Gopyiightl^? CCBOUCHI OEECISIE n me (jvient Wi^T^ Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2010 with funding from The Library of Congress http://www.archive.org/details/zigzagginginorieOOgray Zigzagging in the Orient 1921-22 FRED L. GRAY •I COPYRIGHT 1922 by FRED L. GRAY OCT-8'22 GUIDE POSTS ALONG THE WAY Page Some Japanese Snapshots 9 Japan, Seen From Korea (the "Chosen") . . 17 Chaotic China 22 Java — The Garden of the East 31 The Crossroads of the Eastern Seas .... 42 Bewitching Burma 52 India — The Indescribable 63 Delhi — India's New-Old Capital 73 Some Typical Native States — Jaipur 82 Udaipur 86 Baroda 92 Rural India, Native Travel and the Rail- ways 98 Cities and Temples of the South 106 The Uncanny Side of India 110 Captivating Ceylon 118 "Mahatma" Gandhi— Demi-God or Dema- gogue? 128 Later Developments in the Non-Cooperative Movement 143 Home-Coming Ruminations 146 HOW IT HAPPENED BEFORE leaving on a *' Round the World** tour, last October, I recklessly promised a number of friends to write them of our "impressions** as we journeyed along. How many another frail, weak human has likewise gone astray! Very soon it became evident that to carry out this rash promise would leave no time to get impressions. So once or twice a month a general and more formal letter was sent home with instructions that typewritten copies be made for those who were expecting to hear from us. There my ''lit*ry" adventures would doubtless have ended had not the editor of The Minneapolis Journal happened to see parts of the story and begun running them in his Sunday issues. This unlooked-for publicity proved my undoing. So many of my friends, who missed one or more of the installments, have asked for copies, and so many others have asked for the whole series, that I have been forced to take refuge in the print shop! Many a globe-trotter before now has inflicted a "private- ly circulated** volume of travel on his friends, but I submit that none of the tribe ever drummed up a more plausible excuse for the offense than the one here given. Anyhow, here are the letters — the whole batch of them — and with them my promise to sin no more. All that can be said for these rambling sketches is that they represent a sincere attempt to make the folks ''back home** see some of the strange things on the other side of the Pacific just as the casual traveler sees them, rather than as a professional writer or research student might portray them. And all that I really hope for, in getting them together in this shape, is that they may tempt some good friend of mine to fare forth and see the wonders of the Orient for himself. F. L. G. Minneapolis, Minnesota. September 1, 1922. SOME JAPANESE SNAPSHOTS November 1921 WE had been accustomed to think of Japan as a land which had been catapulted out of the tenth century into the nineteenth, a land which within the memory of many now living had suddenly abandoned the ways of the East for those of the West. We were aware that both industrially and politically its people had begun to take rank in the modern world and we knew that their naval and mili- tary strength had made them a force to be reckoned with everywhere. Hence we were scarcely prepared to find so much of the old Japan, the Japan of our pic- ture-book days, still in evidence on every hand. The powers that be in this bewildering country are unmistakably modern. Public officials and those who direct the government owned railways as well as the postal, telegraph and telephone services, apparently do much the same things and in much the same ways that similar officials do the world over. Those engaged in "big business" impress one as being fully abreast of the times. But if outward appearances count for anything the rank and file of the population still live in the past. They cling tenaciously to their Oriental traditions, customs and garb. Automobiles, trolley cars, modern factories, Eur- opean dress and American movies are not novelties in Tokyo, Yokohama, Osaka and other large cities. Yet even in such commercial centers, jinrikshas vastly out- number flivvers and flowing kimonos are still far more 9 Some Japanese Snapshots popular than coats and vests, while the occasional sound of squeaking shoe leather is drowned in the clatter of wooden clogs. Here and there a steel frame structure audaciously punctures the sky line, but as likely as not its next door neighbor is a Buddhist temple or a Shinto shrine, continuing serenely as a going concern in its ancient location. The occasional European hotel or cafe cuts a lonely and incongruous figure in the midst of a wilderness of tea-houses where apparently 99 per cent of the population still squat on their haunches, eating rice concoctions with chop-sticks, precisely as their ancestors have done for ages. In Tokyo there is a great department store which would do credit to any American city, yet the throngs that patronize it leave their clogs at the door and shuffle in on clean, noiseless sandals, just as they do when entering a temple, while the salespeople who wait on them add up purchases and compute change with the help of an antiquated Chinese counting board. To see the crowds that pack this store one might imagine it had a monopoly of Tokyo's retail trade, but as a matter of fact the vast majority of the 2,500,000 people of the city continue to buy at the little toy-like shops which for centuries have lined its narrow streets. The old order is still overwhelmingly in evi- dence, even in these metropolitan cities, and when one goes to the smaller towns of the interior there is scarcely anything, save the railway and its telegraph and mail accompaniments, which even remotely suggests the world we know today. In these latter places, European 10 Some Japanese Snapshots attire is still a curiosity, and although we are told that for years past English has been included in the curriculum of every Japanese high school, hardly anyone we met in the rural communities could comprehend any of our vocal output, save those magical and universally understood words — "How much?" Our two weeks' swing through the Island Empire has impressed us with the uniform courtesy of its people, their prodigious industry, their physical cleanliness and their law-abiding disposition, and it is of these character- istics that we wish particularly to speak. As to courtesy: the Japanese may be a dangerous lot, bent on making mischief in the world, but certainly their outward attitude toward each other, and toward the strolling foreigner, would seem to belie any such theory. They are eternally bowing and smiling, and in such a gracious and apparently spontaneous way that one can't help feeling it is sincere. The spectacle of two Japanese gentlemen engaged in a bowing match as they casually meet on the street is a feast for Occidental eyes, unac- customed to such excessive politeness. Each brings his head to a level with his hips in a profound obeisance and then repeats the performance again and again until his courteous contestant shows some slight symptom of a waning interest in the game. It is a sight calculated to make the average American feel that he, rather than the little brown man of Nippon, is really the benighted one. We have been cautioned by more than one foreigner of long experience that Japanese politeness is largely superficial and should not be taken too seriously, but we find it difficult to believe that it does not come from the 11 Some Japanese Snapshots heart. Whatever its quality, it cannot be ascribed to the influence of western civilization, for from the time of the Shoguns, the everyday manners of the people have been more or less a matter of governmental concern. Even in days as recent as those when some of our worthy Puritans were burning Salem ladies alive for witchcraft, the Japanese who, under certain circumstances, showed his back teeth when smiling, or who failed to show them when certain other circumstances called for a smile, laid himself liable to death ! Japanese cleanliness is proverbial. The daily bath is a national rite, while the immaculate floor mat, on which no one would dream of stepping without first removing his street footwear, is the corner stone of every home, from the thatched roof abode of the humblest peasant to the lacquered palace of the Emperor. If cleanliness is indeed next to godliness, the Japanese might well send missionaries to us instead of our attempting to convert them. Yet we can give them a few practical pointers on plumbing and about sanitation in general. Surface sewers are still the fashion over here, and most of the fertilizer used on the farms continues to come from the cesspools of city and town dwellers. As for the industry of this remarkable people, in the thousand or so miles covered by our itinerary we have not seen one man or woman actually idle. Our kodaks have gone stale taking pictures of farmers, and their wo- men folk, working knee-deep in the mire of rice "paddies;" of coolies staggering through the congested streets under herculean burdens; of drivers of high wheeled carts, loaded with wares and produce of every conceivable sort, 12 Some Japanese Snapshots leading their patient bullocks to far destinations which at home would only be attempted with the aid of steam or gasoline; even of twelve-year old girls by the thou- sands, and many still younger, doing their twelve-hour shifts at the looms of the great cotton and silk mills — virtual slaves, with but two rest days a month. No loafers anywhere, no one standing about with hands in pockets waiting for something to turn up, no tramps and only one beggar, he, in the last stages of leprosy, an excusable one. Yet they tell us that Japan, like the rest of the world, is undergoing serious business depression and that there is much unemployment and unrest. If so, then the unemployed are in hiding now and those afflicted with "unrest" are mighty good actors. When it comes to the law-abiding character of the people, we, fresh from the land of "moonshine" and hold-ups, feel no disposition to boast. The only serious crime in all Japan which the papers have chronicled during the past fortnight is the assassination of Premier Hara, a tragedy which we narrowly escaped witnessing the night of our arrival at the Tokyo Central Station. It is possible that some of the country's nearly 60,000,000 people have been held up or had their houses burglarized since we landed, but if so the fact has not been recorded by any of Japan's English papers, and they appear to be as keen for news as circulation- hungry newspapers are anywhere. Neither have we read of a single automobile accident since our arrival, and the only one we saw was a trivial affair where the victim, instead of taking our number and 13 Some Japanese Snapshots rushing off to a damage suit lawyer, picked himself up and meekly apologized for getting in the way. Lastly, we have seen but one intoxicated person, although Japan has no Eighteenth Amendment, and booze, both amber and red, is everywhere as easily obtainable as tea. While we wouldn't swap our little **100 foot front" in lovely Minneapolis for all Japan, were the trade con- ditioned on our living here the rest of our days, we can't help wondering whether the country which Commodore Perry introduced to the modern world but little more than half a century ago doesn't do a good many things rather better than we do them at home. Somehow we find it easier to talk about the Japanese than about Japan. Not that the latter has proved at all disappointing but rather that we have found its physical aspects so precisely what we have always pictured them that it seems impossible to say anything new or interesting on the subject. For example, we had com- mitted Mount Fuji to memory long years ago, hence when the great cone finally stood before us in all its symmetrical beauty we simply met an old acquaintance again. Yet we admired it none the less for that. There are loftier and far more rugged mountains in the world, but surely none other so patrician in its solitary splendor. It is a rank monopolist, for there are no competing mountains worthy of the name for hundreds of miles about. Neither are the temples particularly surprising, for who has not a fairly accurate picture in his mind's eye of the curling roofs, fantastic carvings, lacquered wood, 14 Some Japanese Snapshots graceful torii and myriad stone lanterns which go to make up the typical temple or shrine of old Nippon? Most of the outward aspects of the Mikado's kingdom — the charming mountain scenery, the rushing streams, the island-dotted Inland Sea, the intensively cultivated fields, the thousands upon thousands of shrines and temples, the countless bamboo cottages, looking more stage-like than real in their flimsiness — have become so familiar to us all ever since scribbling travelers first broke into Japan that we will not expatiate on them. Frankly, it is the people themselves that interest us mostly, and concerning them we are going away in a some- what puzzled frame of mind. Of one thing we are sure, that with all their odd mixture of East and West they possess a remarkable national consciousness; at all times they think and act in terms strictly Japanese. Patriotism is inculcated in the rising generation to an extent possibly never known in any other land, unless perhaps the Prussia of pre-war time. One of the commonest sights today in Japan is a class of students, garbed in the uniform of the public schools, being piloted by a professor of history to this or that spot made famous by some great event in the annals of the country. Every- where we have encountered these roving student bands, bent on learning the history of their nation at the places where it was made rather than from some dry text- book only. Every Japanese boy is taught to believe that not only can he "lick his weight in wild cats" but that he is more than a match for any two American boys. Yet we feel certain that Japan has no more thought of picking 15 Some Japanese Snapshots a quarrel with the United States than our government has of attacking England. What she probably has been figur- ing on in all her feverish military and naval programs has been to strengthen herself so that no Western nation will care to question very insistently any designs she may have for expansion in the East. 16 JAPAN, SEEN FROM KOREA (The "Chosen") November 1921 OUR all too short month in Japan, Korea and China has been long enough at least to make us understand why the Japanese want more room in the world and why the Koreans and Chinese, like our California friends, want fewer Japanese in their midst. No one can so much as peep into Japan without realizing how tremendously over-populated it is and how exacting are the demands on every inch of its soil and, in normal times, on every ounce of its human energy. In an area 10,000 square miles smaller than that of Cal- ifornia nearly 57,000,000 people struggle for existence, more than half the population of our entire forty-eight states. Every year the stork adds to this huge family enough souls to repopulate New Mexico, Arizona and Nevada. If you doubt that last statement, just spend a week or two in Japan and notice how few of its women are to be seen without a bundle of babyhood on their backs. Four Japanese out of every five derive their living from the soil or from occupations directly dependent thereon, and as only about 15 per cent of the land is arable, the average farm owner must be content with less than 2J acres, while the average tenant farmer must somehow keep soul and body together on a single acre. Everywhere one sees patches of ground scarcely larger than a billiard table, many of them high up on steep mountain sides, cultivated with as much pains- taking care as an American woman would bestow on her pet flower bed. Yet with all this intensive agricultural 17 Japan, Seen From Korea (The ''Chosen') effort Japan fails to feed herself. Rice, the country's chief crop and the food mainstay of its people, is now imported in large quantities every year, a fact which was pointedly brought to our attention the other day when the boat on which we crossed the Pacific discharged 33,000 bags of California rice at Yokohama docks. When one sees conditions like these at short range it is decidedly easier to understand and sympathize with Japan's desire for a larger place in the sun. At any rate, people like us who are privileged to live in America, where there are less than 36 inhabitants to the square mile, should not be too quick to question the aspirations or condemn the policies of a country each of whose square miles, on the average, represents a com- munity of 380 souls. After all, self-preservation is the first law of nature, and if we Americans were up against any such tremendous problem the chances are we would be no more inclined to treat it academically than are the Japanese. But Korea and China can scarcely be expected to sympathize with Japan in this particular. They have over-population problems and a host of other troubles of their own, and neither of them relishes the idea of carry- ing any part of Japan's load. In an area about equal to that of Minnesota, Korea (or "Chosen," as the Japanese have aptly re-christened it) supports, after a fashion, more than 17,000,000 people, while in an area approx- imately one-half the size of continental United States, China proper manages to keep something like 300,000,000 souls a jump or two ahead of starvation. Yet we doubt if the economic phase of the case has had 18 Japariy Seen From Korea {The "Chosen'*) half as much to do with making Japan disliked and feared by these peoples of the Asiatic mainland as have the methods employed in carrying out her "peaceful con- quests" among them. However polite the Japanese may be to one another, however tactful, even obsequious, when dealing with Europeans and Americans, they certainly have displayed no such character- istics in their treatment of next-door neighbors, consequently you hear almost no one over here speak a good word for them. Everywhere they are regarded as crafty and designing, and, by many, as ruthless and cruel. Some of the stories one hears of Japanese brutality in Korea sound like the tales of mediaeval times, and while perhaps many of them should be liber- ally discounted, there is no question that the dreamy-eyed, placid-faced people of the "Hermit Kingdom" are today being ruled by the Nipponese with what we Americans would regard as an iron hand. The last of Korea's long line of kings is now a prisoner in the ancient palace of his dynasty at Seoul, his Japanese jailers according him the occasional high privilege of going to worship at the tombs of his ances- tors, while the people as a whole are subjected to a most obnoxious system of police espionage. We, ourselves, were made unpleasantly aware of the fact that even casual tourists passing through the country are continually under surveillance lest they give aid and comfort to the "rebels." Tactics of this sort have naturally jBlled the Koreans with resentment. One sees evidence of this, though generally mute evidence, at every turn. The platform 19 Japan, Seen From Korea {The '* C hosen'') of every railway station is paced by smartly uniformed Japanese soldiers of supercilious bearing, and the sullen looks bestowed on them by the villagers, who, like all small town folk the world over, dote on "seeing the train come in," reveal an unmistakable story of race hatred. Nevertheless, Japan is slowly but surely working a wonderful transformation in the 3,000-year-old country which she so coolly annexed ten years ago. The bulk of the Japanese at home may still be oriental to the core, but when their government starts out to make another oriental country toe the twentieth century mark, it goes about the job in a thoroughly occidental fashion. In the Japanese sections of Seoul, you will see more modern buildings, more well paved, well lighted streets and more evidence of scientific sanitation than in many an important town of old Japan itself. If these and numerous other improvements, including a vast amount of re-forestation, were being paid for by the Japanese rather than by the poverty-stricken, overtaxed Koreans, and if it were all being done in something of the same kindly spirit in which General Wood is handling the Filipinos, there might be hope for eventual good relations between the two peoples, but the trouble is that it is being done in a way which the Koreans themselves re- gard as decidedly arrogant. The Korean is a peaceable, good natured, happy-go- lucky fellow. It pains him to be hurried. The chief occupation of the male population, at least as we observe it in November, seems to be to wander aimlessly along the winding country paths from one village to 20 Japan, Seen From Korea {The "Choseri") another. All the way from Fusan in the south, up to Antung on the Yalu river in the north, the landscape was dotted with white-robed figures. The first time we noticed them, so far away that no movement was dis- cernible, we concluded that the tiny white specks against the green background were either tombstones or guide- posts, but a closer view proved them to be tall, digni- fied looking citizens whose chins were garnished with a random whisker or two, who carried pipes with stems three feet long and bowls the size of a chestnut, and whose attire seemingly consisted of a long white night- gown surmounted by a ridiculously small, black stove- pipe hat. No one ever gets his first '*close-up" of these Korean gentlemen of leisure without becoming secretly hilar- ious, yet despite their grotesque garb, melancholy countenances and odd mannerisms one cannot help liking them. They have a grave, quiet courtesy which is rather refreshing after so much effusive Japanese politeness. Whether Japan will be able to work any such change in the temperament and customs of these queer people as that which she undoubtedly is working in the face of the country they inhabit remains to be seen. It would surely be the irony of fate if Korea, which ages ago was the relay station through which Japan gained from China and India the foundation of her own civilization, should now learn from that ancient pupil the meaning of western civilization. 21 CHAOTIC CHINA December 1921 POOR old China! Everyone over here is asking what is to become of her and we have thus far met no one bold enough to venture a cocksure answer to the question. For centuries she has been the world's great interrogation mark, and today she is more so than ever. The government itself, if the self-appointed bureaucrats at Peking can be dignified as such, is apparently bankrupt. When we were in that city the other day, the police were marching a body of prom- nent merchants through the streets with placards on their backs denouncing their refusal to accept at face value the depreciated paper money of two government- owned banks which had suspended the day before, the notice going on to warn the public that further offenses of the sort would be more drastically dealt with. Surely a novel, if not effective, way to stabilize a nation's currency ! It behooves the traveler in China nowadays to get rid of the bank bills of one city before proceeding to the next. Peking money is looked at askance in Mukden, Nanking money in Hankow and Shanghai money in Hongkong, while even the silver coins of the latter, British crown colony though it is, are handled gingerly by the tradesmen of Canton, 90 miles away. Everywhere too the money problem is immensely complicated by the daily fluctuations in foreign exchange. The be- wildered tourist, who spends half his time trying to keep his own small money matters straight, wonders how 22 Chaotic China importers and exporters can do business at all under such weird conditions. The civil war which is "raging" between North and South is costing far more in paper and ink than in powder and blood. In the entire eighteen provinces there are said to be more than 1,000,000 men under arms. Speci- mens of them are to be seen on every hand, but their seedy uniforms and rather sheepish countenances belie the warlike calling in which they are supposed to be engaged. Our guess is that if the provincial governors, whose hired mercenaries most of these "soldiers" are, would stop the practice of holding back their pay from three to four months, the whole make-believe army would promptly go on a spree and then muster itself out. And yet who knows, who can fathom an Oriental? These provincial or military governors, "tuchuns" they are called in the native vernacular, are the real rulers in China today. They are a law to themselves, and from all accounts most of them have become enormously wealthy through the sale of government positions and by the practice of every other conceivable form of graft, or "squeeze," as it is called in the Orient. Their al- legiance to the national government is purely perfunct- ory, and in their respective bailiwicks they rule as des- potically as any feudal baron of old. At the moment, the most powerful of these political chieftains is the "War Lord of Mukden," General Chang Tso-Kn, who holds sway over the Manchurian regions and who laid the foundation for his public career in years of hard and efficient work as a bandit! For a country which only a decade ago threw off the yoke of an ancient despot- 23 Chaotic China ism and which since then has ostensibly, been a repubUc, these are surely fantastic conditions. It is all a most incomprehensible mess. No one pretends to say what the outcome will be. Most of the foreign residents with whom we have talked express the belief that the Chinese riddle will never be solved until the Powers unite in forcibly putting through some sweeping program of reform. On the other hand, the Peking representative of the Northcliffe papers told us (and he told Lord Northcliffe himself the same thing when the latter was here last week) that any such attempt on the part of outsiders would surely fail unless it were backed by at least 5,000,000 trained troops. This journalist has lived among the Chinese for twenty-three years and he believes that a move of that kind would instantly solidify all of the contending factions and again raise the old cry against the "foreign devil." At present Japan enjoys the distinction of being China's sole foreign devil, and such racial hatred as these naturally docile yellow men are capable of is in conse- quence centered on the shrewd little men of Nippon, greatly to the latter's discomfiture in the loss of much valuable trade. In spite of all the political and financial chaos, the great mass of the people seem to be going about their daily work as usual, much, we imagine, as they have been in the habit of doing for ages. One simply cannot view the busy life of China's teeming millions, in city and country, on land, river and sea, without feeling that how ever corrupt or insolvent its nominal government may be, the nation itself is still very much of a going concern, 24 Chaotic China sound in heart and limb, if not in head. One also feels that the rank and file of the people have but little compre- hension of what their self-constituted political spokes- men are doing, and even less real interest in the subject. We'll wager most of the Chinese don't care a whoop whether they are ruled by Ming emperor, Manchu empress, parliamentary president or provin- cial war lord. From time immemorial