Following the Equator........................................................................................................................................1

Mark Twain ..............................................................................................................................................1

CHAPTER I. ............................................................................................................................................3

CHAPTER II. ...........................................................................................................................................6

CHAPTER III........................................................................................................................................13

CHAPTER IV........................................................................................................................................19

CHAPTER V.........................................................................................................................................23

CHAPTER VI........................................................................................................................................26

CHAPTER VII. ......................................................................................................................................29

CHAPTER VIII.....................................................................................................................................32

CHAPTER IX........................................................................................................................................36

CHAPTER X.........................................................................................................................................40

CHAPTER XI........................................................................................................................................41

CHAPTER XII. ......................................................................................................................................44

CHAPTER XIII.....................................................................................................................................46

CHAPTER XIV.....................................................................................................................................52

CHAPTER XV......................................................................................................................................54

CHAPTER XVI.....................................................................................................................................56

CHAPTER XVII. ...................................................................................................................................59

CHAPTER XVIII. ..................................................................................................................................61

CHAPTER XIX.....................................................................................................................................64

CHAPTER XX......................................................................................................................................67

CHAPTER XXI.....................................................................................................................................70

CHAPTER XXII. ...................................................................................................................................74

CHAPTER XXIII. ..................................................................................................................................77

CHAPTER XXIV..................................................................................................................................80

CHAPTER XXV. ...................................................................................................................................83

CHAPTER XXVI..................................................................................................................................88

CHAPTER XXVII .................................................................................................................................90

CHAPTER XXVIII. ...............................................................................................................................95

CHAPTER XXIX..................................................................................................................................99

CHAPTER XXX. .................................................................................................................................102

CHAPTER XXXI................................................................................................................................104

CHAPTER XXXII. ..............................................................................................................................108

CHAPTER XXXIII. .............................................................................................................................111

CHAPTER XXXIV.............................................................................................................................113

CHAPTER XXXV. ..............................................................................................................................115

CHAPTER XXXVI.............................................................................................................................117

CHAPTER XXXVII............................................................................................................................120

CHAPTER XXXVIII. ..........................................................................................................................124

CHAPTER XXXIX.............................................................................................................................127

CHAPTER XL. ....................................................................................................................................133

CHAPTER XLI. ...................................................................................................................................136

CHAPTER XLII..................................................................................................................................139

CHAPTER XLIII. ................................................................................................................................142

CHAPTER XLIV. ................................................................................................................................146

CHAPTER XLV..................................................................................................................................149

CHAPTER XLVI. ................................................................................................................................155

CHAPTER XLVII...............................................................................................................................160

CHAPTER XLVIII..............................................................................................................................165

CHAPTER XLIX. ................................................................................................................................169

CHAPTER L. .......................................................................................................................................175

CHAPTER LI......................................................................................................................................178

CHAPTER LII.....................................................................................................................................182

CHAPTER LIII. ...................................................................................................................................185

CHAPTER LIV. ...................................................................................................................................189

CHAPTER LV. ....................................................................................................................................193

CHAPTER LVI. ...................................................................................................................................197

CHAPTER LVII..................................................................................................................................199

CHAPTER LVIII. ................................................................................................................................201

CHAPTER LIX. ...................................................................................................................................208

CHAPTER LX. ....................................................................................................................................214

CHAPTER LXI. ...................................................................................................................................218

CHAPTER LXII..................................................................................................................................224

CHAPTER LXIII. ................................................................................................................................229

CHAPTER LXIV. ................................................................................................................................232

CHAPTER LXV..................................................................................................................................236

CHAPTER LXVI. ................................................................................................................................239

CHAPTER LXVII...............................................................................................................................243

CHAPTER LXVIII..............................................................................................................................249

CHAPTER LXIX. ................................................................................................................................253

CONCLUSION. ...................................................................................................................................258

The starting point of this lecturingtrip around the world was Paris, where we had been living a year or two.

We sailed for America, and there made certain preparations. This took but little time. Two members of my

family elected to go with me. Also a carbuncle. The dictionary says a carbuncle is a kind of jewel. Humor is

We started westward from New York in midsummer, with Major Pond to manage the platformbusiness as

far as the Pacific. It was warm work, all the way, and the last fortnight of it was suffocatingly smoky, for in

Oregon and Columbia the forest fires were raging. We had an added week of smoke at the seaboard, where

we were obliged awhile for our ship. She had been getting herself ashore in the smoke, and she had to be

We sailed at last; and so ended a snailpaced march across the continent, which had lasted forty days.

We moved westward about midafternoon over a rippled and summer sea; an enticing sea, a clean and cool

sea, and apparently a welcome sea to all on board; it certainly was to the distressful dustings and smokings

and swelterings of the past weeks. The voyage would furnish a threeweeks holiday, with hardly a break in

it. We had the whole Pacific Ocean in front of us, with nothing to do but do nothing and be comfortable. The

city of Victoria was twinkling dim in the deep heart of her smokecloud, and getting ready to vanish and now

we closed the fieldglasses and sat down on our steamer chairs contented and at peace. But they went to

wreck and ruin under us and brought us to shame before all the passengers. They had been furnished by the

largest furnituredealing house in Victoria, and were worth a couple of farthings a dozen, though they had

cost us the price of honest chairs. In the Pacific and Indian Oceans one must still bring his own deckchair on

board or go without, just as in the old forgotten Atlantic timesthose Dark Ages of sea travel.

Ours was a reasonably comfortable ship, with the customary seagoing fare plenty of good food furnished

by the Deity and cooked by the devil. The discipline observable on board was perhaps as good as it is

anywhere in the Pacific and Indian Oceans. The ship was not very well arranged for tropical service; but that

is nothing, for this is the rule for ships which ply in the tropics. She had an oversupply of cockroaches, but

this is also the rule with ships doing business in the summer seasat least such as have been long in service.

Our young captain was a very handsome man, tall and perfectly formed, the very figure to show up a smart

uniform's best effects. He was a man of the best intentions and was polite and courteous even to courtliness.

There was a soft and finish about his manners which made whatever place he happened to be in seem for the

moment a drawing room. He avoided the smoking room. He had no vices. He did not smoke or chew tobacco

or take snuff ; he did not swear, or use slang or rude, or coarse, or indelicate language, or make puns, or tell

anecdotes, or laugh intemperately, or raise his voice above the moderate pitch enjoined by the canons of good

form. When he gave an order, his manner modified it into a request. After dinner he and his officers joined

the ladies and gentlemen in the ladies' saloon, and shared in the singing and piano playing, and helped turn

the music. He had a sweet and sympathetic tenor voice, and used it with taste and effect the music he played

whist there, always with the same partner and opponents, until the ladies' bedtime. The electric lights burned

there as late as the ladies and their friends might desire; but they were not allowed to burn in the

smokingroom after eleven. There were many laws on the ship's statute book of course; but so far as I could

see, this and one other were the only ones that were rigidly enforced. The captain explained that he enforced

this one because his own cabin adjoined the smokingroom, and the smell of tobacco smoke made him sick. I

did not see how our smoke could reach him, for the smokingroom and his cabin were on the upper deck,

targets for all the winds that blew; and besides there was no crack of communication between them, no

opening of any sort in the solid intervening bulkhead. Still, to a delicate stomach even imaginary smoke can

The captain, with his gentle nature, his polish, his sweetness, his moral and verbal purity, seemed pathetically

out of place in his rude and autocratic vocation. It seemed another instance of the irony of fate.

He was going home under a cloud. The passengers knew about his trouble, and were sorry for him.

Approaching Vancouver through a narrow and difficult passage densely befogged with smoke from the forest

fires, he had had the illluck to lose his bearings and get his ship on the rocks. A matter like this would rank

merely as an error with you and me; it ranks as a crime with the directors of steamship companies. The

captain had been tried by the Admiralty Court at Vancouver, and its verdict had acquitted him of blame. But

that was insufficient comfort. A sterner court would examine the case in Sydneythe Court of Directors, the

lords of a company in whose ships the captain had served as mate a number of years. This was his first

The officers of our ship were hearty and companionable young men, and they entered into the general

amusements and helped the passengers pass the time. Voyages in the Pacific and Indian Oceans are but

pleasure excursions for all hands. Our purser was a young Scotchman who was equipped with a grit that was

remarkable. He was an invalid, and looked it, as far as his body was concerned, but illness could not subdue

his spirit. He was full of life, and had a gay and capable tongue. To all appearances he was a sick man

without being aware of it, for he did not talk about his ailments, and his bearing and conduct were those of a

person in robust health; yet he was the prey, at intervals, of ghastly sieges of pain in his heart. These lasted

many hours, and while the attack continued he could neither sit nor lie. In one instance he stood on his feet

twentyfour hours fighting for his life with these sharp agonies, and yet was as full of life and cheer and

The brightest passenger in the ship, and the most interesting and felicitous talker, was a young Canadian who

was not able to let the whisky bottle alone. He was of a rich and powerful family, and could have had a

distinguished career and abundance of effective help toward it if he could have conquered his appetite for

drink; but he could not do it, so his great equipment of talent was of no use to him. He had often taken the

pledge to drink no more, and was a good sample of what that sort of unwisdom can do for a manfor a man

with anything short of an iron will. The system is wrong in two ways: it does not strike at the root of the

trouble, for one thing, and to make a pledge of any kind is to declare war against nature; for a pledge is a

chain that is always clanking and reminding the wearer of it that he is not a free man.

I have said that the system does not strike at the root of the trouble, and I venture to repeat that. The root is

not the drinking, but the desire to drink. These are very different things. The one merely requires willand a

great deal of it, both as to bulk and staying capacitythe other merely requires watchfulnessand for no

long time. The desire of course precedes the act, and should have one's first attention; it can do but little good

to refuse the act over and over again, always leaving the desire unmolested, unconquered; the desire will

continue to assert itself, and will be almost sure to win in the long run. When the desire intrudes, it should be

at once banished out of the mind. One should be on the watch for it all the timeotherwise it will get in. It

must be taken in time and not allowed to get a lodgment. A desire constantly repulsed for a fortnight should

die, then. That should cure the drinking habit. The system of refusing the mere act of drinking, and leaving

the desire in full force, is unintelligent war tactics, it seems to me. I used to take pledgesand soon violate

them. My will was not strong, and I could not help it. And then, to be tied in any way naturally irks an

otherwise free person and makes him chafe in his bonds and want to get his liberty. But when I finally ceased

from taking definite pledges, and merely resolved that I would kill an injurious desire, but leave myself free

to resume the desire and the habit whenever I should choose to do so, I had no more trouble. In five days I

drove out the desire to smoke and was not obliged to keep watch after that; and I never experienced any

strong desire to smoke again. At the end of a year and a quarter of idleness I began to write a book, and

presently found that the pen was strangely reluctant to go. I tried a smoke to see if that would help me out of

the difficulty. It did. I smoked eight or ten cigars and as many pipes a day for five months; finished the book,

and did not smoke again until a year had gone by and another book had to be begun.

I can quit any of my nineteen injurious habits at any time, and without discomfort or inconvenience. I think

that the Dr. Tanners and those others who go forty days without eating do it by resolutely keeping out the

desire to eat, in the beginning, and that after a few hours the desire is discouraged and comes no more.

Once I tried my scheme in a large medical way. I had been confined to my bed several days with lumbago.

"My remedies have no fair chance. Consider what they have to fight, besides the lumbago. You smoke

"Very well, there you see what I have to contend against. We can't make progress the way the matter stands.

You must make a reduction in these things; you must cut down your consumption of them considerably for

"I lack the willpower. I can cut them off entirely, but I can't merely moderate them."

He said that that would answer, and said he would come around in twentyfour hours and begin work again.

He was taken ill himself and could not come; but I did not need him. I cut off all those things for two days

and nights; in fact, I cut off all kinds of food, too, and all drinks except water, and at the end of the

fortyeight hours the lumbago was discouraged and left me. I was a well man; so I gave thanks and took to

It seemed a valuable medical course, and I recommended it to a lady. She had run down and down and down,

and had at last reached a point where medicines no longer had any helpful effect upon her. I said I knew I

could put her upon her feet in a week. It brightened her up, it filled her with hope, and she said she would do

everything I told her to do. So I said she must stop swearing and drinking, and smoking and eating for four

days, and then she would be all right again. And it would have happened just so, I know it; but she said she

could not stop swearing, and smoking, and drinking, because she had never done those things. So there it

was. She had neglected her habits, and hadn't any. Now that they would have come good, there were none in

stock. She had nothing to fall back on. She was a sinking vessel, with no freight in her to throw over lighten

ship withal. Why, even one or two little bad habits cou1d have saved her, but she was just a moral pauper.

When she could have acquired them she was dissuaded by her parents, who were ignorant people though

reared in the best society, and it was too late to begin now. It seemed such a pity; but there was no help for it.

These things ought to be attended to while a person is young; otherwise, when age and disease come, there is

When I was a youth I used to take all kinds of pledges, and do my best to keep them, but I never could,

because I didn't strike at the root of the habitthe desire; I generally broke down within the month. Once I

tried limiting a habit. That worked tolerably well for a while. I pledged myself to smoke but one cigar a day. I

kept the cigar waiting until bedtime, then I had a luxurious time with it. But desire persecuted me every day

and all day long; so, within the week I found myself hunting for larger cigars than I had been used to smoke;

then larger ones still, and still larger ones. Within the fortnight I was getting cigars made for meon a yet

larger pattern. They still grew and grew in size. Within the month my cigar had grown to such proportions

that I could have used it as a crutch. It now seemed to me that a onecigar limit was no real protection to a

To go back to that young Canadian. He was a "remittance man," the first one I had ever seen or heard of.

Passengers explained the term to me. They said that dissipated ne'erdowells belonging to important

families in England and Canada were not cast off by their people while there was any hope of reforming

them, but when that last hope perished at last, the ne'erdowell was sent abroad to get him out of the way.

He was shipped off with just enough money in his pocketno, in the purser's pocketfor the needs of the

voyageand when he reached his destined port he would find a remittance awaiting him there. Not a large

one, but just enough to keep him a month. A similar remittance would come monthly thereafter. It was the

remittanceman's custom to pay his month's board and lodging straightwaya duty which his landlord did

not allow him to forgetthen spree away the rest of his money in a single night, then brood and mope and

We had other remittancemen on board, it was said. At least they said they were R. M.'s. There were two.

But they did not resemble the Canadian; they lacked his tidiness, and his brains, and his gentlemanly ways,

and his resolute spirit, and his humanities and generosities. One of them was a lad of nineteen or twenty, and

he was a good deal of a ruin, as to clothes, and morals, and general aspect. He said he was a scion of a ducal

house in England, and had been shipped to Canada for the house's relief, that he had fallen into trouble there,

and was now being shipped to Australia. He said he had no title. Beyond this remark he was economical of

the truth. The first thing he did in Australia was to get into the lockup, and the next thing he did was to

proclaim himself an earl in the police court in the morning and fail to prove it.

About four days out from Victoria we plunged into hot weather, and all the male passengers put on white

linen clothes. One or two days later we crossed the 25th parallel of north latitude, and then, by order, the

officers of the ship laid away their blue uniforms and came out in white linen ones. All the ladies were in

white by this time. This prevalence of snowy costumes gave the promenade deck an invitingly cool, and

There are several sorts of ills in the world from which a person can never escape altogether, let him journey

as far as he will. One escapes from one breed of an ill only to encounter another breed of it. We have come

far from the snake liar and the fish liar, and there was rest and peace in the thought; but now we have reached

the realm of the boomerang liar, and sorrow is with us once more. The first officer has seen a man try to

escape from his enemy by getting behind a tree; but the enemy sent his boomerang sailing into the sky far

above and beyond the tree; then it turned, descended, and killed the man. The Australian passenger has seen

this thing done to two men, behind two treesand by the one arrow. This being received with a large silence

that suggested doubt, he buttressed it with the statement that his brother once saw the boomerang kill a bird

away off a hundred yards and bring it to the thrower. But these are ills which must be borne. There is no other

The talk passed from the boomerang to dreamsusually a fruitful subject, afloat or ashorebut this time the

output was poor. Then it passed to instances of extraordinary memorywith better results. Blind Tom, the

negro pianist, was spoken of, and it was said that he could accurately play any piece of music, howsoever

long and difficult, after hearing it once; and that six months later he could accurately play it again, without

having touched it in the interval. One of the most striking of the stories told was furnished by a gentleman

who had served on the staff of the Viceroy of India. He read the details from his notebook, and explained

that he had written them down, right after the consummation of the incident which they described, because he

thought that if he did not put them down in black and white he might presently come to think he had dreamed

The Viceroy was making a progress, and among the shows offered by the Maharajah of Mysore for his

entertainment was a memoryexhibition. The Viceroy and thirty gentlemen of his suite sat in a row, and the

memory expert, a highcaste Brahmin, was brought in and seated on the floor in front of them. He said he

knew but two languages, the English and his own, but would not exclude any foreign tongue from the tests to

be applied to his memory. Then he laid before the assemblage his program a sufficiently extraordinary

one. He proposed that one gentleman should give him one word of a foreign sentence, and tell him its place

in the sentence. He was furnished with the French word 'est', and was told it was second in a sentence of three

words. The next, gentleman gave him the German word 'verloren' and said it was the third in a sentence of

four words. He asked the next gentleman for one detail in a sum in addition; another for one detail in a sum of

subtraction; others for single details in mathematical problems of various kinds; he got them. Intermediates

gave him single words from sentences in Greek, Latin, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, and other languages, and

told him their places in the sentences. When at last everybody had furnished him a single rag from a foreign

sentence or a figure from a problem, he went over the ground again, and got a second word and a second

figure and was told their places in the sentences and the sums; and so on and so on. He went over the ground

again and again until he had collected all the parts of the sums and all the parts of the sentencesand all in

The Brahmin now sat silent and thinking, a while, then began and repeated all the sentences, placing the

words in their proper order, and untangled the disordered arithmetical problems and gave accurate answers to

In the beginning he had asked the company to throw almonds at him during the two hours, he to remember

how many each gentleman had thrown; but none were thrown, for the Viceroy said that the test would be a

General Grant had a fine memory for all kinds of things, including even names and faces, and I could have

furnished an instance of it if I had thought of it. The first time I ever saw him was early in his first term as

President. I had just arrived in Washington from the Pacific coast, a stranger and wholly unknown to the

public, and was passing the White House one morning when I met a friend, a Senator from Nevada. He asked

me if I would like to see the President. I said I should be very glad; so we entered. I supposed that the

President would be in the midst of a crowd, and that I could look at him in peace and security from a

distance, as another stray cat might look at another king. But it was in the morning, and the Senator was using

a privilege of his office which I had not heard ofthe privilege of intruding upon the Chief Magistrate's

working hours. Before I knew it, the Senator and I were in the presence, and there was none there but we

three. General Grant got slowly up from his table, put his pen down, and stood before me with the iron

expression of a man who had not smiled for seven years, and was not intending to smile for another seven.

He looked me steadily in the eyesmine lost confidence and fell. I had never confronted a great man before,

The President gave my hand an unsympathetic wag and dropped it. He did not say a word but just stood. In

my trouble I could not think of anything to say, I merely wanted to resign. There was an awkward pause, a

dreary pause, a horrible pause. Then I thought of something, and looked up into that unyielding face, and said

His face brokejust a littlea wee glimmer, the momentary flicker of a summerlightning smile, seven

Ten years passed away before I saw him the second time. Meantime I was become better known; and was one

of the people appointed to respond to toasts at the banquet given to General Grant in Chicagoby the Army

of the Tennessee when he came back from his tour around the world. I arrived late at night and got up late in

the morning. All the corridors of the hotel were crowded with people waiting to get a glimpse of General

Grant when he should pass to the place whence he was to review the great procession. I worked my way by

the suite of packed drawingrooms, and at the corner of the house I found a window open where there was a

roomy platform decorated with flags, and carpeted. I stepped out on it, and saw below me millions of people

blocking all the streets, and other millions caked together in all the windows and on all the housetops

around. These masses took me for General Grant, and broke into volcanic explosions and cheers; but it was a

good place to see the procession, and I stayed. Presently I heard the distant blare of military music, and far up

the street I saw the procession come in sight, cleaving its way through the huzzaing multitudes, with

Sheridan, the most martial figure of the War, riding at its head in the dress uniform of a Lieutenant General.

And now General Grant, arminarm with Major Carter Harrison, stepped out on the platform, followed two

and two by the badged and uniformed reception committee. General Grant was looking exactly as he had

looked upon that trying occasion of ten years beforeall iron and bronze self possession. Mr. Harrison

came over and led me to the General and formally introduced me. Before I could put together the proper

"Mr. Clemens, I am not embarrassed. Are you?"and that little seven year smile twinkled across his face

Seventeen years have gone by since then, and today, in New York, the streets are a crush of people who are

there to honor the remains of the great soldier as they pass to their final restingplace under the monument;

and the air is heavy with dirges and the boom of artillery, and all the millions of America are thinking of the

man who restored the Union and the flag, and gave to democratic government a new lease of life, and, as we

may hope and do believe, a permanent place among the beneficent institutions of men.

We had one game in the ship which was a good timepasserat least it was at night in the smokingroom

when the men were getting freshened up from the day's monotonies and dullnesses. It was the completing of

non complete stories. That is to say, a man would tell all of a story except the finish, then the others would

try to supply the ending out of their own invention. When every one who wanted a chance had had it, the man

who had introduced the story would give it its original endingthen you could take your choice. Sometimes

the new endings turned out to be better than the old one. But the story which called out the most persistent

and determined and ambitious effort was one which had no ending, and so there was nothing to compare the

newmade endings with. The man who told it said he could furnish the particulars up to a certain point only,

because that was as much of the tale as he knew. He had read it in a volume of `sketches twentyfive years

ago, and was interrupted before the end was reached. He would give any one fifty dollars who would finish

the story to the satisfaction of a jury to be appointed by ourselves. We appointed a jury and wrestled with the

tale. We invented plenty of endings, but the jury voted them all down. The jury was right. It was a tale which

the author of it may possibly have completed satisfactorily, and if he really had that good fortune I would like

to know what the ending was. Any ordinary man will find that the story's strength is in its middle, and that

there is apparently no way to transfer it to the close, where of course it ought to be. In substance the storiette

John Brown, aged thirtyone, good, gentle, bashful, timid, lived in a quiet village in Missouri. He was

superintendent of the Presbyterian Sundayschool. It was but a humble distinction; still, it was his only

official one, and he was modestly proud of it and was devoted to its work and its interests. The extreme

kindliness of his nature was recognized by all; in fact, people said that he was made entirely out of good

impulses and bashfulness; that he could always be counted upon for help when it was needed, and for

Mary Taylor, twentythree, modest, sweet, winning, and in character and person beautiful, was all in all to

him. And he was very nearly all in all to her. She was wavering, his hopes were high. Her mother had been in

opposition from the first. But she was wavering, too; he could see it. She was being touched by his warm

interest in her two charity proteges and by his contributions toward their support. These were two forlorn

and aged sisters who lived in a log hut in a lonely place up a cross road four miles from Mrs. Taylor's farm.

At last the time seemed ripe for a final advance, and Brown gathered his courage together and resolved to

make it. He would take along a contribution of double the usual size, and win the mother over; with her

He took to the road in the middle of a placid Sunday afternoon in the soft Missourian summer, and he was

equipped properly for his mission. He was clothed all in white linen, with a blue ribbon for a necktie, and he

had on dressy tight boots. His horse and buggy were the finest that the livery stable could furnish. The lap

robe was of white linen, it was new, and it had a handworked border that could not be rivaled in that region

When he was four miles out on the lonely road and was walking his horse over a wooden bridge, his straw

hat blew off and fell in the creek, and floated down and lodged against a bar. He did not quite know what to

Then he had an idea. The roads were empty, nobody was stirring. Yes, he would risk it. He led the horse to

the roadside and set it to cropping the grass; then he undressed and put his clothes in the buggy, petted the

horse a moment to secure its compassion and its loyalty, then hurried to the stream. He swam out and soon

His legs almost gave way under him. The horse was walking leisurely along the road. Brown trotted after it,

saying, "Whoa, whoa, there's a good fellow;" but whenever he got near enough to chance a jump for the

buggy, the horse quickened its pace a little and defeated him. And so this went on, the naked man perishing

with anxiety, and expecting every moment to see people come in sight. He tagged on and on, imploring the

horse, beseeching the horse, till he had left a mile behind him, and was closing up on the Taylor premises;

then at last he was successful, and got into the buggy. He flung on his shirt, his necktie, and his coat; then

reached forbut he was too late; he sat suddenly down and pulled up the laprobe, for he saw some one

coming out of the gatea woman; he thought. He wheeled the horse to the left, and struck briskly up the

crossroad. It was perfectly straight, and exposed on both sides; but there were woods and a sharp turn three

miles ahead, and he was very grateful when he got there. As he passed around the turn he slowed down to a

He had come upon Mrs. Enderby, Mrs. Glossop, Mrs. Taylor, and Mary. They were on foot, and seemed tired

and excited. They came at once to the buggy and shook hands, and all spoke at once, and said eagerly and

earnestly, how glad they were that he was come, and how fortunate it was. And Mrs. Enderby said,

"It looks like an accident, his coming at such a time; but let no one profane it with such a name; he was

"Sarah Enderby, you never said a truer word in your life. This is no accident, it is a special Providence. He

was sent. He is an angelan angel as truly as ever angel wasan angel of deliverance. I say angel, Sarah

Enderby, and will have no other word. Don't let any one ever say to me again, that there's no such thing as

"I know it's so," said Mrs. Taylor, fervently. "John Brown, I could worship you; I could go down on my

knees to you. Didn't something tell you? didn't you feel that you were sent? I could kiss the hem of your

He was not able to speak; he was helpless with shame and fright. Mrs. Taylor went on:

"Why, just look at it all around, Julia Glossop. Any person can see the hand of Providence in it. Here at noon

what do we see? We see the smoke rising. I speak up and say, 'That's the Old People's cabin afire.' Didn't I,

"The very words you said, Nancy Taylor. I was as close to you as I am now, and I heard them. You may have

said hut instead of cabin, but in substance it's the same. And you were looking pale, too."

"Pale? I was that pale that ifwhy, you just compare it with this laprobe. Then the next thing I said was,

'Mary Taylor, tell the hired man to rig up the teamwe'll go to the rescue.' And she said, 'Mother, don't you

know you told him he could drive to see his people, and stay over Sunday?' And it was just so. I declare for it,

I had forgotten it. 'Then,' said I, 'we'll go afoot.' And go we did. And found Sarah Enderby on the road."

"And we all went together," said Mrs. Enderby. "And found the cabin set fire to and burnt down by the crazy

one, and the poor old things so old and feeble that they couldn't go afoot. And we got them to a shady place

and made them as comfortable as we could, and began to wonder which way to turn to find some way to get

them conveyed to Nancy Taylor's house. And I spoke up and saidnow what did I say? Didn't I say,

"So had I," said Mrs. Glossop and Mrs. Taylor; "but you certainly said it. Now wasn't that remarkable? "

"Yes, I said it. And then we went to Mr. Moseley's, two miles, and all of them were gone to the camp meeting

over on Stony Fork; and then we came all the way back, two miles, and then here, another mileand

"And then," said Mrs. Glossop, "what do you think we had better do let Mr. Brown drive the Old People to

Nancy Taylor's one at a time, or put both of them in the buggy, and him lead the horse?"

"Now, then, that's a question," said Mrs. Enderby. "You see, we are all tired out, and any way we fix it it's

going to be difficult. For if Mr. Brown takes both of them, at least one of us must, go back to help him, for he

"That is so," said Mrs. Taylor. "It doesn't lookoh, how would this do? one of us drive there with Mr.

Brown, and the rest of you go along to my house and get things ready. I'll go with him. He and I together can

"But who will take care of the other one?" said Mrs. Enderby. "We musn't leave her there in the woods alone,

They had all been sitting on the grass beside the buggy for a while, now, trying to rest their weary bodies.

They fell silent a moment or two, and struggled in thought over the baffling situation; then Mrs. Enderby

"I think I've got the idea, now. You see, we can't walk any more. Think what we've done: four miles there,

two to Moseley's, is six, then back to herenine miles since noon, and not a bite to eat; I declare I don't see

how we've done it; and as for me, I am just famishing. Now, somebody's got to go back, to help Mr.

Brownthere's no getting mound that; but whoever goes has got to ride, not walk. So my idea is this: one of

us to ride back with Mr. Brown, then ride to Nancy Taylor's house with one of the Old People, leaving Mr.

