 
 rival priests and Levites. Thus, inevitably, the 
 entire material prosperity of a holy city is as 
 strictly based on the "merits of the saints" as 
 Newcastle on coals or Manchester on calicoes ; and 
 as, in a great commercial city, each rival firm seeks 
 to outdo its neighbor in display of attractions in 
 its show-windows, so, in a great holy city, does 
 each competing religious body vie with every other 
 in the superior variety and marvel of its tinsel 
 legends, authentic relics, and miraculous trumpery 
 of every sort. In truth, the scourge of small cords 
 works a jail-delivery only once. Soon the traders 
 are back again, this time to realize a profit out of 
 authentic strands of the very cords with which they 
 were originally whipped. 
 
 There are three frames of mind, each equally 
 natural, in which a human being may wan- 
 der round among the holy places of Jerusalem and 
 Bethlehem. The first is that of the devout village 
 pilgrims one encounters in shoals, largely un- 
 kempt, powerfully built Russian peasants, igno- 
 rant and superstitious beyond compare, and so 
 hot-bloodedly emotional as to pass in a moment 
 
IN WHAT FRAME OF MIND? 319 
 
 from the most groveling prostration before a relic 
 to the most savage brutality in a fight with a Latin 
 or Coptic f eUow^-Christian of erroneous views. The 
 second is that of the thorough-going disciple of 
 Mark Twain, without the genius of the master; 
 his only breviary the " Innocents Abroad." He 
 journeys to Jerusalem in devoutest faith, that here 
 is sanctuary none other can rival for a chance 
 at cheap wit based on irreverence, and that once 
 there the dullest of men may cherish a rational 
 hope of manufacturing a really funny book out of 
 incongruities staring him in the face on every hand. 
 The third frame of mind is that of the at once 
 medisevally devout and medisevaUy scholastic man 
 of the Cardinal Newman type, one who, having 
 eyes, sees only through a haze of preconceptions, 
 but through this haze sees with a beauty vastly 
 edifying to all who, like himself, are staggered at 
 nothing. What, then, shall the visitor do who has 
 neither the endowment of the Russian peasant, nor 
 of a pseudo-disciple of Mark Twain, nor of a fol- 
 lower of Cardinal Newman ? There seems but one 
 course for him. 
 
 He is going, say, to the Church of the Holy 
 Sepulchre. What does he expect to find there? 
 The shrine of pilgrimage of millions of the human 
 race from the third or fourth century until to-day. 
 Does he suppose they have ever read Emerson 
 or Martineau? Or is it his object to try con- 
 clusions between his own critical apparatus and 
 their purely uncritical imaginations? The Em- 
 press Helena, wife of Constantine, with unlimited 
 
320 PALESTINE 
 
 means and a most obsequious bishop at command, 
 — does he suppose that, when she went out to 
 Palestine to settle the position of the holy places, 
 she meant to be balked by idle archaeological con- 
 siderations ? As an adjunct to her critical appa- 
 ratus, had she not, for example, supernatural 
 dreams to assure her just where under Golgotha 
 the three crosses were buried? And, when a mo- 
 mentary doubt arose as to which one of the three 
 was the cross of Jesus, did she not, by sending at 
 once to the hospital for a moribund patient, fur- 
 nish an opportunity to the true cross to work 
 a miracle, and so settle the question beyond ra- 
 tional dispute? 
 
 No : there is but one way and one spirit in 
 which the broadly educated man of to-day can 
 intelligently and seriously view the Church of the 
 Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. He is there neither 
 to praise nor to blame, but to understand. He is 
 in the presence of a growth of centuries differing 
 totally from his own. The whole spectacle is to 
 be taken as a unity, one and indivisible. The 
 piUar marking the exact centre of the earth, as 
 well as marking the spot from which was taken 
 the dust out of which Adam was made, is as much 
 a part of the whole imaginative creation as are 
 the three authentic holes in the rock into which 
 were thrust the three crosses of the crucifixion. 
 The grave of Adam exactly underlying the cross 
 of the Redeemer, so that the blood of the eternal 
 sacrifice should trickle down and annul the origi- 
 nal sin of him in whom feU the whole human race, 
 
IN WHAT FRAME OF MIND? 321 
 
 rests on precisely the same foundation of authority 
 as the spot where the Virgin Mother stood when 
 Jesus commended her to the tender care of the 
 beloved disciple. 
 
 On setting out, therefore, for the Church of the 
 Holy Sepulchre, let one make a hard and fast vow 
 to leave all cheap, rationalistic acumen at home. 
 Rather, let him watch and try to enter into the 
 feelings of the swarms of Russian pilgrims. See 
 them as they break on entering under the high 
 arch of the portal, and wildly precipitate them- 
 selves at the foot of the " Stone of Holy Unction." 
 It is like seeing troops of horses just out of the 
 desert break and precipitate themselves at the 
 sight of pools of water. Here is the Gate of 
 Heaven ! Here is the Promised Land ! Here can 
 the blessed Saviour be seen, felt, handled, kissed, 
 reveled in through every sense ! The very stone 
 on which his crucified body was laid for the anoint- 
 ing, the very spot on which Mary stood weeping 
 the very hole into which was thrust the foot of the 
 cross, the very cave and sarcophagus in which 
 rested the mangled body till the Angel of the 
 Resurrection rent the rock asunder, — oh, to be 
 thrice blessed of God in beholding all this, to be 
 able to fling the arms passionately around each ob- 
 ject, to kiss it over and over, to rub the forehead 
 against it, to feel in outright contact with what 
 his flesh and blood had been in contact with, — 
 this is to see Christ, to become one with Christ, 
 to find him tangible, palpable reality ! 
 
 Now first one understands the true spirit of the 
 
322 PALESTINE 
 
 Crusades as he watches these pilgrims, men and 
 ■women who had tramped their hundred or thou- 
 sand miles to behold the kingdom of heaven radiant 
 before their eyes in this vast, tawdry church; 
 understands, too, in its massive material-spiritual 
 significance, the great Middle Age dogma of tran- 
 substantiation, of bread made actual flesh of Christ, 
 and wine made actual blood of Christ, till the be- 
 liever ate and drank the real body and blood of his 
 Lord, all else mere spiritual medium, empty and 
 impalpable in comparison. No longer ask, then, 
 what you think of all this marvelous spectacle. It 
 matters not. Seek only to get at what these pil- 
 grims think of it, what it actually is to them, what 
 equally it has been to millions behind them and to 
 the myriads of Crusaders who spilt their last drop 
 of blood in rescuing these holy memorials from the 
 hand of the infidel. Then opens to you, child of 
 this nineteenth century, a new chapter in human 
 history. What made this past so vital, so terrible, 
 so glorious, is now before your eyes. 
 
 From the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in 
 Jerusalem it is a charming stroll of five 
 or six miles to Bethlehem and the Church of the 
 Nativity. After so many pilgrims and so much 
 strain to live into ages that have gone by, it is very 
 blissful to feel one's self once again in the living 
 presence of nature and out under the old, unchang- 
 ing sky. True, it is a barren and rugged nature 
 about one. The very wheat-fields along the moun- 
 tain crests — if fields they may be called — are so 
 
A STROLL TO BETHLEHEM 323 
 
 congested with sharply splintered stones that the 
 partial clearing of one of them involves burying 
 up a full half of the surface under piles of rock 
 taken from the other half. Now strikes home 
 new insight into the relation between man and his 
 environment as bne takes in at a glance why the 
 prophets of Jerusalem so commonly met death by 
 stoning. Murder in the heart of Saul, and St. 
 Stephen there, the magazine of death-dealing mis- 
 siles is right on hand. But this scene of cruel 
 martyrdom, even though it bequeathed to the 
 world so divine a prayer, one would now fain dis- 
 miss from the mind, and think rather of the sower 
 who went forth to sow. No wonder so little seed 
 fell upon the good ground. So little good ground 
 was there. But the stony places, they were every- 
 where. All seemed like looking straight through 
 the eyes of Jesus, the only way to look would one 
 ever get in touch with his soul. 
 
 Ah! what a walk were this but for authentic 
 sacred places. Every few hundred paces, and lo ! 
 another. Now, alas ! one must pause duly to re- 
 vere the slab of stone on which sublime Elijah 
 sank when in coUapse of despair he cried, " Lord, 
 it is enough; now lettest thou thy servant die." 
 Nothing more fuU of the heartbreak of a mighty 
 spirit is there in all Hebrew literature. Does it 
 gain by one's stopping to see, in physical attesta- 
 tion of the weight of the prophet's woe, the full- 
 length impress of his body sunk as with a mortal 
 die into the rock? O God! cries the soul in re- 
 volt, must the monkish awkward squad thus fire 
 
324 PALESTINE 
 
 over each hallowed grave. From every side rings 
 their ragged fusillade. Passing belief is the ab- 
 ject prose of literalism under which are degraded 
 the most spontaneous outbursts of the soid. " If 
 they should hold their peace, the stones would 
 immediately cry out," Jesus passionately retorted 
 to the Pharisees incensed with the multitude pro- 
 claiming, "Blessed the King that cometh in the 
 name of the Lord ! " Then think — by way of 
 edifying comment on this metaphor of passion — 
 of being shown in a shrine four or five authentic 
 specimens of the very stones that would have cried 
 out, only that the multitude did not hold their 
 peace, and so there was no call for lithological 
 rebuke. 
 