they have been so accustomed to misrule that they continue to expect and endure it quite as a matter of course. The small, infinitely small, minority who are educated and enlightened may in time work out the country's salva- tion, but those who ought to know say that the tendency with many even of this class is corruptly to seek power and wealth for themselves regardless of what becomes of the nation. Obviously the whole Chinese puzzle is on the lap of the gods! We are taking away a wonderfully vivid picture of a nation at work, of a nation where literally every one works. Japan seemed to us the last word in physical toil, but after two weeks in China's human hive we are forced to revise our ideas. There appears to be no task too menial, no exertion too great, no hours too long and no wage too low for these marvelous people. Most of the throngs one encounters in the crowded streets seem veritable beasts of burden, carrying, carrying, eternally carrying. Bent men and women of seventy with line-seamed faces, together with children of both sexes scarcely old enough to toddle, struggle for the highway privilege alongside those of sturdier years. In the almost complete absence of railways, trams and power- 25 Chaotic China driven trucks, this endless chain of human vehicles constitutes the country's main transportation system, and a most flexible and practical system it is, even though slow. Coming back to Peking one evening from a trip to the famed Summer Palace of the old Empress Dowager, we met a conveyance which in many parts of China is still the common one for handling passenger traffic. It was a wheelbarrow, and the human motor propelling it had for his cargo no less than six "commuters" return- ing to their suburban hovels from the day's work in town. A moment later we overtook more than 100 coolies, together with a dozen bullocks, ponies and donkeys, all indiscriminately harnessed together, hauling a gigantic wheeled contraption on which was a huge monolith fully 50 feet in length and whose weight must certainly have run into scores of tons. No matter what the back-breaking burden may be, whether a towering load of hay, enough household goods to half fill a furniture van, enormous bales of merchan- dise, a barrel of water, or sufficient fish, meat or vege- tables to stock a small market, the patient Chinese porters, both men and women, trot cheerfully along under its staggering weight to the rhythm of their own weird songs. And to what end? To earn 25 cents "Mex," or, on an extraordinarily successful day, perhaps as much as 40 cents, with which to buy enough food to provide motive power for another day of like toil! The items of clothes and lodging are negligible, the common solution of the former problem in summer time being to go without, and in winter time to add a 26 Chaotic China fiftieth patch to the garment which already resembles a crazy quilt; lodgings, on the other hand, can easily be procured by the simple expedient of falling asleep in one's tracks behind any old, rent free, mud wall. Of course these extreme conditions do not obtain among the better class of artisans and skilled workers, nor among the comparatively well-to-do small shopkeepers; but even these great "middle classes" have incomes and a standard of living which would appear beggarly in the extreme to the poorest paid classes of American common labor. Any Chinaman who can average 25 cents gold a day, the year around, is on Easy Street. We had never dreamed until visiting Canton how many vocations there are in the world. The Cantonese, 1,500,000 of whom are herded together in a space much smaller than that occupied by Minneapolis, seem to manufacture and sell every conceivable thing under the heavens, from tooth brushes and artificial eyeballs to the most beautiful mother-of-pearl goods; from wonderfully embroidered shawls to splendidly hand-carved furniture; from exquisitely wrought jewelry to the most delicately woven silks and satins. In nearly every case the factory, the store and their owner's dwelling are all combined in a single one or two story building whose ten-foot front faces a street so narrow that you can almost span it with your outstretched arms. Along these winding, tunnel -like alleyways there swarms from early dawn till late night an endless stream of shouting, singing, struggling, sweating, ill-smelling, but always good natured, human- ity. Pandemonium is the only word for it all, 27 Chaotic China yet it is the purposeful and practical sort of pande- monium that one associates with a riotous boiler shop. When witnessing the kaleidoscopic scenes of these old Chinese cities, the primitive life of their inhabitants and the even more primitive life of those in the sur- rounding country districts who supply them with fish, fowl, flesh, fruit, rice, tea and all manner of queer looking and queerer tasting garden truck, one cannot help feeling that it is all pretty much as it must have been five centuries ago, and, barring miracles, pretty much as it will be five centuries hence. It is to be hoped that Rockefeller foundations, missionary boards, foreign "consortiums," Washington conferences and other progressive agencies will somehow bring this ancient yet still virile country into step with the times, but our own reaction to the strange scenes and experiences of the past fortnight leads us to venture the doubt that much of concrete or wide-spread value can be expected from their efforts for many generations to come. However pessimistic or reactionary it may sound, we risk the prediction that no one now living will ever see China, except in spots, essentially different from what it is today. Yet if it should some day wake up and join the modern procession the rest of the world had better look out, for John Chinaman is not only naturally intelligent and clever but he has the good nature and patience of a faithful dog, the endurance of a horse and the industry of a beaver. These qual- ities, coupled with a phenomenal ability to subsist on almost nothing, would make him a mighty dangerous competitor should he ever enter the world's commercial game in earnest. 28 Chaotic China Vastly interesting and impressive as are the neglected and rapidly decaying palaces, temples and pagodas of China, its many monumental relics of the waning faiths of Confucius and Buddha, its historic Forbidden City, its wonderful, 2,500-mile Great Wall, its marvelous National Museum collection of porcelain, jade, damascene, lacquer and bronze — all telling an eloquent story of the nation's past greatness — we are leaving the country with a less keen and lasting impression of those things than of the remarkable traits of its present inhabitants and of the high-pressure lives they are leading under seemingly impossible conditions. The typical pictures which we shall most vividly recall are of a peasant returning from his fields at twilight with a primitive plow on his back and a tired water buffalo or donkey in tow; of a bent, wrinkled old woman trudging gaily along a country road with impossible mountains of straw balanced across her shoulders; of people of all ages and both sexes cheerfully doing all manner of team work in harness with four-footed beasts of every description; of fishermen hauling their nets and of shepherds tending their flocks; of queer-looking craft by the thousands on which father, mother, grandparents and children, who know no other home, take turns in manning the sails and handling the tiller; of shrill- voiced keepers piloting their feathered wards home from the duck ponds at nightfall; and of the myriads of city toilers in- cessantly pulsing through the crowded streets or laboring eighteen hours a day at unheard of tasks in their stuffy little shops. Work, work, work — everywhere and always, work! 29 Chaotic China This is the outstanding impression we get of China. That, and the universal willingness and cheerfulness of the workers. Perhaps, now that manual labor is no longer fashionable in America, we may one of these days repeal the Exclusion Act and avail ourselves of some of these willing workers, thereby incidentally contributing our mite toward the solution of the baffling Far East question ! Who knows .^ 30 JAVA— THE GARDEN OF THE EAST December 1921 ANYONE who, on account of its proximity to Sumatra and Borneo, pictures Java as a jungle- overgrown East Indies island, the home of tigers, elephants and head-hunters, would get something of a jolt if, as we write, he were to look in on this lovely mountain resort of Tosari, to which Dutch society folk from the torrid coast towns have fled for a cool Christmas holiday . Most of them have come in high-powered American cars, over automobile roads that would do credit to California, and have brought with them an up-to-date array of sport and evening clothes. When tired of tennis, billiards or bridge, or of dancing to the latest jazz, they fall to with genuine glee club zest and sing American college songs. Had we eyes and ears only for these immediate surroundings it would not be at all difficult to imagine ourselves foregathering with a company of friends at some summer hotel or country club on our own side of the globe. But the wealth of tropical vegetation all about, the sight of smoking volcanoes in the distance and the occasional rumble of a faint-hearted earthquake remind us that we are far from home. Then, the spectacle of dark- skinned waiters and * 'bell-hops" scurrying to and fro in bare feet, of hungry sparrows perched expectantly on the backs of dining-room chairs, and nimble lizards ambling gaily over the walls of our sleeping rooms (on occasion making themselves at home in our beds, if the sworn, literally sworn, testimony of certain members of the 31 Java — The Garden of the East party is to be credited) go to prove beyond question that we are sojourning at no American resort. The romantic Java of our school days is, alas, no more. The last Javanese elephant, the shrunken, moth-eaten survivor of a once mighty race, is now enjoying a placid old age down at the palace stables of the Sultan of Djokjakarta, while the tigers, leopards and deadly snakes of the one-time jungle have all disappeared with the jungle itself. But there remains a vast menagerie of small animal life — ants, bugs, bats, beetles, lizards and other winged and crawling pests too numerous to index — with which no tourist can fail to become inti- mately acquainted. These compensate in a measure for the dearth of more heroic and dangerous beasts. Java is a miniature world in itself, and a most paradoxical one. Can you imagine a country where the bulk of the inhabitants are, to all outward appearances, scarcely half-civilized, yet where steam railways, macadam roads, automobiles, electric lights and telephones are an old story? Can you visualize a great society in which 99 people out of every 100 know little or nothing of schools, churches, newspapers or governmental affairs, yet in which there is vastly less crime, vastly more respect for constituted authority, than in Europe, or even America .^^ Can you conceive of a people who were at one time so deeply religious that now, after the lapse of twelve centuries, the ruins of their temples and altars rank among the acknowledged wonders of the world, yet a people who today display far less evidence of religious faith of any sort than a tribe of primitive sun-worshippers 32 Java — The Garden of the East would? Or can you conjure a region where tropical heat and humidity make life almost unbearable the year around, yet where an hour's journey from almost any point will bring you into the temperate zone, so con- venient from end to end of the sweltering lowlands are the cool mountain heights? Finally, can you picture an equa- torial island, in size but little larger than Cuba (its actual area is little more than half that of Minnesota), swarming with nearly 40,000,000 dark-hued natives, more than the combined population of the Atlantic Coast states from Maine to Florida, all held gently but firmly in leash by a mere handful of white people hailing from the chilly shores of the North Sea, half a world away? These are some of the contradictions so puzzling to those travelers who leave the beaten path long enough to visit this remarkable spot. Barring the half dozen years or so during the Napoleonic era when the British ruled it, Java has been a Dutch possession for nearly four centuries, and during the last of those centuries, at least, the Hollanders have certainly managed the country with tact and success. They have permitted the native sultans to retain nom- inally much of their old time authority, and it is through those points of contact, and with the aid of less than 10,000 imported troops, that the actual governing is done. The establishments of these princely pen- sioners, one of whom has a retinue of 15,000 people (including a bevy of harem ladies variously estimated at from 30 to 3,000 in number) are maintained in much of their ancient splendor. But behind each gilded throne stands a quiet, determined, business-like repre- 33 Java — The Garden of the East sentative of the Netherlands whose word is law. Incongruous as such an arrangement may seem, it appears to work beautifully. The puppet rulers are evidently quite willing to be supported in luxury and in the con- tinued enjoyment of such comic opera titles as "Spike of Heaven," "Nail of the Universe," etc., without incurring any real responsibility. And the rank and file of the native population, to whom firearms are forbidden, are probably not keen to try conclusions with soldiers who, however small their numbers, are abundantly supplied with machine guns. For reasons best known to themselves, the Dutch have from the first looked askance at missionary activity, not only in Java but in all their other East Indies pos- possessions, and in consequence the number of native Christians hereabouts is almost negligible. Twelve hundred years ago Java was the recognized Buddhist stronghold of the world, the marvelous shrine at Bourobudur, almost as large as the greatest of the Egyptian pyramids and far more beautiful because of its miles of bas-relief sculptures, unmistakably attest- ing that fact. But when Buddhism was supplanted in these regions by Brahmanism, and the latter in turn by Mohammedanism, the Javanese, apparently surfeited with oriental creeds, seem to have lost all interest in spiritual things. While many are still nominal followers of Islam there are probably mighty few who would recognize a copy of the Koran if they saw it. The vast majority impress one as having no thought or aim in life except to do 365 days part-time work each year for the sake of 34 Java — The Garden of the East 365 days of meager sustenance. With no Sabbath days of rest and comparatively few fete days, the regular afternoon siesta constitutes the chief recreation of the populace — that and the everlasting chewing of enormous cuds of betel-nut. The American consul at Batavia told us that in his judgment no like number of people can be found on the globe who are so resigned to their lot or who offer so uninviting a field both to missionaries and to political agitators. The "unrest" which has so upset most of the world evidently has not yet reached Java. Yet even in this far-away corner of the map there is genuine business depression, and here as elsewhere our old friend H. C. L., has put in an appearance. Our native guide told us that the immaculate white duck suit he was wearing had cost him seven times as much as similar ones did six years ago. Rice, the staple Javanese food, costs three times as much as it did before the war. On the other hand, the price of raw rubber has declined to a point where the planters are taking drastic measures to curtail its production, while the sugar and copra growers are up against the same demoralized market conditions which confront their unhappy competitors everywhere in the tropics. To what extent this distressing economic situation is reflected in the daily lives of the masses who people this human sardine box no casual observer can say. Apparently they are happy and contented, as perhaps might be expected in a land where nature has been so prodigal — where the Almighty has so ordered things that bread grows on trees and backs need no clothing. If, perchance, the native Javanese cannot afford to eat 35 Java — The Garden of the East rice, or if he has no bread-fruit or cocoanut trees in his yard, he can at least subsist on bananas, of which authorities say 4,000 pounds can be grown, practically without effort, on the same amount of ground that an American farmer would laboriously till in order to raise 99 pounds of potatoes or 33 pounds of wheat. But we are not in the least qualified, on the strength of a fortnight's "once over," to analyze either the econ- omic, political or religious status of this tropical people, and in any case we much prefer to dwell on their wond- erful environment. Java has been called the ''Garden of the East," but to our notion the phrase is a feeble one, for there are gar- dens and gardens, and this particular one is so absolutely in a class by itself that it deserves a much stronger simile. Some gardens are chiefly productive, others chiefly beau- tiful, but the 600-mile stretch of this enchanted garden possesses both of those characteristics to a superlative degree. A rich, volcanic soil and a hot, moist climate, together with an abundance of cheap but scientifically directed Malay, Chinese and native labor, combine to make it yield in profusion almost everything known to the vegetable kingdom. Its vast sugar, coffee, tobacco and rubber plantations, interspersed everywhere with rice and tapioca fields, cocoanut and banana groves and forests of teak and other costly woods, have all seemingly been laid out with such precision and in such delightful contrasts that as one motors along the well-kept highways beneath stately arches of kanari and weringen trees the feeling becomes irresistible that some vast pleasure park or private estate has been thrown open for public in- 36 Java — The Garden of the East spection, — that one is privileged to view the handiwork of some master landscape artist who has centered his thought on the weaving of a thousand lovely vistas into a harmonious general design rather than on the prosaic and practical job of raising crops. Even the crude native architecture blends perfectly into the picture. Individtially, and on close inspection, the home of the average Javanese, with its motley assortment of dogs, chickens, pigs, goats and cattle, all domiciled together on terms of perfect equality with naked children and more than half-naked grown-ups, makes no appeal to an aesthetic taste, but when seen collectively, and beyond the range of smell, the basket- like houses with their thatched roofs of palm leaves and walls of woven bamboo are extremely picturesque. They add just the right touch to the landscape as they cluster together in little kampongs, or villages, half hidden by the sheltering foliage of the ubiquitous banana grove. This custom of burying the villages in dense thickets to escape the fierce rays of the equatorial sun inclines the stranger to question the official statement that there are upwards of 37,000,000 people on the island. He will frequently speed past villages containing a thousand or more souls without in the least suspecting the real size of the community, so completely concealed in the trees are their toy-like huts. Java has few sizable cities, but its country districts literally reek with humanity, the average density of its population per square mile being more than double that of over-crowded Japan and twenty times that of the United States! Java has no "drift to 37 Java — The Garden of the East the city" problem to contend with, for it is itself all city. The best way to get a true appreciation of this fact is to motor into the country at daybreak, as we have done on several occasions in order to escape the mid-day heat. At that gray hour, all rural Java is on march to field and market, and every arterial highway is almost as crowded as Nicollet Avenue at noontime. It is a sight no one can faithfully describe without being accused of exaggeration. Nothing in Java's glorious garden more quickly cap- tures the eye than the rice fields, or sawtohs, as the natives call them. In this tropical climate, the planting, cultivating and harvesting of rice go on side by side the whole year around, and in con- sequence everywhere one sees the grain at all stages of its development and in every imaginable shade of green and gold. In many places the formation of the fields themselves, — their engineering construction one might almost say — is scarcely less pleasing than their color effects. The Javanese fairly shingle the sides of their hills and mountains with rice terraces, and when these are covered with water (rice is commonly planted under water a foot deep) the effect is no less startling than beautiful, especially when viewed transversely or from above. It is as if some landscape wizard had built a huge pyramid of narrow lakes whose contents ought, by all the laws of gravity, to go cascading away, but which instead cling in uncanny fashion to the sloping sides of the edifice. In Japan, rice culture is a farming proposition; in Java it impresses one as being almost a manufacturing proposition, carried on in a sort of glori- fied out-door industrial plant. 38 Java — The Garden of the East Java has also been called the "Switzerland of the East," and with no little reason. Although her moun- tains are neither as high nor as rugged as the Alps, they appear almost as imposing for, like the peaks of Puget Sound, their full stature is revealed from every sea level pointof vantage; and the beauty of these great cones is mightily enhanced by the misty, low -hanging clouds which, like fleecy drapery, festoon without quite conceal- ing their alluring forms. Perhaps nowhere else on the globe are there so many volcanoes, both active and extinct, within so small an area. Certainly nowhere else do equally great masses of humanity tempt fate by continuing to live on a volcanic lid of such bad repute. Not every year, nor every decade, does a Javanese volcano let go, yet the thing does happen often enough, and on a suflBciently terrific scale, to constitute a standing menace, particu- larly to those venturesome natives who persist in grow- ing wheat, corn, potatoes and other northern crops far up the mountain slopes within speaking distance of the smoul- dering craters. How these people avoid falling off their tiny, almost perpendicular fields is a mystery. One would think they would need the safety belt and swinging perch of an office building window-cleaner in order to escape disaster. Yesterday we climbed a 9,200-foot eminence to see the sun rise over the famous volcano of Bromo. We left the hotel at 2 A. M., the men on ponies and the women in chairs, each of the latter being manned by eight noisy coolies. It was a cold, dark trip up the winding seven- mile trail to our observation point, but the spectacle 39 Java — The Garden of the East which greeted us when we finally reached there — when the sea of clouds at our feet began drifting away and the cavernous throat of Bromo, belching tremendous volumes of smoke and ashes, gradually emerged from its somber wrappings — amply repaid us for the loss of a night's sleep. There may be a more glorious sight somewhere on earth, but chronic globe-trotters say not. Even some of our own party who have hitherto sworn by the Grand Canyon of the Colorado are inclined to transfer their allegiance to fiery Bromo's tropical sunrise. All in all, Java possesses a most remarkable com- bination of attractions. Externally, it presents something of the same finished appearance that Americans, particu- larly those from our Western states, are so quick to note and admire in Europe. Almost everywhere one goes, things look picked up and in place, as befits a land long governed by orderly Hollanders who themselves have added much to the beauty of the scene by frequent architectural splashes that remind you strongly of Delft, the Hague or Amsterdam. If one is especially interested in exotic flowers, shrubs, trees, and fruits, and is not satisfied with a hurried glimpse of the God-made botan- ical garden which is Java itself, he can leisurely study such things in detail, all properly labelled, in the man- made park at Buitenzorg, which authorities say is the greatest botanical garden in the world. If he is chiefly interested in folks, particularly queer and unaccountable folks, here is the place to come, for the country is alive with them; and their beautiful home- made batik worn as skirts or sarongs, by both men and women, and as turbans by the men only, add a 40 Java — The Garden of the East charming touch of color to a picture which nature her- self has already colored so lavishly. The manufacture of hatik is distinctly a Javanese specialty, one of the few ancient arts of the race which have not been lost. The hammered copper, the beautiful figured leather goods and the wonderful carved tortoise- shell stuff displayed in every shop also testify to the inherited love of the artistic possessed by the people. The one unaccountable thing about them all is that they are apparently content to live such a hand-to-mouth existence, with no political consciousness, no real religious convictions and not the slightest curiosity about what is going on in the outside world. We hazard the guess that 10,000,000 of them never heard of the Great War and that most of the other 27,000,000 don't know to this day who fought it — which perhaps is not a particularly wild guess considering Holland's neutrality during the late unpleasantness and her obvious behef that too much enlightenment of far-away colonial subjects is not good policy. 