Brown to keep the other old one company, you all to go now to Nancy's and rest and wait; then one of you

"Splendid!" they all cried. "Oh, that will dothat will answer perfectly." And they all said that Mrs. Enderby

had the best head for planning, in the company; and they said that they wondered that they hadn't thought of

this simple plan themselves. They hadn't meant to take back the compliment, good simple souls, and didn't

know they had done it. After a consultation it was decided that Mrs. Enderby should drive back with Brown,

she being entitled to the distinction because she had invented the plan. Everything now being satisfactorily

arranged and settled, the ladies rose, relieved and happy, and brushed down their gowns, and three of them

started homeward; Mrs. Enderby set her foot on the buggystep and was about to climb in, when Brown

"Please Mrs. Enderby, call them back I am very weak; I can't walk, I can't, indeed."

"Why, dear Mr. Brown! You do look pale; I am ashamed of myself that I didn't notice it sooner. Come

backall of you! Mr. Brown is not well. Is there anything I can do for you, Mr. Brown?I'm real sorry. Are

"No, madam, only weak; I am not sick, but only just weaklately; not long, but just lately."

The others came back, and poured out their sympathies and commiserations, and were full of selfreproaches

And they at once struck out a new plan, and soon agreed that it was by far the best of all. They would all go

to Nancy Taylor's house and see to Brown's needs first. He could lie on the sofa in the parlor, and while Mrs.

Taylor and Mary took care of him the other two ladies would take the buggy and go and get one of the Old

By this time, without any solicitation, they were at the horse's head and were beginning to turn him around.

The danger was imminent, but Brown found his voice again and saved himself. He said

"But ladies, you are overlooking something which makes the plan impracticable. You see, if you bring one of

them home, and one remains behind with the other, there will be three persons there when one of you comes

back for that other, for some one must drive the buggy back, and three can't come home in it."

They all exclaimed, "Why, surely, that is so!" and they were, all perplexed again.

"Dear, dear, what can we do?" said Mrs. Glossop;" it is the most mixed up thing that ever was. The fox and

They sat wearily down once more, to further torture their tormented heads for a plan that would work.

"I am young and strong, and am refreshed, now. Take Mr. Brown to our house, and give him helpyou see

how plainly he needs it. I will go back and take care of the Old People; I can be there in twenty minutes. You

can go on and do what you first started to dowait on the main road at our house until somebody comes

along with a wagon; then send and bring away the three of us. You won't have to wait long; the farmers will

soon be coming back from town, now. I will keep old Polly patient and cheered upthe crazy one doesn't

This plan was discussed and accepted; it seemed the best that could be done, in the circumstances, and the

Brown felt relieved, and was deeply thankful. Let him once get to the main road and he would find a way to

"The evening chill will be coming on, pretty soon, and those poor old burntout things will need some kind

That was the end of the tale. The passenger who told it said that when he read the story twentyfive years ago

At first we thought we could finish the story quite easily, and we set to work with confidence; but it soon

began to appear that it was not a simple thing, but difficult and baffling. This was on account of Brown's

charactergreat generosity and kindliness, but complicated with unusual shyness and diffidence, particularly

in the presence of ladies. There was his love for Mary, in a hopeful state but not yet securejust in a

condition, indeed, where its affair must be handled with great tact, and no mistakes made, no offense given.

And there was the mother wavering, half willingby adroit and flawless diplomacy to be won over, now, or

perhaps never at all. Also, there were the helpless Old People yonder in the woods waitingtheir fate and

Brown's happiness to be determined by what Brown should do within the next two seconds. Mary was

Of course none but a happy ending of the story would be accepted by the jury; the finish must find Brown in

high credit with the ladies, his behavior without blemish, his modesty unwounded, his character for self

sacrifice maintained, the Old People rescued through him, their benefactor, all the party proud of him, happy

We tried to arrange this, but it was beset with persistent and irreconcilable difficulties. We saw that Brown's

shyness would not allow him to give up the laprobe. This would offend Mary and her mother; and it would

surprise the other ladies, partly because this stinginess toward the suffering Old People would be out of

character with Brown, and partly because he was a special Providence and could not properly act so. If asked

to explain his conduct, his shyness would not allow him to tell the truth, and lack of invention and practice

would find him incapable of contriving a lie that would wash. We worked at the troublesome problem until

Meantime Mary was still reaching for the laprobe. We gave it up, and decided to let her continue to reach. It

On the seventh day out we saw a dim vast bulk standing up out of the wastes of the Pacific and knew that that

spectral promontory was Diamond Head, a piece of this world which I had not seen before for twentynine

years. So we were nearing Honolulu, the capital city of the Sandwich Islandsthose islands which to me

were Paradise; a Paradise which I had been longing all those years to see again. Not any other thing in the

In the night we anchored a mile from shore. Through my port I could see the twinkling lights of Honolulu

and the dark bulk of the mountainrange that stretched away right and left. I could not make out the beautiful

Nuuana valley, but I knew where it lay, and remembered how it used to look in the old times. We used to ride

up it on horseback in those days we young peopleand branch off and gather bones in a sandy region

where one of the first Kamehameha's battles was fought. He was a remarkable man, for a king; and he was

also a remarkable man for a savage. He was a mere kinglet and of little or no consequence at the time of

Captain Cook's arrival in 1788; but about four years afterward he conceived the idea of enlarging his sphere

of influence. That is a courteous modern phrase which means robbing your neighborfor your neighbor's

benefit; and the great theater of its benevolences is Africa. Kamehameha went to war, and in the course of ten

years he whipped out all the other kings and made himself master of every one of the nine or ten islands that

form the group. But he did more than that. He bought ships, freighted them with sandal wood and other

native products, and sent them as far as South America and China; he sold to his savages the foreign stuffs

and tools and utensils which came back in these ships, and started the march of civilization. It is doubtful if

the match to this extraordinary thing is to be found in the history of any other savage. Savages are eager to

learn from the white man any new way to kill each other, but it is not their habit to seize with avidity and

apply with energy the larger and nobler ideas which he offers them. The details of Kamehameha's history

show that he was always hospitably ready to examine the white man's ideas, and that he exercised a tidy

A shrewder discrimination than was exhibited by his son and successor, Liholiho, I think. Liholiho could

have qualified as a reformer, perhaps, but as a king he was a mistake. A mistake because he tried to be both

king and reformer. This is mixing fire and gunpowder together. A king has no proper business with

reforming. His best policy is to keep things as they are; and if he can't do that, he ought to try to make them

worse than they are. This is not guesswork; I have thought over this matter a good deal, so that if I should

ever have a chance to become a king I would know how to conduct the business in the best way.

When Liholiho succeeded his father he found himself possessed of an equipment of royal tools and

safeguards which a wiser king would have known how to husband, and judiciously employ, and make

profitable. The entire country was under the one scepter, and his was that scepter. There was an Established

Church, and he was the head of it. There was a Standing Army, and he was the head of that; an Army of 114

privates under command of 27 Generals and a Field Marshal. There was a proud and ancient Hereditary

Nobility. There was still one other asset. This was the tabuan agent endowed with a mysterious and

stupendous power, an agent not found among the properties of any European monarch, a tool of inestimable

value in the business. Liholiho was headmaster of the tabu. The tabu was the most ingenious and effective of

all the inventions that has ever been devised for keeping a people's privileges satisfactorily restricted.

It required the sexes to live in separate houses. It did not allow people to eat in either house; they must eat in

another place. It did not allow a man's womanfolk to enter his house. It did not allow the sexes to eat

together; the men must eat first, and the women must wait on them. Then the women could eat what was

leftif anything was leftand wait on themselves. I mean, if anything of a coarse or unpalatable sort was

left, the women could have it. But not the good things, the fine things, the choice things, such as pork,

poultry, bananas, cocoanuts, the choicer varieties of fish, and so on. By the tabu, all these were sacred to the

men; the women spent their lives longing for them and wondering what they might taste like; and they died

These rules, as you see, were quite simple and clear. It was easy to remember them; and useful. For the

penalty for infringing any rule in the whole list was death. Those women easily learned to put up with shark

It was death for any one to walk upon tabu'd ground; or defile a tabu'd thing with his touch; or fail in due

servility to a chief; or step upon the king's shadow. The nobles and the King and the priests were always

suspending little rags here and there and yonder, to give notice to the people that the decorated spot or thing

was tabu, and death lurking near. The struggle for life was difficult and chancy in the islands in those days.

Thus advantageously was the new king situated. Will it be believed that the first thing he did was to destroy

his Established Church, root and branch? He did indeed do that. To state the case figuratively, he was a

prosperous sailor who burnt his ship and took to a raft. This Church was a horrid thing. It heavily oppressed

the people; it kept them always trembling in the gloom of mysterious threatenings; it slaughtered them in

sacrifice before its grotesque idols of wood and stone; it cowed them, it terrorized them, it made them slaves

to its priests, and through the priests to the king. It was the best friend a king could have, and the most

dependable. To a professional reformer who should annihilate so frightful and so devastating a power as this

Church, reverence and praise would be due; but to a king who should do it, could properly be due nothing but

reproach; reproach softened by sorrow; sorrow for his unfitness for his position.

He destroyed his Established Church, and his kingdom is a republic today, in consequence of that act.

When he destroyed the Church and burned the idols he did a mighty thing for civilization and for his people's

wealbut it was not "business." It was unkingly, it was inartistic. It made trouble for his line. The American

missionaries arrived while the burned idols were still smoking. They found the nation without a religion, and

they repaired the defect. They offered their own religion and it was gladly received. But it was no support to

arbitrary kingship, and so the kingly power began to weaken from that day. Fortyseven years later, when I

was in the islands, Kainehameha V. was trying to repair Liholiho's blunder, and not succeeding. He had set

up an Established Church and made himself the head of it. But it was only a pinchbeck thing, an imitation, a

bauble, an empty show. It had no power, no value for a king. It could not harry or burn or slay, it in no way

resembled the admirable machine which Liholiho destroyed. It was an Established Church without an

Long before that, the kingship had itself become but a name, a show. At an early day the missionaries had

turned it into something very much like a republic; and here lately the business whites have turned it into

In Captain Cook's time (1778), the native population of the islands was estimated at 400,000; in 1836 at

something short of 200,000, in 1866 at 50,000; it is today, per census, 25,000. All intelligent people praise

Kamehameha I. and Liholiho for conferring upon their people the great boon of civilization. I would do it

When I was in the islands nearly a generation ago, I was acquainted with a young American couple who had

among their belongings an attractive little son of the age of sevenattractive but not practicably

companionable with me, because he knew no English. He had played from his birth with the little Kanakas on

his father's plantation, and had preferred their language and would learn no other. The family removed to

America a month after I arrived in the islands, and straightway the boy began to lose his Kanaka and pick up

English. By the time he was twelve be hadn't a word of Kanaka left; the language had wholly departed from

his tongue and from his comprehension. Nine years later, when he was twentyone, I came upon the family

in one of the lake towns of New York, and the mother told me about an adventure which her son had been

having. By trade he was now a professional diver. A passenger boat had been caught in a storm on the lake,

and had gone down, carrying her people with her. A few days later the young diver descended, with his armor

on, and entered the berthsaloon of the boat, and stood at the foot of the companionway, with his hand on the

rail, peering through the dim water. Presently something touched him on the shoulder, and he turned and

found a dead man swaying and bobbing about him and seemingly inspecting him inquiringly. He was

paralyzed with fright. His entry had disturbed the water, and now he discerned a number of dim corpses

making for him and wagging their heads and swaying their bodies like sleepy people trying to dance. His

senses forsook him, and in that condition he was drawn to the surface. He was put to bed at home, and was

soon very ill. During some days he had seasons of delirium which lasted several hours at a time; and while

they lasted he talked Kanaka incessantly and glibly; and Kanaka only. He was still very ill, and he talked to

me in that tongue; but I did not understand it, of course. The doctorbooks tell us that cases like this are not

uncommon. Then the doctors ought to study the cases and find out how to multiply them. Many languages

and things get mislaid in a person's head, and stay mislaid for lack of this remedy.

Many memories of my former visit to the islands came up in my mind while we lay at anchor in front of

Honolulu that night. And picturespictures picturesan enchanting procession of them! I was impatient for

When it came it brought disappointment, of course. Cholera had broken out in the town, and we were not

allowed to have any communication with the shore. Thus suddenly did my dream of twentynine years go to

ruin. Messages came from friends, but the friends themselves I was not to have any sight of. My lecturehall

Several of our passengers belonged in Honolulu, and these were sent ashore; but nobody could go ashore and

return. There were people on shore who were booked to go with us to Australia, but we could not receive

them; to do it would cost us a quarantineterm in Sydney. They could have escaped the day before, by ship to

San Francisco; but the bars had been put up, now, and they might have to wait weeks before any ship could

venture to give them a passage any whither. And there were hardships for others. An elderly lady and her son,

recreationseekers from Massachusetts, had wandered westward, further and further from home, always

intending to take the return track, but always concluding to go still a little further; and now here they were at

anchor before Honolulu positively their last westwardbound indulgencethey had made up their minds to

thatbut where is the use in making up your mind in this world? It is usually a waste of time to do it. These

two would have to stay with us as far as Australia. Then they could go on around the world, or go back the

way they had come; the distance and the accommodations and outlay of time would be just the same,

whichever of the two routes they might elect to take. Think of it: a projected excursion of five hundred miles

gradually enlarged, without any elaborate degree of intention, to a possible twentyfour thousand. However,

And we had with us a lawyer from Victoria, who had been sent out by the Government on an international

matter, and he had brought his wife with him and left the children at home with the servants and now what

was to be done? Go ashore amongst the cholera and take the risks? Most certainly not. They decided to go on,

to the Fiji islands, wait there a fortnight for the next ship, and then sail for home. They couldn't foresee that

they wouldn't see a homewardbound ship again for six weeks, and that no word could come to them from

the children, and no word go from them to the children in all that time. It is easy to make plans in this world;

even a cat can do it; and when one is out in those remote oceans it is noticeable that a cat's plans and a man's

are worth about the same. There is much the same shrinkage in both, in the matter of values.

There was nothing for us to do but sit about the decks in the shade of the awnings and look at the distant

shore. We lay in luminous blue water; shoreward the water was greengreen and brilliant; at the shore itself it

broke in a long white ruffle, and with no crash, no sound that we could hear. The town was buried under a

mat of foliage that looked like a cushion of moss. The silky mountains were clothed in soft, rich splendors of

melting color, and some of the cliffs were veiled in slanting mists. I recognized it all. It was just as I had seen

A change had come, but that was political, and not visible from the ship. The monarchy of my day was gone,

and a republic was sitting in its seat. It was not a material change. The old imitation pomps, the fuss and

feathers, have departed, and the royal trademarkthat is about all that one could miss, I suppose. That

imitation monarchy, was grotesque enough, in my time; if it had held on another thirty years it would have

We had a sunset of a very fine sort. The vast plain of the sea was marked off in bands of sharplycontrasted

colors: great stretches of dark blue, others of purple, others of polished bronze; the billowy mountains

showed all sorts of dainty browns and greens, blues and purples and blacks, and the rounded velvety backs of

certain of them made one want to stroke them, as one would the sleek back of a cat. The long, sloping

promontory projecting into the sea at the west turned dim and leaden and spectral, then became suffused with

pinkdissolved itself in a pink dream, so to speak, it seemed so airy and unreal. Presently the cloud rack

was flooded with fiery splendors, and these were copied on the surface of the sea, and it made one drunk with

From talks with certain of our passengers whose home was Honolulu, and from a sketch by Mrs. Mary H.

Krout, I was able to perceive what the Honolulu of today is, as compared with the Honolulu of my time. In

my time it was a beautiful little town, made up of snowwhite wooden cottages deliciously smothered in

tropical vines and flowers and trees and shrubs; and its coral roads and streets were hard and smooth, and as

white as the houses. The outside aspects of the place suggested the presence of a modest and comfortable

prosperitya general prosperity perhaps one might strengthen the term and say universal. There were no

fine houses, no fine furniture. There were no decorations. Tallow candles furnished the light for the

bedrooms, a whaleoil lamp furnished it for the parlor. Native matting served as carpeting. In the parlor one

would find two or three lithographs on the wallsportraits as a rule: Kamehameha IV., Louis Kossuth,

Jenny Lind; and may be an engraving or two: Rebecca at the Well, Moses smiting the rock, Joseph's servants

finding the cup in Benjamin's sack. There would be a center table, with books of a tranquil sort on it: The

Whole Duty of Man, Baxter's Saints' Rest, Fox's Martyrs, Tupper's Proverbial Philosophy, bound copies of

The Missionary Herald and of Father Damon's Seaman's Friend. A melodeon; a music stand, with 'Willie, We

have Missed You', 'Star of the Evening', 'Roll on Silver Moon', 'Are We Most There', 'I Would not Live

Alway', and other songs of love and sentiment, together with an assortment of hymns. A whatnot with

semiglobular glass paperweights, enclosing miniature pictures of ships, New England rural snowstorms, and

the like; seashells with Bible texts carved on them in cameo style; native curios; whale's tooth with

fullrigged ship carved on it. There was nothing reminiscent of foreign parts, for nobody had been abroad.

Trips were made to San Francisco, but that could not be called going abroad. Comprehensively speaking,

But Honolulu has grown wealthy since then, and of course wealth has introduced changes; some of the old

simplicities have disappeared. Here is a modern house, as pictured by Mrs. Krout:

"Almost every house is surrounded by extensive lawns and gardens enclosed by walls of volcanic stone or by

"The houses are most tastefully and comfortably furnished; the floors are either of hard wood covered with

rugs or with fine Indian matting, while there is a preference, as in most warm countries, for rattan or bamboo

furniture; there are the usual accessories of bric abrac, pictures, books, and curios from all parts of the

"Nearly every house has what is called a lanai. It is a large apartment, roofed, floored, open on three sides,

with a door or a draped archway opening into the drawingroom. Frequently the roof is formed by the thick

interlacing boughs of the hou tree, impervious to the sun and even to the rain, except in violent storms. Vines

are trained about the sidesthe stephanotis or some one of the countless fragrant and blossoming trailers

which abound in the islands. There are also curtains of matting that may be drawn to exclude the sun or rain.

The floor is bare for coolness, or partially covered with rugs, and the lanai is prettily furnished with

comfortable chairs, sofas, and tables loaded with flowers, or wonderful ferns in pots.

"The lanai is the favorite reception room, and here at any social function the musical program is given and

cakes and ices are served; here morning callers are received, or gay riding parties, the ladies in pretty divided

skirts, worn for convenience in riding astride, the universal mode adopted by Europeans and Americans, as

"The comfort and luxury of such an apartment, especially at a seashore villa, can hardly be imagined. The

soft breezes sweep across it, heavy with the fragrance of jasmine and gardenia, and through the swaying

boughs of palm and mimosa there are glimpses of rugged mountains, their summits veiled in clouds, of

purple sea with the white surf beating eternally against the reefs, whiter still in the yellow sunlight or the

There: rugs, ices, pictures, lanais, worldly books, sinful bricabrac fetched from everywhere. And the ladies

riding astride. These are changes, indeed. In my time the native women rode astride, but the white ones

lacked the courage to adopt their wise custom. In my time ice was seldom seen in Honolulu. It sometimes

came in sailing vessels from New England as ballast; and then, if there happened to be a manofwar in port

and balls and suppers raging by consequence, the ballast was worth six hundred dollars a ton, as is evidenced

by reputable tradition. But the icemachine has traveled all over the world, now, and brought ice within

everybody's reach. In Lapland and Spitzbergen no one uses native ice in our day, except the bears and the

The bicycle is not mentioned. It was not necessary. We know that it is there, without inquiring. It is

everywhere. But for it, people could never have had summer homes on the summit of Mont Blanc; before its

day, property up there had but a nominal value. The ladies of the Hawaiian capital learned too late the right

way to occupy a horsetoo late to get much benefit from it. The ridinghorse is retiring from business

everywhere in the world. In Honolulu a few years from now he will be only a tradition.

We all know about Father Damien, the French priest who voluntarily forsook the world and went to the leper

island of Molokai to labor among its population of sorrowful exiles who wait there, in slowconsuming

misery, for death to cone and release them from their troubles; and we know that the thing which he knew

beforehand would happen, did happen: that he became a leper himself, and died of that horrible disease.

There was still another case of selfsacrifice, it appears. I asked after "Billy" Ragsdale, interpreter to the

Parliament in my timea halfwhite. He was a brilliant young fellow, and very popular. As an interpreter he

would have been hard to match anywhere. He used to stand up in the Parliament and turn the English

speeches into Hawaiian and the Hawaiian speeches into English with a readiness and a volubility that were

astonishing. I asked after him, and was told that his prosperous career was cut short in a sudden and

unexpected way, just as he was about to marry a beautiful halfcaste girl. He discovered, by some nearly

invisible sign about his skin, that the poison of leprosy was in him. The secret was his own, and might be kept

concealed for years; but he would not be treacherous to the girl that loved him; he would not marry her to a

doom like his. And so he put his affairs in order, and went around to all his friends and bade them goodbye,

and sailed in the leper ship to Molokai. There he died the loathsome and lingering death that all lepers die.

In this place let me insert a paragraph or two from 11 The Paradise of the Pacific" (Rev. H. H. Gowen)

"Poor lepers! It is easy for those who have no relatives or friends among them to enforce the decree of

segregation to the letter, but who can write of the terrible, the heartbreaking scenes which that enforcement

"A man upon Hawaii was suddenly taken away after a summary arrest, leaving behind him a helpless wife

about to give birth to a babe. The devoted wife with great pain and risk came the whole journey to Honolulu,

and pleaded until the authorities were unable to resist her entreaty that she might go and live like a leper with

"A woman in the prime of life and activity is condemned as an incipient leper, suddenly removed from her

home, and her husband returns to find his two helpless babes moaning for their lost mother.

"Imagine it! The case of the babies is hard, but its bitterness is a trifleless than a trifleless than

nothingcompared to what the mother must suffer; and suffer minute by minute, hour by hour, day by day,

month by month, year by year, without respite, relief, or any abatement of her pain till she dies.

"One woman, Luka Kaaukau, has been living with her leper husband in the settlement for twelve years. The

man has scarcely a joint left, his limbs are only distorted ulcerated stumps, for four years his wife has put

every particle of food into his mouth. He wanted his wife to abandon his wretched carcass long ago, as she

herself was sound and well, but Luka said that she was content to remain and wait on the man she loved till

"I myself have known hard cases enough:of a girl, apparently in full health, decorating the church with me

at Easter, who before Christmas is taken away as a confirmed leper; of a mother hiding her child in the

mountains for years so that not even her dearest friends knew that she had a child alive, that he might not be

taken away; of a respectable white man taken away from his wife and family, and compelled to become a

dweller in the Leper Settlement, where he is counted dead, even by the insurance companies."

And one great pity of it all is, that these poor sufferers are innocent. The leprosy does not come of sins which

they committed, but of sins committed by their ancestors, who escaped the curse of leprosy!

Mr. Gowan has made record of a certain very striking circumstance. Would you expect to find in that awful

Leper Settlement a custom worthy to be transplanted to your own country? They have one such, and it is

inexpressibly touching and beautiful. When death sets open the prison door of life there, the band salutes the

Sept. 2. Flocks of flying fishslim, shapely, graceful, and intensely white. With the sun on them they look

Sept. 3. In 9 deg. 50' north latitude, at breakfast. Approaching the equator on a long slant. Those of us who

have never seen the equator are a good deal excited. I think I would rather see it than any other thing in the

world. We entered the "doldrums" last nightvariable winds, bursts of rain, intervals of calm, with chopping

seas and a wobbly and drunken motion to the shipa condition of things findable in other regions

sometimes, but present in the doldrums always. The globe girdling belt called the doldrums is 20 degrees

Sept. 4. Total eclipse of the moon last night. At 1.30 it began to go off. At totalor about thatit was like a

rich rosy cloud with a tumbled surface framed in the circle and projecting from ita bulge of

strawberryice, so to speak. At halfeclipse the moon was like a gilded acorn in its cup.

Sept. 5. Closing in on the equator this noon. A sailor explained to a young girl that the ship's speed is poor

because we are climbing up the bulge toward the center of the globe; but that when we should once get over,

at the equator, and start downhill, we should fly. When she asked him the other day what the foreyard was,

he said it was the front yard, the open area in the front end of the ship. That man has a good deal of learning

Afternoon. Crossed the equator. In the distance it looked like a blue ribbon stretched across the ocean.

Several passengers kodak'd it. We had no fool ceremonies, no fantastics, no horse play. All that sort of thing

has gone out. In old times a sailor, dressed as Neptune, used to come in over the bows, with his suite, and

lather up and shave everybody who was crossing the equator for the first time, and then cleanse these

unfortunates by swinging them from the yardarm and ducking them three times in the sea. This was

considered funny. Nobody knows why. No, that is not true. We do know why. Such a thing could never be

funny on land; no part of the oldtime grotesque performances gotten up on shipboard to celebrate the

passage of the line would ever be funny on shorethey would seem dreary and less to shore people. But the

shore people would change their minds about it at sea, on a long voyage. On such a voyage, with its eternal

monotonies, people's intellects deteriorate; the owners of the intellects soon reach a point where they almost

seem to prefer childish things to things of a maturer degree. One is often surprised at the juvenilities which

grown people indulge in at sea, and the interest they take in them, and the consuming enjoyment they get out

of them. This is on long voyages only. The mind gradually becomes inert, dull, blunted; it loses its

accustomed interest in intellectual things; nothing but horseplay can rouse it, nothing but wild and foolish

grotesqueries can entertain it. On short voyages it makes no such exposure of itself; it hasn't time to slump

The shortvoyage passenger gets his chief physical exercise out of "horsebilliards"shovelboard. It is a

good game. We play it in this ship. A quartermaster chalks off a diagram like thison the deck.

The player uses a cue that is like a broomhandle with a quartermoon of wood fastened to the end of it.

With this he shoves wooden disks the size of a saucerhe gives the disk a vigorous shove and sends it

fifteen or twenty feet along the deck and lands it in one of the squares if he can. If it stays there till the inning

is played out, it will count as many points in the game as the figure in the square it has stopped in represents.

The adversary plays to knock that disk out and leave his own in its placeparticularly if it rests upon the 9

or 10 or some other of the high numbers; but if it rests in the "10off" he backs it uplands his disk behind it

a foot or two, to make it difficult for its owner to knock it out of that damaging place and improve his record.

When the inning is played out it may be found that each adversary has placed his four disks where they

count; it may be found that some of them are touching chalk lines and not counting; and very often it will be

found that there has been a general wreckage, and that not a disk has been left within the diagram. Anyway,

the result is recorded, whatever it is, and the game goes on. The game is 100 points, and it takes from twenty

minutes to forty to play it, according to luck and the condition of the sea. It is an exciting game, and the

crowd of spectators furnish abundance of applause for fortunate shots and plenty of laughter for the other

kind. It is a game of skill, but at the same time the uneasy motion of the ship is constantly interfering with

We had a couple of grand tournaments, to determine who should be "Champion of the Pacific"; they included

among the participants nearly all the passengers, of both sexes, and the officers of the ship, and they afforded

many days of stupendous interest and excitement, and murderous exercisefor horsebilliards is a

The figures in the following record of some of the closing games in the first tournament will show, better

than any description, how very chancy the game is. The losers here represented had all been winners in the

And so on; until but three couples of winners were left. Then I beat my man, young Smith beat his man, and

Thomas beat his. This reduced the combatants to three. Smith and I took the deck, and I led off. At the close

of the first inning I was 10 worse than nothing and Smith had scored 7. The luck continued against me. When

I was 57, Smith was 97 within 3 of out. The luck changed then. He picked up a 10off or so, and couldn't

Mr. Thomas and I were the contestants. He won the lead and went to the batso to speak. And there he

stood, with the crotch of his cue resting against his disk while the ship rose slowly up, sank slowly down,

rose again, sank again. She never seemed to rise to suit him exactly. She started up once more; and when she

was nearly ready for the turn, he let drive and landed his disk just within the lefthand end of the 10.

(Applause). The umpire proclaimed " a good 10," and the gamekeeper set it down. I played: my disk grazed

Mr. Thomas played againand landed his second disk alongside of the first, and almost touching its

Mr. Thomas delivered his third shot and landed his disk just at the right of the other two. " Good 10."

There they lay, side by side, the three in a row. It did not seem possible that anybody could miss them. Still I

Mr. Thomas played his last disk. It seems incredible, but he actually landed that disk alongside of the others,

and just to the right of thema straight solid row of 4 disks. (Tumultuous and longcontinued applause.)

Then I played my last disk. Again it did not seem possible that anybody could miss that rowa row which

would have been 14 inches long if the disks had been clamped together; whereas, with the spaces separating

them they made a longer row than that. But I did it. It may be that I was getting nervous.