 ■ The impression wrought by the Church 
 of the Nativity is over again that of the 
 Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. 
 Once more is experienced the same dazed surprise 
 at finding so many sacred places included within 
 the walls of a single great building, the Same in- 
 credulous wonder that each incident in the Gospel 
 story should be located to the very inch. Here 
 a star on the pavement marks the precise spot on 
 which the Holy Child was born ; here another star 
 just where the Magi stood ; here stiU another the 
 position of the manger. On this hand a chapel 
 shows the recess to which St. Joseph retired when 
 he gave thanks at the moment of the Nativity ; on 
 this, where the angel descended to command the 
 Flight into Egypt; on this, where the Innocents 
 
THE CHURCH OF THE NATIVITY 325 
 
 were gathered together and buried after Herod's 
 massacre. Even the cave-stable, if here it is, is so 
 bedizened with marble and tinsel as to be trans- 
 formed into a tawdry doll-house. 
 
 A single inspired picture like Correggio's ecstatic 
 " Nativity " in the Dresden Gallery, a single glo- 
 rifying poem like Milton's " Christmas Hymn," 
 and the soul is carried a thousand times nearer in 
 actual time and space to the spirit that dictated 
 the early Gospel narrative of cave, manger, shep- 
 herds, happy young mother, rejoicing of heaven 
 with earth, than by all this Bethlehem child's- 
 play. For the one is poetry and the other prose. 
 Here, alas ! is the whole devout story monopolized 
 for vulgar sensation, and degraded to a sacred 
 peep-show. Indeed, the very Turkish soldiers on 
 guard to keep the Greek, Latin, and Armenian 
 monks from tearing one another's hair, should the 
 one venture to cross the staked-out " claim " of the 
 other, are but fitting symbols of the worth of the 
 whole ecclesiastical exhibition. Here, of a truth, 
 one looks on at the real Gethsemane, the real 
 Agony in the Garden, the crucifixion afresh of 
 Jesus. 
 
 With the general aspects of nature, however, 
 in and about Bethlehem and Jerusalem, and 
 with the real gain in becoming familiar with them, 
 the case is utterly different. Here, in truth, is the 
 handiwork of God, — the material body in which 
 the spirit once tabernacled, on which time has 
 effected little change. The reputed site, say, for 
 
326 PALESTINE 
 
 example, of the house of Martha and Mary in 
 Bethany — one modern stone hovel amid a hundred 
 as sordid would, one might think, awaken no trace 
 of interest ; but the view of earth and sky on which 
 their eyes looked out, the stony hills, the terraces 
 of vines and olives, the fertile spots of pasturage 
 in the valley below, the paths trod by Jesus' feet 
 to and from the Mount of Olives above, — these 
 are more than historical : they are bound up with 
 all the imagery of the parables and intimately 
 associated with the one real home that was refuge 
 and solace to him who so often had not " where to 
 lay his head." So with a thousand objects in this 
 whole region of spiritual story. One looks off over 
 the barren hills among which David was a wan- 
 derer and an outcast. The guide points out the 
 site of the cave of Adullam, or, perhaps, the exact 
 spot where the young hero, dying of thirst for a 
 drink from the dear old well in Bethlehem, poured 
 out the water on the ground, because, thus pur- 
 chased, it was the " blood of his men." But there 
 are countless such caves in the limestone of these 
 mountains ; and what matters any idle fancy which 
 exact one it was in which there gathered to the 
 outlawed chief "every one that was in distress, 
 and every one that was in debt, and every one that 
 was discontented, and he became a captain over 
 them." Enough that, with a single sweep of the 
 eye, one thus takes in the scene of the bandit life, 
 of the refuse material ripe for political revolution, 
 of the Sir Philip Sidney chivalry of their heroic 
 leader. A realistic setting is thus given to the 
 
THE SPIRIT AND THE FLESH 327 
 
 Bible story that is a distinct addition, and like 
 instances might be multiplied without end. 
 
 Not, indeed, that one does not gladly welcome 
 legends whenever there is any genuine human 
 nature in them. In Bethlehem, to give an example, 
 one visits a shrine built over the supposed spot to 
 which Mary retired with the infant Jesus to prepare 
 for the flight into Egypt. There one drop of her 
 mother milk fell to the ground, ever after impart- 
 ing to the dust of the place miraculous power to 
 make the milk flow freely in the breasts of all 
 mothers unable to nourish their own pining little 
 ones. Crude as the legend is, it has at least some- 
 thing human in it, something in line with the loving 
 tradition of the Gospels. For Jesus, once a babe, 
 loved all babes, and knew how sweet was his mother 
 Mary's milk. One can sympathize with the sad- 
 eyed peasant woman he sees kneeling there, her 
 emaciated baby in her arms. But ateked to share 
 the emotions of a troop of pilgrims hanging in 
 idiotic simplicity of adoration over specimens of 
 the stones that would have cried out, my own piety, 
 I confess, fails. 
 
 Of course, one goes to see and hear the 
 wailing of the Jews over the sole remain- 
 ing fragment of the foundation waU of their 
 national temple, — probably one of the few genuine 
 relics of the time of Solomon left in the city, unless 
 the subterranean quarries. It is the hilarious cus- 
 tom with tourists to laugh at this spectacle as a 
 sort of mock exhibition of grief akin to shedding 
 
328 PALESTINE 
 
 tears over Adam's grave. To me the scene was 
 affecting. Eeligion and patriotism are one and 
 inseparable in the Jewish mind ; and of all their 
 former glories there remains to them, in their own 
 ancestral city, but this stretch of ruined wall. If 
 ever there was a " lost cause," the memory of which 
 might remain locked up in the human heart genera- 
 tion on generation, surely this is one. Exiles in 
 their own home ; dominated by a hateful Moham- 
 medan government ; their temple site the seat, 
 on which they dare not set foot, of the splendid 
 Mosque of Omar; prohibited, at the risk of being 
 torn to pieces by ferocious mobs, from so much as 
 walking through the street of the Church of the 
 Holy Sepulchre, — a real Via Dolorosa to them ; 
 with no future, but only a past, to fall back on for 
 cheer and hope, — why should there not be pathetic 
 sincerity in the litany they chant ? 
 
 " Because of the palace which is deserted, 
 We sit alone and weep. 
 Because of the temple which is destroyed, 
 Because of the walls which are hroken down, 
 Because of our greatness which is departed, 
 Because of the precious stones of the temple ground to powder, 
 Because of our priests who have erred and gone astray, 
 Because of our kings who have contemned God, — 
 We sit alone and weep." 
 
 In Jerusalem, its population three fourths Jewish 
 and Mohammedan, its Christian temples maintained 
 in safety solely through fear of European interven- 
 tion, one feels as nowhere else the abiding spir- 
 itual characteristics of the Semitic race, and the 
 greatness of the gulf that divides it from the 
 
THE DEAD SEA AND THE JORDAN 329 
 
 Aryan, — the outcome of whose distinct pantheistic 
 and philosophical genius, superimposed on the 
 simple story of the Gospel, is seen in the vast 
 system of theological mythology here so crudely 
 represented by the Greek and Latin churches. 
 The Mosque of Omar and the Church of the Holy 
 Sepulchre, the naked simplicity of the ritual of the 
 one, the florid and grotesque symbolism of the 
 other, — here are the two great races in salient 
 contrast. 
 
 To us, in the saddle most of the time and 
 under a blazing Syrian sun, great certainly 
 was the fatigue, though greater far the interest, of 
 the descent of nearly four thousand feet to Jericho, 
 the Dead Sea, and the Jordan. That it is still pos- 
 sible on this memorable journey to "fall among 
 thieves" — though the good Samaritan be more 
 problematical — was evident in the fact that our 
 little party of two tourists, a dragoman, and a ser- 
 vant, required the escort of a donkey-mounted scrap 
 of a Bedouin, a highly decorated gun, six feet in 
 length, strapped horizontally across his back. Once 
 covenanting with this tawny son of Ishmael for a 
 certain sum in shekels, metaphorically we were 
 taken to have " eaten his salt," and so, under the 
 protecting aegis of the laws of hospitality, to be 
 exempt from further robbery at the hands of his 
 tribe. As he would sway from side to side, the 
 muzzle of his weapon described such areas of 
 ninety or more degrees, that we who rode behind 
 felt in him a veritable object of terror, and so 
 possessed our souls in peace. 
 