41 THE CROSSROADS OF THE EASTERN SEAS January 1922 IF one's only object in making a tour of the world is to observe strange peoples, then much time, energy and money can be saved by going straight to Singapore and there parking oneself on the broad, well-shaded veranda of the Raffles Hotel. From that comfortable vantage ground, more varieties of the human species can be seen in a given space of time than anywhere else on the globe. It is the only habitable spot in the world where an ethnological congress could be convened on short notice with absolute assurance of a quorum, for past it there flows an endless stream of the races — Chinese, Malays, Burmans, Bengalis, Tamils, Sinhalese, Japanese, Siamese Arabs, Javanese, Turks, Armenians and pretty much all the rest of the tribes of man save those from the polar regions. Singapore, as a sort of racial clearing house, was inevitable. The little island on which it stands lies just off the tip of the Malay Peninsula, that long, sinuous arm which Asia thrusts into the southern seas almost to the equator and which must be rounded by every ship plying between the ports of Europe and those of the Far East. It also lies at the entrance of the Straits of Milacca, that great thoroughfare which the ships of Australia, New Zealand and Java have for ages traversed in reaching the shores of India. Situated at such a maritime crossroads as this, where every passing vessel drops anchor in quest of cargo, provisions or fuel, what wonder is it that the sun-baked streets and palm-fringed 42 The Crossroads of the Eastern Seas esplanades of Singapore are thronged day and night with people from the ends of the earth? But if you want to witness this passing show with seeing eyes — if you are really keen to know who's who in the kaleidoscopic pageant and where he comes from — you should first make a study of racial colorings so that you may be able to identify and properly classify the many shades of yellow and brown revealed by the bare backs and legs of the surging crowd. You should also be able to discriminate intelligently between a pair of oriental eyes, slanted at a certain angle, and those whose slant is almost imperceptibly different. You should know why men who coil their waist-long hair in a knot at the back of the neck have no racial relation- ship to those of otherwise quite similar appearance who gather equally long hair in a knot on the top of the head. The number and kind of ear, nose and finger rings and, in the case of women, the number and kind of bracelets, anklets and toe rings also throw important light on the nationality, social status and religious creed of the wearer. Yet not all of these hurrying thousands display shining bare skins, grotesquely dressed hair or fantastic- ally wrought jewelry. Here and there the colorful procession is punctuated by the spotless white suit and sun helmet of some well garbed European or American, for be it remembered that the equator lies only 80 miles away and that from 9 a. m. till 4 p. m. the year round no sane white man ever frequents these blistering pave- ments in anything but tropical attire. This much we must say in defense of the 43 The Crossroads of the Eastern Seas equator: journeying to and from Java we "crossed the line" both times at night, yet in neither instance did we experience anywhere near as much discomfort as on many a suffocating July night at home. On the return voyage we actually passed from the south- ern to the northern hemisphere under woolen blankets ! Even at midday, when in the shade, we have found the heat in these latitudes far less oppressive than it was a few weeks ago in the China Sea, a thousand miles to the north. There, for a stretch of forty-eight hours, we kept such even pace with a hot following wind that the stuffy cabins of the old P. & O. tub on which we were sailing became almost uninhabitable. We must not speak slightingly of the good ship *'Samoli," or of the line to which it belongs, for during the war the former did valiant service as a hospital ship, while the latter suffered the loss of more than two score of its great fleet of passenger and freight carriers. In an informal but intensely gripping address to the first- cabin passengers at tiffin one day, the Samoli's brave captain told of some of the gruesome scenes which had been enacted among the very surroundings that then seemed so quiet and peaceful; how the smoking room had been converted into an operating room, which at times, when the anaesthetics gave out, became a ghastly chamber of horrors; how the ship lay for weeks directly under the guns of the Turkish forts during the fierce fighting at Gallipolis; and how there, and in many other places, she had time and again miraculously escaped destruction from gun fire, mines and torpedoes. After listening to this thrilling story we tried to forget our 44 The Crossroads of the Eastern Seas petty discomforts, feeling, in the captain's phrase, that we were on sacred ground. Speaking of discomforts, whatever modern luxuries the English boats now in commission in the Orient may lack, their cabins and berths are at least clean, the food is abundant and more than tolerably good, the service is excellent and the ships' officers are far better mixers than are their chesty brethren on the palatial liners of the North Atlantic. The genuine trepidation with which we approached this stage of our journey proved entirely groundless. The waters we have been sailing of late have been like a mill pond. During the past fortnight we have scarcely seen a whitecap and in consequence not even the star poor sailor of the party has missed any of her meals. At another season of the year, when the deadly typhoon is in action, there would, no doubt, be a very different story to tell. To the comfort of steady decks has been added the delight of sailing a veritable inland sea where hardly for an hour have we been out of sight of land. Steaming south to Java, from Singapore, the low-lying coast jungles of Sumatra were much of the time in plain view, while Occasional glimpses of Borneo's bold headlands in the opposite direction brought out every available pair of binoculars in pretended search for its traditional wild men. Then, returning from the far end of Java, our small but very comfortable Dutch steamer skirted the shores of that latter-day Garden of Eden all the way from Sourabaya to Batavia, affording a constantly shifting panorama of cloud- wreathed mountains. Leav- 45 The Crossroads of the Eastern Seas ing Singapore's crowded harbor for Rangoon we threaded our way through a maze of islands whose beauty far surpasses that of the famed Thousand Islands of the St. Lawrence. And now, far up in that man-sized sea which, for some unaccountable reason, early geographers dubbed the "Bay" of Bengal, our course lies through a channel so narrow that, to the east, the rugged promontories of the Malay Peninsula are plainly discernible, while to the west, our glasses afford most interesting close-up views of a seemingly endless succession of islets, some of them verdure-clad, coral-reefed and inhabited by nomadic tribes of fishermen, others mere rock upheavals wholly barren of both animal and vegetable life. From end to end of this great passage-way one enjoys all the charm of a sea voyage while escaping the monotony of an un- broken horizon, that tiresome accompaniment of most ocean trips. The continual alternation of land and sea and the consequent scurrying about for maps and field glasses keep us constantly on the qui vive. The only bit of real excitement we have had on this leg of the journey came the other day in the Java Sea when the cry of "Man overboard!" went up. Instantly the "Rumpius" began a sharp swing to starboard and in an incredibly short time was doubling back on her tracks, a manoeuvre by no means easy even for a small vessel when under the momentum of a 20-knot speed. After a tense five minutes or so a tiny black speck was seen bobbing about on the waves far ahead, whereupon the bridge promptly signalled for"full speed astern." This order slowed the ship to a pace which enabled a boat's crew 46 The Crossroads of the Eastern Seas of sturdy Dutch sailors to lower materially the local quick launching record and then to give an exhibition of oarsmanship that would have won applause at a Yale- Harvard regatta. When finally the limp and almost lifeless cause of all the excitement was lifted from the water a round of cheers and many "Thank Gods" went up from the anxious spectators. The fact, as afterwards developed, that the rescued man was a coolie steerage passenger whose opium slumbers had been rudely interrupted by a lurch of the ship, lessened no one's enthusiasm over the skillful manner in which the affair was handled. Then, too, "a man's a man for a' that." Most of the boats plying between Singapore, Rangoon and Calcutta make at least a few hours' stop at the small island of Penang, which lies just off the southwest coast of the Malay Peninsula. The city of Penang itself was once Great Britain's chief outpost in these regions, and even today, long after it has yielded both political and commercial supremacy to Singapore, it maintains an air of queenly superiority over the latter and all other Straits Settlements rivals. The city, as we saw it in the golden sunshine of a clear January morning, seemed a place where one might well wish to pass his proverbial last days, although after the intense heat of Singapore and the cramped quarters aboard ship we may have been overly susceptible to its charms. We landed in a sampan, that universal water taxi of the Orient, and its fantastically garbed oarsmen chat- tered like a lot of Venetian gondoliers as they deftly 47 The Crossroads of the Eastern Seas worked their way to the quay through a swarm of ocean-going vessels, fishing smacks and junks. The motor drive which followed was one long to be remembered. It took us through the clean, well paved streets of the European business district, lined with white, dazzling white, and very substantial looking buildings, out into the suburban residence section where the spacious villas of government officials, wealthy tradesmen, bankers and planters, all embowered among waving cocoanut trees along a rock-strewn shore, command superb views of the distant headlands across the bay. An hour later we encountered scenes so totally different that it was hard to believe we had not suddenly been transported to another world, for leaving the winding ocean drive at the further side of the island we returned to the city by a more direct route and in doing so passed through the native quarter where, for block after block, we again saw the familiar scenes of Peking and Canton, and also, if we guess correctly, were treated to a "pre- view" of many of the scenes which await us in Burma and India. For local color and a hodge-podge of national- ities the native quarter of Penang runs that of Singapore a close second. The guide books all dilate on the city's great botanical garden, and doubtless with good reason, but truth compels us to confess that we passed it by. This partly because we are now pretty well fed up on botanical gardens, and partly because we had chanced to hear of a much more curious though decidedly less beautiful sight nearby, one that struck us as being rather more worth while under the circumstances. It was nothing 48 The Crossroads of the Eastern Seas less than an astonishing marble temple to which the Chinese population of Penang, or at least a considerable portion thereof, regularly goes for the worship of reptiles ! This pagan sanctuary stands in the outskirts of the city in a lovely setting of tropical foliage. It has stood there for ages, and while for architectural considerations alone it well merits a visit, its chief interest to the tourist lies in the slimy menagerie it contains. Believe it or not as you may, we counted no less than 51 live snakes comfortably parked about that holy place! Several of them were gracefully entwined among the sacred images and other paraphernalia of the altar itself, others were coiled about the carved pillars supporting the dome, while the glistening, mottled skins of still others gaily festooned the ancient archways. We stopped counting at 51 simply because time forbade taking a more complete inventory. Doubtless every nook and cranny of the heathenish edifice houses a well- fed, contented, and therefore well-behaved reptile, deified by the benighted people who frequent the place. After staying awhile to watch these evidently sincere worshippers, and to speculate on their mental processes, we hurried out into the glorious sunshine of the one true God, feeling very much in accord with Mark Twain's thought when he said '*The more I see of people the better I like dogs." For a moment we were inclined to take back all the nice things we have been saying about the Chinese. But recalling that we had seen no such revolting sight in China, also that pagan religions are decidedly on the wane in that country, we concluded that John 49 The Crossroads of the Eastern Seas Chinaman as an alien in other lands is not an altogether safe criterion by which to judge those of his fellows who have stuck to the native soil. Chinese who emigrate come mainly from the ex- tremes of society, the worst class of the population and the best. The coolies who have flocked to the Phillipines, the Malay States and the islands of the south seas are apparently the dregs of the race, but along with them have come thousands of keen, intelligent traders who already are a serious menace to the white man's com- mercial control in these regions, and many of them have amassed fortunes. They maintain elaborate establish- ments, dress in the latest European style and speed to and from business in high-powered automobiles. They seem in every way "to the manner born.'* Perhaps we should speak more guardedly about amassing fortunes, for, over here, as well as in America, fortunes are melting fast. In journeying along this great north and south waterway of the antipodes, we have not permitted our interest in sights strange and picturesque to blind our eyes to the fact that this part of the world is suffering from the same blight which has brought business almost to a standstill everywhere else. Rubber, sugar, copra and tin are the principal products of the region, and all of them are today going begging in the markets of the world. Probably no city on the globe was more prosperous during the war than Singapore, yet no other has today a larger number of *'poor rich" men in proportion to its total population. * 'Frozen assets" seem to be playing even greater havoc in the trade centers of the East than in America or Europe, for 50 The Crossroads of the Eastern Seas here liquidation has been staved off much longer. Every one who had anything to sell on a big scale apparently sat tight in the confident belief that prices would event- ually right themselves, with the result that warehouses, or "godowns" as they are called in the Orient, are everywhere choked with unsold and unsalable com- modities and whole fleets of freighters are begging for cargoes that are not to be had. Surely the Kaiser made a world-wide job of it when he spilled the beans! 51 ' BEWITCHING BURMA January 1922 ANY well balanced Oriental itinerary should allow the tourist at least a week in the fascinating country which lies along the northeastern shore of the Bay of Bengal. It is a land where golden days, silvery nights, the music of tinkling pagoda bells and the laughter of a light-hearted people offer a lure well nigh irresistible. This at least is our impression in Jan- uary. Six months later, at the height of the monsoon season when the whole country is a scalding vapor bath, we would probably be less enthusiastic about it. Since 1885, Burma has been a province of British India, but aside from the artificial political ties which bind them there is little in common between the two countries. In features, dress, habits, temperament and religion there is as much difference between their peoples as between Japanese and Chinese. The rather flat, broad faces of the Burmese, attesting Mongol rather than Aryan descent, their jovial, care-free dispositions and their fondness for gay apparel, present a striking contrast to the sharp features, melancholy mien and drab attire of the natives of India proper. In Burma, religion is a recreation, while in India it is a grinding industry. The Hindu and Mohammedan faiths which between them have India by the throat have made no perceptible headway in Burma, where 86 per cent of the people are Buddhists and where, in consequence, the terrible caste system of the Hindus and the no less terrible Moslem practice of secluding 52 Bewitching Burma women are practically unknown. Buddhism, as we first encountered it in Japan, impressed us as a rather gloomy and forbidding faith, but inBurma we have been struck by the cheery matter-of-factness with which it is accepted by its followers. Here, every important temple is a sort of neighborhood center where, after a hurried observance of their ritualistic duties, the worshippers linger to trade, swap talk and amuse themselves in all sorts of childish ways. The approaches to the larger temples of Rangoon and Mandalay, mostly of the pagoda type, are lined with stalls and booths where one can buy gold leaf, flowers, candles, gongs, drums and various other kinds of devotional paraphernalia, also pretty much everything to be found in the city bazaars. And once inside the sacred precincts, the ear is greeted with a babel of voices, and the eye with a scene of slap-dash activity, far more in keeping with a street carnival than with a house of worship. Here squat groups of chattering women who have brought their knitting, a supply of enormous cheroots and a morsel of lunch for a day of delightful gossip, their ears, noses, hands and feet glittering with gaudy trinkets. Here romp their numerous and mostly naked progeny, happier even than their mothers at having escaped from sun-baked homes for a few hours respite in the cool spaces of the big temple. Here too insistent merchants of both sexes hawk their nondescript wares, the din of their shrill voices frequently interrupted by the clang of the altar gong warning everyone to save a few coppers for the purchase of a priestly blessing. 53 Bewitching Burma Priesthood is Burma's most conspicuous institution. Every male Buddhist in the country is expected to spend some definite portion of his life, even if only a few weeks, in monastic study and work ; and since many discharge this obligation at an astonishingly early age it is no uncommon thing to see mere boys of 14 or 15 in the garb of a monk. The shaven heads, long yellow robes and bare brown feet of the monks of Burma will always remain one of our most vivid memories of this bewitching country. Seemingly a third of the male population, old, middle-aged and young, is thus attired, its chief occupation apparently being to wander from house to house, armed with the same sort of beggar's bowl that Kim's beloved lama carried in the Kipling story. This alms-gathering system of the Buddhist church in Burma is assuredly an air-tight, 100 per cent perfect one. Usually the expected toll is immediately forth- coming, but if it isn't the priestly beggar takes up his position directly before the door of the slacker's home, and there he stands, hours at a time if need be, motion- less as a statue, bowl extended, silently but eloquently advertising the penurious household to every passer-by. It is a species of picketing calculated to make the tightest of churchly tight-wads dig up. The pagodas of Burma, unlike the angular, many- storied ones common to China and Japan, are bell-like in form, a sort of elongated bell whose height is altogether out of proportion to its breadth. Each one is surmount- ed by a small umbrella-shaped spire called a ti, from whose encircling rings are suspended clusters of tiny bells so delicately adjusted that the slightest breeze 54 Bewitching Burma starts their tinkling melodies. In these musical high- pitched pagoda bells we seemed to detect another of the blithesome notes which Buddhism sounds in Burma — a note quite different from the doleful one it sounds in Japan, the massive bells of whose temples, when struck on the outer rim by the swing of a ponderous wooden beam, boom forth a deep knell which reverberates like distant thunder. All Burma is bespattered with pagodas, for he who causes the erection of one is regarded as a saint while upon earth and as certain of eternal happiness in the hereafter. You run on to them everywhere in the cities and towns, while their graceful and beautifully embel- lished forms are to be seen in the most unexpected places throughout the country districts, many being perched on the tops of almost inaccessible mountains. The greatest of them all is the famed Swe Dagon at Rangoon, which for six centuries, a portion of it for more than twenty centuries, has soared into the blue from an artificial terrace 166 feet high in the outskirts of that city. The structure itself is 370 feet high, with a circumference at the base of 1355 feet, and its entire surface, every inch of it from top to bottom, is covered with pure gold leaf! The multitude of tiny bells which dangle from its ti are of jewelled gold and silver, and its ultra-polygonal, almost circular, walls are supposed to guard some of the actual relics not only of the great Gautama, but also of the three other Buddhas who, long before the Christian era, preceded him. From whatever direction one approaches Rangoon, whether by river or by sea, this dazzling land- 55 Bewitching Burma mark can be seen many miles away, piercing the sky like a flaming torch. Clustered about its base, crowding the utmost limits of the great masonry terrace on which it stands, are hundreds of lesser pagodas, shrines and altars, each a mass of fantastic carvings and bril- liant color and each containing the stereotyped image of Buddha in marble, alabaster, bronze, sun-dried clay or wood — some sitting, some standing, others reclining. In Burma even the features of Charlie Chaplin are no better known than those of Buddha. For the unbeliever, a close inspection of this amazing conglomeration of sanctuaries is no easy matter because to gain access to the lofty terrace on which they elbow each other he (.and she as well) must remove both shoes and stockings and toil barefooted up seemingly endless flights of worn, filth-covered flagstone steps. In Japan we had become accustomed to exchanging shoes for sandals when visiting the holy places of Buddhism, but in Burma we quickly discovered that the hosiery must go also. The experience brought back happy boyhood memories, and they tell us that if we do much exploring of Hindu temples over in India proper we will have even greater occasion to recall those care-free days when stone bruises rather than corns were youth's common affliction. Despite its Swe Dagon and other strange oriental sights, Rangoon has a strong flavor of modern commer- cialism, for it is an important seaport town and the English have established many thri\'ing industries there. To get a glimpse of the real Burma we therefore motored up to Pegu, saw the thousand-year-old rechning figure of 56 Bewitching Burma Buddha — a granite statue 181 feet long, 46 feet high at the shoulder — which is the chief attraction of that place, and then went on by train to Mandalay, the cap- ital of the old Burmese kings, 300 miles further north. Although this quaint city, so widely famed by Kipling's pen, has a population of 138,000, unfortunately it possesses no hotel, at least none fit for Europeans or Americans. This circumstance compelled us to accept the hospitality of the local *'Dak Bungalow," as govern- ment rest houses are called thoughout the British East Indies. There, however, by supplying our own bedding and giving the steward in charge a liberal tip for cooking our food, we managed to get along quite comfortably for two nights. In the course of our recent zig-zagging some evilly disposed person (or perhaps he was only ignorant) came near cheating us out of a visit to Mandalay altogether by hinting that it offered nothing of sufficient interest to compensate for the hot, dusty and generally dis- agreeable railway journey from Rangoon. But as matters turned out, we heartily wished that the single day we did have there might have been at least three, for on the strength of even that shamefully brief visit we pronounced it the most interesting Oriental city we had yet seen save Peking ; and Peking, like Rome, is beyond the pale of comparisons. To do justice to Mandalay one should write a volume about it, but perhaps you can get some hazy idea of the place by coming with us on an imaginary climb up one of the almost interminable flights of stone steps that lead 57 Bewitching Burma to the templed summit of Mandalay Hill, an isolated mound several hundred feet high which rises abruptly from the northern edge of the city. From this eminence you will see a wonderful system of artificial lakes and canals interlacinga veritable forest of pagodas, and in the center of the picture, an immense square, each of whose sides is 134 miles long, bounded by a red brick wall 26 feet high, which in turn is surrounded by a moat 220 feet wide, — a moat still brimful of real water, quite unlike most moats you see in the East. This great square con- tains the palace, or rather litter of palaces, once occupied by the despotic kings of Burma and their numerous wives, concubines and retainers. Some of these palaces stand to-day in all the gaudy beauty that was theirs when the last dynasty fell, but mostly they have been converted to modern and more practical uses by the British conqueror. We must not leave Mandalay without at least a look at two of its most remarkable sights. The first is known as "The 730 Pagodas" — an immense walled enclosure in which stands a wilderness of small stone structures of the pagoda type. Their exact num- ber is 729 and they are uniformly about 20 feet high, all elaborately carved and each sheltering an upright marble slab on which is engraved a chapter from the holy books of Buddhism. The second of the most extraordinary sights is the great Arakan pagoda, whose approaches are guarded by a battalion of enormous, misshapen, stone figures, the function of which is to scare away evil spirits. * 'Devil-chasers," these grotesque images are called; 58 Bewitching Burma and if hideous grins, bulging eyes and belligerent attitudes count for anything they ought to be highly efficient at the job. In the holy shrine of this pagoda sits a gigantic image of Buddha. On its head, shoulders and breast dozens of half -naked worshippers can at any time be seen "acquiring merit" as they diligently apply to those portions of the great figure their hard earned contributions of pure gold leaf. At the rate the Buddha's golden proportions were expanding under this treatment the day we were there it struck us that sooner or later they must inevitably burst their rather cramped confines. Presumably, however, the monkish custodians of the place are too thrifty to let an undue accumulation of marketable gold leaf invite so dire a calamity. No one can view the innumerable pagodas, temples, shrines and monasteries in and about Mandalay without feeling that in the early days of the city the erection of such structures must have been the sole occupation of its inhabitants. And we are told (lack of time forbade our detouring to it) that the ancient capital of Burma, a place called Pagan, was once even more crowded with religious buildings. That city, whose ruins can still be traced over a region 20 miles long by 5 miles broad, is credited with having possessed 13,000 pagodas, and it is said that even today the remnants of no less than 5,000 can be counted there. Beneath his veneer of Buddhism the Burman, particularly of the rural districts, is a devout nature- worshipper. However casual or matter-of-fact may be his public performance of temple rites, he is constantly bowing down in private to his nats, 59 Bewitching Burma the spirits of the air, the sea, the land, mountains, streams and practically everything else with which his physical senses have made him acquainted. To these nats he erects his household shrines, and to them he continually goes before undertaking the smallest ven- tures. In his eyes even an inanimate hand tool has a conscious spirit which must be propitiated. The unaccountable thing about it all is that a people so intensely superstitious should at the same time be so gay, light-hearted and pleasure loving. This leads us to speak of a form of Burmese entertainment, which so far as we can learn, is character- istic of no other people. It is known as the pwe. When a Burman has unusual cause for rejoicing, such as the birth of a boy, the marriage of a daughter, recovery from illness, a good crop or a bit of lucky trading, he gives a pwe, which is a sort of carnival staged at his home, or more likely in the street in front of his home. It lasts all night, frequently several nights in succession, and to it everyone in the neighborhood is expected to come without being invited, the host providing refresh- ments, musicians, dancers and acrobats for the free entertainment of his guests. As someone is always giving a pwe and as everyone is always going to one, the nights of Burma are a continual round of jollification. In our ignorance we had conceived the idea that this out-of-the-way corner of the world was almost as thickly populated with elephants as with people. In the jungles which cover the northern regions of Burma such, perhaps, is the case; but in the populous delta sections of the south where, thanks to the life-giving 60 Beivitching Burma deposits of the great Irrawaddy River, the land is under high cultivation, there are fewer elephants than on any American "Main Street" on circus day. The only ones we saw were in the teak yards at Rangoon, where we found a mud-covered herd of the huge beasts busily engaged in hauling and piling logs. It was a novel sight, and we marvelled at the industry of the four-footed lumberjacks as they patiently bent to their task. Later, when their shouting mahouts suddenly ordered them to forget the logs and line up in front of our cameras, our interest waned a bit. The alacrity with which the big fellows obeyed the command, the evident effort they made to "look pretty" and the appealing way in which they afterward waved their trunks for baksheesh betrayed long practice at the begging game. Some day, before this trip is over, we hope to meet up with an elephant, at a safe distance of course, who has not been unduly commercialized. We were fortunate in witnessing the farewell appear- ance of the Prince of Wales in Burma as he sailed from Rangoon for Madras. It was a glorious day, and apparently all of the country's 12,000,000 people were at the jetty to see His Highness off. The Gandhi Non-cooperative movement having as yet made but little headway in Burma, no "hartal" had been declared there against the Prince, and consequently the streets were packed and the housetops were black with en- thusiastic natives, many of them wild tribesmen in primitive garb from the northern borders of the land. When the slim, white-clad youth mounted the "Duffer- ins" bridge and began waving his sun helmet in final adieus 61 Bewitching Burma to the throng, a British secret service man turned to us and exclaimed, '"E's a plucky little beggar, 'e is, for 'e knows blarsted well they're layin' for 'im in Madras!" 