I think it unlikely that that innings has ever had its parallel in the history of horsebilliards. To place the four

disks side by side in the 10 was an extraordinary feat; indeed, it was a kind of miracle. To miss them was

another miracle. It will take a century to produce another man who can place the four disks in the 10; and

longer than that to find a man who can't knock them out. I was ashamed of my performance at the time, but

In a minor tournament I won the prize, which was a Waterbury watch. I put it in my trunk. In Pretoria, South

Africa, nine months afterward, my proper watch broke down and I took the Waterbury out, wound it, set it by

the great clock on the Parliament House (8.05), then went back to my room and went to bed, tired from a long

railway journey. The parliamentary clock had a peculiarity which I was not aware of at the time a

peculiarity which exists in no other clock, and would not exist in that one if it had been made by a sane

person; on the halfhour it strikes the succeeding hour, then strikes the hour again, at the proper time. I lay

reading and smoking awhile; then, when I could hold my eyes open no longer and was about to put out the

light, the great clock began to boom, and I counted ten. I reached for the Waterbury to see how it was getting

along. It was marking 9.30. It seemed rather poor speed for a three dollar watch, but I supposed that the

climate was affecting it. I shoved it half an hour ahead; and took to my book and waited to see what would

happen. At 10 the great clock struck ten again. I lookedthe Waterbury was marking halfpast 10. This was

too much speed for the money, and it troubled me. I pushed the hands back a half hour, and waited once

more; I had to, for I was vexed and restless now, and my sleepiness was gone. By and by the great clock

struck 11. The Waterbury was marking 10.30. I pushed it ahead half an hour, with some show of temper. By

and by the great clock struck 11 again. The Waterbury showed up 11.30, now, and I beat her brains out

The average human being is a perverse creature; and when he isn't that, he is a practical joker. The result to

the other person concerned is about the same: that is, he is made to suffer. The washing down of the decks

begins at a very early hour in all ships; in but few ships are any measures taken to protect the passengers,

either by waking or warning them, or by sending a steward to close their ports. And so the deckwashers have

their opportunity, and they use it. They send a bucket of water slashing along the side of the ship and into the

ports, drenching the passenger's clothes, and often the passenger himself. This good old custom prevailed in

this ship, and under unusually favorable circumstances, for in the blazing tropical regions a removable zinc

thing like a sugarshovel projects from the port to catch the wind and bring it in; this thing catches the

washwater and brings it in, tooand in flooding abundance. Mrs. L, an invalid, had to sleep on the

lockersofa under her port, and every time she overslept and thus failed to take care of herself, the

And the painters, what a good time they had! This ship would be going into dock for a month in Sydney for

repairs; but no matter, painting was going on all the time somewhere or other. The ladies' dresses were

constantly getting ruined, nevertheless protests and supplications went for nothing. Sometimes a lady, taking

an afternoon nap on deck near a ventilator or some other thing that didn't need painting, would wake up by

and by and find that the humorous painter had been noiselessly daubing that thing and had splattered her

The blame for this untimely painting did not lie with the ship's officers, but with custom. As far back as

Noah's time it became law that ships must be constantly painted and fussed at when at sea; custom grew out

of the law, and at sea custom knows no death; this custom will continue until the sea goes dry.

Sept. 8.Sunday. We are moving so nearly south that we cross only about two meridians of longitude a day.

This morning we were in longitude 178 west from Greenwich, and 57 degrees west from San Francisco.

Tomorrow we shall be close to the center of the globethe 180th degree of west longitude and 180th

And then we must drop out a daylose a day out of our lives, a day never to be found again. We shall all die

one day earlier than from the beginning of time we were foreordained to die. We shall be a day behindhand

all through eternity. We shall always be saying to the other angels, "Fine day today," and they will be always

retorting, "But it isn't today, it's tomorrow." We shall be in a state of confusion all the time and shall never

Next Day. Sure enough, it has happened. Yesterday it was September 8, Sunday; today, per the

bulletinboard at the head of the companionway, it is September 10, Tuesday. There is something uncanny

about it. And uncomfortable. In fact, nearly unthinkable, and wholly unrealizable, when one comes to

consider it. While we were crossing the 180th meridian it was Sunday in the stern of the ship where my

family were, and Tuesday in the bow where I was. They were there eating the half of a fresh apple on the 8th,

and I was at the same time eating the other half of it on the 10thand I could notice how stale it was,

already. The family were the same age that they were when I had left them five minutes before, but I was a

day older now than I was then. The day they were living in stretched behind them half way round the globe,

across the Pacific Ocean and America and Europe; the day I was living in stretched in front of me around the

other half to meet it. They were stupendous days for bulk and stretch; apparently much larger days than we

had ever been in before. All previous days had been but shrunkup little things by comparison. The

difference in temperature between the two days was very marked, their day being hotter than mine because it

Along about the moment that we were crossing the Great Meridian a child was born in the steerage, and now

there is no way to tell which day it was born on. The nurse thinks it was Sunday, the surgeon thinks it was

Tuesday. The child will never know its own birthday. It will always be choosing first one and then the other,

and will never be able to make up its mind permanently. This will breed vacillation and uncertainty in its

opinions about religion, and politics, and business, and sweethearts, and everything, and will undermine its

principles, and rot them away, and make the poor thing characterless, and its success in life impossible. Every

one in the ship says so. And this is not allin fact, not the worst. For there is an enormously rich brewer in

the ship who said as much as ten days ago, that if the child was born on his birthday he would give it ten

thousand dollars to start its little life with. His birthday was Monday, the 9th of September.

If the ships all moved in the one directionwestward, I meanthe world would suffer a prodigious

lossin the matter of valuable time, through the dumping overboard on the Great Meridian of such

multitudes of days by ships crews and passengers. But fortunately the ships do not all sail west, half of them

sail east. So there is no real loss. These latter pick up all the discarded days and add them to the world's stock

again; and about as good as new, too; for of course the salt water preserves them.

WEDNESDAY, Sept. 11. In this world we often make mistakes of judgment. We do not as a rule get out of

them sound and whole, but sometimes we do. At dinner yesterday eveningpresent, a mixture of Scotch,

English, American, Canadian, and Australasian folka discussion broke out about the pronunciation of

certain Scottish words. This was private ground, and the nonScotch nationalities, with one exception,

discreetly kept still. But I am not discreet, and I took a hand. I didn't know anything about the subject, but I

took a hand just to have something to do. At that moment the word in dispute was the word three. One

Scotchman was claiming that the peasantry of Scotland pronounced it three, his adversaries claimed that they

didn'tthat they pronounced it 'thraw'. The solitary Scot was having a sultry time of it, so I thought I would

enrich him with my help. In my position I was necessarily quite impartial, and was equally as well and as ill

equipped to fight on the one side as on the other. So I spoke up and said the peasantry pronounced the word

three, not thraw. It was an error of judgment. There was a moment of astonished and ominous silence, then

weather ensued. The storm rose and spread in a surprising way, and I was snowed under in a very few

minutes. It was a bad defeat for mea kind of Waterloo. It promised to remain so, and I wished I had had

better sense than to enter upon such a forlorn enterprise. But just then I had a saving thoughtat least a

thought that offered a chance. While the storm was still raging, I made up a Scotch couplet, and then spoke

"Very well, don't say any more. I confess defeat. I thought I knew, but I see my mistake. I was deceived by

It is wonderful the power of that name. These men looked doubtfulbut paralyzed, all the same. They were

quite silent for a moment; then one of them saidwith the reverence in his voice which is always present in

It ended the discussion. There was no man there profane enough, disloyal enough, to say any word against a

thing which Robert Burns had settled. I shall always honor that great name for the salvation it brought me in

It is my belief that nearly any invented quotation, played with confidence, stands a good chance to deceive.

There are people who think that honesty is always the best policy. This is a superstition; there are times when

We are moving steadily southwardgetting further and further down under the projecting paunch of the

globe. Yesterday evening we saw the Big Dipper and the north star sink below the horizon and disappear

from our world. No, not "we," but they. They saw itsomebody saw itand told me about it. But it is no

matter, I was not caring for those things, I am tired of them, any way. I think they are well enough, but one

doesn't want them always hanging around. My interest was all in the Southern Cross. I had never seen that. I

had heard about it all my life, and it was but natural that I should be burning to see it. No other constellation

makes so much talk. I had nothing against the Big Dipper and naturally couldn't have anything against it,

since it is a citizen of our own sky, and the property of the United Statesbut I did want it to move out of the

way and give this foreigner a chance. Judging by the size of the talk which the Southern Cross had made, I

But that was a mistake. We saw the Cross tonight, and it is not large. Not large, and not strikingly bright.

But it was low down toward the horizon, and it may improve when it gets up higher in the sky. It is

ingeniously named, for it looks just as a cross would look if it looked like something else. But that

description does not describe; it is too vague, too general, too indefinite. It does after a fashion suggest a

cross across that is out of repairor out of drawing; not correctly shaped. It is long, with a short crossbar,

It consists of four large stars and one little one. The little one is out of line and further damages the shape. It

should have been placed at the intersection of the stem and the crossbar. If you do not draw an imaginary

One must ignore the little star, and leave it out of the combinationit confuses everything. If you leave it

out, then you can make out of the four stars a sort of crossout of true; or a sort of kiteout of true; or a

Constellations have always been troublesome things to name. If you give one of them a fanciful name, it will

always refuse to live up to it; it will always persist in not resembling the thing it has been named for.

Ultimately, to satisfy the public, the fanciful name has to be discarded for a commonsense one, a manifestly

descriptive one. The Great Bear remained the Great Bearand unrecognizable as suchfor thousands of

years; and people complained about it all the time, and quite properly; but as soon as it became the property

of the United States, Congress changed it to the Big Dipper, and now every body is satisfied, and there is no

more talk about riots. I would not change the Southern Cross to the Southern Coffin, I would change it to the

Southern Kite; for up there in the general emptiness is the proper home of a kite, but not for coffins and

crosses and dippers. In a little while, nowI cannot tell exactly how long it will bethe globe will belong

to the English speaking race; and of course the skies also. Then the constellations will be reorganized, and

polished up, and renamedthe most of them "Victoria," I reckon, but this one will sail thereafter as the

Southern Kite, or go out of business. Several towns and things, here and there, have been named for Her

In these past few days we are plowing through a mighty Milky Way of islands. They are so thick on the map

that one would hardly expect to find room between them for a canoe; yet we seldom glimpse one. Once we

saw the dim bulk of a couple of them, far away, spectral and dreamy things; members of the HorneAlofa

and Fortuna. On the larger one are two rival native kingsand they have a time together. They are Catholics;

From the multitudinous islands in these regions the "recruits" for the Queensland plantations were formerly

drawn; are still drawn from them, I believe. Vessels fitted up like oldtime slavers came here and carried off

the natives to serve as laborers in the great Australian province. In the beginning it was plain, simple

manstealing, as per testimony of the missionaries. This has been denied, but not disproven. Afterward it was

forbidden by law to "recruit" a native without his consent, and governmental agents were sent in all recruiting

vessels to see that the law was obeyedwhich they did, according to the recruiting people; and which they

sometimes didn't, according to the missionaries. A man could be lawfully recruited for a threeyears term of

service; he could volunteer for another term if he so chose; when his time was up he could return to his

island. And would also have the means to do it; for the government required the employer to put money in its

Captain Wawn was a recruiting shipmaster during many years. From his pleasant book one gets the idea that

the recruiting business was quite popular with the islanders, as a rule. And yet that did not make the business

wholly dull and uninteresting; for one finds rather frequent little breaks in the monotony of itlike this, for

"The afternoon of our arrival at Leper Island the schooner was lying almost becalmed under the lee of the

lofty central portion of the island, about threequarters of a mile from the shore. The boats were in sight at

some distance. The recruiterboat had run into a small nook on the rocky coast, under a high bank, above

which stood a solitary hut backed by dense forest. The government agent and mate in the second boat lay

"Suddenly we heard the sound of firing, followed by yells from the natives on shore, and then we saw the

recruiterboat push out with a seemingly diminished crew. The mate's boat pulled quickly up, took her in

tow, and presently brought her alongside, all her own crew being more or less hurt. It seems the natives had

called them into the place on pretence of friendship. A crowd gathered about the stern of the boat, and several

fellows even got into her. All of a sudden our men were attacked with clubs and tomahawks. The recruiter

escaped the first blows aimed at him, making play with his fists until he had an opportunity to draw his

revolver. 'Tom Sayers,' a Mare man, received a tomahawk blow on the head which laid the scalp open but did

not penetrate his skull, fortunately. 'Bobby Towns,' another Mare boatman, had both his thumbs cut in

warding off blows, one of them being so nearly severed from the hand that the doctors had to finish the

operation. Lihu, a Lifu boy, the recruiter's special attendant, was cut and pricked in various places, but

nowhere seriously. Jack, an unlucky Tanna recruit, who had been engaged to act as boatman, received an

arrow through his forearm, the head of whichapiece of bone seven or eight inches longwas still in the

limb, protruding from both sides, when the boats returned. The recruiter himself would have got off scotfree

had not an arrow pinned one of his fingers to the loom of the steeringoar just as they were getting off. The

The truth is, Captain Wawn furnishes such a crowd of instances of fatal encounters between natives and

French and English recruitingcrews (for the French are in the business for the plantations of New

Caledonia), that one is almost persuaded that recruiting is not thoroughly popular among the islanders; else

why this bristling string of attacks and bloodcurdling slaughter? The captain lays it all to "Exeter Hall

influence." But for the meddling philanthropists, the native fathers and mothers would be fond of seeing their

children carted into exile and now and then the grave, instead of weeping about it and trying to kill the kind

Captain Wawn is crystalclear on one point: He does not approve of missionaries. They obstruct his business.

They make "Recruiting," as he calls it ("SlaveCatching," as they call it in their frank way) a trouble when it

ought to be just a picnic and a pleasure excursion. The missionaries have their opinion about the manner in

which the Labor Traffic is conducted, and about the recruiter's evasions of the law of the Traffic, and about

the traffic itselfand it is distinctly uncomplimentary to the Traffic and to everything connected with it,

including the law for its regulation. Captain Wawn's book is of very recent date; I have by me a pamphlet of

still later datehot from the press, in factby Rev. Wm. Gray, a missionary; and the book and the pamphlet

Interesting, and easy to understandexcept in one detail, which I will mention presently. It is easy to

understand why the Queensland sugar planter should want the Kanaka recruit: he is cheap. Very cheap, in

fact. These are the figures paid by the planter: L20 to the recruiter for getting the Kanaka or "catching" him,

as the missionary phrase goes; L3 to the Queensland government for "superintending" the importation; L5

deposited with the Government for the Kanaka's passage home when his three years are up, in case he shall

live that long; about L25 to the Kanaka himself for three years' wages and clothing; total payment for the use

of a man three years, L53; or, including diet, L60. Altogether, a hundred dollars a year. One can understand

why the recruiter is fond of the business; the recruit costs him a few cheap presents (given to the recruit's

relatives, not himself), and the recruit is worth L20 to the recruiter when delivered in Queensland. All this is

clear enough; but the thing that is not clear is, what there is about it all to persuade the recruit. He is young

and brisk; life at home in his beautiful island is one lazy, long holiday to him; or if he wants to work he can

turn out a couple of bags of copra per week and sell it for four or five shillings a bag. In Queensland he must

get up at dawn and work from eight to twelve hours a day in the canefieldsin a much hotter climate than he

I cannot understand his willingness to go to Queensland. It is a deep puzzle to me. Here is the explanation,

from the planter's point of view; at least I gather from the missionary's pamphlet that it is the planter's:

"When he comes from his home he is a savage, pure and simple. He feels no shame at his nakedness and

want of adornment. When he returns home he does so well dressed, sporting a Waterbury watch, collars,

cuffs, boots, and jewelry. He takes with him one or more boxes["Box" is English for trunk.] well filled

with clothing, a musical instrument or two, and perfumery and other articles of luxury he has learned to

For just one moment we have a seeming flash of comprehension of, the Kanaka's reason for exiling himself :

he goes away to acquire civilization. Yes, he was naked and not ashamed, now he is clothed and knows how

to be ashamed; he was unenlightened; now he has a Waterbury watch; he was unrefined, now he has jewelry,

and something to make him smell good; he was a nobody, a provincial, now he has been to far countries and

It all looks plausiblefor a moment. Then the missionary takes hold of this explanation and pulls it to

"Admitting that the foregoing description is the average one, the average sequel is this: The cuffs and collars,

if used at all, are carried off by youngsters, who fasten them round the leg, just below the knee, as ornaments.

The Waterbury, broken and dirty, finds its way to the trader, who gives a trifle for it; or the inside is taken

out, the wheels strung on a thread and hung round the neck. Knives, axes, calico, and handkerchiefs are

divided among friends, and there is hardly one of these apiece. The boxes, the keys often lost on the road

home, can be bought for 2s. 6d. They are to be seen rotting outside in almost any shore village on Tanna. (I

speak of what I have seen.) A returned Kanaka has been furiously angry with me because I would not buy his

trousers, which he declared were just my fit. He sold them afterwards to one of my Aniwan teachers for 9d.

worth of tobaccoa pair of trousers that probably cost him 8s. or 10s. in Queensland. A coat or shirt is

handy for cold weather. The white handkerchiefs, the 'senet' (perfumery), the umbrella, and perhaps the hat,

are kept. The boots have to take their chance, if they do not happen to fit the copra trader. 'Senet' on the hair,

streaks of paint on the face, a dirty white handkerchief round the neck, strips of turtle shell in the ears, a belt,

a sheath and knife, and an umbrella constitute the rig of returned Kanaka at home the day after landing."

A hat, an umbrella, a belt, a neckerchief. Otherwise stark naked. All in a day the hardearned "civilization"

has melted away to this. And even these perishable things must presently go. Indeed, there is but a single

detail of his civilization that can be depended on to stay by him: according to the missionary, he has learned

In all countries the laws throw light upon the past. The Queensland law for the regulation of the Labor Traffic

is a confession. It is a confession that the evils charged by the missionaries upon the traffic had existed in the

past, and that they still existed when the law was made. The missionaries make a further charge: that the law

is evaded by the recruiters, and that the Government Agent sometimes helps them to do it. Regulation 31

reveals two things: that sometimes a young fool of a recruit gets his senses back, after being persuaded to

sign away his liberty for three years, and dearly wants to get out of the engagement and stay at home with his

own people; and that threats, intimidation, and force are used to keep him on board the recruitingship, and

to hold him to his contract. Regulation 31 forbids these coercions. The law requires that he shall be allowed

to go free; and another clause of it requires the recruiter to set him ashoreper boat, because of the

"There are 'wrinkles' for taking the penitent Kanaka. My first experience of the Traffic was a case of this kind

in 1884. A vessel anchored just out of sight of our station, word was brought to me that some boys were

stolen, and the relatives wished me to go and get them back. The facts were, as I found, that six boys had

recruited, had rushed into the boat, the Government Agent informed me. They had all 'signed'; and, said the

Government Agent, 'on board they shall remain.' I was assured that the six boys were of age and willing to

go. Yet on getting ready to leave the ship I found four of the lads ready to come ashore in the boat! This I

forbade. One of them jumped into the water and persisted in coming ashore in my boat. When appealed to,

the Government Agent suggested that we go and leave him to be picked up by the ship's boat, a quarter mile

The law and the missionaries feel for the repentant recruitand properly, one may be permitted to think, for

he is only a youth and ignorant and persuadable to his hurtbut sympathy for him is not kept in stock by the

"A captain many years in the traffic explained to me how a penitent could betaken. 'When a boy jumps

overboard we just take a boat and pull ahead of him, then lie between him and the shore. If he has not tired

himself swimming, and passes the boat, keep on heading him in this way. The dodge rarely fails. The boy

generally tires of swimming, gets into the boat of his own accord, and goes quietly on board."

Yes, exhaustion is likely to make a boy quiet. If the distressed boy had been the speaker's son, and the captors

savages, the speaker would have been surprised to see how differently the thing looked from the new point of

view; however, it is not our custom to put ourselves in the other person's place. Somehow there is something

pathetic about that disappointed young savage's resignation. I must explain, here, that in the traffic dialect,

"boy" does not always mean boy; it means a youth above sixteen years of age. That is by Queensland law the

age of consent, though it is held that recruiters allow themselves some latitude in guessing at ages.

Captain Wawn of the free spirit chafes under the annoyance of "castiron regulations." They and the

missionaries have poisoned his life. He grieves for the good old days, vanished to come no more. See him

"For a long time we were allowed to apprehend and detain all deserters who had signed the agreement on

board ship, but the 'cast iron' regulations of the Act of 1884 put a stop to that, allowing the Kanaka to sign

the agreement for three years' service, travel about in the ship in receipt of the regular rations, cadge all he

could, and leave when he thought fit, so long as he did not extend his pleasure trip to Queensland."

Rev. Mr. Gray calls this same restrictive castiron law a "farce." "There is as much cruelty and injustice done

to natives by acts that are legal as by deeds unlawful. The regulations that exist are unjust and

inadequateunjust and inadequate they must ever be." He furnishes his reasons for his position, but they are

However, if the most a Kanaka advantages himself by a threeyears course in civilization in Queensland, is a

necklace and an umbrella and a showy imperfection in the art of swearing, it must be that all the profit of the

traffic goes to the white man. This could be twisted into a plausible argument that the traffic ought to be

However, there is reason for hope that that can be left alone to achieve itself. It is claimed that the traffic will

depopulate its sources of supply within the next twenty or thirty years. Queensland is a very healthy place for

white peopledeathrate 12 in 1,000 of the population but the Kanaka deathrate is away above that. The

vital statistics for 1893 place it at 52; for 1894 (Mackay district), 68. The first six months of the Kanaka's

exile are peculiarly perilous for him because of the rigors of the new climate. The deathrate among the new

men has reached as high as 180 in the 1,000. In the Kanaka's native home his deathrate is 12 in time of

peace, and 15 in time of war. Thus exile to Queenslandwith the opportunity to acquire civilization, an

umbrella, and a pretty poor quality of profanityis twelve times as deadly for him as war. Common

Christian charity, common humanity, does seem to require, not only that these people be returned to their

homes, but that war, pestilence, and famine be introduced among them for their preservation.

Concerning these Pacific isles and their peoples an eloquent prophet spoke long years agofive and fifty

years ago. In fact, he spoke a little too early. Prophecy is a good line of business, but it is full of risks. This

"Is the tide of civilization to roll only to the foot of the Rocky Mountains, and is the sun of knowledge to set

at last in the waves of the Pacific ? No; the mighty day of four thousand years is drawing to its close; the sun

of humanity has performed its destined course; but long ere its setting rays are extinguished in the west, its

ascending beams have glittered on the isles of the eastern seas . . . . And now we see the race of Japhet setting

forth to people the isles, and the seeds of another Europe and a second England sown in the regions of the

sun. But mark the words of the prophecy: 'He shall dwell in the tents of Shem, and Canaan shall be his

servant.' It is not said Canaan shall be his slave. To the AngloSaxon race is given the scepter of the globe,

but there is not given either the lash of the slavedriver or the rack of the executioner. The East will not be

stained with the same atrocities as the West; the frightful gangrene of an enthralled race is not to mar the

destinies of the family of Japhet in the Oriental world; humanizing, not destroying, as they advance; uniting

with, not enslaving, the inhabitants with whom they dwell, the British race may," etc., etc.

"Come, bright Improvement! on the car of Time, And rule the spacious world from clime to clime."

Very well, Bright Improvement has arrived, you see, with her civilization, and her Waterbury, and her

umbrella, and her thirdquality profanity, and her humanizingnotdestroying machinery, and her hundred

But the prophet that speaks last has an advantage over the pioneer in the business. Rev. Mr. Gray says:

"What I am concerned about is that we as a Christian nation should wipe out these races to enrich ourselves."

And he closes his pamphlet with a grim Indictment which is as eloquent in its flowerless straightforward

"1. It generally demoralizes and always impoverishes the Kanaka, deprives him of his citizenship, and

"2. It is felt to lower the dignity of the white agricultural laborer in Queensland, and beyond a doubt it lowers

"3. The whole system is fraught with danger to Australia and the islands on the score of health.

"4. On social and political grounds the continuance of the Queensland Kanaka Labor Traffic must be a barrier

"5. The Regulations under which the Traffic exists in Queensland are inadequate to prevent abuses, and in the

"6. The whole system is contrary to the spirit and doctrine of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. The Gospel requires

"7. The bedrock of this Traffic is that the life and liberty of a black man are of less value than those of a

white man. And a Traffic that has grown out of 'slavehunting' will certainly remain to the end not unlike its

From Diary:For a day or two we have been plowing among an invisible vast wilderness of islands,

catching now and then a shadowy glimpse of a member of it. There does seem to be a prodigious lot of

islands this year; the map of this region is freckled and flyspecked all over with them. Their number would

seem to be uncountable. We are moving among the Fijis now224 islands and islets in the group. In front of

us, to the west, the wilderness stretches toward Australia, then curves upward to New Guinea, and still up and

up to Japan; behind us, to the east, the wilderness stretches sixty degrees across the wastes of the Pacific;

south of us is New Zealand. Somewhere or other among these myriads Samoa is concealed, and not

discoverable on the map. Still, if you wish to go there, you will have no trouble about finding it if you follow

the directions given by Robert Louis Stevenson to Dr. Conan Doyle and to Mr. J. M. Barrie. "You go to

America, cross the continent to San Francisco, and then it's the second turning to the left." To get the full

Wednesday, September 11.Yesterday we passed close to an island or so, and recognized the published Fiji

characteristics: a broad belt of clean white coral sand around the island; back of it a graceful fringe of leaning

palms, with native huts nestling cosily among the shrubbery at their bases; back of these a stretch of level

land clothed in tropic vegetation; back of that, rugged and picturesque mountains. A detail of the immediate

foreground: a mouldering ship perched high up on a reef bench. This completes the composition, and makes

In the afternoon we sighted Suva, the capital of the group, and threaded our way into the secluded little

harbora placid basin of brilliant blue and green water tucked snugly in among the sheltering hills. A few

ships rode at anchor in itone of them a sailing vessel flying the American flag; and they said she came

from Duluth! There's a journey! Duluth is several thousand miles from the sea, and yet she is entitled to the

proud name of Mistress of the Commercial Marine of the United States of America. There is only one free,

independent, unsubsidized American ship sailing the foreign seas, and Duluth owns it. All by itself that ship

is the American fleet. All by itself it causes the American name and power to be respected in the far regions

of the globe. All by itself it certifies to the world that the most populous civilized nation, in the earth has a

just pride in her stupendous stretch of seafront, and is determined to assert and maintain her rightful place as

one of the Great Maritime Powers of the Planet. All by itself it is making foreign eyes familiar with a Flag

which they have not seen before for forty years, outside of the museum. For what Duluth has done, in

building, equipping, and maintaining at her sole expense the American Foreign Commercial Fleet, and in thus

rescuing the American name from shame and lifting it high for the homage of the nations, we owe her a debt

of gratitude which our hearts shall confess with quickened beats whenever her name is named henceforth.

Many national toasts will die in the lapse of time, but while the flag flies and the Republic survives, they who

live under their shelter will still drink this one, standing and uncovered: Health and prosperity to Thee, O

Rowboats began to flock from the shore; their crews were the first natives we had seen. These men carried

no overplus of clothing, and this was wise, for the weather was hot. Handsome, great dusky men they were,

muscular, cleanlimbed, and with faces full of character and intelligence. It would be hard to find their

Everybody went ashore to look around, and spy out the land, and have that luxury of luxuries to

seavoyagersa landdinner. And there we saw more natives: Wrinkled old women, with their flat

mammals flung over their shoulders, or hanging down in front like the coldweather drip from the

molassesfaucet; plump and smily young girls, blithe and content, easy and graceful, a pleasure to look at;

young matrons, tall, straight, comely, nobly built, sweeping by with chin up, and a gait incomparable for

unconscious stateliness and dignity; majestic young men athletes for build and muscle clothed in a loose

arrangement of dazzling white, with bronze breast and bronze legs naked, and the head a cannonswab of

solid hair combed straight out from the skull and dyed a rich brickred. Only sixty years ago they were sunk

in darkness; now they have the bicycle. We strolled about the streets of the white folks' little town, and

around over the hills by paths and roads among European dwellings and gardens and plantations, and past

clumps of hibiscus that made a body blink, the great blossoms were so intensely red; and by and by we

stopped to ask an elderly English colonist a question or two, and to sympathize with him concerning the

"We supposed that this was summer; it has the earmarks of it. You could take it to almost any country and

I had been suffering from colds for several months, and a sudden change of season, like this, could hardly fail

to do me hurt. It brought on another cold. It is odd, these sudden jumps from season to season. A fortnight

ago we left America in midsummer, now it is midwinter; about a week hence we shall arrive in Australia in

After dinner I found in the billiardroom a resident whom I had known somewhere else in the world, and

presently made, some new friends and drove with them out into the country to visit his Excellency the head

of the State, who was occupying his country residence, to escape the rigors of the winter weather, I suppose,

for it was on breezy high ground and much more comfortable than the lower regions, where the town is, and

where the winter has full swing, and often sets a person's hair afire when he takes off his hat to bow. There is

a noble and beautiful view of ocean and islands and castellated peaks from the governor's highplaced house,

and its immediate surroundings lie drowsing in that dreamy repose and serenity which are the charm of life in

One of the new friends who went out there with me was a large man, and I had been admiring his size all the

way. I was still admiring it as he stood by the governor on the veranda, talking; then the Fijian butler stepped

out there to announce tea, and dwarfed him. Maybe he did not quite dwarf him, but at any rate the contrast

was quite striking. Perhaps that dark giant was a king in a condition of political suspension. I think that in the

talk there on the veranda it was said that in Fiji, as in the ,Sandwich Islands, native kings and chiefs are of

much grander size and build than the commoners. This man was clothed in flowing white vestments, and they

were just the thing for him; they comported well with his great stature and his kingly port and dignity.