330 PALESTINE 
 
 It was good to be out among the mountains, 
 stern and forbidding as they looked, and to be 
 storing away first-hand mental pictures. Every 
 now and then we would come upon a gaunt, sun- 
 blackened shepherd walking in front of his flock, 
 the sheep "following him." "The Lord is my 
 shepherd, I shall not want." Ay, but without a 
 shepherd knowing where lies every nibble of grass 
 and every trickling water-spring, how these thirsty, 
 pining creatures must want. " Read with empha- 
 sis ! " insisted in the school our early teachers. 
 That one word want, — ah ! with what emphasis 
 did famine and thirst ejaculate it here. Yes, how 
 deep-lying in sharp sensation is all poetic imagery! 
 and how eternally true of facts, " They learn in suf- 
 fering what they teach in song." 
 
 Then, farther on, we would come upon the ruins 
 of an old Crusader castle, bleached, bare, and with 
 no green ivy to mantle its woimds and scars. Oh, 
 the cruel disillusioning that must have come over 
 those fanatic warriors, their brains aflame with 
 visions of the Promised Land, when, once they 
 had stormed the sacred city and sated their lust 
 of blood, they found themselves monotonously set 
 down on these desolate mountains, amidst swarms 
 more fanatic than themselves, to hold fast this Fata 
 Morgana exhalation of desert sand. With what 
 yearning must Europe have risen before the mind's 
 eye, the castle on the Loire, the castle on the Rhine ! 
 
 More impressive still, stand and gaze down into 
 the savage gorge at the bottom of which courses 
 the brook Cherith. For a picture of raven-fed 
 
THE DEAD SEA AND THE JORDAN 331 
 
 Elijah, what a background of solitary desolation ! 
 Yes, God pity the prophet there whom the ravens 
 should not find out and succor ! And yet to the 
 side of the gorge, like a limpet to a rock, clings 
 a monastery, where centuries on centuries succes- 
 sive bands of Carmelite monks have dwelt. Piteous 
 the irony of the fate of the poor Crusaders ; but, 
 irony of ironies would you ponder and fathom it, 
 is it not witnessed in brotherhoods of ascetic monks, 
 seK-exHed in this savage gorge to commune with 
 the mighty spirit of Elijah, and yet doomed to 
 seek their ravens in the profits of carving salad- 
 spoons for gadding tourists out of holy wood from 
 the Mount of Olives ? 
 
 Striking views begin to open up over a wide 
 expanse as one nears the verge of the mountain 
 region. What a presence of ages of history and of 
 historical legend ! In sight is the top of Pisgah 
 lifting from behind the mountains of Moab ; in 
 sight, the river that rolled back for the passage of 
 Joshua's bands ; in sight, the mound-heaps of old 
 Jericho, toppled down at the blast of the rams' 
 horns of the priests. These, and the Mount of 
 Temptation to which the Devil carried Jesus, the 
 grave of Moses set up in rivalry by the Moham- 
 medans, the pool of bitter water Elisha made sweet 
 ever after by casting in a handful of salt, the whole 
 stretch of the Jordan vaUey, and, shining in the 
 distance, the glassy surface of the Dead Sea ! 
 
 Unquestionably, over these Moab mountains de- 
 scended Joshua and his desert-toughened, desert- 
 famished Bedouins. What the cry "The sea! the 
 
332 PALESTINE 
 
 sea ! " of Xenophon's army, to their cry as their 
 eyes feasted on the verdure of the Jordan valley as 
 then it was ! 
 
 Fresh from reading the Book of Joshua, fresh 
 from the primitive chroniclers of the first Moham- 
 medan campaigns, how realistically one saw and 
 felt that it was one and the same historic story 
 repeated at vast intervals of time. The same fiery 
 and vindictive tribal God of the desert, — the su- 
 pernatural Bedouin, with a few genuine tribal 
 Bedouin virtues in his heart, ever ready to reward 
 the faithful with the illimitable booty of idolar 
 trous cities and idolatrous women, — such alike the 
 Jahveh of Joshua and the Allah of Mohammed ! 
 One pays afresh his tribute of grateful reverence 
 to devoutly brave old Christian Bishop Ulfilas, in 
 that clear back in the fourth century he should have 
 refused so stoutly to translate for his converted 
 Goths the Book of Joshua. No, the Goths need 
 no revelation from on high to incite to rapine and 
 murder; enough of it have they by nature with- 
 out the aid of grace ! Such the ringing word of the 
 stout old bishop. Yet out of these ferocious begin- 
 nings were to grow, at last, as consummate spiritual 
 flower, the sublime strains of Isaiah and the par- 
 able of the Prodigal Son. 
 
 In contradiction of its name, forever will the 
 Dead Sea hold in one mind, at least, a green and 
 living memory. Not that its environing mountains 
 are not desolate enough, but what sternness will 
 not aerial light robe in a bridal veil of beauty! 
 The air was breathless, and perfect the reflection 
 
THE DEAD SEA AND THE JORDAN 333 
 
 of sky and range. Sodom and Gomorrah, Lot and 
 his wicked daughters, fire and brimstone from on 
 high, seemed all out of keeping with the radiant 
 sunshine. For months nowhere had my friend 
 and I fomid ourselves where it was possible to 
 enjoy the luxury of a swim, and now red-hot with 
 long hours in the saddle under such a blazing sun, 
 rank ingratitude had it seemed not to answer the 
 invitation of these crystal-clear waters. 
 
 Often as has been described the delight of float- 
 ing on the buoyant surface of the Dead Sea, the 
 experience is one only to be interpreted in terms 
 of private consciousness. Under the spell of such 
 sparkling levity, presto! vanishes the heavy and 
 the weary weight of gravitation, in contemptuous 
 refutation of every law of Newton. The elastic 
 flood tosses one up in its arms as a proud and 
 happy mother her crowing babe. Dainty Ariel, 
 thistledown floating in the sunbeams, all other 
 airy-fairy creatures, you are one with them in 
 spirit now. The more you weigh, the less you 
 weigh. Here is the real hydrostatic paradox ! 
 
 From the shore of the Dead Sea to the ford of 
 the Jordan, the traditional spot of the baptism of 
 Jesus, the ride lies through an arid region whose 
 chief foliage is a scrub growth of Spina Christi, 
 the accredited plant of the crown of thorns. Only 
 a narrow fringe of trees separates the stream from 
 the alkali-eaten stretches on either side. Disap- 
 pointing was the sight of the river as, swollen by 
 the melting snows of Hermon far to the north, the 
 swift and turbid current rolled and eddied along. 
 
334 PALESTINE 
 
 There, too, alas ! was the noise and inane laughter 
 of a swarm of lunching tourists. Ah ! why are 
 aU tourists of another party so sacrilegiously com- 
 monplace ? Temporarily one forgets good Bishop 
 Ulfilas, and breathes a sigh that Joshua might de- 
 scend once more from these Moab mountains to 
 smite hip and thigh such Canaanitish idolaters. 
 There is but one thing for it, to steal away to 
 some quiet spot farther up or down the river and 
 there to try to think one's own thought. " Thou, 
 when thou prayest, enter thy closet and shut the 
 door." How often in the Holy Land recur these 
 words. Either find such inner sanctuary in the 
 soul itself, or better be anywhere than in Palestine. 
 And yet and yet ! Every hour is the mind storing 
 away imagery that in later days, when the dust 
 has settled and the fever has cooled, will make 
 a thousand incidents in the Gospel story so very, 
 very real. And yet and yet ! 
 
 " heart ! weak follower of the weak, 
 That thou should'st compass land and sea 
 In this far place that God to seek, 
 Who long ago had come to thee." 
 
BAALBEC AND DAMASCUS 
 
 As on a sunny morning one steams into the 
 harbor of Beyrout, in northern Syria, how 
 entrancing a .picture ! The Lebanon ranges are 
 full in view, their higher peaks white with snow ; 
 while, embowered in plantations of fig, olive, mul- 
 berry, and orange trees, the white houses of the 
 city peep through on the hillside. Along the 
 sands below curve the fleecy wave-line and bright 
 blue waters of the Mediterranean. For a week to 
 come, we are to be driving over these mountains 
 and down among the oasis valleys of Baalbec and 
 Damascus. 
 