62 INDIA— THE INDESCRIBABLE February 1922 THE grandest sight in India is, of course, the Himalayas, and the most accessible point from which to view their highest peaks, Everest, Kin- chinjanga and the rest, is the beautiful hill station resort of Darjeeling, some 300 miles north of Calcutta. To reach there you leave the latter city in the evening on a broad-gauge road, transfer late at night to a metro- gauge, and early the following morning begin climbing the foothills of the "Roof of the World" on a track 24 inches wide and behind a toy-like locomotive which sputters its protest at every stop. In a brief six hours it lifts you out of the fetid vapors of a tropical jungle into the bracing ozone of a northern clime, and on the way up makes you acquainted with as many varieties of vegetation as you would see on an overland trip from the Panama Canal to Hudson Bay. And at the journey's end, what a spectacle, provided the sky is clear. When Stoddard saw it 30 years ago he exclaimed, "Merciful God! is this a revelation of the gates of pearl, the gleaming battlements of the Celestial City?" — a sentiment which the most blase traveler of today can hardly fail to echo. Imagine a gigantic procession of snow-capped moun- tains stretching east and west as far as the eye can reach, scarcely one of which is less than twice the height of Pike's Peak. Observe that although the summits of some of these colossi are more than 100 miles from where you stand, itself a spot 7,000 feet above sea level, and although 63 India — The Indescribable the nearest of them is more than 40 miles distant, you must nevertheless look up, not off or away, in order to see them. No words can convey even a feeble idea of the grandeur of these massive ramparts, nor yet of the wonderfully picturesque scene that intervenes at your very feet. Darjeeling stands high on a jutting ledge, on a sort of mountain balcony, and thus affords the eye a double feast, — upward to the glistening spurs of the world's highest pinnacles and downward, sheer thousands of feet down, into the depths of fertile valleys whose sides and floors are beautifully upholstered with the trim bushes of great tea plantations. Yet sublime scenery is not the only attraction which draws the tourist to Darjeeling. Situated on the threshold of forbidden Tibet and flanked on either side by mountainous states whose people have as yet been but little influenced by modern civilization, the town, particularly on market days, is overrun with fierce looking natives as little resembling the races of central and southern India as a Scotch High- lander resembles a Sicilian. Most of them are tall, rawboned folk of a decidedly Mongolian cast of counte- nance. The men sport pigtails and cutlasses, and the women adorn themselves with a vast amount of cumber- some jewelry, their nose hoops and pendants and their elaborately wrought earrings being especially ponderous. It is among these people, by the way, that the pleasant custom obtains of permitting several men, often brothers, to marry the same woman ! The prevailing religion is a debased form of Buddhism, characterized chiefly by a prodigal use of the prayer wheel and prayer flag. The 64 India — The Indescribable former device, whirled rapidly by the muscular worship- per, has a powerfully deterrent effect on evil spirits. The latter consists of a tall bamboo pole, frequently many of them in a group, to which petitions written on rice paper are lightly attached. When these are wafted away by the first chance breeze they speedily reach the gods and of course are as speedily answered. To turn from the world's loftiest mountains on the northern borders of India to the peaks, less than a third as high, which dominate its plains a thousand miles to the southwest is to risk an anti-climax, yet the latter, the Aravalli Hills of Rajputana, are invested with a charm all their own by reason of their extraordin- ary rock formations. Mount Abu, the most celebrated of these peaks, is strewn with black boulders of enormous size and every conceivable shape. And near its summit reposes a lake of transcendent beauty, while not far away, in a grove of mango trees, above and apart from the treadmill of Hindustan's teeming life, one stumbles onto a suc- cession of temples the like of which is not to be found in all this great land of pagan sanctuaries. They are known as the Dilwarra temples and were built some seven centuries ago by the Jains, that strange sect, part Brahman, part Buddhist, to which nearly a million and a half of the inhabitants of India fanatically adhere. The priests in charge of these temples carry their scruples against the slaughter of animals, partic- ularly cattle, to such lengths that no visitor is granted admission until he has divested himself of shoes, pocket- book, belt and any other article of leather which he 65 India — The Indescribable may chance to have on his person. This trifling annoy- ance is quickly forgotten, however, when one finally comes face to face with the entrancing sight within. Here again words are futile. We shall not attempt to put into language a description of the incomparable carvings which have so long been the despair of the world's leading sculptors, artists, architects and writers. If you can picture in your mind's eye a labyrinth of white marble domes, archways, colonnades and pillars all covered with a magic frostwork of exquisitely chiseled images — gods, satyrs, devils, men and beasts — , each of which is a real museum piece, you may, perhaps, get some faint conception of the bewildering beauty of the scene. Amazement that such sculptured wizardry existed centuries before America was discovered is equalled only by astonishment that buildings so huge and so marvelously embellished should have been tucked away in the recesses of a remote mountain. Yet when we are reminded that this is the traditional spot once inhabited by the gods it seems quite fitting that it should have been dedicated to their worship in this splendid fashion, and we can only hope that they have duly rewarded the souls of those who here "designed like Titans and wrought like jewelers" in their honor. Then the Taj Mahal at Agra! Just as the Dilwarra temples are the finest examples of profusion and deUcacy in carved marble figures in all India, so the Taj stands supreme in all the world in the extent and richness of its inlay work and in the symmetry of its architectural lines. And while the Dilwarra exteriors, fine though 66 India — The Indescribable they are, give but little hint of the wonders within, the exterior of the great tomb at Agra, with its perfectly balanced proportions and its magnificent setting— in a formal garden traversed by cypress bordered avenues through which course streams of sparkling water — is but a prelude to its superb interior. Having no more adjectives at hand we can only take refuge in the simple statement that thousands of vastly more competent judges than we have pronounced the Taj the most beautiful symphony in stone ever conceived by man; "frozen music" some one has called it. Truly, it would be little less than profanation for a lay- man to try to describe how the walls of this great mau- soleum, both inside and out, are literally frescoed with costly stones of every imaginable hue, or to endeavor to to picture the subdued twilight effect produced beneath its vaulted dome by the lace-like trellis work of its great marble screens. It all must be seen, and when seen one becomes speechless, just as at the Grand Canyon of the Colorado, or when watching a sunrise unveiling of the Himalayas from Tiger Hill back of Darjeeling. The Taj Mahal was built in the early part of the 17th century by the last of India's great trio of Mogul Em- perors, Shah Jehan. He built it to house the remains of his favorite wife, who died while bearing their fourteenth child. Both her body and his repose in its crypt. Up- wards of 10,000 workmen were engaged for twenty-two years in its construction. The edifice, which is 186 feet square, with walls 108 feet high supporting a central dome and pinnacle 217 feet high, stands on a great marble base, itself 22 feet in height and nearly two acres in extent. 67 India — The Indescribable Not the least marvelous thing about the whole wond- rous structure is its seeming youthfulness. Although completed more than a century before the signing of the Declaration of Independence, it still looks like a work of yesterday. When Shah Jehan commanded his architects to dream this marble dream he little thought that he him- self would never be permitted to inspect their finished task, yet this was the cruel trick which Fate played him. During the last seven years of the work an unfilial son, who had usurped his throne, kept him closely confined in the Jasmine* Tower of the old fort across the river. Before saying good-bye to Agra we climbed this tower to his prison cell, and gazing through its now shattered windows at the beautiful Taj, two miles away, tried to picture the emotions of the old Emperor as, year after year, he watched its stately walls rise in the distance, knowing fuU well that he could never behold the glories within them. Even had Agra no Taj Mahal, it still should be a Mecca for lovers of the beautiful. Long the seat of Mogul power, the city and its environs for miles around abound in monumental relics of that golden age of Indian architecture, relics which would be counted world wonders anywhere else but which here are com- pletely eclipsed by the Great Masterpiece. Most tour- ists, after repeated visits to the Taj to make certain that none of its sunlight, twilight or moonlight moods have escaped them, are apt to make short work of the lesser sights. They take a look at the chastely beauti- ful Pearl Mosque, said to be the finest because the most 68 India — The Indescribable symetrically proportioned Moslem sanctuary in the world; drive out to the tomb of Itimad-ud-daula, a smaller but in some respects more exquisite example of flowery architecture than the Taj itself; and perhaps continue five miles further on to pay a hurried visit to the massive tomb of Akbar, the greatest Mogul of them all — then rush to catch their train. In so doing, they not only neglect much of extraordinary interest in Agra and its immediate vicinity but they also miss one of the most impressive and, to our notion, one of the most unique of all the strange sights of India — the deserted city of Fatehspur Sikra, 23 miles away, a place which we must confess never having heard of until a few weeks ago. Here the great emperor, Akbar, when at the height of his power and fame, built a capital and for several years maintained a court which were the envy of every royal rival, Asiatic and European alike, of the glittering age in which he lived. Then, of a sudden, he abandoned it all. Just why, accounts differ, but an insufficient water supply seems to be the most commonly accepted theory. At any rate the place was evacuated almost over night and its inhabitants and all their movable belongings packed off to Agra. This happened some three hundred years ago, yet of such enduring materials and with such pains- taking care were the buildings constructed that today, given a bit of house cleaning, they remain as habit- able as ever. Fatehspur Sikri is a sort of latter-day Pompeii, with the difference that here no excavations are needed to show precisely how things looked originally. Nothing is buried, nothing is in ruins. After reading the story of 69 India — The Indescribable Akbar and his remarkable reign, and then standing on the summit of the great Gate of Victory, the highest portal of which any walled city in India can boast, it is less difficult than might be supposed to imagine these deserted streets repeopled with gay throngs in their vivid oriental colorings; to reconstruct a picture of the richly caparisoned elephants, camels and horses which once trod the now silent pavements; to believe that the walls and floors of the well preserved buildings stretching away in the distance are still covered with priceless tapestries and rugs, and that perfumed water still splashes in the marble fountains of their courts. On the whole, one gets a tremendous "kick" out of this embalmed city, something like that which one gets from the 4,000-year- old mummy of an Egyptian Pharaoh. Akbar was not only a mighty conqueror, but he was alsoa just and practical ruler, a lawgiver scarcely second to Moses and a theological student of such broad and tolerant views that he had a specially arranged audience chamber constructed for the purpose of enabling Moslems Hindus, Jews, Christians and other sects to debate the merits of their respective creeds in his presence. That he took a lively interest in these debates is evidenced by the great moral code which he himself eventually laid down for the guidance of his subjects and which was a sort of symposium of the loftiest thought of all religions. He was undoubtedly one of the world's truly great men, yet how few of us know anything about him or his once magnificent capital! At the time of our visit we were the second party of Americans who had been there in six months. 70 India — The Indescribable If the traveler in India has a liking for bona fide ruins, and is not particular about their antiquity, he should go to Lucknow and take a look at the mutilated but impressively beautiful remains of its mourned British "Residency." Here, during the Sepoy rebellion of 1857, a small English garrison was besieged for three months, during which time no less than 2,000 men, women and children perished miserably within the enclosure. Its crumbling, shot-torn walls stood proudly erect within the memory of many still living, yet to-day they look like 10th century ruins. They are remarkably picture- sque, nevertheless, for the English, to whom this one- time charnal house is a shrine, have covered it with a mantle of vines and surrounded it with lovely flower gardens in a setting of well kept lawns, all combining to make a picture that looks like a bit of old England. In going west to Delhi by way of Lucknow one should not fail to stop off a few hours at Cawnpore and visit another spot which the English hold sacred and which they have likewise transformed into a beautiful home- land park. Here, also during the Sepoy mutiny, and on a spot which was then the center of a parched plain, 230 gallant soldiers, encumbered by 700 women and children, were exposed for nearly three weeks to the fire of more than 3,000 well armed and well trained native troops. It was midsummer and the temp- erature ranged from 120o to 140oF. The rebels were sheltered from the British fire, and from the scarcely less deadly fire of the sun, by the walls and roofs of distant buildings, but the defenders and their helpless womenfolk and children lay out in the open, exposed 71 India — The Indescribable both to gunfire and to the terrible heat. When, finally, news reached the insurgents that English reinforcements were coming, an armistice was granted and the handful of survivors was escorted to the banks of the Ganges under promise of safe conduct down stream. But just as they were boarding their boat the remnants of the Httle garrison were fired upon without warning by the treacherous commander of the mutinous troops and practically all of them, both officers and men, were annihilated. Some 200 women and children were spared, only to be brought back to Cawnpore and lodged in a house containing but two rooms, each 20 feet by 10 feet in size, where during the week that ensued before succor arrived, twenty -eight of them died. With the rumblings of rebellion today again sound- ing throughout the land, is it any wonder that English women all over India turn pale with apprehension when they reflect on the tragic happenings of 1857? 72 DELHI— INDIANS NEW-OLD CAPITAL February 1922 PERHAPS nowhere else in the world can one witness such a strange mixture of yesterday, to-day and tomorrow as at Delhi. As far back as its history is written, this ancient capital has been a shining target for India's invaders, and all of them seem to have had an itch for building a new and more imposing city of their own in the near vicinity of the one captured. Wherefore, the plains round about the Delhi of today are littered with the ruined palaces, forts, temples and tombs of half a dozen Delhis of the past. And as if there were something compelling about the age-old habit, India's latest conqueror. Great Britain, is now creating still another Delhi, one which bids fair to outshine in size and magnificence, certainly in sanitation, all its historic predecessors. Since 1911, when George V. of England well nigh broke Calcutta's heart by announcing that Delhi was again to become the capital of India, the ponderous machinery which controls the governmental affairs of the country has been housed in temporary buildings scattered all over the latter city. But ere long, perhaps less than five years hence, these will be abandoned for the perma- nent structures of stone whose massive forms are already taking shape only a few miles away. We predict that one institution of present day Delhi will continue to do business indefinitely at the old stand. This is the celebrated Jami Masjid, beneath whose towering minarets most of the native population 73 Delhi — India's New-Old Capital of this predominantly Mohammedan city have for centuries worshipped and where it will doubtless con- tinue to worship, no matter at what personal in- convenience. The Jami Masjid is the largest mosque in the Orient, and any Friday morning a most remarkable sight may be seen within its walls. On that Moslem Sabbath day devout worshippers by the tens of thousands crowd its great rectangle, a granite paved court 325 feet square, and with eyes toward Mecca, their white- robed figures rising and falling in rhythmic undulations, offer praise to Allah and his prophet. Whatever may be thought of the tenets of Islam, no one can witness such a scene without feeling that its forms of worship have an intensely spiritual background. It is at least a religion which requires no such sup- erstitious and disgusting props as those with which the Hindu and Buddhist faiths are bolstered up, — no sacred cattle, monkeys, turtles or snakes, no grease- smeared altars, no foul bathing-pools, no litter of "graven images" and no temple traffic in cheap merchandise. Nevertheless the Moslem is by no means wholly devoid of superstition, and he does love to do a little thrifty trading "under the eaves," if not within the portals, of his sanctuary. At this same Jami Masjid, the high priest will show you several carefully treasured hairs from the beard of Mohammed, if you are credulous enough to pay five rupees for the privilege of seeing them, while regularly every afternoon the entire Mos- lem population of the city, it would seem from appear- 74 Delhi — India's New-Old Capital ances, encamps on the great flights of steps leading up to the mosque and there offers for sale those innumerable things which make the bazaars of India so irresistible both to native and to foreign shoppers. Another landmark of the existing Delhi which will assuredly survive the exodus to the future city is the famous old fort on the banks of the Jumna, that historic stream once robust enough to float vessels of considerable size, but now reduced to a mere rivulet through the embezzlement of its waters by a network of irrigating canals. Volumes have been written about this hoary fortress, but most tourists will carry away from it only one indelible picture — the picture of the public and private audience chambers in the splendid old palace which its ramparts protect. This palace was the work of the Shah Jehan of Taj Mahal fame, and it was there, in the private audience chamber, that the dazzling peacock throne stood until a Persian conqueror ruthlessly carted it off to Teheran. While the absence of this magnificent piece of golden furniture, with its embroidery of diamonds, sapphires, emeralds and rubies, gives the spacious hall a somewhat empty look, its splendid proportions and the great quantity of precious stones with which its walls are inlaid renders it still worthy of the ancient inscription engraved over its entrance — "If there be Paradise on earth, it is here, it is here." Yet there are paradises and paradises, and as we came out from this particular one the other morning, and saw the sky over the Jumna bottoms fairly black with ducks and geese — not the tame varieties with which every 75 Delhi — Indians New-Old Capital moist spot in India abounds, but the honest-to-goodness sort that would quicken the pulse of any Heron Lake or Long Meadow hunter in Minnesota — it struck us that to sit in a shooting-blind in the great outdoors watching for a chance to stop one of those speed law violators of the air would be a far more delightful occupation than to squat on a gem-upholstered throne of gold, dealing out life and death, mostly death, to human beings. But tastes differ and times change. While at Delhi we attended a session of the National Legislative Assembly and were much impressed with the resemblance between its procedure and that of the Eng- lish House of Commons. There were the same searching questions to cabinet members by members of the opposition; the same informing, sometimes adroitly uninforming, replies; the same scholarly debates; the same terse and decisive rulings from the suave speaker in his wig and gown. Both the Hindu turban and the Mohammedan fez were in evidence all over the chamber. Their dark-skinned wearers have an actual voting majority in the body, yet so fluently do most of them speak English that you can sit in the gallery, with closed eyes, and scarcely realize that you are not listen- ing to the proceedings of a strictly Anglo-Saxon parlia- ment. The National Assembly is the supreme lawmaking power in India and its enactments directly affect, for better or worse, a greater number of people than those of any other legislative body on earth. Fifty years ago such an institution would have been unthinkable. A decade ago, the most liberal of British statesmen would 76 Delhi — Indians New-Old Capital have declared it highly impracticable, yet to-day the Viceroy, with all the power that has been delegated him by the English government, rarely vetoes any of its measures. To an outside observer, it would seem that through the functioning of this body India already has a very substantial measure of home rule. But the Gandhites call it all a farce and demand an entirely new deal, one under which not even an English minority will have a voice. "India for the Indians!" is their cry. Right here, let us clear up a misapprehension under which we, probably in common with a good many others, have heretofore labored regarding British rule in India. While we had always known of the Native States, we had no idea of their extent nor of the very considerable authority exercised by their rulers. Less than two-thirds of the country is under actual British administration. Out of its total area of 1,773,000 square miles, 675,000 square miles belong to independent, or semi-independent, states where more than 70,000,000 of the country's 319,000,000 people are governed by native princes, variously styled Maharajahs, Maharanas, Nawabs, Nizams, Gaekwars etc. There are several hundred of these principalities, and they range in size from mere holdings of less than 20 square miles up to a domain like Hyderabad, as large as Italy, with a population of more than 13,000,000. Some of them issue their own cur- rency and postage stamps, operate railways of their own and in purely internal matters have full sovereign authority. In several instances the native ruler even exercises the power of life and death over his subjects. All that the foster mother, Great Britain, demands 77 Delhi — India's New-Old Capital is that local affairs within the Native States shall be ad- ministered along substantially the same enlightened lines which she herself endeavors to pursue in her own provinces, such as Bengal, Bombay and Madras. She also demands that the native potentates shall not become embroiled in quarrels among themselves nor with any foreign power, nor do anything, in short, calculated to embarrass the administration of affairs in British India proper. In exchange for all this she pledges herself to respect the territorial integrity of the Native States and agrees also to protect them against the aggressions of others. On the whole, the arrangement seems to work very satisfactorily. Almost without exception the native princes are thoroughly loyal to the British crown, while their subjects seem far less disposed to listen to revo- lutionary talk than do those