European clothes would have degraded him and made him commonplace. I know that, because they do that

It was said that the oldtime devotion to chiefs and reverence for their persons still survive in the native

commoner, and in great force. The educated young gentleman who is chief of the tribe that live in the region

about the capital dresses in the fashion of highclass European gentlemen, but even his clothes cannot damn

him in the reverence of his people. Their pride in his lofty rank and ancient lineage lives on, in spite of his

lost authority and the evil magic of his tailor. He has no need to defile himself with work, or trouble his heart

with the sordid cares of life; the tribe will see to it that he shall not want, and that he shall hold up his head

and live like a gentleman. I had a glimpse of him down in the town. Perhaps he is a descendant of the last

kingthe king with the difficult name whose memory is preserved by a notable monument of cutstone

which one sees in the enclosure in the middle of the town. ThakombauI remember, now; that is the name.

Fiji was ceded to England by this king in 1858. One of the gentlemen present at the governor's quoted a

remark made by the king at the time of the sessiona neat retort, and with a touch of pathos in it, too. The

English Commissioner had offered a crumb of comfort to Thakombau by saying that the transfer of the

kingdom to Great Britain was merely "a sort of hermitcrab formality, you know." "Yes," said poor

Thakombau, "but with this differencethe crab moves into an unoccupied shell, but mine isn't."

However, as far as I can make out from the books, the King was between the devil and the deep sea at the

time, and hadn't much choice. He owed the United States a large debta debt which he could pay if allowed

time, but time was denied him. He must pay up right away or the warships would be upon him. To protect his

people from this disaster he ceded his country to Britain, with a clause in the contract providing for the

In old times the Fijians were fierce fighters; they were very religious, and worshiped idols; the big chiefs

were proud and haughty, and they were men of great style in many ways; all chiefs had several wives, the

biggest chiefs sometimes had as many as fifty; when a chief was dead and ready for burial, four or five of his

wives were strangled and put into the grave with him. In 1804 twentyseven British convicts escaped from

Australia to Fiji, and brought guns and ammunition with them. Consider what a power they were, armed like

that, and what an opportunity they had. If they had been energetic men and sober, and had had brains and

known how to use them, they could have achieved the sovereignty of the archipelago twentyseven kings and

each with eight or nine islands under his scepter. But nothing came of this chance. They lived worthless lives

of sin and luxury, and died without honorin most cases by violence. Only one of them had any ambition;

he was an Irishman named Connor. He tried to raise a family of fifty children, and scored forty eight. He

died lamenting his failure. It was a foolish sort of avarice. Many a father would have been rich enough with

It is a fine race, the Fijians, with brains in their heads, and an inquiring turn of mind. It appears that their

savage ancestors had a doctrine of immortality in their scheme of religionwith limitations. That is to say,

their dead friend would go to a happy hereafter if he could be accumulated, but not otherwise. They drew the

line; they thought that the missionary's doctrine was too sweeping, too comprehensive. They called his

attention to certain facts. For instance, many of their friends had been devoured by sharks; the sharks, in their

turn, were caught and eaten by other men; later, these men were captured in war, and eaten by the enemy.

The original persons had entered into the composition of the sharks; next, they and the sharks had become

part of the flesh and blood and bone of the cannibals. How, then, could the particles of the original men be

searched out from the final conglomerate and put together again? The inquirers were full of doubts, and

considered that the missionary had not examined the matter withthe gravity and attention which so serious

The missionary taught these exacting savages many valuable things, and got from them onea very dainty

and poetical idea: Those wild and ignorant poor children of Nature believed that the flowers, after they

perish, rise on the winds and float away to the fair fields of heaven, and flourish there forever in immortal

When one glances at the map the members of the stupendous island wilderness of the Pacific seem to crowd

upon each other; but no, there is no crowding, even in the center of a group; and between groups there are

lonely wide deserts of sea. Not everything is known about the islands, their peoples and their languages. A

startling reminder of this is furnished by the fact that in Fiji, twenty years ago, were living two strange and

solitary beings who came from an unknown country and spoke an unknown language. "They were picked up

by a passing vessel many hundreds of miles from any known land, floating in the same tiny canoe in which

they had been blown out to sea. When found they were but skin and bone. No one could understand what

they said, and they have never named their country; or, if they have, the name does not correspond with that

of any island on any chart. They are now fat and sleek, and as happy as the day is long. In the ship's log there

is an entry of the latitude and longitude in which they were found, and this is probably all the clue they will

What a strange and romantic episode it is; and how one is tortured with curiosity to know whence those

mysterious creatures came, those Men Without a Country, errant waifs who cannot name their lost home,

Indeed, the Island Wilderness is the very home of romance and dreams and mystery. The loneliness, the

solemnity, the beauty, and the deep repose of this wilderness have a charm which is all their own for the

bruised spirit of men who have fought and failed in the struggle for life in the great world; and for men who

have been hunted out of the great world for crime; and for other men who love an easy and indolent

existence; and for others who love a roving free life, and stir and change and adventure; and for yet others

who love an easy and comfortable career of trading and moneygetting, mixed with plenty of loose

matrimony by purchase, divorce without trial or expense, and limitless spreeing thrown in to make life ideally

The most cultivated person in the ship was a young English, man whose home was in New Zealand. He was a

naturalist. His learning in his specialty was deep and thorough, his interest in his subject amounted to a

passion, he had an easy gift of speech; and so, when he talked about animals it was a pleasure to listen to him.

And profitable, too, though he was sometimes difficult to understand because now and then he used scientific

technicalities which were above the reach of some of us. They were pretty sure to be above my reach, but as

he was quite willing to explain them I always made it a point to get him to do it. I had a fair knowledge of his

subjectlayman's knowledgeto begin with, but it was his teachings which crystalized it into scientific

His special interest was the fauna of Australasia, and his knowledge of the matter was as exhaustive as it was

accurate. I already knew a good deal about the rabbits in Australasia and their marvelous fecundity, but in my

talks with him I found that my estimate of the great hindrance and obstruction inflicted by the rabbit pest

upon traffic and travel was far short of the facts. He told me that the first pair of rabbits imported into

Australasia bred so wonderfully that within six months rabbits were so thick in the land that people had to dig

He told me a great deal about worms, and the kangaroo, and other coleoptera, and said he knew the history

and ways of all such pachydermata. He said the kangaroo had pockets, and carried its young in them when it

couldn't get apples. And he said that the emu was as big as an ostrich, and looked like one, and had an

amorphous appetite and would eat bricks. Also, that the dingo was not a dingo at all, but just a wild dog; and

that the only difference between a dingo and a dodo was that neither of them barked; otherwise they were just

the same. He said that the only gamebird in Australia was the wombat, and the only songbird the larrikin,

and that both were protected by government. The most beautiful of the native birds was the bird of Paradise.

Next came the two kinds of lyres; not spelt the same. He said the one kind was dying out, the other

thickening up. He explained that the "Sundowner" was not a bird it was a man; sundowner was merely the

Australian equivalent of our word, tramp. He is a loafer, a hard drinker, and a sponge. He tramps across the

country in the sheepshearing season, pretending to look for work; but he always times himself to arrive at a

sheeprun just at sundown, when the day's labor ends; all he wants is whisky and supper and bed and

breakfast; he gets them and then disappears. The naturalist spoke of the bell bird, the creature that at short

intervals all day rings out its mellow and exquisite peal from the deeps of the forest. It is the favorite and best

friend of the weary and thirsty sundowner; for he knows that wherever the bell bird is, there is water; and he

goes somewhere else. The naturalist said that the oddest bird in Australasia was the, Laughing Jackass, and

The Moa stood thirteen feet high, and could step over an ordinary man's head or kick his hat off; and his

head, too, for that matter. He said it was wingless, but a swift runner. The natives used to ride it. It could

make forty miles an hour, and keep it up for four hundred miles and come out reasonably fresh. It was still in

existence when the railway was introduced into New Zealand; still in existence, and carrying the mails. The

railroad began with the same schedule it has now: two expresses a weektime, twenty miles an hour. The

Speaking of the indigenous coneys and bactrian camels, the naturalist said that the coniferous and

bacteriological output of Australasia was remarkable for its many and curious departures from the accepted

laws governing these species of tubercles, but that in his opinion Nature's fondness for dabbling in the erratic

was most notably exhibited in that curious combination of bird, fish, amphibian, burrower, crawler,

quadruped, and Christian called the Ornithorhynchusgrotesquest of animals, king of the animalculae of the

"You can call it anything you want to, and be right. It is a fish, for it lives in the river half the time; it is a land

animal, for it resides on the land half the time; it is an amphibian, since it likes both and does not know which

it prefers; it is a hybernian, for when times are dull and nothing much going on it buries itself under the mud

at the bottom of a puddle and hybernates there a couple of weeks at a time; it is a kind of duck, for it has a

duck bill and four webbed paddles; it is a fish and quadruped together, for in the water it swims with the

paddles and on shore it paws itself across country with them; it is a kind of seal, for it has a seal's fur; it is

carnivorous, herbivorous, insectivorous, and vermifuginous, for it eats fish and grass and butterflies, and in

the season digs worms out of the mud and devours them; it is clearly a bird, for it lays eggs, and hatches

them; it is clearly a mammal, for it nurses its young; and it is manifestly a kind of Christian, for it keeps the

Sabbath when there is anybody around, and when there isn't, doesn't. It has all the tastes there are except

"It is a survivala survival of the fittest. Mr. Darwin invented the theory that goes by that name, but the

Ornithorhynchus was the first to put it to actual experiment and prove that it could be done. Hence it should

have as much of the credit as Mr. Darwin. It was never in the Ark; you will find no mention of it there; it

nobly stayed out and worked the theory. Of all creatures in the world it was the only one properly equipped

for the test. The Ark was thirteen months afloat, and all the globe submerged; no land visible above the flood,

no vegetation, no food for a mammal to eat, nor water for a mammal to drink; for all mammal food was

destroyed, and when the pure floods from heaven and the salt oceans of the earth mingled their waters and

rose above the mountain tops, the result was a drink which no bird or beast of ordinary construction could use

and live. But this combination was nuts for the Ornithorhynchus, if I may use a term like that without offense.

Its river home had always been salted by the floodtides of the sea. On the face of the Noachian deluge

innumerable forest trees were floating. Upon these the Ornithorhynchus voyaged in peace; voyaged from

clime to clime, from hemisphere to hemisphere, in contentment and comfort, in virile interest in the constant

change Of scene, in humble thankfulness for its privileges, in everincreasing enthusiasm in the development

of the great theory upon whose validity it had staked its life, its fortunes, and its sacred honor, if I may use

such expressions without impropriety in connection with an episode of this nature.

"It lived the tranquil and luxurious life of a creature of independent means. Of things actually necessary to its

existence and its happiness not a detail was wanting. When it wished to walk, it scrambled along the

treetrunk; it mused in the shade of the leaves by day, it slept in their shelter by night; when it wanted the

refreshment of a swim, it had it; it ate leaves when it wanted a vegetable diet, it dug under the bark for worms

and grubs; when it wanted fish it caught them, when it wanted eggs it laid them. If the grubs gave out in one

tree it swam to another; and as for fish, the very opulence of the supply was an embarrassment. And finally,

when it was thirsty it smacked its chops in gratitude over a blend that would have slain a crocodile.

"When at last, after thirteen months of travel and research in all the Zones it went aground on a

mountainsummit, it strode ashore, saying in its heart, 'Let them that come after me invent theories and

dream dreams about the Survival of the Fittest if they like, but I am the first that has done it!

"This wonderful creature dates back like the kangaroo and many other Australian hydrocephalous

invertebrates, to an age long anterior to the advent of man upon the earth; they date back, indeed, to a time

when a causeway hundreds of miles wide, and thousands of miles long, joined Australia to Africa, and the

animals of the two countries were alike, and all belonged to that remote geological epoch known to science as

the Old Red Grindstone PostPleosaurian. Later the causeway sank under the sea; subterranean convulsions

lifted the African continent a thousand feet higher than it was before, but Australia kept her old level. In

Africa's new climate the animals necessarily began to develop and shade off into new forms and families and

species, but the animals of Australia as necessarily remained stationary, and have so remained until this day.

In the course of some millions of years the African Ornithorhynchus developed and developed and

developed, and sluffed off detail after detail of its makeup until at last the creature became wholly

disintegrated and scattered. Whenever you see a bird or a beast or a seal or an otter in Africa you know that

he is merely a sorry surviving fragment of that sublime original of whom I have been speakingthat creature

which was everything in general and nothing in particularthe opulently endowed 'e pluribus unum' of the

"Such is the history of the most hoary, the most ancient, the most venerable creature that exists in the earth

When he was strongly moved he could rise and soar like that with ease. And not only in the prose form, but

in the poetical as well. He had written many pieces of poetry in his time, and these manuscripts he lent

around among the passengers, and was willing to let them be copied. It seemed to me that the least technical

one in the series, and the one which reached the loftiest note, perhaps, was his

"Come forth from thy oozy couch, O Ornithorhynchus dear! And greet with a cordial claw The stranger that

"From thy own own lips the tale Of thy origin all unknown: Thy misplaced bone where flesh should be And

"And fishy fin where should be paw, And beavertrowel tail, And snout of beast equip'd with teeth Where

"Come, Kangaroo, the good and true Foreshortened as to legs, And body tapered like a churn, And sack

"And tells us why you linger here, Thou relic of a vanished time, When all your friends as fossils sleep,.

Perhaps no poet is a conscious plagiarist; but there seems to be warrant for suspecting that there is no poet

who is not at one time or another an unconscious one. The above verses are indeed beautiful, and, in a way,

touching; but there is a haunting something about them which unavoidably suggests the Sweet Singer of

Michigan. It can hardly be doubted that the author had read the works of that poet and been impressed by

them. It is not apparent that he has borrowed from them any word or yet any phrase, but the style and swing

and mastery and melody of the Sweet Singer all are there. Compare this Invocation with "Frank

Dutton"particularly stanzas first and seventeenthand I think the reader will feel convinced that he who

"Frank Dutton was as fine a lad As ever you wish to see, And he was drowned in Pine Island Lake On earth

no more will he be, His age was near fifteen years, And he was a motherless boy, He was living with his

"He was drowned on Tuesday afternoon, On Sunday he was found, And the tidings of that drowned boy Was

heard for miles around. His form was laid by his mother's side, Beneath the cold, cold ground, His friends for

That note recalls an experience. The passengers were sent for, to come up in the bow and see a fine sight. It

was very dark. One could not follow with the eye the surface of the sea more than fifty yards in any direction

it dimmed away and became lost to sight at about that distance from us. But if you patiently gazed into the

darkness a little while, there was a sure reward for you. Presently, a quarter of a mile away you would see a

blinding splash or explosion of light on the watera flash so sudden and so astonishingly brilliant that it

would make you catch your breath; then that blotch of light would instantly extend itself and take the

corkscrew shape and imposing length of the fabled seaserpent, with every curve of its body and the "break"

spreading away from its head, and the wake following behind its tail clothed in a fierce splendor of living

fire. And my, but it was coming at a lightning gait! Almost before you could think, this monster of light, fifty

feet long, would go flaming and storming by, and suddenly disappear. And out in the distance whence he

came you would see another flash; and another and another and another, and see them turn into seaserpents

on the instant; and once sixteen flashed up at the same time and came tearing towards us, a swarm of

wiggling curves, a moving conflagration, a vision of bewildering beauty, a spectacle of fire and energy whose

It was porpoisesporpoises aglow with phosphorescent light. They presently collected in a wild and

magnificent jumble under the bows, and there they played for an hour, leaping and frollicking and carrying

on, turning summersaults in front of the stem or across it and never getting hit, never making a

miscalculation, though the stem missed them only about an inch, as a rule. They were porpoises of the

ordinary length eight or ten feetbut every twist of their bodies sent a long procession of united and

glowing curves astern. That fiery jumble was an enchanting thing to look at, and we stayed out the

performance; one cannot have such a show as that twice in a lifetime. The porpoise is the kitten of the sea; he

never has a serious thought, he cares for nothing but fun and play. But I think I never saw him at his

winsomest until that night. It was near a center of civilization, and he could have been drinking.

By and by, when we had approached to somewhere within thirty miles of Sydney Heads the great electric

light that is posted on one of those lofty ramparts began to show, and in time the little spark grew to a great

Sydney Harbor is shut in behind a precipice that extends some miles like a wall, and exhibits no break to the

ignorant stranger. It has a break in the middle, but it makes so little show that even Captain Cook sailed by it

without seeing it. Near by that break is a false break which resembles it, and which used to make trouble for

the mariner at night, in the early days before the place was lighted. It caused the memorable disaster to the

Duncan Dunbar, one of the most pathetic tragedies in the history of that pitiless ruffian, the sea. The ship was

a sailing vessel; a fine and favorite passenger packet, commanded by a popular captain of high reputation.

She was due from England, and Sydney was waiting, and counting the hours; counting the hours, and making

ready to give her a heartstirring welcome; for she was bringing back a great company of mothers and

daughters, the longmissed light and bloom of life of Sydney homes; daughters that had been years absent at

school, and mothers that had been with them all that time watching over them. Of all the world only India and

Australasia have by custom freighted ships and fleets with their hearts, and know the tremendous meaning of

that phrase; only they know what the waiting is like when this freightage is entrusted to the fickle winds, not

steam, and what the joy is like when the ship that is returning this treasure comes safe to port and the long

On board the Duncan Dunbar, flying toward Sydney Heads in the waning afternoon, the happy homecomers

made busy preparation, for it was not doubted that they would be in the arms of their friends before the day

was done; they put away their seagoing clothes and put on clothes meeter for the meeting, their richest and

their loveliest, these poor brides of the grave. But the wind lost force, or there was a miscalculation, and

before the Heads were sighted the darkness came on. It was said that ordinarily the captain would have made

a safe offing and waited for the morning; but this was no ordinary occasion; all about him were appealing

faces, faces pathetic with disappointment. So his sympathy moved him to try the dangerous passage in the

dark. He had entered the Heads seventeen times, and believed he knew the ground. So he steered straight for

the false opening, mistaking it for the true one. He did not find out that he was wrong until it was too late.

There was no saving the ship. The great seas swept her in and crushed her to splinters and rubbish upon the

rock tushes at the base of the precipice. Not one of all that fair and gracious company was ever seen again

alive. The tale is told to every stranger that passes the spot, and it will continue to be told to all that come, for

generations; but it will never grow old, custom cannot stale it, the heartbreak that is in it can never perish

There were two hundred persons in the ship, and but one survived the disaster. He was a sailor. A huge sea

flung him up the face of the precipice and stretched him on a narrow shelf of rock midway between the top

and the bottom, and there he lay all night. At any other time he would have lain there for the rest of his life,

without chance of discovery; but the next morning the ghastly news swept through Sydney that the Duncan

Dunbar had gone down in sight of home, and straightway the walls of the Heads were black with mourners;

and one of these, stretching himself out over the precipice to spy out what might be seen below, discovered

this miraculously preserved relic of the wreck. Ropes were brought and the nearly impossible feat of rescuing

the man was accomplished. He was a person with a practical turn of mind, and he hired a hall in Sydney and

exhibited himself at sixpence a head till he exhausted the output of the gold fields for that year.

We entered and cast anchor, and in the morning went ohing and ahing in admiration up through the crooks

and turns of the spacious and beautiful harbora harbor which is the darling of Sydney and the wonder of

the world. It is not surprising that the people are proud of it, nor that they put their enthusiasm into eloquent

words. A returning citizen asked me what I thought of it, and I testified with a cordiality which I judged

would be up to the market rate. I said it was beautifulsuperbly beautiful. Then by a natural impulse I gave

"It is beautiful, of course it's beautifulthe Harbor; but that isn't all of it, it's only half of it; Sydney's the

other half, and it takes both of them together to ring the supremacybell. God made the Harbor, and that's all

Of course I made an apology; and asked him to convey it to his friend. He was right about Sydney being half

of it. It would be beautiful without Sydney, but not above half as beautiful as it is now, with Sydney added. It

is shaped somewhat like an oakleafa roomy sheet of lovely blue water, with narrow offshoots of water

running up into the country on both sides between long fingers of land, high wooden ridges with sides sloped

like graves. Handsome villas are perched here and there on these ridges, snuggling amongst the foliage, and

one catches alluring glimpses of them as the ship swims by toward the city. The city clothes a cluster of hills

and a ruffle of neighboring ridges with its undulating masses of masonry, and out of these masses spring

towers and spires and other architectural dignities and grandeurs that break the flowing lines and give

The narrow inlets which I have mentioned go wandering out into the land everywhere and hiding themselves

in it, and pleasurelaunches are always exploring them with picnic parties on board. It is said by trustworthy

people that if you explore them all you will find that you have covered 700 miles of water passage. But there

are liars everywhere this year, and they will double that when their works are in good going order. October

was close at hand, spring was come. It was really spring everybody said so; but you could have sold it for

summer in Canada, and nobody would have suspected. It was the very weather that makes our home summers

the perfection of climatic luxury; I mean, when you are out in the wood or by the sea. But these people said it

was cool, nowa person ought to see Sydney in the summer time if he wanted to know what warm weather

is; and he ought to go north ten or fifteen hundred miles if he wanted to know what hot weather is. They said

that away up there toward the equator the hens laid fried eggs. Sydney is the place to go to get information

about other people's climates. It seems to me that the occupation of Unbiased Traveler Seeking Information is

the pleasantest and most irresponsible trade there is. The traveler can always find out anything he wants to,

merely by asking. He can get at all the facts, and more. Everybody helps him, nobody hinders him. Anybody

who has an old fact in stock that is no longer negotiable in the domestic market will let him have it at his own

price. An accumulation of such goods is easily and quickly made. They cost almost nothing and they bring

par in the foreign market. Travelers who come to America always freight up with the same old nursery tales

that their predecessors selected, and they carry them back and always work them off without any trouble in

If the climates of the world were determined by parallels of latitude, then we could know a place's climate by

its position on the map; and so we should know that the climate of Sydney was the counterpart of the climate

of Columbia, S. C., and of Little Rock, Arkansas, since Sydney is about the same distance south of the

equator that those other towns are north ofitthirtyfour degrees. But no, climate disregards the parallels of

latitude. In Arkansas they have a winter; in Sydney they have the name of it, but not the thing itself. I have

seen the ice in the Mississippi floating past the mouth of the Arkansas river; and at Memphis, but a little way

above, the Mississippi has been frozen over, from bank to bank. But they have never had a cold spell in

Sydney which brought the mercury down to freezing point. Once in a midwinter day there, in the month of

July, the mercury went down to 36 deg., and that remains the memorable "cold day" in the history of the

town. No doubt Little Rock has seen it below zero. Once, in Sydney, in midsummer, about New Year's Day,

the mercury went up to 106 deg. in the shade, and that is Sydney's memorable hot day. That would about tally

with Little Rock's hottest day also, I imagine. My Sydney figures are taken from a government report, and are

trustworthy. In the matter of summer weather Arkansas has no advantage over Sydney, perhaps, but when it

comes to winter weather, that is another affair. You could cut up an Arkansas winter into a hundred Sydney

The whole narrow, hilly belt of the Pacific side of New South Wales has the climate of its capitala mean

winter temperature of 54 deg. and a mean summer one of 71 deg. It is a climate which cannot be improved

upon for healthfulness. But the experts say that 90 deg. in New South Wales is harder to bear than 112 deg. in

the neighboring colony of Victoria, because the atmosphere of the former is humid, and of the latter dry. The

mean temperature of the southernmost point of New South Wales is the same as that of Nice60 deg. yet

But Nature is always stingy of perfect climates; stingier in the case of Australia than usual. Apparently this

If we look at a map of the world we are surprised to see how big Australia is. It is about twothirds as large

But where as one finds a sufficiently good climate and fertile land almost everywhere in the United States, it

seems settled that inside of the Australian borderbelt one finds many deserts and in spots a climate which

nothing can stand except a few of the hardier kinds of rocks. In effect, Australia is as yet unoccupied. If you

take a map of the United States and leave the Atlantic seaboard States in their places; also the fringe of

Southern States from Florida west to the Mouth of the Mississippi; also a narrow, inhabited streak up the

Mississippi halfway to its head waters; also a narrow, inhabited border along the Pacific coast: then take a

brushful of paint and obliterate the whole remaining mighty stretch of country that lies between the Atlantic

States and the Pacificcoast strip, your map will look like the latest map of Australia.

This stupendous blank is hot, not to say torrid; a part of it is fertile, the rest is desert; it is not liberally

watered; it has no towns. One has only to cross the mountains of New South Wales and descend into the

westwardlying regions to find that he has left the choice climate behind him, and found a new one of a quite

different character. In fact, he would not know by the thermometer that he was not in the blistering Plains of

"The wind, which had been blowing all the morning from the N.E., increased to a heavy gale, and I shall

never forget its withering effect. I sought shelter behind a large gumtree, but the blasts of heat were so

terrific that I wondered the very grass did not take fire. This really was nothing ideal: everything both animate

and inanimate gave way before it; the horses stood with their backs to the wind and their noses to the ground,

without the muscular strength to raise their heads; the birds were mute, and the leaves of the trees under

which we were sitting fell like a snow shower around us. At noon I took a thermometer graded to 127 deg.,

out of my box, and observed that the mercury was up to 125. Thinking that it had been unduly influenced, I

put it in the fork of a tree close to me, sheltered alike from the wind and the sun. I went to examine it about an

hour afterwards, when I found the mercury had risen to thetop of the instrument and had burst the bulb, a

circumstance that I believe no traveler has ever before had to record. I cannot find language to convey to the

reader's mind an idea of the intense and oppressive nature of the heat that prevailed."

That hot wind sweeps over Sydney sometimes, and brings with it what is called a " duststorm." It is said that

most Australian towns are acquainted with the duststorm. I think I know what it is like, for the following

description by Mr. Gape tallies very well with the alkali duststorm of Nevada, if you leave out the "shovel"

part. Still the shovel part is a pretty important part, and seems to indicate that my Nevada storm is but a poor

"As we proceeded the altitude became less, and the heat proportionately greater until we reached Dubbo,

which is only 600 feet above sealevel. It is a pretty town, built on an extensive plain . . . . After the effects of

a shower of rain have passed away the surface of the ground crumbles into a thick layer of dust, and

occasionally, when the wind is in a particular quarter, it is lifted bodily from the ground in one long opaque

cloud. In the midst of such a storm nothing can be seen a few yards ahead, and the unlucky person who

happens to be out at the time is compelled to seek the nearest retreat at hand. When the thrifty housewife sees

in the distance the dark column advancing in a steady whirl towards her house, she closes the doors and

windows with all expedition. A drawingroom, the window of which has been carelessly left open during a

duststorm, is indeed an extraordinary sight. A lady who has resided in Dubbo for some years says that the

dust lies so thick on the carpet that it is necessary to use a shovel to remove it."