 Rather in Kansas or Montana than in Syria 
 one would look for startling impressions of the 
 march of modern improvement. It is a mistake. 
 Go instead to Syria for a real sensation. The 
 road on which one drives to-day equals any over 
 the passes of Switzerland. What does this mean 
 in the land of the " unspeakable Turk," under the 
 blight of whose rule all mildews and goes to ruin ? 
 Only the iron hand of Europe laid in arrest on the 
 shoulder of Asia, with its stern word, " So far and 
 no farther ! " The road, the work of French cap- 
 ital, is safeguarded against Moslem cupidity and 
 kept in working order by French energy and 
 science marshaling the labor of the native popu- 
 
336 BAALBEC AND DAMASCUS 
 
 lation, and finding no more faithful labor any- 
 where, if fairly treated. Close beside this triumph 
 of modern engineering runs the old trail from 
 Damascus, torn and gullied almost out of recogni- 
 tion, over which are painfully laboring great cara- 
 vans of heavily burdened asses and camels, the poor 
 brutes picking their way and bruising their knees 
 after the good old ancestral fashion. Further 
 still, already is a mountain railway from Beyrout 
 to Damascus in rapid advance before the eye, and 
 soon will be witnessed side by side the bewildering 
 medley of locomotives and trains shrieking their 
 fiery way along, of carriages and pack-wagons 
 rolling smoothly over a macadamized road, and 
 of long trains of camels, in alternate pathos of 
 patience and snarls of sullen wrath, floundering 
 their way among the rocks of the dilapidated old 
 trail. For thousands of years, from Damascus, 
 Palmyra, Aleppo, Bagdad, Jerusalem, Mecca, have 
 these vast caravans conveyed the trade between 
 India, Persia, Arabia, Syria, and the European 
 world. But lo ! before the sight a new epoch in 
 history-building. 
 
 In the modern crusade of Europe against Asia, 
 Peter the Hermit has become a railway engineer, 
 no longer with the ragged rabble behind him he 
 first led out, but the science, literatiu'e, politics, 
 law, moral and religious ideas of a higher civiliza- 
 tion. No farther back than 1860 had there been 
 a hideous massacre of the Christian population of 
 Damascus at the hand of Moslem fanaticism. This 
 led to French intervention, and thus did the blood 
 
BEYROUT AND THE LEBANON RANGES 337 
 
 of the martyrs become the seed of the railway 
 church. 
 
 In long circuitous curves to the top of the pass, 
 at an altitude of over five thousand feet, the road 
 winds its way, skirting mountain precipices and 
 slopes treeless except for olives, but terraced up 
 in dizziest heights for patches of wheat and vines. 
 Where the grapes get the wit and patience to elab- 
 orate such rich juices out of so desiccated a soil is 
 a moral lesson to all whose own mental soil belongs 
 to a like arid geological formation. It fairly 
 makes one tremble to think how inexorably he 
 will be judged if, by hook or by crook, he does not 
 contrive to grow and ferment bumpers of spiritual 
 champagne. 
 
 Once at the top of the pass, however, the most 
 poetic conception of the Pisgah outlook that has 
 ever ravished the soul is faint before reality. 
 Three thousand feet below, nestled down between 
 the Lebanon and Anti-Lebanon ranges, stretches 
 a level valley that shines like a lake of emerald. 
 It is six or eight miles broad and thirty long, and 
 the eye, turning to it from the sun-smitten moun- 
 tains, fairly pastures on such greenness. Pre- 
 existent states of soul emerge from long-forgotten 
 aeons of time when one was driven down with his 
 fellow -kine from these arid heights to wander 
 knee-deep in such lush exuberance, bruise out its 
 streaming juices, and, fully sated, at length to lie 
 down and ruminate in pastoral Nirvana. Yet, 
 along with this elemental sense, the root in us of 
 all higher sense, is blent the richer content of our 
 
338 BAALBEC AND DAMASCUS 
 
 dear human nature. While we still pasture below, 
 we yet lift up our eyes on high. For yonder, over 
 there, tower the snow-crowned ranges of Mt. Her- 
 mon, leading the mind on into Galilee. 
 
 For a book to set a boy's mind on fire and 
 awaken yearnings that some day will fulfill 
 themselves in actual sight, commend me to William 
 Ware's "Zenobia" and the visions it conjures up 
 of Palmyra, — a dream of Greek architectural 
 beauty set in a luxurious oasis and surrounded by 
 thirsty desert. Bedouins and camels thrown in ad 
 libitum to the top of a boy's enchanted imagina- 
 tion. Alas ! we had not time to spare for Palmyra, 
 but Baalbec is an example of the same type of 
 city, and to Baalbec were we bound. The broad 
 luxuriant valley but now described, and along 
 which we were the next day driving, had been the 
 feeder of its population, the great caravans had 
 been the fleets that piled up its former wealth. 
 A Grseco-Eoman city in Syria, — one of the host 
 that once beautified this now for centuries devas- 
 tated land, — a city, the foundation-walls of its 
 Acropolis laid in gigantic blocks by old Assy- 
 rian Baal worshipers, then crowned with sumptu- 
 ous Greek sun-temples by Roman emperors, then 
 further surmounted with Mohammedan towers and 
 forts, the ruins of all this were we to see, ruins 
 to-day standing in loneliness of desolation, the 
 city's former wealth, population, almost its very 
 name, for ages gone. 
 
 Briskly rub Aladdin's lamp and the genie ap- 
 
DAMASCUS 339 
 
 pears in a night to rear a stately city with its 
 palaces and gardens. All through the East one 
 learns to feel this imagery. The genii are water, 
 labor at unlimited command and at infinitesimal 
 price, caravans focusing in a given spot converging 
 streams of wealth. "Here are the magic powers by 
 which the city rises like an exhalation, or, cut off 
 from which, it sinks back into solitary ruin. Such 
 a ruin is Baalbec to-day, a squalid, straggling vil- 
 lage fringing an acropolis crowned by great tem- 
 ples and palaces that tell of by-gone glory. 
 
 That day, the first time for months, we were 
 troubled by rain. What boy, however, brought 
 up in childhood on WUliam Ware but rises to 
 the occasion ! If the actual sun does not shine, 
 he creates one and pours out its beams in golden 
 glory over the superb colonnades. The fallen col- 
 umns he sets up on end beside their still stand- 
 ing mates. The aqueducts he reconstructs and 
 brims with creative water ; the naked hillsides he 
 clothes with palaces and irrigated gardens ; the 
 long gone commercial wealth he brings in again to 
 the crowded bazaars on the backs of the gaunt 
 camels. Out of the ruins rises before his mind's 
 eye the once splendid and luxurious city, and into 
 them he sees it sink again, ah, with what refrain 
 of time and mortality sighing through his soul ! 
 
 To reach Damascus one crosses the Anti- 
 Lebanon range, setting out for an eight or 
 nine hours' drive from Sthora. Ever more forbid- 
 ding grow the scorched mountain defiles, till sud- 
 
340 BAALBEC AND DAMASCUS 
 
 denly at their feet, a river from its birth, leaps out 
 at a bound the Abana. The magic wand is found. 
 " Give me water and a desert and I will create a 
 paradise!" lo! the Oriental version of Archimedes. 
 
 Truly with two forms of nature-worship, lifted 
 to devoutest and most grateful faith, the heart 
 lovingly sympathizes, — the worship of the sun 
 and the worship of water, " Are not Abana and 
 Pharphar, rivers of Damascus, better than all the 
 waters of Israel?" Yes, O Naaman, the Syrian, 
 recreant wert thou to the manifest divinities of thy 
 Damascus not thus to sound their praise ! 
 
 Now at once springs forth a new creation. 
 Eeeds and grass grow lush, flowers bloom scarlet 
 and gold, almond-trees fling out a wealth of white 
 blossoms, houses and embowering gardens line the 
 banks. In this magnificent water-supply, dispersed 
 over the immense plain through a thousand chan- 
 nels and leaping up into fountains in every court- 
 yard, one now reads the perennial story of Damas- 
 cus : " While other cities of the East have risen 
 and decayed, it is stiU what it was. It was founded 
 long centuries before Baalbec and Palmyra, and it 
 has outlived them both. While Babylon is a heap 
 in the desert, and Tyre a ruin on the shore, it re- 
 mains what it was called in the prophecies of Isaiah, 
 ' the head of Syria.' " 
 
 Yet here, as in every region of Syria, the blight 
 of Mohammedanism and the slime of the Turk is 
 over all. Every element of the sensuous paradise 
 is at hand, — pools of water, the constant murmur 
 of rivulets, gardens of pomegranates, figs, plums, 
 
DAMASCUS 341 
 
 apricots, marble-lined courts, shady and perfumed 
 with fruit-laden orange-trees and cool with the 
 spray of jetting fountains. StiU, all wears a look 
 of neglect and decay, of suspicion and fear. In 
 the vast bazaars, shut in from the sun by over- 
 head nettings, is displayed a bewildering variety of 
 Oriental manufactures, — silks, weapons, saddles, 
 embroideries, — and through them streams the 
 strangest medley of tribes and garbs. But a scent 
 of fanaticism, lust, and bloodthirstiness is on the 
 very air. Uncaged tigers would not quicker leap 
 to carnage than, dared they, would these tigers of 
 Allah. 
 