in the provinces which are directly under British rule. The Gandhi Non-co-oper- ative movement has apparently made but little headway in most of the Native States, possibly because their rulers have been more alert than the English provincial governors to see that it did not gain a foothold. Our four days stay at Delhi was enlivened by the feverish preparations then under way for the coming of the Prince of Wales the following week. The Non- co-operators had proclaimed a "hartaV (boycott) against all public functions in his honor, just as they had done practically everywhere else on his trip, To counteract this, the government, and the English colony of Delhi as a whole, were putting forth extraordinary efforts to stage a spectacle calculated to show the entire country how 78 Delhi — India's New-Old Capital loyal its capital was to the future King of Great Britain and Emperor of India. The city looked like an armed camp when we arrived, and fresh detachments of troops poured in by every train. For two hours each morning the streets over which the royal procession was to pass were closed to traffic while all branches of the service were put through a most exacting rehearsal of their part in the forthcoming pageant. To the martial strains of band music and the shrill wail of bagpipes, John Bull's handpicked fighting men from all over India streamed through the city, the brilliant uniforms and banners of the Sikh, Gurkha and other native regiments offering a picturesque contrast to the plaid kilts of the Highlanders and the toneless khaki of the Tommies. Poor little Prince! He certainly has been worked like a slave in India this winter. Ever since landing in Bombay last November, his daily program has varied only occasionally and in very slight degree from this: awakened in the private car of his royal train by the inevitable "God Save the King," played by an enthus- iastic local band; breakfasting with the reception committee; acknowledging the plaudits of the crowd, or at least of the English portion thereof, as his long proces- sion wends its way to the official residence of some provincial governor or to the palace of some native prince; listening to the reading of a tedious address of welcome and reading in turn an equally tedious response, whose author must carry with him a complete library of everything extant on Indian history, economics and politics; an "informal" six-course luncheon with local 79 Delhi — Indians Neiv-Old Capital celebrities; then a game of polo or a mount at the racetrack, followed by tea at an afternoon garden party. Finally, a formal ten -course dinner as a prelude to the usual grand ball and then, at midnight or later, back to the special train for a few hours sleep before being summoned by the national anthem for another day of like sort at the next stop. And he stops pretty much everywhere ! Yet the "Wonderful Little Beggar," as the English in India affectionately call him, has stood up under the ordeal month after month remarkably well; the "close-up" we had of him at Rangoon the day he sailed for Madras convinced us of that fact. Although he had just finished a particularly dizzy week in Burma, and although the elaborate farewell ceremonies had exposed him for hours to the punishing heat, the infectious smile which every- where wins him friends was still doing duty. His zest in the proceedings seemed boyishly unaffected. The prevalent opinion among the English with whom we have talked is that it was decidedly tactless for the government to send the heir apparent out here at a time when political conditions are so much awry, but however that may be, the Prince has certainly carried himself exceedingly well. Even though given the cold shoulder by most of the natives, he has appar- ently committed no indiscretion likely to widen the breach between them and the authorities. But how he must long to be a plain nobody for a few months, and what a terrible prospect for a very human chap in his twenties to look forward to, whether as prince or king, — 80 Delhi— India's New-Old Capital everlastingly in the limelight, eternally discharging the tiresome functions which nowadays are encumbent upon figurehead royalty! 81 SOME TYPICAL NATIVE STATES February 1922 NO tour of India is complete without at least a look in on some of the Native States, hence we paid hurried visits to Jaipur, Udaipur and Baroda, which are fairly typical of most such principalities. Jaipur On reaching the capital of Jaipur, a city of the same name on the direct route from Delhi to Bombay, we realized that at last we were in the India of our dreams. For here were plenty of elephants, not the menial sort we had seen laboring belly -deep in the mire of Rangoon's teak yards, but clean, classy looking fellows, artistically tatooed and otherwise dolled up, who swung their ponderous hulks in the most matter-of-fact way through the city's congested streets. Here that "ship of the desert," the camel, was everj^ where in evidence, seemingly better fed, better groomed and even more supercilious than any of his tribe we had encountered before. Lumbering bullock carts piled high with pro- duce and wares of every description, droves of sheep and goats, and the usual contingent of sacred cows, accentuated the oriental scene. But the oddest sight of all, to our unaccustomed eyes, was the Jaipur beard. The face of the present Maharajah of the state is concealed behind a wirey bunch of whiskers, parted with precision in the middle and bristling stiffly out to right and left like the wings of an aeroplane. The royal fashion thus set has been faithfully followed by most of the male adults of the 82 Some Typical Native States population, who, however, have gone His Highness one better by dyeing their facial bird-nests a bright red! As nearly every third man one jostles against in Jaipur's crowded streets supplements his fiery beard with a brilliant uniform and shining side-arms, marking him either as a government official or an officer of the Rajah's toy army, our first impression of the place was that we had fallen amongst a people possessing an insatiable thirst for blood. We quickly discovered, however, that these fierce exteriors mask dispositions as mild as any to be found in the East. The city of Jaipur has a population of about 140,000, and being less than two centuries old is quite modern, as time is counted in the Orient. It is the only place in India which shows much evidence of real city planning, being laid out in rectangular blocks with thoroughfares more than 100 feet wide, most of them fairly well paved. It has a pretty little park, an interesting museum and a hospital manned by European physicians . But here all twentieth century symptoms cease, for there are neither sewers, water mains, trolley cars, telephones, electric lights nor even a solitary movie, while the automobiles, most of them graduates of the class of 1912, can be counted on the fingers of one hand. And punctually at nine o'clock each evening the massive city gates are closed and locked, just as in olden times when a night attack from some roving enemy had to be guarded against. The buildings of Jaipur are commonly four or five stories in height, and their rose-tinted stucco fronts frequently are adorned with huge pictures of fighting 83 Some Typical Native States elephants. We were told that all this fierce pictorial display relates to some early incident in the history of the city, but exactly what it was no one seemed to know. Being much more interested in the flesh and blood elephants of the Jaipur of today than in these crude mural paintings of their belligerent ancestors, we lost no time in visiting the royal stables of the Rajah where some splendid specimens of the beasts were seen, to- gether with a herd of disdainful looking camels and scores of pure-stock Arabian horses. Several of the latter were put through their paces for our entertain- ment. One of them, just to show how thoroughly house broken he was, was ridden up and down the steep stairs which ascend to the quarters of the head groom. On the second day of our stay at Jaipur, we climbed to the boat deck of one of the royal Jumbos for a trip up to Amber, the ancient capital of the state. It proved a tempestuous voyage and so tediously slow that we were glad to swap mounts at the end of the climb and make the return trip wedged in between the humps of a speedier though scarcely less bone-racking camel. An elephant or camel ride is the ambition of every tourist in India, but one such experience is usually enough. Amber dates back to the 10th century. Its ruins, now inhabited by a band of unusually large, long- tailed monkeys, cluster together in a defile of the moun- tains some seven miles from Jaipur. One gets a fine view of its crumbling walls from the 16th-century palace which clings to the side of the bluff midway between the old capital and the new. And looking back through the 84 Some Typical Native States alabaster latticed casements of that palace toward the modern city the eye sweeps a striking panorama — a pretty artificial lake at the foot of the cliff, a battle- mented wall, almost as impressive as the great wall of China, winding up and down for miles over the jungle- covered mountains, and beyond, the rose-hued buildings of Jaipur. In the still further distance, the bleak desert of Rajputana stretches away from the city, whose suburbs are already slowly submerging in its sands, to the dim, far-off horizon. On the return voyage from Amber, we came upon a couple of naked citizens perched on the top of a high mud wall, their black bodies making a picturesque silhouette against the gray background of the mountainside. It was not their nakedness, however, that attracted us, for of that we have had plenty the past few weeks, but rather the tremendous headgear they wore which resembled enormous turbans, and at a distance appeared to consist of the usual cheap fabric in which the Hindu delights to swath his head. Our guide informed us that in this case the material was hair, not cloth, — live, growing hair at that. Being skeptical on the point, we opened up negotiations with the more heavily en- dowed of the two gentlemen with a view to having his alleged tresses uncoiled and photographed, and after a lengthy parley over how much we should contribute to '*temple repairs" for the privilege (these being "holy men" of an ultra-holy sect) we finally succeeded in making one of the most interesting films of our entire collection. When developed it revealed the Apollo-like figure of a young though bearded Indian, clothed from head to 85 Some Typical Native States foot in nature's garb, his countenance of a decidedly- intellectual cast, and in his outstretched arms two eight- foot lengths of luxuriant, firmly rooted hair! It was a picture which brought vividly to mind the boyhood awe with which we used to gaze on the hirsute cascades of those celebrated Seven Sisters, as they posed in the window of their 14th Street establishment in old New York. The Maharajah of Jaipur rules over a territory one- quarter as large as Minnesota with a population 500,000 greater than ours. He lives in a gaudy palace of sky- scraper height containing hundreds of rooms. It is surrounded by pretentiously designed but ill-kept grounds which occupy the center of the city and cover one-seventh of its area. He has reigned 39 years, is now partially paralyzed (the excuse given for not admitting tourists to his palace), and having no legitimate male descendant has recently adopted an heir. He is famed throughout India for his benevolence, — with money, of course, which his nearly 3,000,000 subjects contribute in taxes and rents to his coffers. Apart from the British political agent and his staff, who constitute the sole connecting link between the Maharajah and the government of India, there are almost no European residents in Jaipur. It is Asiatic to the core. Udaipur Even more primitive than Jaipur, and much less accessible, is Udaipur. On the way to the latter city our car was cut out of the "Bombay Mail" at Ajmer during the night and attached to a branch line 86 Some Typical Native States train which deposited us early the following morning at a little station called Chitorgahr. That name meant nothing to us, nor at first glance was there anything about the place to distinguish it from hundreds of other way stations which these roving Indian railways have endowed with water tank, turn table and refreshment room. But a second look sent us digging into our guide-books, for there, almost within hailing distance, a great Gibraltar-like rock rose abruptly out of the plain, its four-mile long crest buttressed from end to end by the gray walls of a once splendid citadel. These impressive ruins proved to be the remains of ancient Chitor, than which no spot in India is more replete with tragic memories. It was here, for example, that the virtuous wife of a Rajput prince fled to an underground fortress and after barricading its entrance deliberately cremated herself and more than a hundred of her faithful maid-servants and women of the court in order to escape the lustful Moham- medan invader who had vanquished her husband's army. A few days later, on our way back from Udaipur, we stopped to explore these historic heights, so rarely visited by tourists. Although the trip was a hard one, on the straw-covered bottom of a springless bullock cart and through suffocating clouds of dust, it proved well worth all the discomfort it cost. After a hasty breakfast at the little station beneath Chitor's frowning towers, we transferred to the narrow gauge road which the Maharana of Udaipur maintains, rather reluctantly we are told, between the outside world and his capital. The distance is only 69 miles. 87 Some Typical Native States but it took all forenoon to negotiate it, thanks to an asthmatic engine, a makeshift roadbed and an endless succession of mud villages, at each of which the train crew found it necessary to revive their waning energies. The country traversed proved the most uninteresting, even forbidding, we had yet seen in India. It was almost a desert with little to relieve its drear mono- tony save an occasional outcrop of snowy marble, as snowy as any from the quarries of Carrara. The nearer we got to Udaipur the less probable it seemed that amid such desolate surroundings we were likely to find "the most beautifully situated city in India." But at last, almost without warning, our indolent train turned its back on the barren plain, plunged into a mountain defile, and half an hour later we found our- selves gazing on a scene of indescribable loveliness from the veranda of Udaipur's one hotel. This bare, jail- like establishment, by courtesy called a hotel, is sub- sidized by the Maharana in order that the occasional, and none too welcome tourist, may not go entirely without food or lodging when visiting his domains. It is situated on an eminence nearly a mile from the city and for that circumstance we soon came to be devoutly thankful, Udaipur being one of those places to which distance lends enchantment; like a large oil painting, not to be examined too closely. At our feet, surrounded by a high bastioned wall, lay a veritable dream city, a city of creamy whiteness, from the center of which, and flanked by gardens of tropical green, towered the imposing, many-storied palace of the Maharana. Between the granite cupolas of this lofty 88 Some Typical Native States pile glimpses could be had of the charming lake on whose hither shore it stands, and of two marble-capped islands in the distance. Beyond and to either side, as a frame for the whole fairy picture, rose tier upon tier of billowy hills all covered with a green growth of jungle. Nowhere in our travels had we seen a more alluring combination of God's handiwork and man's, par- ticularly as it appeared a few hours later in the soft shades of approaching dusk. But when inspecting this ethereal city at short range the following day we received another and quite different impression of its charms, for we found it nec- essary to thread our way through narrow, crooked streets littered with ill-smelling refuse and lined with half- decayed buildings whose creaminess was oftener that of whitewash than marble, — streets thronged with wretched- ly clad, sad-visaged people, as forlorn looking as the scrawny cattle, goats, dogs and camels wit h which they mingled on fraternal terms. It was in the great palace itself that disillusionment became complete. Here we wandered through rooms without end and climbed stairs interminable only to meet everywhere tawdry magnificence, a hideous clash of colors, a riotous mess of ill-mated furniture and furnishings. Imagine a wooden rocker of the cheapest American make in close communion with a solid silver bedstead of exquisite oriental design, or a room whose blue tiled ceiling, red upholstered chairs and bright green table-spread contend noisily with a priceless rug of imperial yellow ! The present generation of Indian princes seem to have inherited none of the good Some Typical Native States taste of their beauty-loving ancestors. Their fabulous wealth and inordinate love of display only produce results calculated to drive an artistic house decorator to drink, and His Highness, Maharajad Hiraja Maharana Sir Fateh Singh Bahadur, G. C. S. C, G. C. I. E., G. C. V. O. (such is how the occupant of Udaipur's palatial abomination signs himself) is no exception to the rule. This particular 'Raja is rated in India's "Who's Who" as the bluest of blue-blooded princes, for his line extends back to the original Sun-stock of Oudh, beyond which Hindustan's aristocracy takes no account of fam- ily trees. At all great functions he claims precedence, as India's premier prince, over the representatives of all rival houses ; and odd stories are told of how he even insists that British royalty shall treat him as an equal. He rules, with a none too gentle hand, over a state less than one-sixth in area, but whose population is more than one-half that of Minnesota and, himself living in a past age, he discourages his people in every pos- sible way from adopting modern ideas. Automobiles are taboo in his realm; and even the state carriages, which he condescendingly permits visitors to use in lieu thereof, are of a vintage long obsolete in the outside world, as are also the threadbare liveries of the coach- men who drive them. Yet despite fossilized ideas and extreme old age the Maharana of Udaipur is no slouch of a Nimrod and he still takes keen delight in stopping the onrush of a tiger. This sport he has reduced to a decidedly efficient system, being careful to take no bodily risk in its pursuit. On the hills of his realm, watchers equipped with power- 90 Some Typical Native States fill field glasses are constantly on the look-out, and when one of them sights a tiger, or even a leopard or panther, the news is promptly flashed from hilltop to hilltop by heliograph. When it reaches the palace, His Highness hurries off to the shooting-box nearest "the front", and once safely ensconced thereon takes his ease while a small army of beaters drive the quarry within range of his guns. Protruding above the foliage of the low growing jungle the walls of these fortress-like "boxes" may be seen at frequent intervals all over the landscape; and as many of them bear evidence of considerable antiquity the wonder is that any big game at all is left in the country. For in Udaipur there is no closed season for the benefit of tigers and their lordly brethren. Since time immemorial they have been subjected to this same systematic slaughter. In this queer old capital of what is perhaps the most backward of India's native states it seems pass- ing strange to find a modern penal institution. Yet, barring its whipping-post and the practice of keeping the convicts in irons (irons that reach from ankle to waist) , the state prison of Udaipur is not only modern in construction and appointments but almost a model in its methods. Never have we seen a cleaner, more sanitary, better ordered place of the kind, nor one whose inmates apparently were more reconciled to their lot. Everyone was at work, either carding, spinning or weaving, or in turning pottery, and the whole institution hummed with industry like a busy factory. Paroles are an unknown luxury in Udaipur's criminal code; every prisoner must serve his full time. 91 Some TypicoTNative States Perhaps the absence of uncertainty on that point explains in some measure why the convicts seem to accept their punishment so philosophically. The last night of our stay in the Maharana's do- minions, a crew of royal but ragged oarsmen rowed us across beautiful Lake Pichola in state barges that had seen better days. One of the marble pavilion- crowned islands at the further end of the lake was our objective, and, true to Udaipur form, it proved less enchanting on close acquaintance than afar off. But we were richly rewarded for making the trip, be- cause it afforded a strikingly different, yet no less charming, view of the quaint old town and the huge palace that bestrides it than that on which our eyes had been feasting from the veranda of our barracks- like hotel. The sun hung low over the western hills, and as its level rays gilded the towers and fired the windows on the opposite shore we once more found ourselves gazing on a celestial city, forgetting the ugliness which its ancient walls concealed. Baroda After the senile mediaevalism of Udaipur one is scarcely prepared for the twentieth-century snap and vig- or of Baroda. The night we stepped from our train on to the brilliantly illuminated platform of Baroda's fine railway station the contrast between these neighbor- ing native states began to be apparent at once. It became increasingly apparent when, instead of being rushed off by the frenzied driver of some unspeakable wheeled contraption to an equally unspeakable hotel, we were conducted in an up-to-date auto bus to the royal 92 Some Typical Native States guest house which, in the absence of other hotel accommo- dations, the native ruler of this little realm courteously throws open to the tired traveler, provided he be prop- erly credentialed and previously booked. To our still further surprise we found an excellent course dinner awaiting us in this cozy, home-like place, a dinner which in all its appointments would have done credit to any first class metropolitan hotel. Some shock, after the sort of culinary grief, grudging hospitality and all round discomfort to which we had lately been subjected! We speak of these first impressions of Baroda be- cause they typify so many equally pleasing ones which came afterward. The city itself, population 100,000, is full of agreeable surprises to those just arrived from the jungle-desert towns of Rajputana. It has a modern water system and electric light plant. Its principal streets are wide and well paved, and are kept constantly clean by the ceaseless sweeping of hundreds of the lowest of low caste "untouchables," mostly women. Sub- stantial public edifices, municipal, school, library and hospital buildings, are to be seen on every hand. There is a fine park containing an unusually interesting zoologi- cal collection, also a pretentious museum of native art and industry which in several important respects has no equal in India. While the inevitable Hindu temple is a common sight, its influence is measurably curtailed by a system of compulsory but free education, supplemented by an excellent technical school and a thriving branch of the Bombay University. For all of these blessings, credit is due to the pro- gressive, wide-awake prince who rules, with the title of 93 Some Typical Native States Gaekwar, over the 8,000 square miles and 2,000,000 people of the state. Despite the comparatively insig- nificant size of his domain he is reputed to be one of the wealthiest of Indian princes, and many regard him as the most enlightened one. He has had an English university education and has traveled extensively in foreign lands, the trip to America nearly 20 years ago, when he was entertained by President Roosevelt at the White House, being a particularly memorable one. Much of his time is spent in Switzerland, where he owns a fine old castle on the shores of Lake Geneva and from which he keeps in close touch with affairs at home. His Highness was compelled to be in Bombay at the time of our visit to his capital, and that cruel cir- cumstance deprived him of the pleasure of making our acquaintance; but before leaving Baroda he had thought- fully instructed an orderly to show us through the royal palaces, of which there are two in that neighborhood and several more elsewhere. The oldest and largest of these establishments is located in a great park some six miles from the city and was erected long ago by one of the Gaekwar's princely forebears. Though somewhat less garish in tone than those of the great palace at Udaipur, its furnishings would nevertheless give a modern interior decorator nervous prostration. The smaller palace in the outskirts of the city (a diminutive term sounds queer when applied to so huge a pile) is decorated and furnished in much more artistic fashion, and we spent delightful hours wandering through its labyrinth of lofty rooms. Here the Gaekwar makes his permanent home, and when we went to visit it every- 94 Some Typical Native States thing was thrown open to our inspection, save only the private apartments of his wife. We were particularly interested in the room where this swarthy-faced and highly intelligent potentate tran- sacts the affairs of state and attends to the details of his manifold business enterprises. The furniture was mas- sive but in excellent taste and no convenience of a modern office was lacking, whether typewriter, correspondence files, call bells or any other time-saver. In a bookcase within easy reach of the Gaekwar's large flat top desk were the leading English, American and French maga- zines of the day. It was just such a workshop as that in which many an American governor, mayor or business man grinds out his daily grist. This ornate palace of mixed Moorish and Indian design stands in the midst of a wooded park whose palm- fringed driveways, close-cropped lawns, stately fountains and wealth of flowers denote the expert care of an up-to- date landscape gardener. The home of the Gaekwar of Baroda is as lovely without as within, and had we seen no other examples of how the native princes of India attempt to beautify their establishments we might have left the country with glowing stories of their good taste. Ten minutes in a motor car across town, and we ar- rive at the royal stables, where interest centers in the state elephants. The herd numbers twenty-two huge chaps, each of whom could easily qualify, both in size and sagacity, for a stellar role in any American circus. In an adjoining building is housed a prodigious array of state howdahs. There are single, double and four- seated howdahs; howdahs for tiger hunts, for funerals, 95 Some Typical Native States weddings and festivals, each with its appropriate accom- paniment of gold, silver and jewel encrusted trappings. On gala days, when all the proud peanut eaters fare forth in their Sunday best, one wonders how the elephant ward- robe master, or whatever they call him, can untangle this mass of sumptuous finery without the aid of a card Index. In another building near by we spent some time inspecting the ordnance department of the Gaekwar's *'army." This consists of two pieces of artillery no larger than the French "75s", yet in all the world there are no cannon like them, for one is of solid gold and the other of solid silver! We were surprised to learn that this extraordinary battery has never fired anything more expensive than common iron shot. One would think that platinum cased, diamond loaded shrapnel would be none too good for such costly field pieces. By far the most remarkable sight in Baroda is the Gaekwar's celebrated collection of crown jewels, said to be the most costly privately owned collection in existence. Among its treasures are a pearl necklace valued at $500,000, besides one of diamonds, (headed by the great *'Star of the South" stone) whose valuation is placed at a paltry $1,000,000. Originally the "Star" weighed 254 carats, but today, in consequence of repeated cuttings, it weighs only 125! The collection also contains enough exquisitely mounted sapphire, emerald and ruby pieces to stagger any Rue de la Paix or Fifth Avenue jeweler, and by way of extreme novelty includes a carpet into whose pattern are woven thousands of genuine pearls. You must not assume from our enthusiasm over 96 Some Typical Native States Baroda's modern aspects that it is by any means lacking in oriental color. Any such idea would quickly be dis- pelled should you chance to get caught in the maelstrom of its teeming life on market day, as we did the morning of our departure for Bombay. At such a time you would see a wide street packed for blocks, and from curb to curb, with a mass of seething, shouting, gesticulating Hindus in their white, or once white, turbans and flowing tunics, and sandwiched amongst them every imaginable sort of burden-laden beast — a picture of the East through and through, but a better fed, better clothed, apparently happier East than we have seen anywhere outside of Burma. 