And probably a wagon. I was mistaken; I have not seen a proper duststorm. To my mind the exterior aspects

and character of Australia are fascinating things to look at and think about, they are so strange, so weird, so

new, so uncommonplace, such a startling and interesting contrast to the other sections of the planet, the

sections that are known to us all, familiar to us all. In the matter of particularsa detail here, a detail

therewe have had the choice climate of New South Wales' seacoast; we have had the Australian heat as

furnished by Captain Sturt; we have had the wonderful duststorm; and we have considered the phenomenon

of an almost empty hot wilderness half as big as the United States, with a narrow belt of civilization,

Captain Cook found Australia in 1770, and eighteen years later the British Government began to transport

convicts to it. Altogether, New South Wales received 83,000 in 53 years. The convicts wore heavy chains;

they were illfed and badly treated by the officers set over them; they were heavily punished for even slight

infractions of the rules; "the cruelest discipline ever known" is one historian's description of their life. [The

English law was hardhearted in those days. For trifling offenses which in our day would be punished by a

small fine or a few days' confinement, men, women, and boys were sent to this other end of the earth to serve

terms of seven and fourteen years; and for serious crimes they were transported for life. Children were sent to

When I was in London twentythree years ago there was a new penalty in force for diminishing garroting and

wifebeating25 lashes on the bare back with the cato'ninetails. It was said that this terrible punishment

was able to bring the stubbornest ruffians to terms; and that no man had been found with grit enough to keep

his emotions to himself beyond the ninth blow; as a rule the man shrieked earlier. That penalty had a great

and wholesome effect upon the garroters and wifebeaters; but humane modern London could not endure it;

it got its law rescinded. Many a bruised and battered English wife has since had occasion to deplore that cruel

Twentyfive lashes! In Australia and Tasmania they gave a convict fifty for almost any little offense; and

sometimes a brutal officer would add fifty, and then another fifty, and so on, as long as the sufferer could

endure the torture and live. In Tasmania I read the entry, in an old manuscript official record, of a case where

a convict was given three hundred lashesfor stealing some silver spoons. And men got more than that,

sometimes. Who handled the cat? Often it was another convict; sometimes it was the culprit's dearest

comrade; and he had to lay on with all his might; otherwise he would get a flogging himself for his mercy

for he was under watchand yet not do his friend any good: the friend would be attended to by another hand

The convict life in Tasmania was so unendurable, and suicide so difficult to accomplish that once or twice

despairing men got together and drew straws to determine which of them should kill another of the

groupthis murder to secure death to the perpetrator and to the witnesses of it by the hand of the hangman!

The incidents quoted above are mere hints, mere suggestions of what convict life was likethey are but a

couple of details tossed into view out of a shoreless sea of such; or, to change the figure, they are but a pair of

flaming steeples photographed from a point which hides from sight the burning city which stretches away

Some of the convictsindeed, a good many of themwere very bad people, even for that day; but the most

of them were probably not noticeably worse than the average of the people they left behind them at home.

We must believe this; we cannot avoid it. We are obliged to believe that a nation that could look on,

unmoved, and see starving or freezing women hanged for stealing twentysix cents' worth of bacon or rags,

and boys snatched from their mothers, and men from their families, and sent to the other side of the world for

long terms of years for similar trifling offenses, was a nation to whom the term "civilized" could not in any

large way be applied. And we must also believe that a nation that knew, during more than forty years, what

was happening to those exiles and was still content with it, was not advancing in any showy way toward a

If we look into the characters and conduct of the officers and gentlemen who had charge of the convicts and

attended to their backs and stomachs, we must grant again that as between the convict and his masters, and

between both and the nation at home, there was a quite noticeable monotony of sameness.

Four years had gone by, and many convicts had come. Respectable settlers were beginning to arrive. These

two classes of colonists had to be protected, in case of trouble among themselves or with the natives. It is

proper to mention the natives, though they could hardly count they were so scarce. At a time when they had

not as yet begun to be much disturbednot as yet being in the wayit was estimated that in New South

People had to be protected. Officers of the regular army did not want this serviceaway off there where

neither honor nor distinction was to be gained. So England recruited and officered a kind of militia force of

This was the worst blow of all. The colony fairly staggered under it. The Corps was an objectlesson of the

moral condition of England outside of the jails. The colonists trembled. It was feared that next there would be

In those early days the colony was nonsupporting. All the necessaries of lifefood, clothing, and

allwere sent out from England, and kept in great government storehouses, and given to the convicts and

sold to the settlerssold at a trifling advance upon cost. The Corps saw its opportunity. Its officers went into

commerce, and in a most lawless way. They went to importing rum, and also to manufacturing it in private

stills, in defiance of the government's commands and protests. They leagued themselves together and ruled

the market; they boycotted the government and the other dealers; they established a close monopoly and kept

it strictly in their own hands. When a vessel arrived with spirits, they allowed nobody to buy but themselves,

and they forced the owner to sell to them at a price named by themselvesand it was always low enough.

They bought rum at an average of two dollars a gallon and sold it at an average of ten. They made rum the

currency of the countryfor there was little or no moneyand they maintained their devastating hold and

kept the colony under their heel for eighteen or twenty years before they were finally conquered and routed

Meantime, they had spread intemperance everywhere. And they had squeezed farm after farm out of the

settlers hands for rum, and thus had bountifully enriched themselves. When a farmer was caught in the last

agonies of thirst they took advantage of him and sweated him for a drink. In one instance they sold a man a

gallon of rum worth two dollars for a piece of property which was sold some years later for $100,000. When

the colony was about eighteen or twenty years old it was discovered that the land was specially fitted for the

woolculture. Prosperity followed, commerce with the world began, by and by rich mines of the noble metals

were opened, immigrants flowed in, capital likewise. The result is the great and wealthy and enlightened

It is a country that is rich in mines, wool ranches, trams, railways, steamship lines, schools, newspapers,

botanical gardens, art galleries, libraries, museums, hospitals, learned societies; it is the hospitable home of

every species of culture and of every species of material enterprise, and there is a, church at every man's door,

All Englishspeaking colonies are made up of lavishly hospitable people, and New South Wales and its

capital are like the rest in this. The Englishspeaking colony of the United States of America is always called

lavishly hospitable by the English traveler. As to the other English speaking colonies throughout the world

from Canada all around, I know by experience that the description fits them. I will not go more particularly

into this matter, for I find that when writers try to distribute their gratitude here and there and yonder by detail

Mr. Gane ("New South Wales and Victoria in 1885 "), tried to distribute his gratitude, and was not lucky:

"The inhabitants of Sydney are renowned for their hospitality. The treatment which we experienced at the

hands of this generoushearted people will help more than anything else to make us recollect with pleasure

our stay amongst them. In the character of hosts and hostesses they excel. The 'new chum' needs only the

acquaintanceship of one of their number, and he becomes at once the happy recipient of numerous

complimentary invitations and thoughtful kindnesses. Of the towns it has been our good fortune to visit, none

Nobody could say it finer than that. If he had put in his cork then, and stayed away from Dubbobut no;

heedless man, he pulled it again. Pulled it when he was away along in his book, and his memory of what he

"We cannot quit the promising town of Dubbo without testifying, in warm praise, to the kindhearted and

hospitable usages of its inhabitants. Sydney, though well deserving the character it bears of its kindly

treatment of strangers, possesses a little formality and reserve. In Dubbo, on the contrary, though the same

congenial manners prevail, there is a pleasing degree of respectful familiarity which gives the town a homely

comfort not often met with elsewhere. In laying on one side our pen we feel contented in having been able,

though so late in this work, to bestow a panegyric, however unpretentious, on a town which, though

possessing no picturesque natural surroundings, nor interesting architectural productions, has yet a body of

citizens whose hearts cannot but obtain for their town a reputation for benevolence and kind heartedness."

I wonder what soured him on Sydney. It seems strange that a pleasing degree of three or four fingers of

respectful familiarity should fill a man up and give him the panegyrics so bad. For he has them, the worst

wayany one can see that. A man who is perfectly at himself does not throw cold detraction at people's

architectural productions and picturesque surroundings, and let on that what he prefers is a Dubbonese

duststorm and a pleasing degree of respectful familiarity, No, these are old, old symptoms; and when they

Sydney has a population of 400,000. When a stranger from America steps ashore there, the first thing that

strikes him is that the place is eight or nine times as large as he was expecting it to be; and the next thing that

strikes him is that it is an English city with American trimmings. Later on, in Melbourne, he will find the

American trimmings still more in evidence; there, even the architecture will often suggest America; a

photograph of its stateliest business street might be passed upon him for a picture of the finest street in a large

American city. I was told that the most of the fine residences were the city residences of squatters. The name

seemed out of focus somehow. When the explanation came, it offered a new instance of the curious changes

which words, as well as animals, undergo through change of habitat and climate. With us, when you speak of

a squatter you are always supposed to be speaking of a poor man, but in Australia when you speak of a

squatter you are supposed to be speaking of a millionaire; in America the word indicates the possessor of a

few acres and a doubtful title, in Australia it indicates a man whose landfront is as long as a railroad, and

whose title has been perfected in one way or another; in America the word indicates a man who owns a dozen

head of live stock, in Australia a man who owns anywhere from fifty thousand up to half a million head; in

America the word indicates a man who is obscure and not important, in Australia a man who is prominent

and of the first importance; in America you take off your hat to no squatter, in Australia you do; in America if

your uncle is a squatter you keep it dark, in Australia you advertise it; in America if your friend is a squatter

nothing comes of it, but with a squatter for your friend in Australia you may sup with kings if there are any

In Australia it takes about two acres and a half of pastureland (some people say twice as many), to support a

sheep; and when the squatter has half a million sheep his private domain is about as large as Rhode Island, to

speak in general terms. His annual wool crop may be worth a quarter or a half million dollars.

He will live in a palace in Melbourne or Sydney or some other of the large cities, and make occasional trips

to his sheepkingdom several hundred miles away in the great plains to look after his battalions of riders and

shepherds and other hands. He has a commodious dwelling out there, and if he approve of you he will invite

you to spend a week in it, and will make you at home and comfortable, and let you see the great industry in

all its details, and feed you and slake you and smoke you with the best that money can buy.

On at least one of these vast estates there is a considerable town, with all the various businesses and

occupations that go to make an important town; and the town and the land it stands upon are the property of

the squatters. I have seen that town, and it is not unlikely that there are other squatterowned towns in

Australia supplies the world not only with fine wool, but with mutton also. The modern invention of cold

storage and its application in ships has created this great trade. In Sydney I visited a huge establishment

where they kill and clean and solidly freeze a thousand sheep a day, for shipment to England.

The Australians did not seem to me to differ noticeably from Americans, either in dress, carriage, ways,

pronunciation, inflections, or general appearance. There were fleeting and subtle suggestions of their English

origin, but these were not pronounced enough, as a rule, to catch one's attention. The people have easy and

cordial manners from the beginning from the moment that the introduction is completed. This is American.

To put it in another way, it is English friendliness with the English shyness and selfconsciousness left out.

Now and thenbut this is rareone hears such words as piper for paper, lydy for lady, and tyble for table

fall from lips whence one would not expect such pronunciations to come. There is a superstition prevalent in

Sydney that this pronunciation is an Australianism, but people who have been "home"as the native

reverently and lovingly calls Englandknow better. It is "costermonger." All over Australasia this

pronunciation is nearly as common among servants as it is in London among the uneducated and the partially

educated of all sorts and conditions of people. That mislaid 'y' is rather striking when a person gets enough of

it into a short sentence to enable it to show up. In the hotel in Sydney the chambermaid said, one morning:

"The tyble is set, and here is the piper; and if the lydy is ready I'll tell the wyter to bring up the breakfast."

I have made passing mention, a moment ago, of the native Australasian's custom of speaking of England as

"home." It was always pretty to hear it, and often it was said in an unconsciously caressing way that made it

touching; in a way which transmuted a sentiment into an embodiment, and made one seem to see Australasia

In the Australasian home the tabletalk is vivacious and unembarrassed; it is without stiffness or restraint.

This does not remind one of England so much as it does of America. But Australasia is strictly democratic,

English and colonial audiences are phenomenally alert and responsive. Where masses of people are gathered

together in England, caste is submerged, and with it the English reserve; equality exists for the moment, and

every individual is free; so free from any consciousness of fetters, indeed, that the Englishman's habit of

watching himself and guarding himself against any injudicious exposure of his feelings is forgotten, and falls

into abeyanceand to such a degree indeed, that he will bravely applaud all by himself if he wants toan

But it is hard to move a new English acquaintance when he is by himself, or when the company present is

small and new to him. He is on his guard then, and his natural reserve is to the fore. This has given him the

Americans are not Englishmen, and American humor is not English humor; but both the American and his

humor had their origin in England, and have merely undergone changes brought about by changed conditions

and a new environment. About the best humorous speeches I have yet heard were a couple that were made in

Australia at club suppersone of them by an Englishman, the other by an Australian.

In Sydney I had a large dream, and in the course of talk I told it to a missionary from India who was on his

way to visit some relatives in New Zealand. I dreamed that the visible universe is the physical person of God;

that the vast worlds that we see twinkling millions of miles apart in the fields of space are the blood

corpuscles in His veins; and that we and the other creatures are the microbes that charge with multitudinous

"It is not surpassable for magnitude, since its metes and bounds are the metes and bounds of the universe

itself; and it seems to me that it almost accounts for a thing which is otherwise nearly unaccountablethe

origin of the sacred legends of the Hindoos. Perhaps they dream them, and then honestly believe them to be

divine revelations of fact. It looks like that, for the legends are built on so vast a scale that it does not seem

reasonable that plodding priests would happen upon such colossal fancies when awake."

He told some of the legends, and said that they were implicitly believed by all classes of Hindoos, including

those of high social position and intelligence; and he said that this universal credulity was a great hindrance

"At home, people wonder why Christianity does not make faster progress in India. They hear that the Indians

believe easily, and that they have a natural trust in miracles and give them a hospitable reception. Then they

argue like this: since the Indian believes easily, place Christianity before them and they must believe; confirm

its truths by the biblical miracles, and they will no longer doubt, The natural deduction is, that as Christianity

makes but indifferent progress in India, the fault is with us: we are not fortunate in presenting the doctrines

"But the truth is, we are not by any means so well equipped as they think. We have not the easy task that they

imagine. To use a military figure, we are sent against the enemy with good powder in our guns, but only wads

for bullets; that is to say, our miracles are not effective; the Hindoos do not care for them; they have more

extraordinary ones of their own. All the details of their own religion are proven and established by miracles;

the details of ours must be proven in the same way. When I first began my work in India I greatly

underestimated the difficulties thus put upon my task. A correction was not long in coming. I thought as our

friends think at homethat to prepare my childlike wonderlovers to listen with favor to my grave message

I only needed to charm the way to it with wonders, marvels, miracles. With full confidence I told the wonders

"At first I saw lively anticipation and strong interest in the faces of my people, but as I moved along from

incident to incident of the great story, I was distressed to see that I was steadily losing the sympathy of my

audience. I could not understand it. It was a surprise to me, and a disappointment. Before I was through, the

fading sympathy had paled to indifference. Thence to the end the indifference remained; I was not able to

"A good old Hindoo gentleman told me where my trouble lay. He said 'We Hindoos recognize a god by the

work of his handswe accept no other testimony. Apparently, this is also the rule with you Christians. And

we know when a man has his power from a god by the fact that he does things which he could not do, as a

man, with the mere powers of a man. Plainly, this is the Christian's way also, of knowing when a man is

working by a god's power and not by his own. You saw that there was a supernatural property in the hair of

Samson; for you perceived that when his hair was gone he was as other men. It is our way, as I have said.

There are many nations in the world, and each group of nations has its own gods, and will pay no worship to

the gods of the others. Each group believes its own gods to be strongest, and it will not exchange them except

for gods that shall be proven to be their superiors in power. Man is but a weak creature, and needs the help of

godshe cannot do without it. Shall he place his fate in the hands of weak gods when there may be stronger

ones to be found? That would be foolish. No, if he hear of gods that are stronger than his own, he should not

turn a deaf ear, for it is not a light matter that is at stake. How then shall he determine which gods are the

stronger, his own or those that preside over the concerns of other nations? By comparing the known works of

his own gods with the works of those others; there is no other way. Now, when we make this comparison, we

are not drawn towards the gods of any other nation. Our gods are shown by their works to be the strongest,

the most powerful. The Christians have but few gods, and they are newnew, and not strong; as it seems to

us. They will increase in number, it is true, for this has happened with all gods, but that time is far away,

many ages and decades of ages away, for gods multiply slowly, as is meet for beings to whom a thousand

years is but a single moment. Our own gods have been born millions of years apart. The process is slow, the

gathering of strength and power is similarly slow. In the slow lapse of the ages the steadily accumulating

power of our gods has at last become prodigious. We have a thousand proofs of this in the colossal character

of their personal acts and the acts of ordinary men to whom they have given supernatural qualities. To your

Samson was given supernatural power, and when he broke the withes, and slew the thousands with the

jawbone of an ass, and carried away the gate's of the city upon his shoulders, you were amazedand also

awed, for you recognized the divine source of his strength. But it could not profit to place these things before

your Hindoo congregation and invite their wonder; for they would compare them with the deed done by

Hanuman, when our gods infused their divine strength into his muscles; and they would be indifferent to

themas you saw. In the old, old times, ages and ages gone by, when our god Rama was warring with the

demon god of Ceylon, Rama bethought him to bridge the sea and connect Ceylon with India, so that his

armies might pass easily over; and he sent his general, Hanuman, inspired like your own Samson with divine

strength, to bring the materials for the bridge. In two days Hanuman strode fifteen hundred miles, to the

Himalayas, and took upon his shoulder a range of those lofty mountains two hundred miles long, and started

with it toward Ceylon. It was in the night; and, as he passed along the plain, the people of Govardhun heard

the thunder of his tread and felt the earth rocking under it, and they ran out, and there, with their snowy

summits piled to heaven, they saw the Himalayas passing by. And as this huge continent swept along

overshadowing the earth, upon its slopes they discerned the twinkling lights of a thousand sleeping villages,

and it was as if the constellations were filing in procession through the sky. While they were looking,

Hanuman stumbled, and a small ridge of red sandstone twenty miles long was jolted loose and fell. Half of its

length has wasted away in the course of the ages, but the other ten miles of it remain in the plain by

Govardhun to this day as proof of the might of the inspiration of our gods. You must know, yourself, that

Hanuman could not have carried those mountains to Ceylon except by the strength of the gods. You know

that it was not done by his own strength, therefore, you know that it was done by the strength of the gods, just

as you know that Samson carried the gates by the divine strength and not by his own. I think you must

concede two things: First, That in carrying the gates of the city upon his shoulders, Samson did not establish

the superiority of his gods over ours; secondly, That his feat is not supported by any but verbal evidence,

while Hanuman's is not only supported by verbal evidence, but this evidence is confirmed, established,

proven, by visible, tangible evidence, which is the strongest of all testimony. We have the sandstone ridge,

One is sure to be struck by the liberal way in which Australasia spends money upon public workssuch as

legislative buildings, town halls, hospitals, asylums, parks, and botanical gardens. I should say that where

minor towns in America spend a hundred dollars on the town hall and on public parks and gardens, the like

towns in Australasia spend a thousand. And I think that this ratio will hold good in the matter of hospitals,

also. I have seen a costly and wellequipped, and architecturally handsome hospital in an Australian village

of fifteen hundred inhabitants. It was built by private funds furnished by the villagers and the neighboring

planters, and its running expenses were drawn from the same sources. I suppose it would be hard to match

this in any country. This village was about to close a contract for lighting its streets with the electric light,

when I was there. That is ahead of London. London is still obscured by gasgas pretty widely scattered, too,

in some of the districts; so widely indeed, that except on moonlight nights it is difficult to find the gas lamps.

The botanical garden of Sydney covers thirtyeight acres, beautifully laid out and rich with the spoil of all

the lands and all the climes of the world. The garden is on high ground in the middle of the town, overlooking

the great harbor, and it adjoins the spacious grounds of Government Housefiftysix acres; and at hand

also, is a recreation ground containing eightytwo acres. In addition, there are the zoological gardens, the

racecourse, and the great cricketgrounds where the international matches are played. Therefore there is

plenty of room for reposeful lazying and lounging, and for exercise too, for such as like that kind of work.

There are four specialties attainable in the way of social pleasure. If you enter your name on the Visitor's

Book at Government House you will receive an invitation to the next ball that takes place there, if nothing

can be proven against you. And it will be very pleasant; for you will see everybody except the Governor, and

add a number of acquaintances and several friends to your list. The Governor will be in England. He always

is. The continent has four or five governors, and I do not know how many it takes to govern the outlying

archipelago; but anyway you will not see them. When they are appointed they come out from England and

get inaugurated, and give a ball, and help pray for rain, and get aboard ship and go back home. And so the

LieutenantGovernor has to do all the work. I was in Australasia three months and a half, and saw only one

The Australasian Governor would not be so restless, perhaps, if he had a war, or a veto, or something like that

to call for his reserveenergies, but he hasn't. There isn't any war, and there isn't any veto in his hands. And

so there is really little or nothing doing in his line. The country governs itself, and prefers to do it; and is so

strenuous about it and so jealous of its independence that it grows restive if even the Imperial Government at

home proposes to help; and so the Imperial veto, while a fact, is yet mainly a name.

Thus the Governor's functions are much more limited than are a Governor's functions with us. And therefore

more fatiguing. He is the apparent head of the State, he is the real head of Society. He represents culture,

refinement, elevated sentiment, polite life, religion; and by his example he propagates these, and they spread

and flourish and bear good fruit. He creates the fashion, and leads it. His ball is the ball of balls, and his

He is usually a lord, and this is well; for his position compels him to lead an expensive life, and an English

Another of Sydney's social pleasures is the visit to the Admiralty House; which is nobly situated on high

ground overlooking the water. The trim boats of the service convey the guests thither; and there, or on board

the flagship, they have the duplicate of the hospitalities of Government House. The Admiral commanding a

station in British waters is a magnate of the first degree, and he is sumptuously housed, as becomes the

Third in the list of special pleasures is the tour of the harbor in a fine steam pleasurelaunch. Your richer

friends own boats of this kind, and they will invite you, and the joys of the trip will make a long day seem

And finally comes the sharkfishing. Sydney Harbor is populous with the finest breeds of maneating sharks

in the world. Some people make their living catching them; for the Government pays a cash bounty on them.

The larger the shark the larger the bounty, and some of the sharks are twenty feet long. You not only get the

bounty, but everything that is in the shark belongs to you. Sometimes the contents are quite valuable.

The shark is the swiftest fish that swims. The speed of the fastest steamer afloat is poor compared to his. And

he is a great gadabout, and roams far and wide in the oceans, and visits the shores of all of them, ultimately,

in the course of his restless excursions. I have a tale to tell now, which has not as yet been in print. In 1870 a

young stranger arrived in Sydney, and set about finding something to do; but he knew no one, and brought no

recommendations, and the result was that he got no employment. He had aimed high, at first, but as time and

his money wasted away he grew less and less exacting, until at last he was willing to serve in the humblest

capacities if so he might get bread and shelter. But luck was still against him; he could find no opening of any

sort. Finally his money was all gone. He walked the streets all day, thinking; he walked them all night,

thinking, thinking, and growing hungrier and hungrier. At dawn he found himself well away from the town

and drifting aimlessly along the harbor shore. As he was passing by a nodding shark fisher the man looked

If you can't change it, no harm's done; if you do change it, it's for the better, of course. Come."

"Here you are. I will get away, now, for awhile, so that my luck won't spoil yours; for many and many a time

I've noticed that ifthere, pull in, pull in, man, you've got a bite! I knew how it would be. Why, I knew

It was an unusually large shark"a full nineteenfooter," the fisherman said, as he laid the creature open

"Now you rob him, young man, while I step to my hamper for a fresh bait. There's generally something in

them worth going for. You've changed my luck, you see. But my goodness, I hope you haven't changed your

When the fisherman got back the young man had just finished washing his hands in the bay, and was starting

"What use is he? I like that. Don't you know that we can go and report him to Government, and you'll get a

clean solid eighty shillings bounty? Hard cash, you know. What do you think about it now?"

"Well, this is odd. You're one of those sort they call eccentrics, I judge. The saying is, you mustn't judge a

man by his clothes, and I'm believing it now. Why yours are looking just ratty, don't you know; and yet you

The young man walked slowly back to the town, deeply musing as he went. He halted a moment in front of

the best restaurant, then glanced at his clothes and passed on, and got his breakfast at a "standup." There

was a good deal of it, and it cost five shillings. He tendered a sovereign, got his change, glanced at his silver,

muttered to himself, "There isn't enough to buy clothes with," and went his way.

At halfpast nine the richest woolbroker in Sydney was sitting in his morningroom at home, settling his

"What do you bring that kind of a message here for? Send him about his business."

"He won't go? That'swhy, that's unusual. He's one of two things, then: he's a remarkable person, or he's

The sundowner was shown in. The broker said to himself, "No, he's not crazy; that is easy to see; so he must

Then aloud, "Well, my good fellow, be quick about it; don't waste any words; what is it you want?"

"Scott! (It's a mistake; he is crazy . . . . Nohe can't benot with that eye.) Why, you take my breath away.

"No, I don't remember hearing the name before. Now thenjust for curiosity's sakewhat has sent you to

"The intention to make a hundred thousand pounds for you and as much for myself within the next sixty

"Well, well, well. It is the most extraordinary idea thatsit downyou interest me. And somehow

youwell, you fascinate me; I think that that is about the word. And it isn't your propositionno, that

doesn't fascinate me; it's something else, I don't quite know what; something that's born in you and oozes out

of you, I suppose. Now then just for curiosity's sake again, nothing more: as I understand it, it is your desire

"Pardon, so you did. I thought it was an unheedful use of the wordan unheedful valuing of its strength, you

"Well, I must saybut look here, let me walk the floor a little, my mind is getting into a sort of whirl, though

you don't seem disturbed any. (Plainly this young fellow isn't crazy; but as to his being remarkable well,

really he amounts to that, and something over.) Now then, I believe I am beyond the reach of further

"No, I was not quite out of the reach of surprises, after all. Why, how you talk! Do you know what our crop is

"Well, you've got your statistics right, any way. Now, then, do you know what the margins would foot up, to

"Right, once more. Well, dear me, just to see what would happen, I wish you had the money. And if you had

"Yes, by George, you did say 'shall'! You are the most definite devil I ever saw, in the matter of language.

Dear, dear, dear, look here! Definite speech means clarity of mind. Upon my word I believe you've got what

you believe to be a rational reason, for venturing into this house, an entire stranger, on this wild scheme of

buying the wool crop of an entire colony on speculation. Bring it outI am preparedacclimatized, if I may

use the word. Why would you buy the crop, and why would you make that sum out of it? That is to say, what

"Because France has declared war against Germany, and wool has gone up fourteen per cent. in London and

"Oh, indeed? Now then, I've got you! Such a thunderbolt as you have just let fly ought to have made me

jump out of my chair, but it didn't stir me the least little bit, you see. And for a very simple reason: I have

read the morning paper. You can look at it if you want to. The fastest ship in the service arrived at eleven

o'clock last night, fifty days out from London. All her news is printed here. There are no war clouds

anywhere; and as for wool, why, it is the lowspiritedest commodity in the English market. It is your turn to

jump, now . . . . Well, why, don't you jump? Why do you sit there in that placid fashion, when"

"Later news? Oh, comelater news than fifty days, brought steaming hot from London by the"

"Oh, oh, oh, this is too much! Front! call the police bring the gun raise the town! All the asylums in

"Sit down! And collect yourself. Where is the use in getting excited? Am I excited? There is nothing to get

excited about. When I make a statement which I cannot prove, it will be time enough for you to begin to offer

"Oh, a thousand, thousand pardons! I ought to be ashamed of myself, and I am ashamed of myself for

thinking that a little bit of a circumstance like sending a shark to England to fetch back a market report"

"Wait a moment. Proof about the sharkand another matter. Only ten lines. Therenow it is done. Sign it."

"Many thanksmany. Let me see; it saysit says oh, come, this is interesting! Whywhylook here!

prove what you say here, and I'll put up the money, and double as much, if necessary, and divide the

winnings with you, half and half. There, nowI've signed; make your promise good if you can. Show me a

"Here it isand with it these buttons and a memorandum book that belonged to the man the shark

swallowed. Swallowed him in the Thames, without a doubt; for you will notice that the last entry in the book

is dated 'London,' and is of the same date as the Times, and says, 'Ber confequentz der Kreigeseflarun, reife

ich heute nach Deutchland ab, aur bak ich mein leben auf dem Ultar meines Landes legen mag', as clean

native German as anybody can put upon paper, and means that in consequence of the declaration of war, this

loyal soul is leaving for home today, to fight. And he did leave, too, but the shark had him before the day

"And a pity, too. But there are times for mourning, and we will attend to this case further on; other matters

are pressing, now. I will go down and set the machinery in motion in a quiet way and buy the crop. It will

cheer the drooping spirits of the boys, in a transitory way. Everything is transitory in this world. Sixty days

hence, when they are called to deliver the goods, they will think they've been struck by lightning. But there is

a time for mourning, and we will attend to that case along with the other one. Come along, I'll take you to my

"It is hard to remember. However, I think you will make it easier by and by, if you live. There are three kinds

of peopleCommonplace Men, Remarkable Men, and Lunatics. I'll classify you with the Remarkables, and

The deal went through, and secured to the young stranger the first fortune he ever pocketed.

The people of Sydney ought to be afraid of the sharks, but for some reason they do not seem to be. On

Saturdays the young men go out in their boats, and sometimes the water is fairly covered with the little sails.