 Visit such of the dwellings of the wealthy as 
 strangers are admitted to, and what a story they 
 tell of lack of any trace of the sanctity of the 
 home, of any interest in thought ; what a story 
 of the mere sensuous existence of the bath, the 
 harem, the siesta, coffee, and the pipe. On the out- 
 side these houses are blank walls, or, where they 
 have windows, they are shut in with jealous screens 
 of delicate openwork carving. But once within 
 the courtyards, paved and on all sides faced with 
 richly colored marbles, murmuring with the sound 
 of water, and set with orange and myrtle, momen- 
 tarily one feels the spell of the siren incantation. 
 All this on earth, and paradise thrown in ! Gra- 
 cious is Allah to the faithful ! Who would not 
 renounce forever study, literature, society, art, phi- 
 losophy, reform, to dream away life in such nar- 
 cotic repose ? 
 
 To such enticing questionings as these were we 
 
342 BAALBEC AND DAMASCUS 
 
 men left in the courtyards, and to the improving 
 society of the coal-black eunuchs, brutes unskill- 
 fully carved in ebony, and ready at a sign to basti- 
 nado or bowstring the fairest of recalcitrant wives. 
 On the other hand, the ladies with us were admitted 
 into the inner sanctuary of the harem. 
 
 The only peoples, says Schopenhauer, who have 
 ever understood woman are the peoples of the 
 East. They lock her up, as unfit to go abroad. 
 Less grounded .in philosophy, the ladies of our 
 party returned not duly impressed with the privi- 
 lege of lounging all day on divans, eating sweet- 
 meats, and smoking pipes, but rather with a look 
 in their eyes that seemed to presage a swift return 
 to America to preach a new crusade for the deliv- 
 ery of the Holy Sepulchre of their outraged sister- 
 hood from the defiling hand of the infidel. In 
 vain we superiorly introduced them to the eunuchs 
 as the natural custodians of their unstable sex. 
 Ideals vary so ! The most beatified conception 
 of the guardian angel of womanhood to which the 
 Mohammedan mind can rise assumes the guise of 
 the brute-jawed, coal-black eunuch. 
 
 Many the books on comparative religion we 
 read to-day, but an hour with one's own eyes is 
 worth them all. Mohammedanism is the only 
 great world-religion that originated with a semi- 
 barbarian, with a prophet who could neither read 
 nor write, a man of no knowledge outside the man- 
 ners and traditions of a narrow desert tribe, a man 
 of such enormous sensual passion and bloodthirsty 
 ferocity as to be capable of slaughtering a husband 
 
DAMASCUS 348 
 
 in the morning and forcing his wife to marriage 
 the same night. From such a mind and character, 
 a flame of native eloquence, impassioned in inten- 
 sity of adoration of a deity who was a consuming 
 fire against idolatry, a model, too, of equity, sim- 
 plicity, and kindliness after the code of morals of a 
 semi-nomad clan, — from such a prophet Islam de- 
 rived its enduring ideal of the man after Allah's 
 own heart, the infallible declarer of Allah's will, the 
 exceptional favorite on whom Allah lavished, by 
 special revelation of what he esteemed the choicest 
 blessing at his command, a far larger multiplicity 
 of wives than was accorded unto others. Into the 
 minds and passions of millions Mohammed burned 
 his own personal characteristics, and his followers 
 have always borne his impress. 
 
 Utterly different was it with the ideal of the other 
 great world-religions, the ideal of the Confucianist, 
 of the Buddhist, of the Brahman, of the Zoroas- 
 trian, of the Christian. Confucius was a culti- 
 vated, reflective, benevolent sage ; the Buddha 
 was all tenderness and compassion ; Zoroaster was 
 a mind profoundly impressed with the stupendous 
 conflict of Good with Evil ; the thinkers of Brah- 
 manism were deep speculative philosophers, re- 
 cluses from the world of strife and passion ; the 
 central thought of Jesus was, " He that loveth 
 dwelleth in God and God in him." 
 
 It is altogether idle to dream that such utterly 
 contrasted ideals leave no mark on the peoples 
 that embrace them. The moderation and equity 
 of Confucius, the Buddha's tenderness of compas- 
 
344 BAALBEC AND DAMASCUS 
 
 sion, the piety and self-sacrifice of Jesus, survive 
 in millions of hearts to-day, just as literally as the 
 lust of Mohammed burns on in every harem in 
 Delhi, Cairo, and Damascus, and in every slave- 
 mart in the East ; just as literally as the ferocity 
 of Mohammed flames out afresh in every Bulga- 
 rian, Lebanon, or Armenian massacre. 
 
 Happy for Mohammedanism, by reason of its 
 conquest of the Roman Empire of the East, of 
 India, and of Grsecized Persia, it shared at the 
 outset the rare good fortune of entering on a 
 splendid inheritance of culture, art, literature, and 
 science. But the revival that followed in architec- 
 ture, philosophy, medicine, was never its original 
 work. It was the work of Greek scholars, artists, 
 physicians in the pay of Islam ; the work of Indian 
 and Grseco-Persian architects, poets, and thinkers, 
 rebaptized with Mohammedan names. So far as 
 of its own spirit and essence it goes, in all places 
 and in all times, — at least in the example of its 
 rulers and privileged classes, — Mohammedanism 
 has tended to kUl out all higher life in the harem 
 and to keep aflame tiger passions in the heart. 
 While the rank and file of the humble — because 
 too poor to indulge in its sensual paradise on earth 
 — escape its worst blight, and are often models 
 of industry, temperance, and fidelity to trust, they 
 none the less share to the fuU. its savage fanati- 
 cism, and postpone the harem only till they shall 
 get to heaven. 
 
 Indeed, historically, has not the claim made in 
 behalf of naked, numerical monotheism — unless 
 
DAMASCUS 345 
 
 as a protest against groveling idolatry — been 
 utterly over-urged ? The moral content, the genu- 
 ine humanity of a deity, is there not here some- 
 thing of infinitely deeper import than his unity or 
 his omnipotent sway ? Why were not a hierarchy of 
 such saints as Francis of Assisi, Philip Neri, and 
 Vincent de Paul an unspeakable boon as spiritual 
 rulers of the universe, and to be exalted over any 
 sole and absolute divine monarch as yet imperfectly 
 evolved out of the Bedouin stage ? Surely to come 
 home to the heart of woman and to help lift her out 
 of a state of degradation into a realm of dignity, 
 one Virgin Mary, enthroned on high by the wor- 
 shiping heart as Queen of Heaven, is worth a 
 thousand Allahs. 
 
ASIA MINOR AND GREECE 
 
 In delicious spring weather, the sail from 
 Beyrout to Smyrna all around the southern 
 and western coasts of Asia Minor, and among the 
 islands of the archipelago, is one of the rich expe- 
 riences of a lifetime. Even if the ever freshly 
 unfolding scene spoke nothing historical, the mere 
 sight of the snow-crowned Taurus ranges, the pic- 
 turesque coasts and countless mountain-crested 
 islands, would hold the mind in unbroken delight. 
 But the whole atmosphere is as full of legend, his- 
 tory, and biography as the background of the Sis- 
 tine Madonna of cherub heads. Almost from the 
 start one meets Paul in Tarsus, Alexander the 
 Great at Issus, Cicero in Cilicia. Iliad and 
 Odyssey soon become realistic guidebooks. What 
 a breeding-place these islands for the sea-rovers 
 and pirates that at last stopped plundering one 
 another, and joined their barks together for a 
 general descent upon Troy ! Then, too, the lazy, 
 riotous fellows left behind, hating work, with end- 
 less capacity for meat and drink, and never taking 
 no for an answer, even from the most distracted 
 widow, — how easy to transform them into poor spin- 
 ning Penelope's greedy suitors, needing to be thrust 
 out neck and heels on the return home of the much 
 wandering master. All the types are in unquick- 
 
348 ASIA MINOR AND GREECE 
 
 ened germ before the eye to-day, from Achilles to 
 Thersites, the hints in nature of what another 
 Homer might make of them. But, alas ! the cities 
 of Ionia, the temples, the poets, the philosophers 
 are not, — only the sunny atmosphere that bred 
 their early splendid civilization. 
 