97 RURAL INDIA, NATIVE TRAVEL AND THE RAILWAYS February 1922 IT is one thing to cross the continent of India by a route along which cities of such surpassing interest as Benares, Agra, Delhi, Jaipur and Baroda are constantly breaking one's journey, and quite another thing to recross it by a route which offers no such be- guiling interruptions. The truth of this observation was borne in on us as we completed the thirty-two hour trip from Bombay on the Arabian Sea over to Madras, where we again found ourselves on the shores of the Bay of Bengal, — a hot, dusty, tedious trip at best but in this instance rendered the more unbearable by the thoughtfulness of the G. I. P. railway's management in assigning to us its star piece of rolling stock, a "private" carriage unrivaled in all India for antiquity, dirt, flat tires and red ants. Yet it was a trip that had its compensations. Our train was slow and inclined to loiter at every station, hence we were afforded a much better opportunity to study the rural life of the country, the characteristics of native travelers and the manner in which the business of railroading is conducted than was possible on the hop, skip and jump journey from Calcutta across to Bombay. Dealing with the above subjects in their order, it should first be remarked that 70 out of every 100 of India's inhabitants are agriculturists, producing practi- cally every known crop, from wheat, corn, barley, rye and jute in the North, to rice, cotton, sugar cane, tobacco, 98 Rural India, Native Travel and the Railways copra and indigo in the South. Under present conditions the cultivator, or ryot, as the farmer is called, realizes a net income of four or five annas a day, less than ten cents gold, from his produce, and with this he manages to eke out a bare existence. When occasionally he sets out for the nearest city, bent on a genuinely big time, he in- sures himself abundant capital for the excursion by loading his donkey with a 150-pound cargo of sun-baked cow dung, for which city dwellers in need of fuel may pay him a whole rupee, or about 28 cents gold at the present rate of exchange. The isolated farm house is an almost unknown sight in India, practically all of the ryots congregating together in little mud villages where they spend their dark, cheer- less nights and from whence they sally forth at dawn each morning for a long day's toil in the neighboring fields. Rural India, as seen from a train window, con- vinces one that the people as a whole must be living substantially the same lives that their ancestors lived centuries ago, in which particular our impressions of India and China are identical. Because of the uncertain rainfall, farming in many sections of the country is largely dependent upon irriga- tion. During recent years most of the important streams have been systematically bled in order to furnish water for the land, so much so, in fact, that during the dry season many of them are little more than winding rivers of sand. Yet notwithstanding the gov- ernment's numerous and costly irrigation projects, the chief supply of water continues to come from the primitive wells of the cultivators. One of the 99 Rural India, Native Travel and the Railways most familiar sights of India is a team of long- horned bullocks making repeated trips down an inclined pathway from the rim of one of these ancient wells, furnishing the power which lifts a huge skin of water from the depths below to be fed by the ryot into his little system of irrigating canals. In a land where modern reapers and threshers have made no perceptible headway against those ancient hand implements, the sickle and the flail, — where a chilled plow is still a curiosity and where most travel continues to be done afoot, in bullock carts or astride asses and camels — it seems incongruous in the extreme to find railways. Yet here they are and, mile for mile, they handle about the heaviest traffic in the world, in folks if not freight. Where people are counted by the hundreds of millions and where railway development is still in its infancy, a very small proportion of the popu- lation can easily crowd the trains to capacity. On the westbound trip from Calcutta we had been impressed by the tremendous number of natives who were everywhere on the go, and this long trip back to the eastern coast only served to strengthen the impression. Seemingly all India was rushing to and fro over the G.I. P. Our own train was made up of two or three alleged first class carriages, but most of the wretched looking multi- tude journeying our way was herded together like sheep in the bare compartments of an endless string of third class cars. Constantly we met other trains likewise packed to suffocation with humanity of the same pitiable type, while at every stop, particularly during the small hours of the night when we were vainly seeking an oc- 100 Rural India, Native Travel and the Railways casional wink of sleep, it seemed as though all creation was surging up and down the long stone platforms. We remarked to a railway official that general conditions must be better than we had been led to believe, since such throngs of people were continually racing about the country, apparently on important business. To this he laughingly replied that real business had no bearing whatever on the errands of most native travelers, that as a matter of fact more than 75 per cent of the third class traffic fell under three heads ; first, religious fanatics bent on a pilgrimage to some holy shrine; second, people journeying to some family cere- mony or rite, such as a betrothal, a wedding, a christening or a funeral; third, litigants and their witnesses headed for the law courts. According to this official, one of the chief national pastimes in India is litigation, the average native having an incurable weakness for going to law, even over the most trivial disputes. Our own opinion is that the railways encourage much needless travel by the extremely low rates they give to third class passengers. A coolie can get transpor- tation from Bombay to Madras, 765 miles, for about 8 rupees, or less than $2.25 in our money. He must, of course, provide his own food en route, and the vehicle in which he rides is but little better than a cattle car, yet at that his discomforts are probably no greater than those to which he is accustomed in the hovel he calls home. In two noteworthy particulars the railways of India are most considerate of the native traveler. At every station there is a tap of pure running water from which the devout Hindu can fill his brass drinking bowl 101 Rural India, Native Travel and the Railways without danger of contamination from a well where some unclean compatriot has quenched his thirst. Separate lunch counters for Mohammedan travelers are also provided everywhere so that their religious dietetical whims may not be jarred. To make every one perfectly happy, the railways really ought to transport their Mohammedan patrons by one set of trains and their Hindu passengers by another, and the latter should be provided with cars containing compartments of a hundred distinct classes to correspond with at least a few of the more important castes. The trouble and expense which a high caste Hindu incurs in purifying himself after having traveled all night in close contact with some "untouchable" is no laughing matter, at least to him. Unless the prescribed rites of purification are immediately and thoroughly performed he speedily finds himself a social outcast. Regarding the Indian railways themselves, their con- struction, equipment and operating methods: like practi- cally all railway systems throughout the Orient the road beds are well ballasted and carry a heavy steel rail on which the light-weight carriages and goods vans run with remark- able smoothness. Grade crossings in the cities and towns are invariably protected by gates which swing back and forth, alternately blocking highway and railway. Double track lines are not uncommon, and train movements are quite generally controlled by a modern system of block signals, hence collisions, either "head on" or "tail end," are almost unknown. Trains are started and stopped with a quiet 102 Rural India, Native Travel and the Railways ease most gratifying to one accustomed to the jars and jolts of American trains. Station buildings and platforms are of the most sub- stantial construction, usually of stone or brick, and in the larger cities are frequently beautiful in design and imposing in size. At most way stops, there are duplicate east and west bound stations on opposite sides of the right of way, connected by an elevated passage over the tracks. Anyone attempting to cross the road bed by another route invites arrest as well as accidental injury. Tickets are examined at the gate leading to the platform and again by the guards on the train, but are not surrendered until leaving the station at des- tination. All stations in towns of any consequence are equipped with both first and second class dining rooms in which refreshments of all kinds, including the alcoholic variety, are obtainable at moderate prices. Perambu- lating lunch stands sell tea and cake at the carriage doors to those whose time or means do not permit of a full meal in the restaurant. With minor variations the foregoing conditions obtain in Japan, Korea, China, Java and the Malay states as well as in India, but the character of the train equipment itself differs considerably in those countries. In Japan, on account of the short distances, there is little night travel, and what few sleeping cars there are are constructed much on the plan of the Euro- pean "wagon-lits", with exceedingly cramped, two-berth compartments, built athwart the car and opening onto a long narrow corridor which runs from end to end of the 103 Rural India, Native Travel and the Railways vehicle. Tiny, and usually very dark, toilet rooms are found between alternate compartments. Chinese sleeping cars are of a somewhat similar type, but in Java there are none at all, for no night trains whatever are operated in that country. The journey from Batavia to Sourabaya, for example, requires two full days, passengers being compelled to lie off over night midway between those points. The South Manchurian Railway, which the Japanese government operates between Fusan and Mukden, is equipped with standard American cars, both sleepers and coaches, and on that road it seems strange indeed to find oneself gazing at the queer sights of Korea and Manchuria from the comfortable seat of a Pullman car. While digressing, we must not fail to mention the odd day coaches of the Japanese railways and the equally odd custom of the native passengers who travel in them. These coaches apparently have been designed on the assumption that the passenger prefers to sit sidewise, staring at his fellow travelers across the aisle, rather than facing forward to meet the on-coming land- scape. Only on that theory can one account for the two long vis-a-vis seats which extend the full length of the car, as in our old fashioned American street cars. Yet nine Japanese out of ten scorn this arrangement. They climb up on the seat, turn their backs to those on the opposite side, and squatting on their heels gaze out of the window. In this position, so awkward and uncomfort- able for long western legs, men, women and children alike will ride contentedly for hours. In India, the designer of first class railway coaches 104 Rural India, Native Travel and the Railways has given some little thought to the comfort of his vic- tims. Here distances are great and there is much night travel. Moreover, excessively high temperatures must be taken into account, even in winter. Mark Twain, you will remember, declared that the only difference between India's summer and winter heat is that in sum- mer time the door knobs melt, while in winter time they merely get mushy! Sleeping cars in India are divided into spacious compartments twice the length of a Pullman drawing- room and extending the full width of the car. Affixed to the ceiling of each of these rooms will be found a large electric-driven, propeller-blade fan, sometimes two of them, while the windows are equipped with heavy wooden shutters, effectually barring the rays of the merciless midday sun, also the pole and hook with which the midnight thief would otherwise fish for your valu- ables. Opening off one end of the compartment is an un- usually commodious washroom and toilet, sometimes equipped with a shower bath, while at the opposite end is a narrow cupboard of a room in which one's private servants or "bearers, "as they are called, are lodged. There are no regular porters on these Indian sleeping cars, nor does the railway company furnish bedding for the berths. Every first class passenger supplies his own sheets, blankets, pillows soap and towels. His bearer makes up the berth at night, takes it down in the morn- ing and does the sweeping and dusting. At virtually all hotels also the bearer does most of the chamber work, sleeping at night on the stone floor outside his Sahib's ( master's) door. 105 CITIES AND TEMPLES OF THE SOUTH February 1922 AGONIZING though our experiences were in that flat- wheeled, ant-infested derehct which brought us down from Bombay, they were soon forgotten under the soothing influence of Madras. The magnifi- cent ocean drive of that city is alone capable of putting one in a mood to forgive his worst enemy, even be he a conscienceless railway oflScial, and we motored up and down its winding course for hours, filling our lungs with the moisture-laden air. And there were numerous other attractions which helped to divert our minds from the memory of that unhappy journey, among them the marine aquarium, the only one worthy of the name in India, which con- tains even rarer species of fish than those we had seen at Honolulu, many of them looking more like birds of bril- liant plumage than finny denizens of the sea; and the great banyan trees, one of which is locally reputed to be the largest of its kind in the world, though our hurried measurements showed it to be considerably smaller than the real title holder at Calcutta whose top is 1000 feet in circumference and most of whose enormous weight is supported by the nearly 600 aerial roots which its wide-spreading branches give off; also the ancient Hindu temples with their immense tanks of sacred water, quite as foul as the tanks of Benares, along with the almost equally ancient Catholic cathedrals, one of which claims to treasure the remains of St. Thomas the Apostle in its dungeon-like crypt. 106 Cities and Temples of the South Whatever may be thought of this claim, there appears to be much evidence in and around Madras tending to prove that the doubting disciple did Hve and preach in this vicinity toward the close of his life. This metropolis of the South should easily qualify as the religious storm-center of India, for here the most con- flicting creeds are in direct competition. The Moham- medan fez is much in evidence, though less so than in some of the northern cities; the Brahman caste mark disfigures many a Hindu forehead; here both Catholics and Protestants maintain thriving organizations; here, too is found the inspirational world headquarters of The- osophy, the palatial estates of Madame Blavatsky and Annie Besant attesting the fact that in this far-off land they, as well as Mrs. Tingley at Point Loma, California, have had no difficulty in attracting wealthy disciples. Journeying south from Madras on our way to Ceylon we made hurried calls at Tan j ore, Madura and Trichi- nopoly to see the remarkable Hindu temples of those cities. The religious architecture of southern India, known as the Dravidian type, is wholly unlike that of the North. Here, the shrines are enclosed in a series of great rectangular courts whose gateways are surmounted by immense towers called gopurams, in shape resembling somewhat the truncated pyramidal pylons of Egyptian temples, and with surfaces carved deep with a mass of bas-relief sculptures. The most imposing of these sanctuaries, that at Madura, covers nearly 15 acres of ground and is sur- rounded by no less than nine such gateway towers, one of them 152 feet high and all of them embellished with 107 Cities and Temples of the South profuse carvings depicting notable events and per- sonages of Indian antiquity. Perhaps the most striking feature of this wonder temple is its "Hall of 1000 Pillars," a vast chamber whose granite roof is supported by 997 beautifully engraved stone columns. So closely are these huge pillars set together that even on the sunniest day the chamber is in semi-darkness and one half gropes his way through its echoing spaces as through the twilight shades of a primeval forest. It is the only refuge in the whole stupendous edifice where the visitor can escape being poked at by the alms-begging temple elephants; such a thick stand of monumental timber they simply can't squeeze their way through. At Trichinopoly we abandoned our quest of Dra vi- dian architecture long enough to pay tribute to the memory of that grand old missionary who more than a century ago set all Christendom singing **From Greenland's icy mountains, From India's coral strand." Only by chance did we learn late one evening that Bishop Heber is buried in the quaint English church not far from the railway station, and it was with considerable diffi- culty that we located its sexton and prevailed upon him to bring his lantern and point out the simple slab in the chancel beneath which the body of the great hymn writer lies. As we stood there in the flickering light and contrasted the peaceful quiet of that chaste little church with the noisy hubbub of the pagan temple hard by, we seemed to sense more clearly than ever before the gulf which separates the religions of East and West. A few mornings later, as we raised the curtain of our 108 Cities and Temples of the South sleeping car window for a first glimpse of Ceylon, having landed on its northern coast after dark the night before, we realized how apt were those other familiar lines of Bishop Heber's — "What though the spicy breezes Blow soft o'er Ceylon's isle; Though every prospect pleases, And only man is vile," — for here the drab, sun-baked plains, of which we had grown so eye weary of late, had suddenly given way to fertile valleys andJgreen-clad,|cloud-wreathed mountains. 109 -THE UNCANNY SIDE OF INDIA March 1922 "The poor benighted Hindu, He does the best he kin do, He sticks to his caste from first to last, And for pants, he makes his skin do." DID we really see all these bewildering sights, or was it merely a *'pipe?" Have we really been roaming up and down, back and forth, through the vast stretches of mysterious India the past six weeks — observing at close range a welter of poverty-stricken people who number nearly a fifth of the human race — or are we just awaking from a terrible, in many respects a terribly beautiful, dream? As we rub our eyes and ask ourselves this question, some of the bizarre pictures which haunt our recollection are these: Those "sacred" cows placidly chewing their cuds as they wander along the sidewalks and through the colonnades of Calcutta's finest business streets, and those even more sacred bulls insolently shouldering their way through throngs of worshippers at the very altars of Hindu temples all over the country — That strange sanctuary in India's Mecca where for ages the ape has been idolized, and where the troops of long-tailed monkeys which today inhabit the place seem as much at home as do their fellow deities in the old Chinese snake temple down at Penang — That ultra-sacred north shore of the Ganges, a river of respectable origin and early chastity which in later 110 The Uncanny Side of India life, particularly when passing the aforesaid holy Mecca, becomes so contaminated by the foul rites of a heathenish creed that it must needs spew its filth into the sea through a dozen mouths. There, at Benares, we see thousands of pilgrims from all over India devoutly scrubbing them- selves in these sanctified waters. There, too, is witnessed every gruesome detail of a ritualistic Hindu cremation — the white-shrouded body bound to a rude wooden frame soaking in the muddy current while waiting its turn at the burning ghat; the remains, thus purified, stretched on a pyre of oil-sprinkled fagots; the ceremonial circling of the pyre seven times by the nearest male relative of the deceased — father, son, husband, or brother — before he applies the torch; then the ghastly spectacle of a charred and twisted human form recoiling in mute protest at the shame of its public exposure; and finally, the scattering of its ashes on those murky waters which every orthodox Hindu holds potent to heal in this life and to save eternally in the next — And that scarcely less gruesome sight in the beautiful cemetery of the Parsees at Bombay, which overlooks the stately homes of many of the members of this strange but affluent Indo-Persian sect and which commands, as well, superb views of the great city and the blue Arabian Sea beyond. Here, on the copings of the famed '^Towers of Silence," perch hundreds of greedy vultures waiting expectantly for the feast of human flesh which the daily, sometimes thrice daily, funeral cortege is sure to bring. To be born a Bombay Parsee and to spend one's years in plain sight of these beckoning towers, knowing that 111 The Uncanny Side of India sooner or later one's bones will there be picked dry by ravenous birds, would, to most people, mean a harrowing existence, yet apparently the Parsees are the most cheer- ful, light-hearted folk in all gay Bombay — That cadaverous old Yogi who leads you unscathed over a bed of red-hot coals in your bare feet and who offers to demonstrate further his occult powers, and in- cidentally confound the anatomists, by removing and then replacing, through his mouth, the entire thirty feet or more of his alimentary canal — That frenzied sun-worshipper whose trained optic nerve permits him to stand by the hour with wide-open eyes gazing squarely at the orb whose direct rays, in India, so easily spell death to ordinary mortals — That robust ascetic of disdainful mien who eight years ago staked out for himself a claim 20 feet square just beyond the city walls of old Udaipur, and who since then has never once set foot outside his cramped domain. Bareheaded and practically naked, dependent for sustenance entirely on the gifts of food and drink tendered by his credulous devotees, this "holy man" holds high court year in and year out on a rickety bamboo throne, his body impervious alike to the blazing heat of summer and the chilling blasts of winter. During all these years never known to utter an audible word, although to those who seek his counsel on matters either spiritual or worldly, or who require the aid of his supposed prophetic vision, he pencils cryptic notes on a slate, provided they pay homage by entering his sacred precincts barefooted and with uncovered head* The 112 The Uncanny Side of India only relaxation this strange creature permits himself is to stretch his naked body for slumber at nightfall on a bed of jagged rocks three feet distant from his daytime perch — A whole band of like holy men encamped by the roadside far up on the slopes of Mount Abu, that an- cient abode of the gods. The night is crisp, for the altitude is high, and unsanctified folk find good use for heavy wraps, yet here a score or more of these priestly pilgrims squat unconcernedly in the open with no other covering than a tangled thatch of greasy hair, a smear of ashes from head to foot and a strip of cotton cloth about the loins. Their only warmth comes from a few smouldering heaps of dried cow dung, that universal fuel of India, also, perhaps, from the mystic inner fire which shines through their eyes and which apparently helps to make them, and the 600,000 others of their kind with which the country is afflicted, immune to physical discomfort. To our amazement one of these wild looking men suddenly steps forward and politely addresses us in faultless English. In the heart to heart talk that follows he admits he is a graduate of Calcutta University and that he fought with the British in France. On returning to India after the Armistice he became convinced that the only way to get "at one" with his Maker and thus be of real help to his relatives and friends was to detach himself from the world, seek a cave and in its solitude spend his remaining days in pious meditation. He had already picked out his cave and was on the way thither when he fell in with his present companions and was persuaded to join them on their 113 The Uncanny Side of India pilgrimage to the Dilwarra temples before settling down to his introspective existence. Questioned as to his religious theories and beliefs he gives ready and evidently- sincere replies — no Catholic, Methodist or Christian Scientist could be surer of his theological grounds — but when pressed to explain what would happen to civiliza- tion if everyone should cultivate the cave habit in order to save his soul we lose him in a haze of Hindu metaphysics altogether too dense for western minds. Warmly clad, yet shivering from the cold, we climb back into our rickshas and go on, while our ascetic friend, his naked body aglow and the fire of a zealot burning in his eyes, rejoins his wild companions. As affecting fuel and clothing