A boat upsets now and then, by accident, a result of tumultuous skylarking; sometimes the boys upset their

boat for funsuch as it is with sharks visibly waiting around for just such an occurrence. The young fellows

scramble aboard wholesometimesnot always. Tragedies have happened more than once. While I was in

Sydney it was reported that a boy fell out of a boat in the mouth of the Paramatta river and screamed for help

and a boy jumped overboard from another boat to save him from the assembling sharks; but the sharks made

The government pays a bounty for the shark; to get the bounty the fishermen bait the hook or the seine with

agreeable mutton; the news spreads and the sharks come from all over the Pacific Ocean to get the free board.

In time the shark culture will be one of the most successful things in the colony.

My health had broken down in New York in May; it had remained in a doubtful but fairish condition during a

succeeding period of 82 days; it broke again on the Pacific. It broke again in Sydney, but not until after I had

had a good outing, and had also filled my lecture engagements. This latest break lost me the chance of seeing

Queensland. In the circumstances, to go north toward hotter weather was not advisable.

So we moved south with a westward slant, 17 hours by rail to the capital of the colony of Victoria,

Melbournethat juvenile city of sixty years, and half a million inhabitants. On the map the distance looked

small; but that is a trouble with all divisions of distance in such a vast country as Australia. The colony of

Victoria itself looks small on the maplooks like a county, in factyet it is about as large as England,

Scotland, and Wales combined. Or, to get another focus upon it, it is just 80 times as large as the state of

Outside of Melbourne, Victoria seems to be owned by a handful of squatters, each with a Rhode Island for a

sheep farm. That is the impression which one gathers from common talk, yet the wool industry of Victoria is

by no means so great as that of New South Wales. The climate of Victoria is favorable to other great

We took the train at Sydney at about four in the afternoon. It was American in one way, for we had a most

rational sleeping car; also the car was clean and fine and newnothing about it to suggest the rolling stock

of the continent of Europe. But our baggage was weighed, and extra weight charged for. That was

continental. Continental and troublesome. Any detail of railroading that is not troublesome cannot honorably

The tickets were roundtrip onesto Melbourne, and clear to Adelaide in South Australia, and then all the

way back to Sydney. Twelve hundred more miles than we really expected to make; but then as the round trip

wouldn't cost much more than the single trip, it seemed well enough to buy as many miles as one could

afford, even if one was not likely to need them. A human being has a natural desire to have more of a good

Now comes a singular thing: the oddest thing, the strangest thing, the most baffling and unaccountable

marvel that Australasia can show. At the frontier between New South Wales and Victoria our multitude of

passengers were routed out of their snug beds by lanternlight in the morning in the bitingcold of a high

altitude to change cars on a road that has no break in it from Sydney to Melbourne! Think of the paralysis of

intellect that gave that idea birth; imagine the boulder it emerged from on some petrified legislator's

It is a narrowgage road to the frontier, and a broader gauge thence to Melbourne. The two governments

were the builders of the road and are the owners of it. One or two reasons are given for this curious state of

things. One is, that it represents the jealousy existing between the coloniesthe two most important colonies

of Australasia. What the other one is, I have forgotten. But it is of no consequence. It could be but another

All passengers fret at the doublegauge; all shippers of freight must of course fret at it; unnecessary expense,

delay, and annoyance are imposed upon everybody concerned, and no one is benefitted.

Each Australian colony fences itself off from its neighbor with a custom house. Personally, I have no

objection, but it must be a good deal of inconvenience to the people. We have something resembling it here

and there in America, but it goes by another name. The large empire of the Pacific coast requires a world of

iron machinery, and could manufacture it economically on the spot if the imposts on foreign iron were

removed. But they are not. Protection to Pennsylvania and Alabama forbids it. The result to the Pacific coast

is the same as if there were several rows of customfences between the coast and the East. Iron carted across

the American continent at luxurious railway rates would be valuable enough to be coined when it arrived.

We changed cars. This was at Albury. And it was there, I think, that the growing day and the early sun

exposed the distant range called the Blue Mountains. Accurately named. "My word!" as the Australians say,

but it was a stunning color, that blue. Deep, strong, rich, exquisite; towering and majestic masses of bluea

softly luminous blue, a smouldering blue, as if vaguely lit by fires within. It extinguished the blue of the

skymade it pallid and unwholesome, whitey and washedout. A wonderful colorjust divine.

A resident told me that those were not mountains; he said they were rabbitpiles. And explained that long

exposure and the overripe condition of the rabbits was what made them look so blue. This man may have

been right, but much reading of books of travel has made me distrustful of gratis information furnished by

unofficial residents of a country. The facts which such people give to travelers are usually erroneous, and

often intemperately so. The rabbitplague has indeed been very bad in Australia, and it could account for one

mountain, but not for a mountain range, it seems to me. It is too large an order.

We breakfasted at the station. A good breakfast, except the coffee; and cheap. The Government establishes

the prices and placards them. The waiters were men, I think; but that is not usual in Australasia. The usual

thing is to have girls. No, not girls, young ladiesgenerally duchesses. Dress? They would attract attention

at any royal levee in Europe. Even empresses and queens do not dress as they do. Not that they could not

All the pleasant morning we slid smoothly along over the plains, through thinnot thickforests of great

melancholy gum trees, with trunks rugged with curled sheets of flaking barkerysipelas convalescents, so to

speak, shedding their dead skins. And all along were tiny cabins, built sometimes of wood, sometimes of

grayblue corrugated iron; and the doorsteps and fences were clogged with childrenrugged little simply

clad chaps that looked as if they had been imported from the banks of the Mississippi without breaking bulk.

And there were little villages, with neat stations well placarded with showy advertisementsmainly of

almost too selfrighteous brands of "sheepdip." If that is the nameand I think it is. It is a stuff like tar, and

is dabbed on to places where the shearer clips a piece out of the sheep. It bars out the flies, and has healing

properties, and a nip to it which makes the sheep skip like the cattle on a thousand hills. It is not good to eat.

That is, it is not good to eat except when mixed with railroad coffee. It improves railroad coffee. Without it

railroad coffee is too vague. But with it, it is quite assertive and enthusiastic. By itself, railroad coffee is too

passive; but sheepdip makes it wake up and get down to business. I wonder where they get railroad coffee?

We saw birds, but not a kangaroo, not an emu, not an ornithorhynchus, not a lecturer, not a native. Indeed, the

land seemed quite destitute of game. But I have misused the word native. In Australia it is applied to

Australianborn whites only. I should have said that we saw no Aboriginalsno "blackfellows." And to this

day I have never seen one. In the great museums you will find all the other curiosities, but in the curio of

chiefest interest to the stranger all of them are lacking. We have at home an abundance of museums, and not

an American Indian in them. It is clearly an absurdity, but it never struck me before.

The air was balmy and delicious, the sunshine radiant; it was a charming excursion. In the course of it we

came to a town whose odd name was famous all over the world a quarter of a century agoWaggaWagga.

This was because the Tichborne Claimant had kept a butchershop there. It was out of the midst of his

humble collection of sausages and tripe that he soared up into the zenith of notoriety and hung there in the

wastes of space a time, with the telescopes of all nations leveled at him in unappeasable curiositycuriosity

as to which of the two longmissing persons he was: Arthur Orton, the mislaid roustabout of Wapping, or Sir

Roger Tichborne, the lost heir of a name and estates as old as English history. We all know now, but not a

dozen people knew then; and the dozen kept the mystery to themselves and allowed the most intricate and

fascinating and marvelous reallife romance that has ever been played upon the world's stage to unfold itself

serenely, act by act, in a British court by the long and laborious processes of judicial development.

When we recall the details of that great romance we marvel to see what daring chances truth may freely take

in constructing a tale, as compared with the poor little conservative risks permitted to fiction. The

fictionartist could achieve no success with the materials of this splendid Tichborne romance.

He would have to drop out the chief characters; the public would say such people are impossible. He would

have to drop out a number of the most picturesque incidents; the public would say such things could never

It cost the Tichborne estates $400,000 to unmask the Claimant and drive him out; and even after the exposure

multitudes of Englishmen still believed in him. It cost the British Government another $400,000 to convict

him of perjury; and after the conviction the same old multitudes still believed in him; and among these

believers were many educated and intelligent men; and some of them had personally known the real Sir

Roger. The Claimant was sentenced to 14 years' imprisonment. When he got out of prison he went to New

York and kept a whisky saloon in the Bowery for a time, then disappeared from view.

He always claimed to be Sir Roger Tichborne until death called for him. This was but a few months agonot

very much short of a generation since he left WaggaWagga to go and possess himself of his estates. On his

deathbed he yielded up his secret, and confessed in writing that he was only Arthur Orton of Wapping, able

seaman and butcherthat and nothing more. But it is scarcely to be doubted that there are people whom

even his dying confession will not convince. The old habit of assimilating incredibilities must have made

strong food a necessity in their case; a weaker article would probably disagree with them.

I was in London when the Claimant stood his trial for perjury. I attended one of his showy evenings in the

sumptuous quarters provided for him from the purses of his adherents and wellwishers. He was in evening

dress, and I thought him a rather fine and stately creature. There were about twentyfive gentlemen present;

educated men, men moving in good society, none of them commonplace; some of them were men of

distinction, none of them were obscurities. They were his cordial friends and admirers. It was "Sir Roger,"

always "Sir Roger," on all hands; no one withheld the title, all turned it from the tongue with unction, and as

For many years I had had a mystery in stock. Melbourne, and only Melbourne, could unriddle it for me. In

1873 I arrived in London with my wife and young child, and presently received a note from Naples signed by

a name not familiar to me. It was not Bascom, and it was not Henry; but I will call it Henry Bascom for

convenience's sake. This note, of about six lines, was written on a strip of white paper whose endedges were

ragged. I came to be familiar with those strips in later years. Their size and pattern were always the same.

Their contents were usually to the same effect: would I and mine come to the writer's countryplace in

England on such and such a date, by such and such a train, and stay twelve days and depart by such and such

a train at the end of the specified time? A carriage would meet us at the station.

These invitations were always for a long time ahead; if we were in Europe, three months ahead; if we were in

America, six to twelve months ahead. They always named the exact date and train for the beginning and also

This first note invited us for a date three months in the future. It asked us to arrive by the 4.10 p.m. train from

London, August 6th. The carriage would be waiting. The carriage would take us away seven days latertrain

I showed the note to the author of "Tom Brown at Rugby," and be said: "Accept, and be thankful."

He described Mr. Bascom as being a man of genius, a man of fine attainments, a choice man in every way, a

rare and beautiful character. He said that Bascom Hall was a particularly fine example of the stately manorial

mansion of Elizabeth's days, and that it was a house worth going a long way to seelike Knowle; that Mr. B.

was of a social disposition; liked the company of agreeable people, and always had samples of the sort

We paid the visit. We paid others, in later yearsthe last one in 1879. Soon after that Mr. Bascom started on

a voyage around the world in a steam yachta long and leisurely trip, for he was making collections, in all

The day that President Garfield was shot by the assassin Guiteau, we were at a little watering place on Long

Island Sound; and in the mail matter of that day came a letter with the Melbourne postmark on it. It was for

my wife, but I recognized Mr. Bascom's handwriting on the envelope, and opened it. It was the usual

noteas to paucity of linesand was written on the customary strip of paper; but there was nothing usual

about the contents. The note informed my wife that if it would be any assuagement of her grief to know that

her husband's lecturetour in Australia was a satisfactory venture from the beginning to the end, he, the

writer, could testify that such was the case; also, that her husband's untimely death had been mourned by all

classes, as she would already know by the press telegrams, long before the reception of this note; that the

funeral was attended by the officials of the colonial and city governments; and that while he, the writer, her

friend and mine, had not reached Melbourne in time to see the body, he had at least had the sad privilege of

My first thought was, why didn't he have the coffin opened? He would have seen that the corpse was an

imposter, and he could have gone right ahead and dried up the most of those tears, and comforted those

I did nothing about the matter. I had set the law after living lecture doubles of mine a couple of times in

America, and the law had not been able to catch them; others in my trade had tried to catch their impostor

doubles and had failed. Then where was the use in harrying a ghost? Noneand so I did not disturb it. I had

a curiosity to know about that man's lecturetour and last moments, but that could wait. When I should see

Mr. Bascom he would tell me all about it. But he passed from life, and I never saw him again.. My curiosity

However, when I found that I was going to Australia it revived. And naturally: for if the people should say

that I was a dull, poor thing compared to what I was before I died, it would have a bad effect on business.

Well, to my surprise the Sydney journalists had never heard of that impostor! I pressed them, but they were

I could not understand it; still, I thought it would all come right in Melbourne. The government would

remember; and the other mourners. At the supper of the Institute of Journalists I should find out all about the

So my mystery was a mystery still. It was a great disappointment. I believed it would never be cleared

However, this is not the place for the rest of it; I shall come to the matter again, in a fardistant chapter.

Melbourne spreads around over an immense area of ground. It is a stately city architecturally as well as in

magnitude. It has an elaborate system of cablecar service; it has museums, and colleges, and schools, and

public gardens, and electricity, and gas, and libraries, and ,theaters, and mining centers, and wool centers, and

centers of the arts and sciences, and boards of trade, and ships, and railroads, and a harbor, and social clubs,

and journalistic clubs, and racing clubs, and a squatter club sumptuously housed and appointed, and as many

churches and banks as can make a living. In a word, it is equipped with everything that goes to make the

modern great city. It is the largest city of Australasia, and fills the post with honor and credit. It has one

specialty; this must not be jumbled in with those other things. It is the mitred Metropolitan of the

HorseRacing Cult. Its raceground is the Mecca of Australasia. On the great annual day of sacrificethe

5th of November, Guy Fawkes's Daybusiness is suspended over a stretch of land and sea as wide as from

New York to San Francisco, and deeper than from the northern lakes to the Gulf of Mexico; and every man

and woman, of high degree or low, who can afford the expense, put away their other duties and come. They

begin to swarm in by ship and rail a fortnight before the day, and they swarm thicker and thicker day after

day, until all the vehicles of transportation are taxed to their uttermost to meet the demands of the occasion,

and all hotels and lodgings are bulging outward because of the pressure from within. They come a hundred

thousand strong, as all the best authorities say, and they pack the spacious grounds and grandstands and make

It is the "Melbourne Cup" that brings this multitude together. Their clothes have been ordered long ago, at

unlimited cost, and without bounds as to beauty and magnificence, and have been kept in concealment until

now, for unto this day are they consecrate. I am speaking of the ladies' clothes; but one might know that.

And so the grandstands make a brilliant and wonderful spectacle, a delirium of color, a vision of beauty.

The champagne flows, everybody is vivacious, excited, happy; everybody bets, and gloves and fortunes

change hands right along, all the time. Day after day the races go on, and the fun and the excitement are kept

at white heat; and when each day is done, the people dance all night so as to be fresh for the race in the

morning. And at the end of the great week the swarms secure lodgings and transportation for next year, then

flock away to their remote homes and count their gains and losses, and order next year's Cupclothes, and

then lie down and sleep two weeks, and get up sorry to reflect that a whole year must be put in somehow or

The Melbourne Cup is the Australasian National Day. It would be difficult to overstate its importance. It

overshadows all other holidays and specialized days of whatever sort in that congeries of colonies.

Overshadows them? I might almost say it blots them out. Each of them gets attention, but not everybody's;

each of them evokes interest, but not everybody's; each of them rouses enthusiasm, but not everybody's; in

each case a part of the attention, interest, and enthusiasm is a matter of habit and custom, and another part of

it is official and perfunctory. Cup Day, and Cup Day only, commands an attention, an interest, and an

enthusiasm which are universaland spontaneous, not perfunctory. Cup Day is supreme it has no rival. I can

call to mind no specialized annual day, in any country, which can be named by that large nameSupreme. I

can call to mind no specialized annual day, in any country, whose approach fires the whole land with a

conflagration of conversation and preparation and anticipation and jubilation. No day save this one; but this

In America we have no annual supreme day; no day whose approach makes the whole nation glad. We have

the Fourth of July, and Christmas, and Thanksgiving. Neither of them can claim the primacy; neither of them

can arouse an enthusiasm which comes near to being universal. Eight grown Americans out of ten dread the

coming of the Fourth, with its pandemonium and its perils, and they rejoice when it is goneif still alive.

The approach of Christmas brings harassment and dread to many excellent people. They have to buy a

cartload of presents, and they never know what to buy to hit the various tastes; they put in three weeks of

hard and anxious work, and when Christmas morning comes they are so dissatisfied with the result, and so

disappointed that they want to sit down and cry. Then they give thanks that Christmas comes but once a year.

The observance of Thanksgiving Dayas a functionhas become general of late years. The Thankfulness

is not so general. This is natural. Twothirds of the nation have always had hard luck and a hard time during

We have a supreme daya sweeping and tremendous and tumultuous day, a day which commands an

absolute universality of interest and excitement; but it is not annual. It comes but once in four years; therefore

In Great Britain and Ireland they have two great daysChristmas and the Queen's birthday. But they are

I think it must be conceded that the position of the Australasian Day is unique, solitary, unfellowed; and

The next things which interest us when we travel are, first, the people; next, the novelties; and finally the

history of the places and countries visited. Novelties are rare in cities which represent the most advanced

civilization of the modern day. When one is familiar with such cities in the other parts of the world he is in

effect familiar with the cities of Australasia. The outside aspects will furnish little that is new. There will be

new names, but the things which they represent will sometimes be found to be less new than their names.

There may be shades of difference, but these can easily be too fine for detection by the incompetent eye of

the passing stranger. In the larrikin he will not be able to discover a new species, but only an old one met

elsewhere, and variously called loafer, rough, tough, bummer, or blatherskite, according to his geographical

distribution. The larrikin differs by a shade from those others, in that he is more sociable toward the stranger

than they, more kindly disposed, more hospitable, more hearty, more friendly. At least it seemed so to me,

and I had opportunity to observe. In Sydney, at least. In Melbourne I had to drive to and from the

lecturetheater, but in Sydney I was able to walk both ways, and did it. Every night, on my way home at ten,

or a quarter past, I found the larrikin grouped in considerable force at several of the street corners, and he

"SayMark!is he dead? a reference to a passage in some book of mine, though I did not detect, at that

time, that that was its source. And I didn't detect it afterward in Melbourne, when I came on the stage for the

first time, and the same question was dropped down upon me from the dizzy height of the gallery. It is always

difficult to answer a sudden inquiry like that, when you have come unprepared and don't know what it means.

I will remark hereif it is not an indecorumthat the welcome which an American lecturer gets from a

British colonial audience is a thing which will move him to his deepest deeps, and veil his sight and break his

voice. And from Winnipeg to Africa, experience will teach him nothing; he will never learn to expect it, it

will catch him as a surprise each time. The warcloud hanging black over England and America made no

trouble for me. I was a prospective prisoner of war, but at dinners, suppers, on the platform, and elsewhere,

there was never anything to remind me of it. This was hospitality of the right metal, and would have been

And speaking of the warflurry, it seemed to me to bring to light the unexpected, in a detail or two. It seemed

to relegate the wartalk to the politicians on both sides of the water; whereas whenever a prospective war

between two nations had been in the air theretofore, the public had done most of the talking and the bitterest.

The attitude of the newspapers was new also. I speak of those of Australasia and India, for I had access to

those only. They treated the subject argumentatively and with dignity, not with spite and anger. That was a

new spirit, too, and not learned of the French and German press, either before Sedan or since. I heard many

public speeches, and they reflected the moderation of the journals. The outlook is that the Englishspeaking

race will dominate the earth a hundred years from now, if its sections do not get to fighting each other. It

would be a pity to spoil that prospect by baffling and retarding wars when arbitration would settle their

No, as I have suggested, novelties are rare in the great capitals of modern times. Even the wool exchange in

Melbourne could not be told from the familiar stock exchange of other countries. Wool brokers are just like

stockbrokers; they all bounce from their seats and put up their hands and yell in unisonno stranger can tell

whatand the president calmly says "Sold to Smith Co., threpence farthingnext!"when probably

In the museums you will find acres of the most strange and fascinating things; but all museums are

fascinating, and they do so tire your eyes, and break your back, and burn out your vitalities with their

consuming interest. You always say you will never go again, but you do go. The palaces of the rich, in

Melbourne, are much like the palaces of the rich in America, and the life in them is the same; but there the

resemblance ends. The grounds surrounding the American palace are not often large, and not often beautiful,

but in the Melbourne case the grounds are often ducally spacious, and the climate and the gardeners together

make them as beautiful as a dream. It is said that some of the country seats have groundsdomainsabout

them which rival in charm and magnitude those which surround the country mansion of an English lord; but I

And what was the origin of this majestic city and its efflorescence of palatial town houses and country seats ?

Its first brick was laid and its first house built by a passing convict. Australian history is almost always

picturesque; indeed, it is so curious and strange, that it is itself the chiefest novelty the country has to offer,

and so it pushes the other novelties into second and third place. It does not read like history, but like the most

beautiful lies. And all of a fresh new sort, no mouldy old stale ones. It is full of surprises, and adventures, and

incongruities, and contradictions, and incredibilities; but they are all true, they all happened.

When we consider the immensity of the British Empire in territory, population, and trade, it requires a stern

exercise of faith to believe in the figures which represent Australasia's contribution to the Empire's

commercial grandeur. As compared with the landed estate of the British Empire, the landed estate dominated

by any other Power except one Russiais not very impressive for size. My authorities make the British

Empire not much short of a fourth larger than the Russian Empire. Roughly proportioned, if you will allow

your entire hand to represent the British Empire, you may then cut off the fingers a trifle above the middle

joint of the middle finger, and what is left of the hand will represent Russia. The populations ruled by Great

Britain and China are about the same400,000,000 each. No other Power approaches these figures. Even

The population of Australasia4,000,000sinks into nothingness, and is lost from sight in that British

ocean of 400,000,000. Yet the statistics indicate that it rises again and shows up very conspicuously when its

share of the Empire's commerce is the matter under consideration. The value of England's annual exports and

imports is stated at three billions of dollars,[New South Wales Blue Book.]and it is claimed that more

than onetenth of this great aggregate is represented by Australasia's exports to England and imports from

England. In addition to this, Australasia does a trade with countries other than England, amounting to a

hundred million dollars a year, and a domestic intercolonial trade amounting to a hundred and fifty millions.

In round numbers the 4,000,000 buy and sell about $600,000,000 worth of goods a year. It is claimed that

about half of this represents commodities of Australasian production. The products exported annually by

India are worth a trifle over $500,000,000.1 Now, here are some faith straining figures:

That is to say, the product of the individual Indian, annually (for export some whither), is worth $1.15 ; that

of the individual Australasian (for export some whither), $75! Or, to put it in another way, the Indian family

of man and wife and three children sends away an annual result worth $8.75, while the Australasian family

There are trustworthy statistics furnished by Sir Richard Temple and others, which show that the individual

Indian's whole annual product, both for export and home use, is worth in gold only $7.50 ; or, $37.50 for the

familyaggregate. Ciphered out on a like ratio of multiplication, the Australasian family's aggregate

production would be nearly $1,600. Truly, nothing is so astonishing as figures, if they once get started.

We left Melbourne by rail for Adelaide, the capital of the vast Province of South Australiaa

seventeenhour excursion. On the train we found several Sydney friends; among them a Judge who was

going out on circuit, and was going to hold court at Broken Hill, where the celebrated silver mine is. It

seemed a curious road to take to get to that region. Broken Hill is close to the western border of New South

Wales, and Sydney is on the eastern border. A fairly straight line, 700 miles long, drawn westward from

Sydney, would strike Broken Hill, just as a somewhat shorter one drawn west from Boston would strike

Buffalo. The way the Judge was traveling would carry him over 2,000 miles by rail, he said; southwest from

Sydney down to Melbourne, then northward up to Adelaide, then a cant back northeastward and over the

border into New South Wales once moreto Broken Hill. It was like going from Boston southwest to

Richmond, Virginia, then northwest up to Erie, Pennsylvania, then a cant back northeast and over the

But the explanation was simple. Years ago the fabulously rich silver discovery at Broken Hill burst suddenly

upon an unexpectant world. Its stocks started at shillings, and went by leaps and bounds to the most fanciful

figures. It was one of those cases where the cook puts a month's wages into shares, and comes next mouth

and buys your house at your own price, and moves into it herself; where the coachman takes a few shares,

and next month sets up a bank; and where the common sailor invests the price of a spree, and next month

buys out the steamship company and goes into business on his own hook. In a word, it was one of those

excitements which bring multitudes of people to a common center with a rush, and whose needs must be

supplied, and at once. Adelaide was close by, Sydney was far away. Adelaide threw a short railway across the

border before Sydney had time to arrange for a long one; it was not worth while for Sydney to arrange at all.

The whole vast tradeprofit of Broken Hill fell into Adelaide's hands, irrevocably. New South Wales

furnishes for Broken Hill and sends her Judges 2,000 milesmainly through alien countriesto administer

We started at 4.20 in the afternoon, and moved across level until night. In the morning we had a stretch of

"scrub" countrythe kind of thing which is so useful to the Australian novelist. In the scrub the hostile

aboriginal lurks, and flits mysteriously about, slipping out from time to time to surprise and slaughter the

settler; then slipping back again, and leaving no track that the white man can follow. In the scrub the

novelist's heroine gets lost, search fails of result; she wanders here and there, and finally sinks down

exhausted and unconscious, and the searchers pass within a yard or two of her, not suspecting that she is near,

and by and by some rambler finds her bones and the pathetic diary which she had scribbled with her failing

hand and left behind. Nobody can find a lost heroine in the scrub but the aboriginal "tracker," and he will not

lend himself to the scheme if it will interfere with the novelist's plot. The scrub stretches miles and miles in

all directions, and looks like a level roof of bushtops without a break or a crack in it as seamless as a

blanket, to all appearance. One might as well walk under water and hope to guess out a route and stick to it, I

should think. Yet it is claimed that the aboriginal "tracker" was able to hunt out people lost in the scrub. Also

in the "bush"; also in the desert; and even follow them over patches of bare rocks and over alluvial ground

From reading Australian books and talking with the people, I became convinced that the aboriginal tracker's

performances evince a craft, a penetration, a luminous sagacity, and a minuteness and accuracy of

observation in the matter of detectivework not found in nearly so remarkable a degree in any other people,

white or colored. In an official account of the blacks of Australia published by the government of Victoria,

one reads that the aboriginal not only notices the faint marks left on the bark of a tree by the claws of a

climbing opossum, but knows in some way or other whether the marks were made today or yesterday.