 Why is it, one cannot but exclaim, that our own 
 Atlantic coast is set up geologically after so nig- 
 gardly a fashion ? It is a positive affront to the 
 American people, a stigma of commonplace stamped 
 on the brow of the great Republic ! From Sandy 
 Hook to the end of Florida not an eminence rears 
 its head over seventy feet high, and then eminent 
 only for sand. Prosaic beyond description the 
 whole mortal stretch, while the Mediterranean 
 shores are one succession of scenic glories. Grate- 
 fully, perhaps, one may except the coast of Maine 
 as poetic enough for every-day prosaic republicans. 
 But even at Mt. Desert how sad the dearth of sirens 
 on Bound Porcupine, of Cyclops on Burnt Por- 
 cupine, of Agamemnons, Nestors, and Ulysseses, 
 distributed as miniature kings, on the other little 
 Porcupines. Perhaps the Maine kings died with- 
 out a Homer. Geologically speaking, nothing short 
 of a stupendous volcanic upheaval in the interest 
 of the picturesque from Sandy Hook to Key West 
 can ever give us the inspiration to poetry the Med- 
 iterranean furnishes at every turn. 
 
 Through its figs, every one cherishes with 
 
 Smyrna fond associations from his days of 
 
 earliest innocence, and to this tender tie a mature 
 
SMYRNA 349 
 
 one is added when he sails into its bay and harbor 
 encircled with mountains, and beautiful as the Bay 
 of Naples. The city fronts the water with a superb 
 quay two miles in length, and backed by handsome 
 residences. Of course, the French built it, — 
 another outcome of the Damascus massacre, and 
 as eyesore a reproof to the unspeakable Turk of 
 how to do things as could be devised. Also due 
 to the French is the paving of two or three of the 
 streets behind the quay, an act perhaps even more 
 offensive in its pointed reflection on the streets 
 beyond. 
 
 For the life of me, in the first drive we took, I 
 could not keep out of mind the image of a precise 
 New England schoolmarm, passionately addicted to 
 object-lessons, out for a drive with a class of little 
 boys and girls, and bent on improving their minds 
 with the contrast between French and Turkish 
 methods of metropolitan administration. "Now, 
 dear children," I seemed to hear her say, as the 
 carriage rolled smoothly over the level pavement, 
 " this is the French idea of how to pave a street. 
 Here a vehicle would last for years, for, as you 
 see, there is no strain nor wrench on wheel or 
 axle." Then, suddenly, as, on turning a corner 
 into another street, the carriage struck a nest of 
 boulders that bounced the party a foot up into 
 the air and knocked their heads together, on re- 
 covery did I seem to hear the faithful woman add 
 gaspingly, "And this the Tur-tur-ki-ish ! " But as 
 the drive went on it was no more possible to hold 
 the children's attention to the subject of compara- 
 
350 ASIA MINOR AND GREECE 
 
 tive metropolitan administration than were they so 
 many kernels of pop-corn on a fire. AH was one 
 pathetic outcry over bruised knees, elbows, and 
 skulls. Still, so severe the intellectual impression 
 made, that the normally educated young woman re- 
 turned — as I myself did — with deeper convic- 
 tions than ever to her object-lessons. "History, 
 dear children, history, as you may recall my re- 
 marking more than once before, teaches by exam- 
 ples. How profound a truth ! And now, while I 
 get out my bottle of chloroform liniment and my 
 box of Perry Davis's Pain Killer, and apply them 
 to you, remember that no knowledge not bought at 
 a price is of lasting value." 
 
 Smyrna has no churches, mosques, or ruins of 
 any historical interest, for which my friend and I 
 felt most devoutly grateful. Blessed, in certain 
 moods, the land that has no history ! Four or five 
 days of delicious exemption from sensations of the 
 sublime or instructive in art or history ! Days in 
 which we could lie in the lap of nature, smoothing 
 out the wrinkles on our thought-furrowed brows, 
 to resume sunny looks of youth for Athens. One 
 single feat of physical energy we did achieve, toil- 
 ing up, by a gentle declivity, a height of fuUy 
 three hundred feet that overlooks the city, and is 
 crowned by the dilapidated ruins of an old Turkish 
 fort. What a view seaward over the bay and the 
 blue Mediterranean, landward over mountains and 
 fertile valleys, peaceful with a soft atmosphere as 
 of eternal childhood eating figs ! Behind the moun- 
 tains, charmingly hidden from sight, lay Ephesus. 
 
CONSTANTINOPLE 351 
 
 Should we go there? No, the interest of Ephesus, 
 we argued, is now wholly archseological. The 
 temples are gone, and nothing but their sites re- 
 main. The same kind of site is here in the 
 beauty of the surrounding scenery. Why not, 
 then, lie here day-dreaming, and so reconstruct the 
 temples ! The argument proved unanswerable. In 
 other words, we were on a tourist-strike. 
 
 The three most beautiful regions of the 
 globe, said Alexander von Humboldt, are 
 the Bay of Naples, the Bavarian Highlands, and 
 Constantinople. It is a pleasure to quote so com- 
 petent an authority, since to Constantinople my 
 friend and I did not get. Cholera and quarantine, 
 not desire or will, were the guilty cause. Great the 
 temptation to hide the humiliating fact under a 
 vivid eye-witness picture of the Bosphorus, con- 
 structed out of pure interior consciousness with 
 hints from Murray. But, alas ! this is a book of 
 genuine personal impressions, and where there were 
 none, wise or foolish, entertaining or stupid, they 
 are conscientiously omitted. 
 
 Our first introduction to Attica was finding 
 ourselves at six in the morning off the pro- 
 montory of Sunium, its abrupt precipice crowned 
 with the columns of a ruined temple. Here was 
 a classic greeting, for whose poetic fitness one 
 could not but be devoutly grateful. For the morn- 
 ing itself, however, it was not easy to be so grate- 
 ful. It was wet and chilly, and after nearly six 
 
352 ASIA MINOR AND GREECE 
 
 months of unbroken sunshine one becomes too 
 spoiled a child of warmth and color not to resent 
 the intrusion of a day of rain. Still, there, in 
 distinct outline before our eyes, were ^gina and 
 Salamis, and, later on, through the misty distance, 
 the Acropolis itself. Could we not, then, supply 
 sunshine enough out of Plato, Sophocles, and 
 Phidias to light up all with glory ! 
 
 However widely one has traveled, it is a distinct 
 surprise on landing at a port like Piraeus, where 
 the acquisition of Greek is attended with so little 
 pain, not to find the citizens sitting around on every 
 hand, enthusiastically reading the Crito or the Re- 
 public, or laughing hilariously over the humor of 
 the Clouds or the Birds. One fears the influence 
 even of classic literature is overrated, when, instead, 
 twenty men spring to supply a cab, and tooters 
 from rival hotels in Athens stuff whole stacks of 
 cards into his reluctant hands. Yet what but classic 
 literature has brought so many strangers here, or 
 thus furnished a mellow soil in which twenty cab- 
 men grow where before grew but one ? 
 
 By noon we were in Athens, be it confessed 
 more eager to repair our own ruins with lunch 
 than to flee to others that we knew not of. That 
 done, the afternoon was all before us where to 
 choose. My friend elected to stay at home, to wait 
 for sunshine, and to knit up the raveled sleeve of 
 his emotions over Plato's Symposium or Murray's 
 Guide. So I sallied out alone, firm of intent to go 
 nowhere in especial, — a purpose that had been 
 carried out to the letter but that lo ! a fresh illustra- 
 
THE PARTHENON 353 
 
 tion was suddenly called for of Cromwell's famous 
 saying : " A man never goes so far as when he 
 knows not whither he is going." Over a row of 
 house-tops the Acropolis reared its head, and my 
 fate was sealed. 
 
 A sudden fear, as on opening a telegram, 
 overcomes one when about to enter the 
 august presence of an object he has for years read 
 and dreamed about. What will the message evoke ? 
 Congratulations for a birth or the sense of blight 
 at a death ? The Parthenon, — how many happy 
 hours had I enjoyed through life over its friezes 
 and the superb figures from its pediments ! How 
 many books had I devoured, how many detail 
 drawings studied, how many brUliant descriptions 
 read of its first glories, till in imagination I could 
 see in splendid pageant the procession climbing the 
 steps of the Propylsea, and the temple stood forth 
 the one matchless Pallas Athene, brain-birth of 
 minds like Pericles and Phidias ! And now in a 
 moment I was to stand in its actual presence. 
 