expense, his religion seems to possess some advantages over ours — But the bizarre side of India is by no means confined to sacred cows and monkeys, wild-eyed holy men, un- canny funeral rites or the marvelous magic of the Yogi. At every turn one also encounters the snake charmer, who for a few rupees will stage a mock battle between his once deadly but now fangless cobra and its hereditary enemy, the mongoose, which latter, for the purposes of such exhibition, has been trained to avoid carefully the knock- out blow, or rather bite; the ubiquitous juggler, many of whose mystifying tricks would make a Hermann or Keller green with envy ; also the omnipresent mendicant, whose number is incalculable and who has elevated the profession of begging to a fine art. No Rockefeller could satisfy the greed of his tribe and remain solvent. Final- ly, one constantly meets with most disagreeable remind- ers that every living beast, whether it walks, creeps, crawls or flies, is a privileged character in Hindu eyes. 114 The Uncanny Side of India India is not only overburdened with humans but it is tremendously overrun with beasts. The multitudinous religions of its people seem to vie with each other in the protection of brute life. All over the country one finds animal hospitals where diseased or aged cattle, sheep, goats, even dogs, cats and birds are piously permitted to die a lingering death, for to put them mercifully out of their misery would be a sin. In fact, to such extremes do some of the monkish orders, those of the Jains in particular, carry the idea of animal preservation that they sweep the ground before them as they walk for fear some worthy lizard or worm may be crushed under foot. Other and still more fanatical sects swath mouth and nostrils with muslin, lest by chance they inhale and thus destroy some microscopic inhabitant of the air. In consequence of this sort of religious mania the country is infested with animal pests of every kind and description. Take crows, for example. We de- voutly hope never again to cross the path of a crow. India swarms with them and they seem particu- larly partial to its hotels, about which they circle in countless numbers at break of day, rendering sleep impossible with their shrill, discordant "caws." It is no uncommon thing for them to invade one's apartments at that hour in the hope of sharing the chota-hazri, as the early bedroom breakfast is called. And the wretched, half -famished dogs! If there really are 319,000,000 human beings in India, each of them must certainly possess one or more dogs. Fur- thermore, 90 per cent of the canine population spends its nights either in lusty gossip, in baying at 115 The Uncanny Side of India the moon, or in loudly challenging its ancient enemy, the jackal, who, himself, is an accomplished howler. We have always been an ardent lover of the dog but the animal known in India as such makes no more of a hit with us in the daytime than when he keeps us awake nights. He is a mongrel of the worst type with a mangey hide through which the bones seem likely to protrude at any moment. His eye is dull and apathetic and ages ago he completely lost the knack of wagging his tail. When you take pity on his starved condition he grabs the food and slinks away with a growl; when you refuse to feed him he turns a sullen eye on you and snarls. He has lost all self respect through living for centuries among a people whose religion forbids them to take his life and whose poverty is so great that they cannot afford to sus- tain it decently. Wild monkeys, which at first were a great novelty, soon became so commonplace that we paid little more attention to them than to gophers at home. But our in- terest in the saucy fellows revived, when on the narrow-guage road running from Udaipur to Chitorgahr we found they had a thrifty habit of riding the trains between stations to forage among the lunch baskets of travelers. Of deadly beasts, such as lions, tigers, panthers and poisonous snakes, we saw nothing outside of zoological gardens, yet that India still abounds with wild animals is evidenced by the fact that as recently as 1920 no less than 1,507 natives were killed by tigers alone, while for years past the annual death toll from snake bites has been upwards of 20,000. 116 The Uncanny Side of India True we did see some wild hogs, many of them in fact. That was at Udaipur, where the sporty old prince who holds forth there has erected a kind of grandstand on the edge of the jungle from which his visitors can observe in safety the robust table manners of these hideous beasts. Regularly every night, just before sun- set, hundreds of them troop down from the hills to tear at each other's throats over the shelled corn which they know will be thrown to them at that hour. The fierce melee that follows on the rocky floor of the gorge defies des- cription and while no actual dead or wounded were left on the field of battle the night of our visit, we suspect that the score or more of bleeding combatants who went limping away were not able to enter the ring soon again. After witnessing this savage "free for all" we decided that a respectable tiger might be a pleasanter chance acquaintance in an Indian jungle than one of these loathsome, screaming creatures. India is unquestionably the greatest show on earth, and even its most gifted and enthusiastic press agents, writers like Kipling and Edwin Arnold, cannot be accused of having overdrawn it. It is the world's one huge hippodrome where everything advertised is shown. While the freakish side of the picture seems at the moment to impress us particularly, we shall doubtless, in the years to come, dwell longer and with far more pleasure on its grand and inspiring aspects. 117 . CAPTIVATING CEYLON March 1922 TN many respects Ceylon is a pocket edition of Java, and to avoid something of an anti-climax one should see it before visiting the latter. It has the same wealth of tropical vegetation, though the species differ considerably; the same combination of wild mountain scenery and intensively cultivated fields, though the mountains are neither so high, so rugged nor so vol- canic, while the plantations run more largely to tea, rubber and cocoanuts than to rice, sugar and coffee. At first, Ceylon impressed us as being almost as much of a human ant-hill as Java. Particularly in and about its capital, Colombo, humanity seems to swarm as thickly as anywhere on earth. Yet taking the island as a whole, (area 25,000 square miles, population 4,000- 000,) it has less than one-fifth as many people to the square mile as Java. At that, its density of population is four times as great as ours in dear old U. S. A. As bearing on the Java comparison, what the Sin- halese lack in quantity they make up in quality, for unquestionably they are far more advanced than their island brethren on the other side of the equator. Few Javanese ever succeed in raising themselves above the peasant level, whereas thousands of Sinhalese have be- come well-to-do business and professional men. The Dutch have done little to encourage the religious or educational development of their South Sea subjects and doubtless this fact, coupled with the intensive heat of their somewhat more tropical climate, accounts in 118 Captivating Ceylon large measure for their backwardness. Ceylon is a crown colony of Great Britian and as such has long enjoyed the benefit of progressive institutions. One sees more school and church edifices there in an hour than in Java in a whole week. While most of the Christian denominations are represented on the island, and while the large Tamil population, which has drifted across from South India, adheres to the Hindu faith, the bulk of the people are Buddhists. Ceylon is one of the last remaining world strongholds of Buddhism, ranking in that respect next to Burma and Japan, we should say. Its Y. M. B. A., modeled on the lines of our Y. M. C. A., is a flourishing and aggressive institution. At Kandy, a delightfully picturesque mountain town 50 miles back from the coast, stands a sanctuary known as the "Temple of the Tooth" to which thousands of Buddhists from the far corners of the Orient make pil- grimages each year. This temple contains a relic which probably has been revered by more people, at this and other well-authenticated locations where for 2000 years it has been jealously guarded, than any other religious relic the world has ever known. Although on the occasion of the great annual festival for which Kandy is famed it is borne aloft through the streets in a golden casket, no one save royalty is ever permitted to look upon it. It consists of a piece of ivory two inches long and one inch thick, resembling the tooth of a crocodile much more than that of a man, yet countless millions venerate it as a genuine molar from the mouth of Buddha himself! 119 Captivating Ceylon Speaking of Kandy, one of its most novel sights is the daily bath of the temple elephants. Of these there are a score or more and regularly every afternoon they are driven to the shores of a nearby stream where they take to the water with as much apparent delight as any American boy to his "ole swimmin' hole." After play- fully drenching their keepers, using their trunks like garden hose for the purpose, they lie down obediently in the bed of the stream and meekly permit themselves to be scrubbed till every inch of their expansive areas is made as clean as a whistle. We find the elephants of Ceylon much more interesting than any we have seen elsewhere for here one comes upon them in the most unexpected places and engaged in the most extraordinary occupations. The other day we chanced upon a big fellow busily at work laying the stone foundations of a dam. The calculat- ing eye with which he scanned the pile of rocks before selecting one of proper size and shape, and the precision with which he afterwards deposited it in its proper place, lent plausability to the most improbable stories we had ever heard about the intelligence of these royal beasts. In the development of young rubber plantations it becomes necessary from time to time to thin out the grow- ing trees, and for such work the planters of Ceylon find a single elephant worth a dozen coolies. The process by elephant power is simple in the extreme. His Highness carefully wraps trunk about trunk, crouches low to get the proper purchase and then with a mighty grunt hauls 120 Captivating Ceylon the tree forth, roots and all, as easily as a gardener would pull out a stubborn weed. In the unique museum connected with the Royal Botanical Gardens near Kandy one will see some of the most freakish curiosities of the vegetable kingdom known to botanists. Among them is by for the oddest freak of the animal kingdom we ever saw. It is popularly known as the "living leaf insect" but zoologists speak of it in their glib, off-hand way as the phyllium pulchriphy Ilium. Irregular in shape, like the large leaf on which it feeds, almost as thin and exactly the same color, its size is about two by three inches. At a distance of five feet from this plant-like creature no one would suspect its presence, but on close examination, what at first looked like the jagged edges of a normal leaf, proves to be the arms, legs and protruding mouth of a very hungry animal, energeti- cally engaged in devouring the vegetable life which it resembles so perfectly. That Ceylon had a civilization many ages ago is evidenced by the ancient ruins one encounters all over the country. The most extensive of these are at Anurad- hapura, in the north central part of the island. Here the scattered remains of forts, palaces, temples and tombs prove convincingly that sometime in the dim past, doubtless long before the Christian era, there existed at this place a great metropolis which actually covered more territory than London does today. But neither here nor elsewhere are the historic ruins of Ceylon in a recogniz- able state. Nowhere will one see anything to compare with the tolerably well preserved thousand-year-old granite pile of Bourobudur in Java. 121 Captivating Ceylon As in Java, the principal towns of Ceylon are con- nected by an excellent government-owned railway, while hard-surfaced highways reach out all over the island. Automobiles are plentiful and the motorist is in little danger of breaking the speed laws, for in the mountains he must negotiate precipitous roads full of dangerous hair-pin turns while in the ''Low Country," where huge- wheeled bullock carts often completely span the narrow thoroughfares with their swaying loads of tea, rubber and cocoanuts, cautious driving is absolutely imperative. Should you ever chance this way do not let anyone persuade you that a motor trip to Kandy will suffice to make you acquainted with the interior of Ceylon. You must at least go on up to Nuwara Eliya, a place much less terrifying to call by name than its spelling would indicate, being pronounced New-Rail-Ya. It is a charm- ing mountain resort to which everyone in Colombo, who can, flees to escape the debilitating summer heat of the coastal regions. Your visit to Ceylon, like ours, doubtless will be made in one of the winter months and you will therefore see but little of this "hill" society life. Never- theless, the trip to Nuwara Eliya is well worth making at any time of the year, if only to enjoy the magnificent views which constantly unfold both going and returning, and to see at close range something of Ceylon's two principal industries, the production of tea and rubber. Up to an altitude of 3000 feet, you are constantly passing through rubber plantations. At that point, the rubber tree goes out of business and the tea bush takes its place. After motoring for hours through tea "gardens," which cover the mountains far and near with their symmetri- 122 Captivating Ceylon cal designs, you will wonder how there can be enough addicts of the 5 o'clock habit in all the world to consume the output of these green, billowy fields. Colombo, like all English governed cities of the East, has its European quarter, with wide, well-paved streets, substantial business blocks, handsome public buildings, vine-clad villas and the inevitable race-track, cricket field and polo grounds. But its native quarter is typically oriental, while its Jetty presents almost as cosmopolitan an aspect as the Esplanade at Singapore. For Colombo, like its Malay rival, is situated at something of a maritime crossroads where dark-skinned wanderers of every shade, sailors from the seven seas, come ashore while their ships are coaling. But none of these oddly-attired, often well- nigh- unattired visitors, are any more curious in appearance than the bareheaded men of Ceylon themselves. The latter support their bunched-up tresses with a pair of circular tortoise shell combs, stroll about in long gaily- colored skirts, and look surprisingly like the prim New England spinster of yesterday. In Ceylon we have heard less croaking about business conditions than anywhere else on the trip. Tea, the mainstay of the island, is commanding a fair price and all the "factories," as the drying and curing establish- ments are called, are running full tilt. Rubber, the next most important crop, has at last turned a corner in the world's markets, but even during the worst of its recent bad days the Ceylon planters seem to have suffered much less than those of the Malay states. We are told that labor is cheaper here and that rubber can be produced at 123 Captivating Ceylon a small margin of profit when planters in other parts of the Orient cannot afford to tap their trees. As a whole, the people of Ceylon seem to be well fed and contented, quite in contrast with the thin, dejected-looking millions across the narrow strait which separates the island from India. Possibly one reason why folks over here are so complaisant is because they pay practically no taxes, at least none that are visible. Nearly all the revenue needed for the support of the government is derived from a tax on exports (not imports, mind you), and from the very comfortable profits of the state-owned railway. Thus far we have said little, if anything, about the Orient's greatest institution, the retail merchant. Either in his own little shop, in the booth of a city bazaar, squatting on the floor outside your hotel room, or in- vading the train or ship on which you travel, this ingra- tiating fellow is forever in pursuit of your last dollar. Since his artistry is carried to the Nth. degree in Ceylon it seems fitting here to pay a word of tribute to his genius. The shopping member of our firm started out on her travels last October firmly determined to bring home no *'junk," and this resolution she adhered to faithfully — all the way from San Francisco to Honolulu! Then she began to slip and the going has been getting more and more slippery ever since, so much so in fact that she has not been the only one to slip, her husband having months ago become an ambitious though most unskilful bargainer himself. 124 Captivating Ceylon After losing out in a two weeks' catch-as-catch-can trading match with the irresistible curio gentry of Japan we felt that nothing more disastrous could befall us at the hands of their fellow bandits in Korea, China, Java and India. But after a long series of humihating defeats in those countries it finally dawned on us that no mere Westerner can ever hope to defend himself against the born traders of the East. Beyond learning that "NO!", however strongly emphasized or sharply inflected, is absolutely meaningless to the oriental salesman, and that his asking price is normally from five to ten times his getting price, we left the Asiatic mainland no better equipped to resist his wiles than when we first sighted it. So on reaching Ceylon, the place of all places where we should have been in the pink of shopping condition, there was little fight left in us. And ever since our arrival we have been assailed from all sides by the nerviest, and withal cleverest, bunch of commercial beach-combers to be found on the globe ! Our first appearance in public was signalized by a riot among the street vendors of deck chairs (few steamers touching at Colombo being thus equipped), and we only succeeded in quelling it by open- ing negotiations with the brawniest-looking pirate in the throng, who finally forced upon us a pair of wobbly rattan seats at half their marked price, and probably twice their actual value. Following which, a frantic mob of riksha men and taxi drivers swooped down upon us, and to escape their clutches we sought refuge in a neighboring gem dealer's shop — and were lost! We don't expect to find ourselves fully again until, 125 Captivating Ceylon safe on the Marseilles steamer, we see the coral strands of Ceylon fading in the distance. Our main job until then is to dodge jewel dealers. For Colombo is one of the world's primary gem markets. Half its shops are ablaze with precious stones and their proprietors, many of whom don't hesitate to strong-arm you in the street, have developed the art of salesmanship to an unbelievable degree. They seem to possess a clairvoyant capacity for gauging the strength of their victim's moral backbone. Furthermore, every mother's son of the clan is a born hypnotist. It avails nothing to plead poverty, to tell plausible stories of how all your spare money was spent in India and how you have barely enough left to get home. Any such attempt to escape your fate is sure to be countered by an offer of credit. As an instance: one of the largest of these gem dealers (his clairvoyant powers failed him this time for he evidently mistook us for people of means) urged most insistently that we take along his 22,000 rupee pearl necklace (marked down from heaven knows how many rupees) with the understanding that we should have six months time in which to remit, and that we need not finally accept it at all if either Cartier or Tiffany should appraise it at less than his figure! But our recollections of Ceylon will by no means be confined to the hide-and-seek game we have been playing with its shopkeepers. We shall remember best our long motor drives, up in the mountains, out to the gem mines of Ratnapura and through the dense cocoanut groves which border the sea on the roads leading to Galle and Negombo. The spice-scented forests of the foot- 126 Captivating Ceylon hills, the regiments of itinerant "pluckers" wandering from one tea plantation to another, the fishermen hauling their nets and sailing their queer out-rigger canoes, together with the frequent bands of pilgrims toiling their weary way to the top of sacred Mount Adam — these will also help to make up the compos- ite picture which we shall carry away of captivating Ceylon. Perhaps the most cherished recollection of all will be of a fine hotel which, from its lawn-covered cliff, overlooks on the one hand the thronged sea wall promenade that stretches away toward down-town Colombo and on the other, the blue Indian Ocean whose surf breaks beneath its broad verandas. After strenuous months of travel, full of more or less harrowing hotel ex- periences, can you imagine what a delight it is to luxuriate in a hotel thus situated, whose rooms, food and service are almost on a par with the finest hostelries of Europe and America? In our present frame of mind, we don't much care whether the steamer from Hong Kong which is to take us on the long three- weeks' voyage to France gets here on time or not. Were we not so eager for a lung-full of crisp Minnesota air our trunks would remain unpacked indefinitely at the "Galle Face." This tribute to the best hotel in all the Orient we cannot withhold even at the risk of being charged with press- agenting. 127 "MAHATMA" GANDHI— DEMI-GOD OR DEMAGOGUE? March 1922 At Sea WE were extremely fortunate to have had a glimpse of India at a moment likely to prove so epochal in its history. We had been warned that the whole country was seething with rebellion and that travel there would be difficult if not dangerous. While at times it did prove both difficult and dis- agreeable, no untoward incident that possibly could be charged to the present acute political situation marred our stay in the land of caste, idolatry and "Non- cooperation." The nearest approach to anything of the sort was a rather amusing experience we had one sunny January morning in Benares, while drifting slowly along the temple- lined north shore of the Ganges watching multitudes of the devotees of that sacred stream engaged in their filthy ritualistic abultions. Suddenly we became aware that a loud chorus of voices was shouting derisively at us from the bank the familiar battle cry of the Non-cooperators — ''Mahatma Gandhi — Jci-jai'' ("Long life and victory to the great soul, Gandhi."). It transpired that we had been mistaken for Britishers, and when our native guide shouted back that it was Americans instead whom they were jeering, the vociferous bathers hastened to send one of their number out to our barge to bedeck us apo- logetically with garlands of flowers — faded, bad smelling altar flowers. Although the alarming reports that had reached us proved exaggerated, there is nevertheless serious 128 ^'Mahatma" Gandhi — Demi-God or Demagogue? trouble brewing in India today. For the first time since the tragic mutiny of 1857, British rule there is being openly challenged and in consequence an air of tense anxiety pervades the European quarter of every city in the land. And what makes the challenge so dumbfounding to the English, is its wholly unprecedented character — that and the remarkable personality of the man who has shaped it. Every nation has had to contend with radical agitators and real or would-be revolutionists but surely none was ever afflicted with a trouble maker so baffling in his methods and so capable of large-scale mischief as ''Mahatma" Gandhi, the head and front of India's extraordinary Non- cooperative movement. Equipped with a broad university education and sharpened by years of successful practice at the bar, this amazing man has renounced the work-a-day world, given away his earthly possessions and turned his back on modern civilization in an attempt to free hundreds of millions of his dark-skinned countrymen from what he regards, or seems to regard, as the white man's misrule. He has discarded his modish European clothes for the simple loin cloth of the Indian coolie and in this almost naked con- dition travels about the country delivering speeches and attending political conventions. When at home his time is employed in editing his magazine, "Young India;" in conferring with his lieutenants; in issuing manifestos to the public; in hurling defis at the government — and in operating, hours at a time, a primitive spinning wheel. He preaches brotherly love, practises the virtues decries intemperance, strikes hard blows at India's 129 '^Mah atma'^ Gandhi — Demi-God or Demagogue? blighting caste system and condemns in severest terms the use of force as a means to revolutionary ends, — "non- violence" and "passive resistance," terms which he has borrowed from Tolstoy, being the chief foundation stones of his political strategy. When some of his fanatical followers get out of hand and murder the police, he punishes them by going on a ten-day fast, and when, as recently happened, his young daughter offends with a harmless fib, he grieves her to distraction by going with- out food fort wo weeks. Millions of devout Hindus, among them some of the brainiest and most successful natives of the country, regard him as saint and prophet, while other millions actually believe him to be a reincarnation of the great Brahman god, Vishnu. It is this manner of man who, by methods unparal- leled in their uniqueness, is trying to force England out of India. Blending spiritual leadership with political he has fired the imagination and captured the hearts of no small part of a people whose religion and politics have always been hopelessl}^ interwoven. His power appears to lie partly in his ability to sway the mass mind with voice and pen and partly, perhaps chiefly, in the effect produced by his spectacular humility, self-renunc- iation and courage, and his seemingly transparent honesty and sincerity. But is he sincere, and if so, is he sane? Remember- ing his educational advantages and the fact that he has so often argued intricate law points with logic and success it is difficult for transient and impartial observers to credit him with both sincerity and sanity when he says, as in substance he does say in his book on "Indian Home Rule," 130 ''Mahatma" Gandhi — Demi-God or Demagogue? that modern civilization only breeds godlessness and im- morality; that modern education only enslaves the masses; that the law courts should be abolished because they make men unmanly; that hospitals should go because they propagate sin; that doctors should stop practicing medicine because they prescribe useless drugs; that rail- ways should be scrapped because they spread bubonic plague and increase the frequency of famine, also because they accentuate the evil nature of man by enabling bad men to accomplish their designs more speedily by train than they could afoot or by donkey or camel; finally, that power machinery of all kinds should be discarded because it is "like a great snake-hole which may contain one or a hundred snakes"! To Westerners such stuff sounds like the ravings of a disordered mind, or else the calculated utterances of a super-demagogue, seeking to befuddle an extremely credulous, ignorant and superstitious following. We are the more inclined to wonder at the apparent general belief in Gandhi's sincerity when we learn of his systematic and untiring efforts to keep open the Khilaf at and Punjab sores — sores which have become immensely irritating of late to multitudes of John Bull's Indian subjects. To understand the merest rudiments of the complex situation underlying the controversy over the "Khilaf at," a term of sundry spellings indicating the spiritual sovereignity of the Sultan of Turkey over Mohammedans of all races and nations, one must bear in mind these facts : There are about 66,000,000 Moslems in India. 