And there is the case, on records where A., a settler, makes a bet with B., that B. may lose a cow as

effectually as he can, and A. will produce an aboriginal who will find her. B. selects a cow and lets the

tracker see the cow's footprint, then be put under guard. B. then drives the cow a few miles over a course

which drifts in all directions, and frequently doubles back upon itself; and he selects difficult ground all the

time, and once or twice even drives the cow through herds of other cows, and mingles her tracks in the wide

confusion of theirs. He finally brings his cow home; the aboriginal is set at liberty, and at once moves around

in a great circle, examining all cowtracks until he finds the one he is after; then sets off and follows it

throughout its erratic course, and ultimately tracks it to the stable where B. has hidden the cow. Now wherein

does one cowtrack differ from another? There must be a difference, or the tracker could not have performed

the feat; a difference minute, shadowy, and not detectible by you or me, or by the late Sherlock Holmes, and

yet discernible by a member of a race charged by some people with occupying the bottom place in the

The train was now exploring a beautiful hill country, and went twisting in and out through lovely little green

valleys. There were several varieties of gum trees; among them many giants. Some of them were bodied and

barked like the sycamore; some were of fantastic aspect, and reminded one of the quaint apple trees in

Japanese pictures. And there was one peculiarly beautiful tree whose name and breed I did not know. The

foliage seemed to consist of big bunches of pinespines, the lower half of each bunch a rich brown or

oldgold color, the upper half a most vivid and strenuous and shouting green. The effect was altogether

bewitching. The tree was apparently rare. I should say that the first and last samples of it seen by us were not

more than half an hour apart. There was another tree of striking aspect, a kind of pine, we were told. Its

foliage was as fine as hair, apparently, and its mass sphered itself above the naked straight stem like an

explosion of misty smoke. It was not a sociable sort; it did not gather in groups or couples, but each

individual stood far away from its nearest neighbor. It scattered itself in this spacious and exclusive fashion

about the slopes of swelling grassy great knolls, and stood in the full flood of the wonderful sunshine; and as

far as you could see the tree itself you could also see the inkblack blot of its shadow on the shining green

On some part of this railway journey we saw gorse and broomimportations from Englandand a

gentleman who came into our compartment on a visit tried to tell me whichwas which; but as he didn't

know, he had difficulty. He said he was ashamed of his ignorance, but that he had never been confronted with

the question before during the fifty years and more that he had spent in Australia, and so he had never

happened to get interested in the matter. But there was no need to be ashamed. The most of us have his

defect. We take a natural interest in novelties, but it is against nature to take an interest in familiar things. The

gorse and the broom were a fine accent in the landscape. Here and there they burst out in sudden

conflagrations of vivid yellow against a background of sober or sombre color, with a so startling effect as to

make a body catch his breath with the happy surprise of it. And then there was the wattle, a native bush or

tree, an inspiring cloud of sumptuous yellow bloom. It is a favorite with the Australians, and has a fine

The gentleman who enriched me with the poverty of his formation about the gorse and the broom told me that

he came out from England a youth of twenty and entered the Province of South Australia with thirtysix

shillings in his pocketan adventurer without trade, profession, or friends, but with a clearlydefined

purpose in his head: he would stay until he was worth L200, then go back home. He would allow himself five

As he went out at the door he met a friend, and turned and introduced him to me, and the friend and I had a

talk and a smoke. I spoke of the previous conversation and said there something very pathetic about this half

"With him? Oh, it did. It's not so sad a case. He is modest, and he left out some of the particulars. The lad

reached South Australia just in time to help discover the BurraBurra copper mines. They turned out

L700,000 in the first three years. Up to now they have yielded L120,000,000. He has had his share. Before

that boy had been in the country two years he could have gone home and bought a village; he could go now

and buy a city, I think. No, there is nothing very pathetic about his case. He and his copper arrived at just a

handy time to save South Australia. It had got mashed pretty flat under the collapse of a land boom a while

before." There it is again; picturesque history Australia's specialty. In 1829 South Australia hadn't a white

man in it. In 1836 the British Parliament erected itstill a solitudeinto a Province, and gave it a governor

and other governmental machinery. Speculators took hold, now, and inaugurated a vast land scheme, and

invited immigration, encouraging it with lurid promises of sudden wealth. It was well worked in London; and

bishops, statesmen, and all ports of people made a rush for the land company's shares. Immigrants soon began

to pour into the region of Adelaide and select town lots and farms in the sand and the mangrove swamps by

the sea. The crowds continued to come, prices of land rose high, then higher and still higher, everybody was

prosperous and happy, the boom swelled into gigantic proportions. A village of sheet iron huts and clapboard

sheds sprang up in the sand, and in these wigwams fashion made display; richlydressed ladies played on

costly pianos, London swells in evening dress and patentleather boots were abundant, and this fine society

drank champagne, and in other ways conducted itself in this capital of humble sheds as it had been

accustomed to do in the aristocratic quarters of the metropolis of the world. The provincial government put

up expensive buildings for its own use, and a palace with gardens for the use of its governor. The governor

had a guard, and maintained a court. Roads, wharves, and hospitals were built. All this on credit, on paper, on

wind, on inflated and fictitious valueson the boom's moonshine, in fact. This went on handsomely during

four or five years. Then of a sudden came a smash. Bills for a huge amount drawn the governor upon the

Treasury were dishonored, the land company's credit went up in smoke, a panic followed, values fell with a

rush, the frightened immigrants seized their grips and fled to other lands, leaving behind them a good

imitation of a solitude, where lately had been a buzzing and populous hive of men.

Adelaide was indeed almost empty; its population had fallen to 3,000. During two years or more the

deathtrance continued. Prospect of revival there was none; hope of it ceased. Then, as suddenly as the

paralysis had come, came the resurrection from it. Those astonishingly rich copper mines were discovered,

The wool production began to grow; grainraising followed followed so vigorously, too, that four or five

years after the copper discovery, this little colony, which had had to import its breadstuffs formerly, and pay

The prosperities continued. After many years Providence, desiring to show especial regard for New South

Wales and exhibit loving interest in its welfare which should certify to all nations the recognition of that

colony's conspicuous righteousness and distinguished welldeserving, conferred upon it that treasury of

inconceivable riches, Broken Hill; and South Australia went over the border and took it, giving thanks.

Among our passengers was an American with a unique vocation. Unique is a strong word, but I use it

justifiably if I did not misconceive what the American told me; for I understood him to say that in the world

there was not another man engaged in the business which he was following. He was buying the

kangarooskin crop; buying all of it, both the Australian crop and the Tasmanian; and buying it for an

American house in New York. The prices were not high, as there was no competition, but the year's

aggregate of skins would cost him L30,000. I had had the idea that the kangaroo was about extinct in

Tasmania and well thinned out on the continent. In America the skins are tanned and made into shoes. After

the tanning, the leather takes a new namewhich I have forgottenI only remember that the new name

does not indicate that the kangaroo furnishes the leather. There was a German competition for a while, some

years ago, but that has ceased. The Germans failed to arrive at the secret of tanning the skins successfully,

and they withdrew from the business. Now then, I suppose that I have seen a man whose occupation is really

entitled to bear that high epithetunique. And I suppose that there is not another occupation in the world

that is restricted to the hands of a sole person. I can think of no instance of it. There is more than one Pope,

there is more than one Emperor, there is even more than one living god, walking upon the earth and

worshiped in all sincerity by large populations of men. I have seen and talked with two of these Beings

myself in India, and I have the autograph of one of them. It can come good, by and by, I reckon, if I attach it

Approaching Adelaide we dismounted from the train, as the French say, and were driven in an open carriage

over the hills and along their slopes to the city. It was an excursion of an hour or two, and the charm of it

could not be overstated, I think. The road wound around gaps and gorges, and offered all varieties of scenery

and prospectmountains, crags, country homes, gardens, forestscolor, color, color everywhere, and the

air fine and fresh, the skies blue, and not a shred of cloud to mar the downpour of the brilliant sunshine. And

finally the mountain gateway opened, and the immense plain lay spread out below and stretching away into

dim distances on every hand, soft and delicate and dainty and beautiful. On its near edge reposed the city.

We descended and entered. There was nothing to remind one of the humble capital, of buts and sheds of the

longvanished day of the landboom. No, this was a modern city, with wide streets, compactly built; with

fine homes everywhere, embowered in foliage and flowers, and with imposing masses of public buildings

There was prosperity, in the air; for another boom was on. Providence, desiring to show especial regard for

the neighboring colony on the west called Western Australiaand exhibit a loving interest in its welfare

which should certify to all nations the recognition of that colony's conspicuous righteousness and

distinguished welldeserving, had recently conferred upon it that majestic treasury of golden riches,

Coolgardie; and now South Australia had gone around the corner and taken it, giving thanks. Everything

But South Australia deserves much, for apparently she is a hospitable home for every alien who chooses to

come;, and for his religion, too. She has a population, as per the latest census, of only 320,000odd, and yet

her varieties of religion indicate the presence within her borders of samples of people from pretty nearly

every part of the globe you can think of. Tabulated, these varieties of religion make a remarkable show. One

would have to go far to find its match. I copy here this cosmopolitan curiosity, and it comes from the

Church of England,........... 89,271 Roman Catholic,.............. 47,179 Wesleyan,.................... 49,159

Lutheran,.................... 23,328 Presbyterian,................ 18,206 Congregationalist,........... 11,882 Bible

Christian,............. 15,762 Primitive Methodist,......... 11,654 Baptist,..................... 17,547 Christian

Brethren,.......... 465 Methodist New Connexion,..... 39 Unitarian,................... 688 Church of Christ,............

3,367 Society of Friends,.......... 100 Salvation Army,.............. 4,356 New Jerusalem Church,........ 168

Jews,........................ 840 Protestants (undefined),..... 6,532 Mohammedans,................. 299 Confucians,

etc.,............ 3,884 Other religions,............. 1,719 Object,...................... 6,940 Not stated,.................. 8,046

The item in the above list "Other religions" includes the following as returned:

Agnostics, Atheists, Believers in Christ, Buddhists, Calvinists, Christadelphians, Christians, Christ's Chapel,

Christian Israelites, Christian Socialists, Church of God, Cosmopolitans, Deists, Evangelists, Exclusive

Brethren, Free Church, Free Methodists, Freethinkers, Followers of Christ, Gospel Meetings, Greek Church,

Infidels, Maronites, Memnonists, Moravians, Mormons, Naturalists, Orthodox, Others (indefinite), Pagans,

Pantheists, Plymouth Brethren, Rationalists, Reformers, Secularists, Seventhday Adventists, Shaker,

Sh1ntOlStS, Spiritualists, Theosophists, Town (City) Mission, Welsh Church, Huguenot, Hussite,

About 64 roads to the other world. You see how healthy the religious atmosphere is. Anything can live in it.

Agnostics, Atheists, Freethinkers, Infidels, Mormons, Pagans, Indefinites they are all there. And all the big

sects of the world can do more than merely live in it: they can spread, flourish, prosper. All except the

Spiritualists and the Theosophists. That is the most curious feature of this curious table. What is the matter

with the specter? Why do they puff him away? He is a welcome toy everywhere else in the world.

The successor of the sheetiron hamlet of the mangrove marshes has that other Australian specialty, the

Botanical Gardens. We cannot have these paradises. The best we could do would be to cover a vast acreage

under glass and apply steam heat. But it would be inadequate, the lacks would still be so great: the confined

sense, the sense of suffocation, the atmospheric dimness, the sweaty heatthese would all be there, in place

of the Australian openness to the sky, the sunshine and the breeze. Whatever will grow under glass with us

will flourish rampantly out of doors in Australia.[The greatest heat in Victoria, that there is an authoritative

record of, was at Sandhurst, in January, 1862. The thermometer then registered 117 degrees in the shade. In

January, 1880, the heat at Adelaide, South Australia, was 172 degrees in the sun.]

When the white man came the continent was nearly as poor, in variety of vegetation, as the desert of Sahara;

now it has everything that grows on the earth. In fact, not Australia only, but all Australasia has levied tribute

upon the flora of the rest of the world; and wherever one goes the results appear, in gardens private and

public, in the woodsy walls of the highways, and in even the forests. If you see a curious or beautiful tree or

bush or flower, and ask about it, the people, answering, usually name a foreign country as the place of its

originIndia, Africa, Japan, China, England, America, Java, Sumatra, New Guinea, Polynesia, and so on.

In the Zoological Gardens of Adelaide I saw the only laughing jackass that ever showed any disposition to be

courteous to me. This one opened his head wide and laughed like a demon; or like a maniac who was

consumed with humorous scorn over a cheap and degraded pun. It was a very human laugh. If he had been

out of sight I could have believed that the laughter came from a man. It is an oddlooking bird, with a head

and beak that are much too large for its body. In time man will exterminate the rest of the wild creatures of

Australia, but this one will probably survive, for man is his friend and lets him alone. Man always has a good

reason for his charities towards wild things, human or animal when he has any. In this case the bird is spared

In that garden I also saw the wild Australian dogthe dingo. He was a beautiful creatureshapely, graceful,

a little wolfish in some of his aspects, but with a most friendly eye and sociable disposition. The dingo is not

an importation; he was present in great force when the whites first came to the continent. It may be that he is

the oldest dog in the universe; his origin, his descent, the place where his ancestors first appeared, are as

unknown and as untraceable as are the camel's. He is the most precious dog in the world, for he does not

bark. But in an evil hour he got to raiding the sheepruns to appease his hunger, and that sealed his doom. He

is hunted, now, just as if he were a wolf. He has been sentenced to extermination, and the sentence will be

carried out. This is all right, and not objectionable. The world was made for manthe white man.

South Australia is confusingly named. All of the colonies have a southern exposure except oneQueensland.

Properly speaking, South Australia is middle Australia. It extends straight up through the center of the

continent like the middle board in a centertable. It is 2,000 miles high, from south to north, and about a third

as wide. A wee little spot down in its southeastern corner contains eight or ninetenths of its population; the

other one or twotenths are elsewhereas elsewhere as they could be in the United States with all the

country between Denver and Chicago, and Canada and the Gulf of Mexico to scatter over. There is plenty of

A telegraph line stretches straight up north through that 2,000 miles of wilderness and desert from Adelaide

to Port Darwin on the edge of the upper ocean. South Australia built the line; and did it in 18712 when her

population numbered only 185,000. It was a great work; for there were no roads, no paths; 1,300 miles of the

route had been traversed but once before by white men; provisions, wire, and poles had to be carried over

immense stretches of desert; wells had to be dug along the route to supply the men and cattle with water.

A cable had been previously laid from Port Darwin to Java and thence to India, and there was telegraphic

communication with England from India. And so, if Adelaide could make connection with Port Darwin it

meant connection with the whole world. The enterprise succeeded. One could watch the London markets

daily, now; the profit to the woolgrowers of Australia was instant and enormous.

A telegram from Melbourne to San Francisco covers approximately 20,000 milesthe equivalent of

fivesixths of the way around the globe. It has to halt along the way a good many times and be repeated; still,

but little time is lost. These halts, and the distances between them, are here tabulated. [From Round the

MelbourneMount Gambier,.......300 Mount Gambier Adelaide,.......270 AdelaidePort Augusta,.........200

Port AugustaAlice Springs,..1,036 Alice SpringsPort Darwin,.....898 Port Darwin Banjoewangie,.. 1,150

BanjoewangieBatavia,..........480 Batavia Singapore,............553 Singapore Penang,.............399 Penang

Madras,..............1,280 MadrasBombay,.................650 BombayAden,.................1,662

AdenSuez,..................1,346 SuezAlexandria,...............224 AlexandriaMalta,..............828

MaltaGibraltar,............1,008 Gibraltar Falmouth,.........1,061 FalmouthLondon,...............350

I was in Adelaide again, some months later, and saw the multitudes gather in the neighboring city of Glenelg

to commemorate the Reading of the Proclamationin 1836which founded the Province. If I have at any

time called it a Colony, I withdraw the discourtesy. It is not a Colony, it is a Province; and officially so.

Moreover, it is the only one so named in Australasia. There was great enthusiasm; it was the Province's

national holiday, its Fourth of July, so to speak. It is the preeminent holiday; and that is saying much, in a

country where they seem to have a most unEnglish mania for holidays. Mainly they are workingmen's

holidays; for in South Australia the workingman is sovereign; his vote is the desire of the politicianindeed,

it is the very breath of the politician's being; the parliament exists to deliver the will of the workingman, and

the government exists to execute it. The workingman is a great power everywhere in Australia, but South

Australia is his paradise. He has had a hard time in this world, and has earned a paradise. I am glad he has

found it. The holidays there are frequent enough to be bewildering to the stranger. I tried to get the hang of

You have seen that the Province is tolerant, religiouswise. It is so politically, also. One of the speakers at the

Commemoration banquetthe Minister of Public Workswas an American, born and reared in New

England. There is nothing narrow about the Province, politically, or in any other way that I know of.

Sixtyfour religions and a Yankee cabinet minister. No amount of horseracing can damn this community.

The mean temperature of the Province is 62 deg. The deathrate is 13 in the 1,000about half what it is in

the city of New York, I should think, and New York is a healthy city. Thirteen is the deathrate for the

average citizen of the Province, but there seems to be no deathrate for the old people. There were people at

the Commemoration banquet who could remember Cromwell. There were six of them. These Old Settlers had

all been present at the original Reading of the Proclamation, in 1536. They showed signs of the blightings and

blastings of time, in their outward aspect, but they were young within; young and cheerful, and ready to talk;

ready to talk, and talk all you wanted; in their turn, and out of it. They were down for six speeches, and they

made 42. The governor and the cabinet and the mayor were down for 42 speeches, and they made 6. They

have splendid grit, the Old Settlers, splendid staying power. But they do not hear well, and when they see the

mayor going through motions which they recognize as the introducing of a speaker, they think they are the

one, and they all get up together, and begin to respond, in the most animated way; and the more the mayor

gesticulates, and shouts "Sit down! Sit down!" the more they take it for applause, and the more excited and

reminiscent and enthusiastic they get; and next, when they see the whole house laughing and crying, three of

them think it is about the bitter oldtime hardships they are describing, and the other three think the laughter

is caused by the jokes they have been uncorkingjokes of the vintage of 1836and then the way they do go

on! And finally when ushers come and plead, and beg, and gently and reverently crowd them down into their

seats, they say, "Oh, I'm not tiredI could bang along a week!" and they sit there looking simple and

childlike, and gentle, and proud of their oratory, and wholly unconscious of what is going on at the other end

of the room. And so one of the great dignitaries gets a chance, and begins his carefully prepared speech,

"when we, now great and prosperous and powerful, bow our heads in reverent wonder in the contemplation

Up come the immortal six again, in a body, with a joyous "Hey, I've thought of another one!" and at it they

go, with might and main, hearing not a whisper of the pandemonium that salutes them, but taking all the

visible violences for applause, as before, and hammering joyously away till the imploring ushers pray them

into their seats again. And a pity, too; for those lovely old boys did so enjoy living their heroic youth over, in

these days of their honored antiquity; and certainly the things they had to tell were usually worth the telling

It was a stirring spectacle; stirring in more ways than one, for it was amazingly funny, and at the same time

deeply pathetic; for they had seen so much, these timeworn veterans, end had suffered so much; and had

built so strongly and well, and laid the foundations of their commonwealth so deep, in liberty and tolerance;

and had lived to see the structure rise to such state and dignity and hear themselves so praised for honorable

One of these old gentlemen told me some things of interest afterward; things about the aboriginals, mainly.

He thought them intelligent remarkably so in some directionsand he said that along with their

unpleasant qualities they had some exceedingly good ones; and he considered it a great pity that the race had

died out. He instanced their invention of the boomerang and the "weetweet" as evidences of their brightness;

and as another evidence of it he said he had never seen a white man who had cleverness enough to learn to do

the miracles with those two toys that the aboriginals achieved. He said that even the smartest whites had been

obliged to confess that they could not learn the trick of the boomerang in perfection; that it had possibilities

which they could not master. The white man could not control its motions, could not make it obey him; but

the aboriginal could. He told me some wonderful thingssome almost incredible thingswhich he had seen

the blacks do with the boomerang and the weetweet. They have been confirmed to me since by other early

It is contendedand may be said to be concededthat the boomerang was known to certain savage tribes in

Europe in Roman times. In support of this, Virgil and two other Roman poets are quoted. It is also contended

One of two things either some one with is then apparent: a boomerang arrived in Australia in the days of

antiquity before European knowledge of the thing had been lost, or the Australian aboriginal reinvented it. It

will take some time to find out which of these two propositions is the fact. But there is no hurry.

Mr. G. called. I had not seen him since Nauheim, Germanyseveral years ago; the time that the cholera

broke out at Hamburg. We talked of the people we had known there, or had casually met; and G. said:

"Yes. That was the last time I saw you. You and he were in a carriage, just startingbelatedfor the train. I

"I remember it too, because of a thing which happened then which I was not looking for. He had told me a

while before, about a remarkable and interesting Californian whom he had met and who was a friend of

yours, and said that if he should ever meet you he would ask you for some particulars about that Californian.

The subject was not mentioned that day at Nauheim, for we were hurrying away, and there was no time; but

the thing that surprised me was this: when I induced you, you said, 'I am glad to meet your lordship gain.' The

I again' was the surprise. He is a little hard of hearing, and didn't catch that word, and I thought you hadn't

intended that he should. As we drove off I had only time to say, 'Why, what do you know about him.?' and I

understood you to say, 'Oh, nothing, except that he is the quickest judge of' Then we were gone, and I

didn't get the rest. I wondered what it was that he was such a quick judge of. I have thought of it many times

since, and still wondered what it could be. He and I talked it over, but could not guess it out. He thought it

must be foxhounds or horses, for he is a good judge of thoseno one is a better. But you couldn't know

that, because you didn't know him; you had mistaken him for some one else; it must be that, he said, because

"How curious that is. Why, he hadn't the least recollection of it. Had you any conversation with him?"

"Why, that would interest him; that ought to have left an impression. What did he talk about?"

It's very curious. I don't understand it. Did what he said leave an impression upon you?"

"Yes. It showed me that he was a quick judge ofhowever, I will tell you all about it, then you will

understand. It was a quarter of a century ago 1873 or '74. I had an American friend in London named F., who

was fond of hunting, and his friends the Blanks invited him and me to come out to a hunt and be their guests

at their country place. In the morning the mounts were provided, but when I saw the horses I changed my

mind and asked permission to walk. I had never seen an English hunter before, and it seemed to me that I

could hunt a fox safer on the ground. I had always been diffident about horses, anyway, even those of the

common altitudes, and I did not feel competent to hunt on a horse that went on stilts. So then Mrs. Blank

came to my help and said I could go with her in the dogcart and we would drive to a place she knew of, and

"When we got to that place I got out and went and leaned my elbows on a low stone wall which enclosed a

turfy and beautiful great field with heavy wood on all its sides except ours. Mrs. Blank sat in the dogcart

fifty yards away, which was as near as she could get with the vehicle. I was full of interest, for I had never

seen a foxhunt. I waited, dreaming and imagining, in the deep stillness and impressive tranquility which

reigned in that retired spot. Presently, from away off in the forest on the left, a mellow buglenote came

floating; then all of a sudden a multitude of dogs burst out of that forest and went tearing by and disappeared

in the forest on the right; there was a pause, and then a cloud of horsemen in black caps and crimson coats

plunged out of the lefthand forest and went flaming across the field like a prairiefire, a stirring sight to see.

There was one man ahead of the rest, and he came spurring straight at me. He was fiercely excited. It was

fine to see him ride; he was a master horseman. He came like, a storm till he was within seven feet of me,

where I was leaning on the wall, then he stood his horse straight up in the air on his hind toenails, and

"I didn't much like the tone, but I did not let on; for he was excited, you know. But I was calm; so I said

"'If you could be a little more definitea little less vaguebecause I am a stranger, and there are many

foxes, as you will know even better than I, and unless I know which one it is that you desire to identify,

"'You're certainly the damdest idiot that has escaped in a thousand years!' and he snatched his great horse

around as easily as I would snatch a cat, and was away like a hurricane. A very excitable man.

"'I knew it! I couldn't hear what he said, but I knew be spoke to you! Do you know who it was? It was Lord

"'Him? Well, for sizingup a stranger, he's got the most sudden and accurate judgment of any man I ever

G. got away from Nauheim just in time to escape being shut in by the quarantinebars on the frontiers; and so

did we, for we left the next day. But G. had a great deal of trouble in getting by the Italian customhouse, and

we should have fared likewise but for the thoughtfulness of our consulgeneral in Frankfort. He introduced

me to the Italian consulgeneral, and I brought away from that consulate a letter which made our way

smooth. It was a dozen lines merely commending me in a general way to the courtesies of servants in his

Italian Majesty's service, but it was more powerful than it looked. In addition to a raft of ordinary baggage,

we had six or eight trunks which were filled exclusively with dutiable stuffhousehold goods purchased in

Frankfort for use in Florence, where we had taken a house. I was going to ship these through by express; but

at the last moment an order went throughout Germany forbidding the moving of any parcels by train unless

the owner went with them. This was a bad outlook. We must take these things along, and the delay sure to be

caused by the examination of them in the customhouse might lose us our train. I imagined all sorts of

terrors, and enlarged them steadily as we approached the Italian frontier. We were six in number, clogged

with all that baggage, and I was courier for the party the most incapable one they ever employed.

We arrived, and pressed with the crowd into the immense customhouse, and the usual worries began;

everybody crowding to the counter and begging to have his baggage examined first, and all hands clattering

and chattering at once. It seemed to me that I could do nothing; it would be better to give it all up and go

away and leave the baggage. I couldn't speak the language; I should never accomplish anything. Just then a

tall handsome man in a fine uniform was passing by and I knew he must be the station masterand that

reminded me of my letter. I ran to him and put it into his hands. He took it out of the envelope, and the

moment his eye caught the royal coat of arms printed at its top, he took off his cap and made a beautiful bow

I showed him the mountain. Nobody was disturbing it; nobody was interested in it; all the family's attempts to

get attention to it had failedexcept in the case of one of the trunks containing the dutiable goods. It was just

"There, let that alone! Lock it. Now chalk it. Chalk all of the lot. Now please come and show the

He plowed through the waiting crowd, I following, to the counter, and he gave orders again, in his emphatic

Then he took off his cap and made that beautiful bow again, and went his way. By this time these attentions

had attracted the wonder of that acre of passengers, and the whisper had gone around that the royal family

were present getting their baggage chalked; and as we passed down in review on our way to the door, I was

But soon there was an accident. My overcoat pockets were stuffed with German cigars and linen packages of

American smoking tobacco, and a porter was following us around with this overcoat on his arm, and

gradually getting it upside down. Just as I, in the rear of my family, moved by the sentinels at the door, about

three hatfuls of the tobacco tumbled out on the floor. One of the soldiers pounced upon it, gathered it up in

his arms, pointed back whence I had come, and marched me ahead of him past that long wall of passengers

againhe chattering and exulting like a devil, they smiling in peaceful joy, and I trying to look as if my

pride was not hurt, and as if I did not mind being brought to shame before these pleased people who had so

When I had been marched twothirds of the long distance and the misery of it was at the worst, the stately

stationmaster stepped out from somewhere, and the soldier left me and darted after him and overtook him;

and I could see by the soldier's excited gestures that be was betraying to him the whole shabby business. The

stationmaster was plainly very angry. He came striding down toward me, and when he was come near he

began to pour out a stream of indignant Italian; then suddenly took off his hat and made that beautiful bow

"Oh, it is you! I beg a thousands pardons! This idiot here" He turned to the exulting soldier and burst out

with a flood of whitehot Italian lava, and the next moment he was bowing, and the soldier and I were

moving in procession againhe in the lead and ashamed, this time, I with my chin up. And so we marched

by the crowd of fascinated passengers, and I went forth to the train with the honors of war. Tobacco and all.

Before I saw Australia I had never heard of the "weetweet" at all. I met but few men who had seen it

thrownat least I met but few who mentioned having seen it thrown. Roughly described, it is a fat wooden

cigar with its buttend fastened to a flexible twig. The whole thing is only a couple of feet long, and weighs

less than two ounces. This featherso to call itis not thrown through the air, but is flung with an

underhanded throw and made to strike the ground a little way in front of the thrower; then it glances and

makes a long skip; glances again, skips again, and again and again, like the flat stone which a boy sends

skating over the water. The water is smooth, and the stone has a good chance; so a strong man may make it

travel fifty or seventyfive yards; but the weetweet has no such good chance, for it strikes sand, grass, and

earth in its course. Yet an expert aboriginal has sent it a measured distance of two hundred and twenty yards.

It would have gone even further but it encountered rank ferns and underwood on its passage and they

damaged its speed. Two hundred and twenty yards; and so weightless a toya mouse on the end of a bit of

wire, in effect; and not sailing through the accommodating air, but encountering grass and sand and stuff at

every jump. It looks wholly impossible; but Mr. Brough Smyth saw the feat and did the measuring, and set

down the facts in his book about aboriginal life, which he wrote by command of the Victorian Government.

What is the secret of the feat? No one explains. It cannot be physical strength, for that could not drive such a

featherweight any distance. It must be art. But no one explains what the art of it is; nor how it gets around

that law of nature which says you shall not throw any two ounce thing 220 yards, either through the air or

"The distance to which the weetweet or kangaroorat can be thrown is truly astonishing. I have seen an

Australian stand at one side of Kennington Oval and throw the kangaroo rat completely across it." (Width of

Kensington Oval not stated.) "It darts through the air with the sharp and menacing hiss of a rifleball, its

greatest height from the ground being some seven or eight feet . . . . . . When properly thrown it looks just

like a living animal leaping along . . . . . . Its movements have a wonderful resemblance to the long leaps of a

The Old Settler said that he had seen distances made by the weetweet, in the early days, which almost

There must have been a large distribution of acuteness among those naked skinny aboriginals, or they

couldn't have been such unapproachable trackers and boomerangers and weetweeters. It must have been

race aversion that put upon them a good deal of the lowrate intellectual reputation which they bear and

They were lazyalways lazy. Perhaps that was their trouble. It is a killing defect. Surely they could have

invented and built a competent house, but they didn't. And they could have invented and developed the

agricultural arts, but they didn't. They went naked and houseless, and lived on fish and grubs and worms and

With a country as big as the United States to live and multiply in, and with no epidemic diseases among them

till the white man came with those and his other appliances of civilization, it is quite probable that there was

never a day in his history when he could muster 100,000 of his race in all Australia. He diligently and

deliberately kept population down by infanticidelargely; but mainly by certain other methods. He did not

need to practise these artificialities any more after the white man came. The white man knew ways of keeping

down population which were worth several of his. The white man knew ways of reducing a native population

80 percent. in 20 years. The native had never seen anything as fine as that before.