 Hurrying up the steep flights of the Propylaea, 
 and scarcely looking to the right or left till I 
 reached the gateway through which the whole ruin 
 of the Parthenon stands visible, what was the first 
 sensation awaiting me ? I must be sincere, though 
 the sesthetic heavens fall, — a sensation of painful 
 disappointment. Fresh from the presence of such 
 overwhelming ruins as those of Denderah, Abydos, 
 Luxor, and Karnak in Egypt, there was no sense 
 of awe in what I saw before me, no suggestion of 
 
354 ASIA MINOR AND GREECE 
 
 a Lear wrestle with the elements, in which the 
 broken monarch stood out sublimer than all the 
 rack of thunder, rain, and lightning. Ah, the 
 pity of it, the pity of it ! was the sharp cry of pain. 
 There are buildings that can endure being ruined, 
 and survive in triumph. A hall like Karnak, a 
 mediaeval castle like Conway, can be shattered by 
 earthquake, blown up by gunpowder, battered and 
 breached by cannon-balls, and still look more im- 
 perial than ever. But a perfect Grecian temple 
 was never made for a ruin, any more than an or- 
 chestra to have its harp-strings cut and its viols 
 shattered, any more than a lovely marble face to 
 have an eye destroyed or its smile-wreathed lips 
 dashed in. The harmony was all. In the spiritual 
 contribution of each ' co-working feature lay the 
 spell. 
 
 Of course, one knows beforehand that the Par- 
 thenon is in ruins. Who has not made his passion- 
 ate Isis search for the mangled remnants of this 
 beautiful Osiris, scattered through aU the lands! 
 It is those broken fragments, those floating strains 
 of music, that have prophesied to us of the once 
 perfect whole. Every section of its frieze, what 
 a masterpiece of grace, dignity, action, fire ! 
 Every figure on its pediments, and the whole in 
 combination, what a vision vouchsafed the sight 
 pf the gods on Olympus ! Each column or archi- 
 trave how it led on the mind to its harmonious 
 relations with the rest ! The material, too, costly as 
 precious stones, was everywhere relieved with gild- 
 ing and bronze, and with delicately shaded back- 
 
THE PARTHENON 355 
 
 grounds, to set off the figures. To Phidias, what 
 remains to-day would seem but the half-erected 
 scaffolding. He who, compassed about with his 
 glorious peers, had created this dream of beauty, 
 could recreate it in his mind's eye. There it 
 already preexisted before a stone was laid. But 
 who of us can reconstruct so much as a broken 
 hand or dented brow or wind-tossed drapery? 
 Here recasting imagination faints, and sinks 
 moaning to the ground. The Orpheus lyre, whose 
 harmonies should sing these scattered fragments 
 into place, it is not ours to strike. There they lie, 
 — the graciously wrought stones by the thousands 
 of tons, as in a brute stone-cutter's yard. It is a 
 sight to weep over. No, I repeat it, a perfected 
 Greek temple was never made for a ruin. A 
 group of detached columns, suggesting nothing 
 beyond themselves, may make a beautiful picture. 
 But there is at once too much and too little of the 
 Parthenon left behind. 
 
 It was, I know, a dank, chilly afternoon, that of 
 my first visit to the Acropolis ; and rain and ruins, 
 mingling with constitutional tendencies to depression 
 over the wrecks of time and fate, constitute an iU 
 sort of personal equation that must be allowed for. 
 Not so much as a light-minded tourist had ventured 
 out to relieve my mind by jocular gayeties over the 
 Venetian bombshell that had thus effectually 
 hoisted with its petard so much good marble, or 
 hilariously to demand if it would not have been fun 
 to see things jump. For two whole hours, rain and 
 chiU and I had our comments all to ourselves over 
 
356 ASIA MINOR AND GREECE 
 
 Propylsea, Nike Apteros, Erectheion, Parthenon, 
 with frequent interpolations of texts from the fate- 
 burdened Lamentations of Jeremiah. Nothing 
 seemed wanting — but to behold somewhere, sitting 
 sunk in dejection, on a broken block, Michelan- 
 gelo's tremendous figure of the prophet, and to 
 hear, sighing in the bleak wind : " How doth the 
 city sit solitary that was full of people ! How is 
 she become even as a widow ! She weepeth sore 
 in the night, and her tears are on her cheeks. 
 Among all her lovers she hath none to comfort 
 her." 
 
 Asain and asrain did I afterwards climb the 
 Acropolis, and in warm, radiant sunshine. How 
 entrancing the view over the sea to ^gina and 
 Salamis, and landward over Hymettus and Pen- 
 telicus, and across the plain green with the young 
 wheat and gray with the olive orchards ! Over 
 the wall one looks down into the amphitheatre of 
 Dionysus, where -^schylus purged with terror, 
 Sophocles with pity, and Aristophanes with peals 
 of laughter their responsive audiences ; and yonder 
 across the blue sea lies the Strait of Salamis, so 
 easy to light up with the flash of the arms and 
 set resounding with the war-cries of the Athenian 
 and Persian fleets. All speaks, — valor, poetry, 
 eloquence, wisdom. > But the flower that bloomed 
 full of the sap, purple and gold with the color, 
 redolent of the perfume of all this outburst of 
 human genius, — the Parthenon, — for all the pa- 
 thetic search for the scattered petals of this con- 
 summate flower of creation, one poor, baffled, 
 
ELEUSIS 357 
 
 heart-sore Isis must sadly confess that she cannot 
 find and restore her slain Osiris. I look up 
 through the columns at the blue sky. I see the 
 sunshine flooding them ; I feel the dignity and 
 beauty of the wreck that remains ; but the sense 
 of bereavement swallows up the sense of joy. 
 
 As the deepest seas lie at the base of the 
 most towering mountains, and the pro- 
 foundest abysses of human tragedy at the feet of 
 the most radiant summits of prosperity, so has it 
 been in Grecian history. Few countries does one 
 visit where the wreck of former glory is so com- 
 plete, till artistically the cry is on the lips, " The 
 nearer to Eome, the farther from God ! " A day 
 in the Vatican or the museums of Naples and 
 Florence, or in the viUas surrounding Rome, and 
 one lives, moves, and has his being in the atmos- 
 phere of Greek art as nowhere in the land of its 
 birth. Still, to see that land is one more key 
 wherewith to unlock its treasures and interpret 
 the nature and life out of which they grew. One 
 envies the happy fellows in the American school 
 at Athens, with years at free disposal to study out 
 the position of every lost site, living always in the 
 hope of unearthing some new miracle of beauty. 
 None the less, for all their labors, the interest of 
 the ruins — the Acropolis, Theseion, and a few 
 other monuments excepted — is mainly archaeo- 
 logical. 
 
 One drives, for example, through the mountains 
 and along the Sacred Way by the Strait of Salamis 
 
358 ASIA MINOR AND GREECE 
 
 to Eleusis. The very landscape is sculpture as 
 well as nature, so statuesquely outlined the moun- 
 tain-shapes and so gracious the curves and recesses 
 of the shores. The very severity of the scenery, 
 the absence of all tropical luxuriance of foliage, is 
 Doric Greek in impression. 
 
 Then, what a site had old Eleusis, elevated just 
 enough to furnish a telling platform for its temples 
 and to set them in relief against the broad wheat- 
 sown plains and the simple environing mountains, 
 with, on the other side, the blue waters of the 
 strait. The Eleusinian Mysteries, too, once cele- 
 brated there, — the Ober-Ammergau Passion Play 
 of Greece, — enacted, however, not by simple pea- 
 sants, but by a priesthood steeped in the deepest 
 mystic thought, poetry, art, and passion of Greece 
 and of the Orient, — mysteries of the abysses of 
 atonement, purification, redemption, in which, as 
 perhaps nowhere else in Greece, the profoundest 
 depths of the soul were sounded, — who has not 
 had his dreams of these ? But ah ! as in our own 
 far-western states, where once stood a forest of 
 noble pines, their high interlacing branches a cov- 
 ert for the birds and the haunt of mysterious 
 beauty, so often there stands to-day but a wilder- 
 ness of scarred, unsightly stumps, and the forest- 
 lover moans over the ruin ; so, in Eleusis, of all 
 that grove of stately temples, there remain but the 
 stumps of a wilderness of columns three or four 
 feet in height. So is it everywhere in Greece, go 
 to Olympia or Delphi, go anywhere one wiU. 
 
 Yet, benedictions on the heads of the archseolo- 
 
MARATHON 359 
 
 gists who have dug out these temple cemeteries 
 and revealed what yet remains of the ribs, verte- 
 brae, and skulls of the once glorified runners and 
 leapers of the palmy days of Greece. Transfigured 
 " Old Mortalities " they ! in their piety keeping 
 green the memories of worthies that should never 
 die. In vain the callow tourist thinks to vent on 
 them his private grief, with his despairing cry, 
 "Son of man, can these dry bones live?" His 
 eye lit with prophecy, each spade-shouldering Eze- 
 kiel among them proudly answers back, " Behold, 
 I will cause breath to enter into them, and they 
 shall live. And I wUl lay sinews upon them, and 
 wiU bring up flesh upon them and cover them with 
 skin. Come from the four winds, O breath, and 
 breathe upon these slain, that they may live ! " 
 
 How much less genius is required to re- 
 construct a battlefield than a Parthenon ! 
 One feels this in aU the elation of victory when 
 he drives out to Marathon. Once on the spot, 
 how easy to draw up in battle array the hundred 
 thousand Persians, and then, as freeborn Greeks, 
 to proceed to demolish them ! Indeed, all these 
 annihilating victories of a handful of hardy, disci- 
 plined troops over hordes of slaves without honor 
 and without hearthstones to fight for are repeti- 
 tions of the same story. Clive at Plassey, in India, 
 and Miltiades in Greece are one. 
 