131 ''Mahatma' Gandhi — Demi-God or Demagogue? Most of the remaining 253,000,000 of the population are of the Hindu faith. Between these two sects there has existed a bitter, age-old quarrel. While the British have been careful to see that this did not break out into any open, widespread conflict, they apparently have not sat up nights trying to heal the breach. Very likely they have figured that a divided opposition could be handled more effectively than a united one. It further appears that during the World war the Moham- medans of India were almost solidly loyal to Great Britain and her allies, notwithstanding Germany's frantic efforts to win them away, but that after the war was over and it was found that the Peace Conference, presumably dominated by English statesmen, had dis- membered Turkey, certain Moslem agitators in India raised a great hue and cry about the Khilafat's loss of power; also about the continued occupation of Constantinople and other "holy cities" of the Near East by "infidel" English troops. Notwith- standing that the Mohammedans of India had at no time in the past evinced the least concern for the welfare of the Turkish Sultan nor the slightest interest in the fate of his holy capital, and despite the fact that many of them had so recently borne arms against him, consider- able sentiment was manufactured against the English on these grounds. All of which was grist for Mr. Gandhi's mill. In such a situation apparently he saw an opportunity to bring the Moslems of India into his camp and by consolidating them with their ancient enenies, the Hindus, present a solid front of native opposition to the British 132 "Mahatma'' Gandhi — Demi-God or Demagogue? rulers. At any rate, it is a matter of record that he, a Hindu of the Hindus, has lost no chance from that time to bewail publicly the great Khilafat "wrong." Every one of his manifestos contains some reference to the dreadful way in which England has treated the Turks, — the co-religionists of his dear friends, the Indian Moslems. Then the "Punjab affair." In the summer of 1919, sedition was rife in that great province of northern India and riots were of frequent occurrence. In quelling a particularly serious disturbance of the sort, a British brigadier general was finally compelled to fire on the mob, and very reluctantly so according to all accounts. A good many of the rioters were killed, and instantly all India was in uproar. The noise reverberated in England and so greatly alarmed the government that the unfortunate general in question was ordered out of India, and, in a manner, publicly reprimanded for his zealous "indiscre- tion." After this amende to their injured feelings the ordinarily docile and forgiving Indians would doubt- less have forgotten the incident forthwith had not Mr. Gandhi promptly proceeded to capitalize it to his own political advantage. Since then he has never per- mitted the people to forget for a moment the "horrors of the Punjab massacre." All of which smatters so much of the methods of a shrewd, calculating, not to say unscrupulous, manipu- lator of political cards that we find it quite impossible to sympathize with all the talk we have recently heard, some of it even from English sources, about Mr. Gandhi's near-godliness. 133 ''Mahatma' Gandhi — Demi-God or Demagogue? The' man's political program is deadly, the more deadly because it is so wholly without precedent in the annals of British colonial history, or in those of any other country for that matter. Briefly, it consists in a demand for India's complete, or practically complete, independence, under penalty of a stupendous mass boycott of all government institutions. This unheard- of scheme Gandhi has unfolded bit by bit until it now means in effect, and if successful, the eventual paralysis of every vital government function, army, police, state- controlled railways and the postal and telegraph service. Government subsidized schools would close from lack of both students and teachers, and even courts of justice would stand idle for lack of judges, lawyers and litigants, the latter submitting their disputes to private courts of arbitration instead. The crowning feature of the Non-cooperator's political program, that which Gandhi naively terms *'mass civil disobedience" — the feature on which he has repeatedly marched and countermarched during the past year and which has now brought him into head-on collision with the authorities — is the proposal that his followers shall refuse to pay their taxes, even though the alternative be confiscation of their property, im- prisonment, or possibly death. The Gandhi economic program is simplicity itself. All foreign-made goods are to be boycotted and every thing necessary to India's needs is to be made at home. So far as cotton goods are concerned every family is to operate its own spinning wheel and hand loom. To keep this idea constantly before the people the spinning 134 ,,Mahatma'' Gandhi — Demi-God or Demagogue? wheel has been made the national emblem of the Non- cooperators and Mr. Gandhi himself, as before stated, sets a daily example in its use. It is in evidence wher- ever one goes, full-sized wheels being frequently borne aloft through the streets by enthusiastic marching clubs, while models in miniature are to be seen in the shops of every bazaar. All in all, could such a program of political and economic absurdities, promoted by a man of such amaz- ing characteristics, "get to first base" in any country on earth, save imaginative, impressionable, impractical, incomprehensible India .^^ Precisely what numerical strength the Non-co- operators have no one knows, aside from those within the inner circle of control. Like Townley's Nonpartisan League, the organization has a paid membership, though the annual fee is only four annas, or about eight cents in our money. It is believed that several million members are enrolled on this basis, but whatever the actual number may be it probably represents but a fraction of those who sympathize with the cause and who, in a pinch, might be willing to fight for it, provided they had weapons. On the other hand, there are millions of ignorant Indians who take no interest whatever in public affairs and who are no more concerned about Mr. Gandhi and his doctrines than the same class of people in China are in what the self-appointed leaders of that country are doing. Then too it would be a mistake to assume that all of the intellectuals by any means, endorse his ideas. Many of the latter recognize that India is a 135 ''Mahatma* Gandhi — Demi-God or Demagogue? long way from being ready for home rule, or Stvaraj, as it is called in the vernacular; that the worst thing that could happen to the country's vast, heterogeneous and almost wholly illiterate population would be to let it experiment with real self-government at this time. Men of this type are sensible enough to see that demoracy, such as we know it in America, or even as the English at home know it, would be ages ahead of the times in a land where the bulk of the inhabitants are still living in the tenth century, or earlier; where there are as many languages as provinces; where a terrible iron-clad system of caste has erected hundreds of barriers which render free intercourse and association between the people utterly impossible; and where the chief national occupa- tion — or shall we call it pastime? — is the worship of thou- sands of gods, the Hindus alone having some 30,000 of these in stock. The better balanced, more thoughtful representatives of the native intellectual class also realize that England has really done much for India. They are aware that while, centuries ago, she embarked on her great Indian adventure with purely selfish motives, and that while her quasi-governmental trading corporation, the British East India Company, did many unconsionable things in those early days, just as similar companies chart- ered by the Dutch and Portugese did, nevertheless she has brought a considerable measure of civilization to the country which otherwise it could scarcely have secured so quickly. Mothers are no longer permitted to cast their living babes into the Ganges. It is no longer fashionable for widows to be burned alive on the funeral pyres of their 136 ''Mahatma'' Gandhi — Demi-God or Demagogue? lamented husbands. People are no longer ground to death under the wheels of ponderous juggernaut cars. Justice, good old English justice, has been ordained between man and man. Property rights and legitimate personal liberty have been secured. Bloody foreign invasions have been stopped. Famine and pestilence, which formerly took tremendous toll of human life nearly every year, have been controlled to a large extent. More than a mere beginning of an excellent railway system has been built. Vast irrigation projects have been carried to completion and modern postal and telegraph systems have been extended in every direction. Above all else, perhaps, educational facilities never before dreamed of have been afforded the youth of the land, even Oxford and Cambridge having been thrown open to aspiring students not content with what the local schools of India have to offer. It is the irony of fate, by the way, that from this latter class Mr. Gandhi has recruited some of his ablest lieutenants. To all of which the radicals reply that England has exploited India long enough; that she should be content with her winnings and get out; that Indians are perfectly capable of managing their own affairs; that a race which has so recently engaged in a struggle with a sister white race, a struggle more terrific, more barbarous than any other known to history, should quit prating about western civilization and stop assuming a superior air toward an Asiatic people who, though admittedly of darker skin, had a civilization long before England was heard of. Which last "sockdologer" recalls a neat retort made 137 ''Mahatma'' Gandhi — Demi-God or Demagogue? the other day by an eminent American educator now traveling in India to a Gandhi sympathizer who had twitted him of the fact that Indian civilization was old "when you Anglo-Saxons were still running about in your forests." "Yes," the professor dryly admitted, "but the difference is that we kept on running and you didn't". Although this constant fanning of the embers of race hatred has played an exceedingly important part in the efforts of the Gandhites to create revolutionary sentiment, it is doubtful if things could have been brought to their present unhappy pass by that process alone. India is suffering her full share of the present world- wide business depression and when a people like hers, who never, under any circumstances, know the meaning of real prosperity — who, at best, are never more than a jump ahead of those two universal functionaries, the tax collector and the undertaker — experience what they regard as unprecedently hard times, it can be seen easily what fertile soil the professional agitator has to work in. The net revenue derived from the average Indian farm, if an acre or so of parched ground can be called a farm, is less than 10 cents a day, while coolie laborers in the cities and towns are in luck when they earn 20 cents a day. These conditions, which can only mean malnutrition for the bulk of the population, are being capitalized to the fullest extent in the campaign against England. Another thing which has doubtless been of great aid to the agitators is Mr. Wilson's pronouncement 138 ''Mahatma" Gandhi — Demi-God or Demagogue? about self determination. That tragically unfortunate phrase, which has done so much to keep the world in turmoil ever since the Armistice, has been deeply pondered by many of the people of India. They fail to see why the principle it suggests should not apply to them as well as to others. The news of Gandhi's arrest came in a two-line flash to the Colombo papers just as we were sailing from Ceylon and we would give a handful of rupees, at the present rate of exchange, if only this ancient ark on which we are drifting across the hot Arabian Sea published a wireless paper, so we might learn how India has reacted to this long- threatened move. The jails of the country have for months been full to over- flowing with Gandhi's disciples, but the "Mahatma" himself has hitherto gone scot free. Though he is said to have repeatedly begged for arrest, the authorities have probably taken his own view of the matter and concluded that he would be more dangerous in prison than out. But now there seems to have been a sudden change of policy. The day before we left Colombo the resignation was announced of Mr. Montagu, Secretary of State for India in the British cabinet, the statesman supposed to be chiefly responsible for the passage by Parliament of the liberalizing "Government of India Act" of 1919. Almost everyone we met in India and almost every paper we read while there agreed that this measure, instead of placating the radicals as was hoped, has only stimulated them to greater activity. Also, that the lenient attitude of the Montagu administration towards 139 ''Mahatma' Gandhi — Demi-God or Demagogue? Mr. Gandhi himself has merely had the effect of strength- ening his hands, having been interpreted by his followers as a sign of governmental weakness rather than tolerance. At the moment, therefore, Mr. Montagu seems to be the goat, although until this snail-like craft completes the Red Sea leg of its voyage and puts us once more in touch with world news we can only speculate as to whether he, or his manifold critics, have had the longer heads. The alarmists, who invariably refer to India as "seething", have been making the most doleful predictions about what would happen if the "people's idol" were locked up. The less nervous ones, and they seem to include those who have had longest experience in Indian affairs and are presumably best qualified to judge of the temperament of the natives, claim to have felt all along that the sooner the arch trouble-maker w^as silenced the sooner normal conditions would be restored. We have it on good authority that the British governor of one of the Indian provinces recently went so far as to declare that if only communication with London were cut, so that he and the other local authorities could act on their own initiative without interference from Whitehall, all India would be as quiet as a summer morn within sixty days. He doubtless figured that several hundred million people, unarmed, unorganized and undisciplined, would be no match for a few hundred thousand seasoned troops, equipped with machine guns and other implements of modern warfare. He, of course, also counted on the whole-hearted loyalty of those troops, but since the native element in the army greatly out- numbers the British, and since no one knows to what 140 "Mahatma" Gandhi — Demi-God or Demagogue? extent Gandhism has infected the former, boasts of this kind may possibly be a trifle brash, especially when we recall what happened in 1857. The whole situation is of surpassing interest to the onlooker. Our own curbstone opinion of it, based on a hurried and naturally superficial survey, is that even were Mr. Gandhi now permanently retired from the stage, the seeds of discord he has already sown may yield a crop of trouble which will plague the English for many a day to come. Whether saint or scoundrel, demi-god or demagogue, he has succeeded in arousing animosities which will not quickly subside. If, in true revolutionary style, he had assembled an army and marched on Delhi, the government would have known exactly what to do, but when, in an ostentatiously peaceful, "non- violent" way, he attempts to put water in the petrol which makes the wheels of their machinery go round, what wonder is it that the authorities have been nonplussed to know how to deal with him, particularly in view of the halo of sancity with which he has been crowned? In any case he has started a train of thought and released a current of political energy among a great, un- wieldy and uneducated mass of humanity which no mere locking of jail doors is likely to stop. He has whetted the latent appetite of an ancient race for things which neither his party, the British, nor any other political influence can easily provide. Out of the whole confused mess one of three things seems certain to happen: 141 "Mahatma^' Gandhi — Demi-God or Demagogue? (1) India will become a more sternly-ruled British dependency than ever before. (2) She will be put in training speedily to qualify for membership in the great association of self-governed British commonwealths, alongside of Canada and Australia. Or (3) She will be permitted to go it alone. While the last contingency seems extremely im- probable, we have nevertheless heard the suggestion seriously advanced several times of late by people whose opinions are worth considering. They argue that on the heels of the most costly war of her career, and with a multitude of pressing problems nearer home to solve, Great Britain might well hesitate at the expenditure of blood and treasure needful to hold in line, on the other side of the globe, nearly a fifth of the world's population, assuming that that great mass of people were to show any widespread determination to break away. But it should be remarked that those who hold this pessimistic view are quick to add that if England and India ever do part company, the world will thereupon be treated to an unparalleled spectacle of anarchy and chaos — unless a miracle happens, and Hindus, Mohammedans, Parsees, Jains and all the conflicting races, sects, castes and political factions with which India is weighed down suddenly become enamored of each other and thus capable of real teamwork. Our own guess is that England will somehow manage to crack its gigantic Indian nut. Nut-cracking has been England's specialty for centuries. 142 LATER DEVELOPMENTS IN THE NON- COOPERATIVE MOVEMENT (Since the following letter throws important light on the more recent political developments in India, it seems permissible to include it here. Its writer. Sir Frederick Whyte, President of the National Assembly, is the ''suave speaker in his wig and gown'' alluded to in my Delhi letter. As the presiding officer of India's supreme law making body, and as a sincere friend of its people no less than a staunch supporter of the British government, his size-up of the situation following Mr. Gandhi's arrest cannot but be of interest. — F. L. G.) Simla, 26th June, 1922. Dear Mr. Gray, Many thanks for your letter of May 23rd which recalled to me your recent visit to Delhi. I have read with the greatest possible interest your account of the Indian situation in The Minneapolis Journal; and I hope you will allow me to say that I have never seen the situation so truly and vividly presented. You certainly got hold of the right end of the stick, and if only all your fellow- countrymen who visit the Orient had as keen an eye as you for the facts of the case, there would, perhaps, be more truth and less propaganda in the newspapers of the world. If there is any chance of your paying India a return visit, or of sending any of your friends out this way, I hope you will let me know. It will give me the greatest pleasure to do anything I can to make their visit easy and successful. 143 Later Developments in the N on-Cooperative Movement To continue the story which you have told so well in the columns of The Journal, I may add that we are now enjoying a period of comparative quiet, due no doubt to various causes. The official and the extremist alike agree that it is mainly due to the arrest of Gandhi and the detention in jail of a number of the leading Non-cooperators. That is, of course, partly true, but it is by no means the whole truth. Other causes which operate to place agitation at a very serious discount are : — (a) The unexpected success of the new Legislatures during the first two years of the operation of the Reform Scheme, known as the Montagu-Chelmsford plan: (b) The consequent irresolution of the whole Non- cooperation movement in face of the defeat of their principal prediction, namely, that the Reforms were a sham and would not work : and (c) The substantial improvement in the economic condition of the country due to the excellent rains of last year; and the increase in general public confidence due partly to the rains of last year and partly to the expectations of good rain this year. These causes have all operated to make the Non- cooperators call a halt in their agitation. In the ''Maharastra," which is the most politically active part of the Bombay Presidency, in Bengal, and in certain other parts of the country, the local committees of Gandhi's Congress are now scratching their heads in the endeavour to find a face-saving formula which will cover their retreat from the extremes of non-cooperation and somehow pave a way for their entry into the new Legislatures. 144 Later Developments in the Non-Cooperative Movement A new election takes place in the late autumn of 1923; and, probably, we shall then see large numbers of Non-cooper ators becoming cooperative legislators. The situation will then undergo a substantial change, and the principal difficulty will be to prevent a dead- lock between a Legislature holding extreme opinions and an Executive endeavouring to work what is undoubt- edly a comparatively liberal constitution. With kind regards, and many thanks once more for your letter, I am, Yours sincerely, A. F. Whyte. 145 HOME-COMING RUMINATIONS THEN, the great seas crossed, there came a happy day when we reached our own glorious land once more. We had left it nearly seven months before, when the leaves were falling. Now it was springtime, and Mother Earth had just donned her new gown. Everything was bursting into bloom. How one's eyes become misty and one's throat chokes as he reahzes that he is on his own country's soil again! Never before had we appreciated how much it means to be able to say: "I am a citizen of the United States of America." On several previous occasions we had greeted the Statue of Liberty with joyful hearts, but never before had "The Goddess" looked so winsome as when we saluted her on returning from this, our first trip 'round the world. Yet some strange reflections obtruded themselves as we sailed up the Bay that lovely evening in May. Could this boasted civilization of ours ever go to pieces? Would tourists from the Orient some day enter the harbor of New York to view the ruins of "Miss Liberty" and of those towering skyscrapers which now look down on her so haughtily from the opposite shore? Would lecturing guides explain that back in the 23rd century here stood a great metropolis, the metropolis of a people who had broken all speed records in history — in the building, and wrecking, of a nation? And could it be possible that these 35th century globe-trotters would be told that the ancient Americans 146 LBJa?3 Home-Coming Ruminations had developed a civilization so materialistic, so complex and intricate, so full of interdependent parts, that when its complicated economic mechanism got out of adjust- ment, when some vital part failed to function, the whole thing stopped— just as the most perfectly constructed automobile of today would, were its carburetor to go off duty, its battery to quit, its spark plugs to become dirty, its wiring to be "shorted," its radiator to run dry or its gas or oil to give out? Or, were such an unthinkable catastrophe to happen, would the sightseers of some future age be told that our then almost forgotten race had made the mistake of assuming that an enduring nation could be forged out of inharmonious, even antagonistic, elements, and that it could easily assimilate mHlions upon millions of aliens who knew little and cared less about the principles on which its government was founded? Or would the explanation perhaps be that a nation established by hard-working, God-fearing pioneers had become indolent and soft, eventually falling into decay, as a result of the worship of Mammon by its pleasure- loving people? No observing American can circumnavigate the globe without realizing, as never before, that his is the grandest country on earth. If, perchance, he has doubted the worthof its institutions, the pitiful scenes of benighted Asia and bewildered Europe should effectually allay his "unrest." But those very sights will also open his eyes to the fact that civilizations have a habit of landing on the scrap pile of Time; that 147 Home-Coming Ruminations empires, even republics, are prone to fall as well as rise. The smug assurance he has always felt that nothing of the sort could possibly overtake his own dear land is apt to be shaken a bit by study of the fundamental causes which underlie the ruins he sees everywhere in foreign lands, more especially so if he recognizes the same or equally dangerous influences at work in America. The man who says "You can always afford to bet on the United States" dwells with pride on its wonderful resources, its unparalleled past career and the freedom of opportunity which is assured to the humblest of its citizens. Patriots of this type are needed. Unquestion- ably such spirit as theirs has made America what it is to- day. But has not the time arrived when we should pay heed to the voice that warns as well as to the voice of the booster? While we still have vastly more ground for optimism than any other people on whom the sun ever shone, it should not be forgotten that we have been squandering our natural resources like spendthrifts; that our 133 years of existence as a nation is but a fleeting moment in world history; that democracy is still on trial; and that Freedom, on which we set such store, carries with it its own abuses and perils. America will come out all right, but only if we all understand and appreciate the blessed heritage of its citizenship and lend the nation a genuinely helping hand — the nation as a whole, not a mere section of it, not merely some one of its already too numerous classes, groups, blocs and self-seeking organizations. But enough of these Statue of Liberty musings. 148 Home-Coming Ruminations And when the old home state and the old home town have been reached, what a joy to see kindly hands out- stretched to grasp yours, and the welcoming light in many a pair of friendly eyes to greet yours ! It is worth while to journey round the world, a dozen times, just to be greeted so kindly and to be told that you've been missed and that folks are glad to see you back! Friendship — friendship — what a word it is, after all! How much it means, what a barren life is his who does not know its meaning ! So may we be worthy of YOURS. ^^^r-r— / 149 LBJa'23 ^-