 In the East one learns to read the open secret. 
 Not that one would pluck down Miltiades from his 
 grand historical pedestal. But the excellency of 
 
360 ASIA MINOR AND GREECE 
 
 the glory lies in being free men, in pride of civic 
 character, in high intelligence, and obedience to 
 reason's law. Given these, your hordes of slaves 
 can no more stand up against them than the wheat 
 stalks of the Dakota grainfields before the on- 
 roUing steam-reapers. 
 
 Yet, it was a pleasure to visit the scene of this 
 ever memorable feat in the history of civilization, 
 — the bare, bleak mountains, the narrow valley 
 against whose sides the Greeks protected their 
 flanks, the broad, swampy plain in front, the blue 
 waters of the Eubcean Strait in which lay the 
 Persian fleet, — and there once more to ponder the 
 deep-freighted lesson that the " heaviest battalion " 
 does not always mean the one that wiU tip the 
 scale in mere avoirdupois, but the one that to 
 weight adds the momentum of liberty and sacrifice. 
 
 Our stay in Athens was crowned with a 
 " final night of peace and reconciliation that 
 wiU. ever linger in memory. The moon was nearly 
 at its full, when, at nine o'clock, my friend and I 
 climbed the Acropolis. A flood of softest light 
 was pouring down among the broken columns of 
 the Propylsea, while the little temple of Nike Ap- 
 teros stood poised on its high pedestal, a fairy 
 creation of moonbeams. All stains and scars of 
 time were dissolved away till there was no more 
 sorrow, nor crying, neither was there any more 
 pain. Peaceful as a lovely cemetery in which the 
 saintly ones are sleeping lay the vast area aroimd 
 the temple, strewn with its countless, softly gleam- 
 
ATHENS' PARTING BENEDICTION 361 
 
 ing blocks. Steeped in the full tide of moonlight 
 hovering down upon its columns and nestling in 
 their recesses, the whole eastern and southern 
 sides of the Parthenon were transfigured into a 
 still dream-world of light and sweetness. You 
 cannot shatter dream-world. Here is a visionary 
 realm whose material is of no substance that vio- 
 lence can smite and fracture. Its falling columns 
 sink to the earth as gently as a drowsy child into 
 its bed of down. The mind, too, is so at peace. 
 No longer capable of suffering, it is translated 
 into an ethereal sphere above the world of weight 
 and wreck. The very yearning for perfection, 
 which is the glory and the agony of human life, 
 is laid to rest. One has reached Nirvana. Tears 
 this night were no longer on the cheeks of discon- 
 solate Pallas Athene. Her weeping was over, and 
 she had lapsed into sweet, dreamless sleep. 
 
INDEX 
 
 AbanAj the, 340. 
 AlDu, Mt., 245. 
 Aden, 257. 
 
 Adullain, cave of, 326. 
 .iEgina, 352. 
 Agra, 220. 
 Ahmedabad, 251. 
 Ajalon, valley of, 314. 
 Akbar, the Great, 218. 
 Amber, 241. 
 
 Anti-Lebanon ranges, 339. 
 Apis Mausolenm, 282. 
 Arabia, 256. 
 Asia Minor, 347. 
 Atami, 42. 
 Athens, 354. 
 
 Baalbec, 338. 
 Benares, 186. 
 Bethlehem, 322. 
 Beyrout, 335. 
 
 Buddhism, in Japan, 48 ; 
 Thibet, 171. 
 
 Cairo, 272. 
 
 Calcutta, 165, 180. 
 
 Canton, 116. 
 
 Canton River, 113. 
 
 Cawnpore, 199. 
 
 Ceylon, 148. 
 
 Cheops, pyramid of, 273. 
 
 Cherith, Brook, 331. 
 
 China, 97. 
 
 China Sea, 97. 
 
 Chinese conservatism, 98. 
 
 Confucius, 128. 
 
 Daibutsu, the, 28. 
 Damascus, 166, 169. 
 Darjeeling, 339. 
 Dead Sea, 332. 
 Delhi, 232. 
 Denderah, 305. 
 Desaix, 163. 
 Desert, the, 255. 
 
 Egypt, 255. 
 
 Egyptian temples, 302. 
 Egyptian tombs, 284. 
 Eleusis, 358. 
 Enoshima, 35. 
 Everest, Mt., 166, 174. 
 
 Ferozabad, 236. 
 Forty-Seven Renins, the, 68. 
 Fujisan, 10. 
 
 Ganges, the, 165, 186. 
 Gizen, pyramids of, 273. 
 
 Hachiman, temple of, 28. 
 
 Hakone lake, 42. 
 
 Hermon, Mt., 338. 
 
 Himalayas, 166. 
 
 Hindu architecture, 251. 
 
 Holy Sepulchre, Church of, 321. 
 
 Hong Kong, 110. 
 
 Hoogly, the, 165. 
 
 Idzu, 42, 46. 
 India, 163. 
 Indrapat, 236. 
 Ismailia, 262. 
 
 Jaffa, 310. 
 
 Jain temples, 245. 
 
 Japan, 13. 
 
 Japanese architecture, 58, 
 
 art, 72. 
 
 bells, 60. 
 
 characteristics of, 38. 
 
 civilization, 58. 
 
 crusading spirit, 89. 
 
 manners, 63. 
 
 missions, 82. 
 
 moral standards, 68. 
 
 smile, 20. 
 
 temples, 56. 
 
 ■women, 18. 
 Jasmine Tower, the, 224. 
 Jericho, 329. 
 
364 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Jerusalem, 313. 
 Jeypore, 238. 
 Jinrikislias, 36. 
 Jordan, the, 333. 
 
 Kamakura, 27. 
 Kamakura Buddha, the, 30. 
 Kandy, 152. 
 Kamak, temple of, 308. 
 Kinchinjanga, 166, 17i. 
 Kumah, temple of, 310. 
 Kutb Minar, the, 235. 
 Kyoto, Nijo Palace in, 75. 
 
 Lehanon ranges, 337. 
 Lucknow, 196. 
 Luxor, temple of, 304. 
 
 Madras, 163. 
 
 Malagawa Buddhist temple, 153, 
 
 159. 
 Marathon, 359. 
 Mariette, 281. 
 Medinet Hahu, 308. 
 Memnon, statues of, 308. 
 Memphis, 279. 
 Miyanoshita, 44, 46. 
 Moah, mountains of, 331, 
 Mogul dynasty, 217. 
 Mohammed, 257. 
 Mohammedanism, 340. 
 
 Nagasaki, 97. 
 
 Nijo Palace in Kyoto, 75. 
 
 Nikko, 48. 
 
 Nile, the, 269. 
 
 Olives, Mount of, 314. 
 Orang-utan, the, 144. 
 
 Palestine, 309. 
 Parthenon, the, 353. 
 Pearl Mosque, thcj 227. 
 Peradeniya Botamoal Gardens, 
 
 158. 
 
 PirsBus, the, 352. 
 Pisgah, 331. 
 Pondicherry, 163. 
 Port Said, 309. 
 
 Quannon, temple of, 28, 
 
 Kamesseum, the, 310. 
 Red Sea 256.- _ 
 Rocky Mountains, 4. 
 
 Sagami Bay, 28. 
 
 Sakkarah, 277. 
 
 Saracenic architecture in India. 
 
 221 
 Sati, 182. 
 Senchal, 176. 
 Serapeum, the, 282. 
 Shamien, the, 117. 
 Shanghai, 97, 101. 
 Shintoism, 87. 
 Sikkim, 166. 
 Silliguri, 166. 
 Singapore, 137. 
 Smyrna, 348. 
 St. Paul, Minnesota, 3. 
 Sthora, 339. 
 Suez, 260. 
 Sunium, 351. 
 
 Taj Mahal, the, 227. 
 Ten Province Pass, 42, 46. 
 Thi, Tomb of, 282. 
 Thibet, 168. 
 Tiger Hill, 176. 
 Tokyo, University of, 89. 
 Tropics, the, 135. 
 Tughlakabad, 234. 
 
 Wusung, 101. 
 
 Yang-tse-Kiang River, 101. 
 Yokohama, 15. 
 Yokohama bay, 10. 
 Yumoto, 42. 
 
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