For example, there is the case of the country now called Victoriaa country eighty times as large as Rhode

Island, as I have already said. By the best official guess there were 4,500 aboriginals in it when the whites

came along in the middle of the 'Thirties. Of these, 1,000 lived in Gippsland, a patch of territory the size of

fifteen or sixteen Rhode Islands: they did not diminish as fast as some of the other communities; indeed, at

the end of forty years there were still 200 of them left. The Geelong tribe diminished more satisfactorily:

from 173 persons it faded to 34 in twenty years; at the end of another twenty the tribe numbered one person

altogether. The two Melbourne tribes could muster almost 300 when the white man came; they could muster

but twenty, thirtyseven years later, in 1875. In that year there were still odds and ends of tribes scattered

about the colony of Victoria, but I was told that natives of full blood are very scarce now. It is said that the

The early whites were not used to savages. They could not understand the primary law of savage life: that if a

man do you a wrong, his whole tribe is responsibleeach individual of itand you may take your change

out of any individual of it, without bothering to seek out the guilty one. When a white killed an aboriginal,

the tribe applied the ancient law, and killed the first white they came across. To the whites this was a

monstrous thing. Extermination seemed to be the proper medicine for such creatures as this. They did not kill

all the blacks, but they promptly killed enough of them to make their own persons safe. From the dawn of

civilization down to this day the white man has always used that very precaution. Mrs. Campbell Praed lived

in Queensland, as a child, in the early days, and in her "Sketches of Australian life," we get informing

pictures of the early struggles of the white and the black to reform each other.

Speaking of pioneer days in the mighty wilderness of Queensland, Mrs. Praed says:

"At first the natives retreated before the whites; and, except that they every now and then speared a beast in

one of the herds, gave little cause for uneasiness. But, as the number of squatters increased, each one taking

up miles of country and bringing two or three men in his train, so that shepherds' huts and stockmen's camps

lay far apart, and defenseless in the midst of hostile tribes, the Blacks' depredations became more frequent

"The loneliness of the Australian bush can hardly be painted in words. Here extends mile after mile of

primeval forest where perhaps foot of white man has never trodinterminable vistas where the eucalyptus

trees rear their lofty trunks and spread forth their lanky limbs, from which the red gum oozes and hangs in

fantastic pendants like crimson stalactites; ravines along the sides of which the longbladed grass grows

rankly; level untimbered plains alternating with undulating tracts of pasture, here and there broken by a stony

ridge, steep gully, or driedup creek. All wild, vast and desolate; all the same monotonous gray coloring,

except where the wattle, when in blossom, shows patches of feathery gold, or a belt of scrub lies green,

"The solitude seems intensified by the strange sounds of reptiles, birds, and insects, and by the absence of

larger creatures; of which in the daytime, the only audible signs are the stampede of a herd of kangaroo, or

the rustle of a wallabi, or a dingo stirring the grass as it creeps to its lair. But there are the whirring of locusts,

the demoniac chuckle of the laughing jackass, the screeching of cockatoos and parrots, the hissing of the

frilled lizard, and the buzzing of innumerable insects hidden under the dense undergrowth. And then at night,

the melancholy wailing of the curlews, the dismal howling of dingoes, the discordant croaking of treefrogs,

That is the theater for the drama. When you comprehend one or two other details, you will perceive how well

suited for trouble it was, and how loudly it invited it. The cattlemen's stations were scattered over that

profound wilderness miles and miles apartat each station half a dozen persons. There was a plenty of

cattle, the black natives were always illnourished and hungry. The land belonged to them. The whites had

not bought it, and couldn't buy it; for the tribes had no chiefs, nobody in authority, nobody competent to sell

and convey; and the tribes themselves had no comprehension of the idea of transferable ownership of land.

The ousted owners were despised by the white interlopers, and this opinion was not hidden under a bushel.

More promising materials for a tragedy could not have been collated. Let Mrs. Praed speak:

"At Nie station, one dark night, the unsuspecting hutkeeper, having, as he believed, secured himself against

assault, was lying wrapped in his blankets sleeping profoundly. The Blacks crept stealthily down the chimney

One could guess the whole drama from that little text. The curtain was up. It would not fall until the

"There was treachery on both sides. The Blacks killed the Whites when they found them defenseless, and the

Whites slew the Blacks in a wholesale and promiscuous fashion which offended against my childish sense of

They were regarded as little above the level of brutes, and in some cases were destroyed like vermin.

"Here is an instance. A squatter, whose station was surrounded by Blacks, whom he suspected to be hostile

and from whom he feared an attack, parleyed with them from his housedoor. He told them it was

Christmastimea time at which all men, black or white, feasted; that there were flour, sugarplums, good

things in plenty in the store, and that he would make for them such a pudding as they had never dreamed

ofa great pudding of which all might eat and be filled. The Blacks listened and were lost. The pudding was

made and distributed. Next morning there was howling in the camp, for it had been sweetened with sugar and

The white man's spirit was right, but his method was wrong. His spirit was the spirit which the civilized white

has always exhibited toward the savage, but the use of poison was a departure from custom. True, it was

merely a technical departure, not a real one; still, it was a departure, and therefore a mistake, in my opinion. It

was better, kinder, swifter, and much more humane than a number of the methods which have been sanctified

by custom, but that does not justify its employment. That is, it does not wholly justify it. Its unusual nature

makes it stand out and attract an amount of attention which it is not entitled to. It takes hold upon morbid

imaginations and they work it up into a sort of exhibition of cruelty, and this smirches the good name of our

civilization, whereas one of the old harsher methods would have had no such effect because usage has made

those methods familiar to us and innocent. In many countries we have chained the savage and starved him to

death; and this we do not care for, because custom has inured us to it; yet a quick death by poison is

lovingkindness to it. In many countries we have burned the savage at the stake; and this we do not care for,

because custom has inured us to it; yet a quick death is loving kindness to it. In more than one country we

have hunted the savage and his little children and their mother with dogs and guns through the woods and

swamps for an afternoon's sport, and filled the region with happy laughter over their sprawling and stumbling

flight, and their wild supplications for mercy; but this method we do not mind, because custom has inured us

to it; yet a quick death by poison is lovingkindness to it. In many countries we have taken the savage's land

from him, and made him our slave, and lashed him every day, and broken his pride, and made death his only

friend, and overworked him till he dropped in his tracks; and this we do not care for, because custom has

inured us to it; yet a quick death by poison is lovingkindness to it. In the Matabeleland todaywhy, there

we are confining ourselves to sanctified custom, we RhodesBeit millionaires in South Africa and Dukes in

London; and nobody cares, because we are used to the old holy customs, and all we ask is that no

noticeinviting new ones shall be intruded upon the attention of our comfortable consciences. Mrs. Praed

says of the poisoner, "That squatter deserves to have his name handed down to the contempt of posterity."

I am sorry to hear her say that. I myself blame him for one thing, and severely, but I stop there. I blame him

for, the indiscretion of introducing a novelty which was calculated to attract attention to our civilization.

There was no occasion to do that. It was his duty, and it is every loyal man's duty to protect that heritage in

every way he can; and the best way to do that is to attract attention elsewhere. The squatter's judgment was

badthat is plain; but his heart was right. He is almost the only pioneering representative of civilization in

history who has risen above the prejudices of his caste and his heredity and tried to introduce the element of

mercy into the superior race's dealings with the savage. His name is lost, and it is a pity; for it deserves to be

"To learn what France is doing to spread the blessings of civilization in her distant dependencies we may turn

with advantage to New Caledonia. With a view to attracting free settlers to that penal colony, M. Feillet, the

Governor, forcibly expropriated the Kanaka cultivators from the best of their plantations, with a derisory

compensation, in spite of the protests of the Council General of the island. Such immigrants as could be

induced to cross the seas thus found themselves in possession of thousands of coffee, cocoa, banana, and

breadfruit trees, the raising of which had cost the wretched natives years of toil whilst the latter had a few

You observe the combination? It is robbery, humiliation, and slow, slow murder, through poverty and the

white man's whisky. The savage's gentle friend, the savage's noble friend, the only magnanimous and

unselfish friend the savage has ever had, was not there with the merciful swift release of his poisoned

There are many humorous things in the world; among them the white man's notion that he is less savage than

You notice that Mrs. Praed knows her art. She can place a thing before you so that you can see it. She is not

alone in that. Australia is fertile in writers whose books are faithful mirrors of the life of the country and of its

history. The materials were surprisingly rich, both in quality and in mass, and Marcus Clarke, Ralph

Boldrewood, Cordon, Kendall, and the others, have built out of them a brilliant and vigorous literature, and

one which must endure. Materialsthere is no end to them! Why, a literature might be made out of the

aboriginal all by himself, his character and ways are so freckled with varietiesvarieties not staled by

familiarity, but new to us. You do not need to invent any picturesquenesses; whatever you want in that line he

can furnish you; and they will not be fancies and doubtful, but realities and authentic. In his history, as

preserved by the white man's official records, he is everythingeverything that a human creature can be. He

covers the entire ground. He is a cowardthere are a thousand fact to prove it. He is bravethere are a

thousand facts to prove it. He is treacherous oh, beyond imagination! he is faithful, loyal, truethe white

man's records supply you with a harvest of instances of it that are noble, worshipful, and pathetically

beautiful. He kills the starving stranger who comes begging for food and shelter there is proof of it. He

succors, and feeds, and guides to safety, today, the lost stranger who fired on him only yesterdaythere is

proof of it. He takes his reluctant bride by force, he courts her with a club, then loves her faithfully through a

long lifeit is of record. He gathers to himself another wife by the same processes, beats and bangs her as a

daily diversion, and by and by lays down his life in defending her from some outside harmit is of record.

He will face a hundred hostiles to rescue one of his children, and will kill another of his children because the

family is large enough without it. His delicate stomach turns, at certain details of the white man's food; but he

likes overripe fish, and brazed dog, and cat, and rat, and will eat his own uncle with relish. He is a sociable

animal, yet he turns aside and hides behind his shield when his motherinlaw goes by. He is childishly

afraid of ghosts and other trivialities that menace his soul, but dread of physical pain is a weakness which he

is not acquainted with. He knows all the great and many of the little constellations, and has names for them;

he has a symbolwriting by means of which he can convey messages far and wide among the tribes; he has a

correct eye for form and expression, and draws a good picture; he can track a fugitive by delicate traces

which the white man's eye cannot discern, and by methods which the finest white intelligence cannot master;

he makes a missile which science itself cannot duplicate without the modelif with it; a missile whose

secret baffled and defeated the searchings and theorizings of the white mathematicians for seventy years; and

by an art all his own he performs miracles with it which the white man cannot approach untaught, nor parallel

after teaching. Within certain limits this savage's intellect is the alertest and the brightest known to history or

tradition; and yet the poor creature was never able to invent a counting system that would reach above five,

nor a vessel that he could boil water in. He is the prizecuriosity of all the races. To all intents and purposes

Mr. Philip Chauncy, an officer of the Victorian Government, contributed to its archives a report of his

personal observations of the aboriginals which has in it some things which I wish to condense slightly and

insert here. He speaks of the quickness of their eyes and the accuracy of their judgment of the direction of

approaching missiles as being quite extraordinary, and of the answering suppleness and accuracy of limb and

muscle in avoiding the missile as being extraordinary also. He has seen an aboriginal stand as a target for

cricketballs thrown with great force ten or fifteen yards, by professional bowlers, and successfully dodge

them or parry them with his shield during about half an hour. One of those balls, properly placed, could have

killed him; "Yet he depended, with the utmost selfpossession, on the quickness of his eye and his agility."

The shield was the customary warshield of his race, and would not be a protection to you or to me. It is no

broader than a stovepipe, and is about as long as a man's arm. The opposing surface is not flat, but slopes

away from the centerline like a boat's bow. The difficulty about a cricketball that has been thrown with a

scientific "twist" is, that it suddenly changes it course when it is close to its target and comes straight for the

mark when apparently it was going overhead or to one side. I should not be able to protect myself from such

Mr. Chauncy once saw "a little native man" throw a cricketball 119 yards. This is said to beat the English

We have all seen the circusman bound into the air from a springboard and make a somersault over eight

horses standing side by side. Mr. Chauncy saw an aboriginal do it over eleven; and was assured that he had

"I saw the same man leap from the ground, and in going over he dipped his head, unaided by his hands, into a

hat placed in an inverted position on the top of the head of another man sitting upright on horsebackboth

man and horse being of the average size. The native landed on the other side of the horse with the hat fairly

on his head. The prodigious height of the leap, and the precision with which it was taken so as to enable him

to dip his head into the hat, exceeded any feat of the kind I have ever beheld."

I should think so! On board a ship lately I saw a young Oxford athlete run four steps and spring into the air

and squirm his hips by a side twist over a bar that was five and onehalf feet high; but he could not have

stood still and cleared a bar that was four feet high. I know this, because I tried it myself.

Sir George Grey and Mr. Eyre testify that the natives dug wells fourteen or fifteen feet deep and two feet in

diameter at the boredug them in the sandwells that were "quite circular, carried straight down, and the

Their tools were their hands and feet. How did they throw sand out from such a depth? How could they stoop

down and get it, with only two feet of space to stoop in ? How did they keep that sandpipe from caving in

on them? I do not know. Still, they did manage those seeming impossibilities. Swallowed the sand, may be.

Mr. Chauncy speaks highly of the patience and skill and alert intelligence of the native huntsman when he is

"As he walks through the bush his step is light, elastic, and noiseless; every track on the earth catches his

keen eye; a leaf, or fragment of a stick turned, or a blade of grass recently bent by the tread of one of the

lower animals, instantly arrests his attention; in fact, nothing escapes his quick and powerful sight on the

ground, in the trees, or in the distance, which may supply him with a meal or warn him of danger. A little

examination of the trunk of a tree which may be nearly covered with the scratches of opossums ascending

and descending is sufficient to inform him whether one went up the night before without coming down again

Fennimore Cooper lost his chance. He would have known how to value these people. He wouldn't have

All savages draw outline pictures upon bark; but the resemblances are not close, and expression is usually

lacking. But the Australian aboriginal's pictures of animals were nicely accurate in form, attitude, carriage;

and he put spirit into them, and expression. And his pictures of white people and natives were pretty nearly as

good as his pictures of the other animals. He dressed his whites in the fashion of their day, both the ladies and

the gentlemen. As an untaught wielder of the pencil it is not likely that he has had his equal among savage

His place in artas to drawing, not colorworkis well up, all things considered. His art is not to be

classified with savage art at all, but on a plane two degrees above it and one degree above the lowest plane of

civilized art. To be exact, his place in art is between Botticelli and De Maurier. That is to say, he could not

draw as well as De Maurier but better than Boticelli. In feeling, he resembles both; also in grouping and in his

preferences in the matter of subjects. His "corrobboree" of the Australian wilds reappears in De Maurier's

Belgravian ballrooms, with clothes and the smirk of civilization added; Botticelli's "Spring" is the

"corrobboree" further idealized, but with fewer clothes and more smirk. And well enough as to intention,

All savages are able to stand a good deal of physical pain. The Australian aboriginal has this quality in a

welldeveloped degree. Do not read the following instances if horrors are not pleasant to you. They were

recorded by the Rev. Henry N. Wolloston, of Melbourne, who had been a surgeon before he became a

1. "In the summer of 1852 I started on horseback from Albany, King George's Sound, to visit at Cape Riche,

accompanied by a native on foot. We traveled about forty miles the first day, then camped by a waterhole

for the night. After cooking and eating our supper, I observed the native, who had said nothing to me on the

subject, collect the hot embers of the fire together, and deliberately place his right foot in the glowing mass

for a moment, then suddenly withdraw it, stamping on the ground and uttering a longdrawn guttural sound

of mingled pain and satisfaction. This operation he repeated several times. On my inquiring the meaning of

his strange conduct, he only said, 'Me carpentermake 'em' ('I am mending my foot'), and then showed me his

charred great toe, the nail of which had been torn off by a teatree stump, in which it had been caught during

the journey, and the pain of which he had borne with stoical composure until the evening, when he had an

And he proceeded on the journey the next day, "as if nothing had happened"and walked thirty miles. It was

2. "A native about twentyfive years of age once applied to me, as a doctor, to extract the wooden barb of a

spear, which, during a fight in the bush some four months previously, had entered his chest, just missing the

heart, and penetrated the viscera to a considerable depth. The spear had been cut off, leaving the barb behind,

which continued to force its way by muscular action gradually toward the back; and when I examined him I

could feel a hard substance between the ribs below the left bladebone. I made a deep incision, and with a

pair of forceps extracted the barb, which was made, as usual, of hard wood about four inches long and from

half an inch to an inch thick. It was very smooth, and partly digested, so to speak, by the maceration to which

it had been exposed during its four months' journey through the body. The wound made by the spear had long

since healed, leaving only a small cicatrix; and after the operation, which the native bore without flinching,

he appeared to suffer no pain. Indeed, judging from his good state of health, the presence of the foreign

But No. 3 is my favorite. Whenever I read it I seem to enjoy all that the patient enjoyedwhatever it was:

3. "Once at King George's Sound a native presented himself to me with one leg only, and requested me to

supply him with a wooden leg. He had traveled in this maimed state about ninetysix miles, for this purpose.

I examined the limb, which had been severed just below the knee, and found that it had been charred by fire,

while about two inches of the partially calcined bone protruded through the flesh. I at once removed this with

the saw; and having made as presentable a stump of it as I could, covered the amputated end of the bone with

a surrounding of muscle, and kept the patient a few days under my care to allow the wound to heal. On

inquiring, the native told me that in a fight with other blackfellows a spear had struck his leg and penetrated

the bone below the knee. Finding it was serious, he had recourse to the following crude and barbarous

operation, which it appears is not uncommon among these people in their native state. He made a fire, and

dug a hole in the earth only sufficiently large to admit his leg, and deep enough to allow the wounded part to

be on a level with the surface of the ground. He then surrounded the limb with the live coals or charcoal,

which was replenished until the leg was literally burnt off. The cauterization thus applied completely checked

the hemorrhage, and he was able in a day or two to hobble down to the Sound, with the aid of a long stout

But he was a fastidious native. He soon discarded the wooden leg made for him by the doctor, because "it had

no feeling in it." It must have had as much as the one he burnt off, I should think.

So much for the Aboriginals. It is difficult for me to let them alone. They are marvelously interesting

creatures. For a quarter of a century, now, the several colonial governments have housed their remnants in

comfortable stations, and fed them well and taken good care of them in every way. If I had found this out

while I was in Australia I could have seen some of those peoplebut I didn't. I would walk thirty miles to

Australia has a slang of its own. This is a matter of course. The vast cattle and sheep industries, the strange

aspects of the country, and the strange native animals, brute and human, are matters which would naturally

breed a local slang. I have notes of this slang somewhere, but at the moment I can call to mind only a few of

the words and phrases. They are expressive ones. The wide, sterile, unpeopled deserts have created eloquent

phrases like "No Man's Land " and the "Nevernever Country." Also this felicitous form: "She lives in the

Nevernever Country"that is, she is an old maid. And this one is not without merit:

"heiferpaddock"young ladies' seminary. "Bail up" and "stick up" equivalent of our highwaymanterm to

"hold up" a stagecoach or a train. "Newchum" is the equivalent of our "tenderfoot"new arrival.

And then there is the immortal "My word! "We must import it. "My word! "In cold print it is the equivalent

of our "Gerrreat Caesar!" but spoken with the proper Australian unction and fervency, it is worth six of it

for grace and charm and expressiveness. Our form is rude and explosive; it is not suited to the drawingroom

or the heiferpaddock; but "My word!" is, and is music to the ear, too, when the utterer knows how to say it.

I saw it in print several times on the Pacific Ocean, but it struck me coldly, it aroused no sympathy. That was

because it was the dead corpse of the thing, the 'soul was not therethe tones were lackingthe informing

spiritthe deep feelingthe eloquence. But the first time I heard an Australian say it, it was positively

We left Adelaide in due course, and went to Horsham, in the colony of Victoria; a good deal of a journey, if I

remember rightly, but pleasant. Horsham sits in a plain which is as level as a floorone of those famous

dead levels which Australian books describe so often; gray, bare, sombre, melancholy, baked, cracked, in the

tedious long drouths, but a horizonless ocean of vivid green grass the day after a rain. A country town,

peaceful, reposeful, inviting, full of snug homes, with garden plots, and plenty of shrubbery and flowers.

"Horsham, October 17. At the hotel. The weather divine. Across the way, in front of the London Bank of

Australia, is a very handsome cottonwood. It is in opulent leaf, and every leaf perfect. The full power of the

onrushing spring is upon it, and I imagine I can see it grow. Alongside the bank and a little way back in the

garden there is a row of soaring fountain sprays of delicate feathery foliage quivering in the breeze, and

mottled with flashes of light that shift and play through the mass like flash lights through an opala most

beautiful tree, and a striking contrast to the cottonwood. Every leaf of the cottonwood is distinctly

definedit is a kodak for faithful, hard, unsentimental detail; the other an impressionist picture, delicious to

look upon, full of a subtle and exquisite charm, but all details fused in a swoon of vague and soft loveliness."

It turned out, upon inquiry, to be a pepper treean importation from China. It has a silky sheen, soft and

rich. I saw some that had long red bunches of currantlike berries ambushed among the foliage. At a

There is an agricultural college eight miles from Horsham. We were driven out to it by its chief. The

conveyance was an open wagon; the time, noonday; no wind; the sky without a cloud, the sunshine

brilliant and the mercury at 92 deg. in the shade. In some countries an indolent unsheltered drive of an

hour and a half under such conditions would have been a sweltering and prostrating experience; but there was

nothing of that in this case. It is a climate that is perfect. There was no sense of heat; indeed, there was no

heat; the air was fine and pure and exhilarating; if the drive had lasted half a day I think we should not have

felt any discomfort, or grown silent or droopy or tired. Of course, the secret of it was the exceeding dryness

of the atmosphere. In that plain 112 deg. in the shade is without doubt no harder upon a man than is 88 or 90

The road lay through the middle of an empty space which seemed to me to be a hundred yards wide between

the fences. I was not given the width in yards, but only in chains and perchesand furlongs, I think. I would

have given a good deal to know what the width was, but I did not pursue the matter. I think it is best to put up

with information the way you get it; and seem satisfied with it, and surprised at it, and grateful for it, and say,

"My word!" and never let on. It was a wide space; I could tell you how wide, in chains and perches and

furlongs and things, but that would not help you any. Those things sound well, but they are shadowy and

indefinite, like troy weight and avoirdupois; nobody knows what they mean. When you buy a pound of a drug

and the man asks you which you want, troy or avoirdupois, it is best to say "Yes," and shift the subject.

They said that the wide space dates from the earliest sheep and cattle raising days. People had to drive their

stock long distancesimmense journeysfrom wornout places to new ones where were water and fresh

pasturage; and this wide space had to be left in grass and unfenced, or the stock would have starved to death

On the way we saw the usual birdsthe beautiful little green parrots, the magpie, and some others; and also

the slender native bird of modest plumage and the eternallyforgettable namethe bird that is the smartest

among birds, and can give a parrot 30 to 1 in the game and then talk him to death. I cannot recall that bird's

name. I think it begins with M. I wish it began with G. or something that a person can remember.

The magpie was out in great force, in the fields and on the fences. He is a handsome large creature, with

snowy white decorations, and is a singer; he has a murmurous rich note that is lovely. He was once modest,

even diffident; but he lost all that when he found out that he was Australia's sole musical bird. He has talent,

and cuteness, and impudence; and in his tame state he is a most satisfactory petnever coming when he is

called, always coming when he isn't, and studying disobedience as an accomplishment. He is not confined,

but loafs all over the house and grounds, like the laughing jackass. I think he learns to talk, I know he learns

to sing tunes, and his friends say that he knows how to steal without learning. I was acquainted with a tame

magpie in Melbourne. He had lived in a lady's house several years, and believed he owned it. The lady had

tamed him, and in return he had tamed the lady. He was always on deck when not wanted, always having his

own way, always tyrannizing over the dog, and always making the cat's life a slow sorrow and a martyrdom.

He knew a number of tunes and could sing them in perfect time and tune; and would do it, too, at any time

that silence was wanted; and then encore himself and do it again; but if he was asked to sing he would go out

It was long believed that fruit trees would not grow in that baked and waterless plain around Horsham, but

the agricultural college has dissipated that idea. Its ample nurseries were producing oranges, apricots, lemons,

almonds, peaches, cherries, 48 varieties of applesin fact, all manner of fruits, and in abundance. The trees

did not seem to miss the water; they were in vigorous and flourishing condition.

Experiments are made with different soils, to see what things thrive best in them and what climates are best

for them. A man who is ignorantly trying to produce upon his farm things not suited to its soil and its other

conditions can make a journey to the college from anywhere in Australia, and go back with a change of

There were forty pupils therea few of them farmers, relearning their trade, the rest young men mainly from

the citiesnovices. It seemed a strange thing that an agricultural college should have an attraction for

citybred youths, but such is the fact. They are good stuff, too; they are above the agricultural average of

intelligence, and they come without any inherited prejudices in favor of hoary ignorances made sacred by

The students work all day in the fields, the nurseries, and the shearing sheds, learning and doing all the

practical work of the businessthree days in a week. On the other three they study and hear lectures. They

are taught the beginnings of such sciences as bear upon agriculturelike chemistry, for instance. We saw the

sophomore class in sheepshearing shear a dozen sheep. They did it by hand, not with the machine. The

sheep was seized and flung down on his side and held there; and the students took off his coat with great

celerity and adroitness. Sometimes they clipped off a sample of the sheep, but that is customary with

shearers, and they don't mind it; they don't even mind it as much as the sheep. They dab a splotch of

The coat of wool was unbelievably thick. Before the shearing the sheep looked like the fat woman in the

circus; after it he looked like a bench. He was clipped to the skin; and smoothly and uniformly. The fleece

The college was flying the Australian flagthe gridiron of England smuggled up in the northwest corner of a

big red field that had the random stars of the Southern Cross wandering around over it.

From Horsham we went to Stawell. By rail. Still in the colony of Victoria. Stawell is in the goldmining

country. In the banksafe was half a peck of surfacegoldgold dust, grain gold; rich; pure in fact, and

pleasant to sift through one's fingers; and would be pleasanter if it would stick. And there were a couple of

gold bricks, very heavy to handle, and worth $7,500 a piece. They were from a very valuable quartz mine; a

lady owns twothirds of it; she has an income of $75,000 a month from it, and is able to keep house.

The Stawell region is not productive of gold only; it has great vineyards, and produces exceptionally fine

wines. One of these vineyardsthe Great Western, owned by Mr. Irvingis regarded as a model. Its

product has reputation abroad. It yields a choice champagne and a fine claret, and its hock took a prize in

France two or three years ago. The champagne is kept in a maze of passages under ground, cut in the rock, to

secure it an even temperature during the threeyear term required to perfect it. In those vaults I saw 120,000

bottles of champagne. The colony of Victoria has a population of 1,000,000, and those people are said to

drink 25,000,000 bottles of champagne per year. The dryest community on the earth. The government has

lately reduced the duty upon foreign wines. That is one of the unkindnesses of Protection. A man invests

years of work and a vast sum of money in a worthy enterprise, upon the faith of existing laws; then the law is

On the way back to Stawell we had a chance to see a group of boulders called the Three Sistersa curiosity

oddly located; for it was upon high ground, with the land sloping away from it, and no height above it from

whence the boulders could have rolled down. Relics of an early ice drift, perhaps. They are noble boulders.

One of them has the size and smoothness and plump sphericity of a balloon of the biggest pattern.

The road led through a forest of great gumtrees, lean and scraggy and sorrowful. The road was

creamwhitea clayey kind of earth, apparently. Along it toiled occasional freight wagons, drawn by long

double files of oxen. Those wagons were going a journey of two hundred miles, I was told, and were running

a successful opposition to the railway! The railways are owned and run by the government.

Those sad gums stood up out of the dry white clay, pictures of patience and resignation. It is a tree that can

get along without water; still it is fond of itravenously so. It is a very intelligent tree and will detect the

presence of hidden water at a distance of fifty feet, and send out slender long rootfibres to prospect it. They

will find it; and will also get at it even through a cement wall six inches thick. Once a cement waterpipe

under ground at Stawell began to gradually reduce its output, and finally ceased altogether to deliver water.

Upon examining into the matter it was found stopped up, wadded compactly with a mass of rootfibres,

delicate and hairlike. How this stuff had gotten into the pipe was a puzzle for some little time; finally it was

found that it had crept in through a crack that was almost invisible to the eye. A gum tree forty feet away had

Frequently, in Australia, one has cloudeffects of an unfamiliar sort. We had this kind of scenery, finely

staged, all the way to Ballarat. Consequently we saw more sky than country on that journey. At one time a

great stretch of the vault was densely flecked with wee raggededged flakes of painfully white cloudstuff,

all of one shape and size, and equidistant apart, with narrow cracks of adorable blue showing between. The

whole was suggestive of a hurricane of snowflakes drifting across the skies. By and by these flakes fused

themselves together in interminable lines, with shady faint hollows between the lines, the long satinsurfaced

rollers following each other in simulated movement, and enchantingly counterfeiting the majestic march of a

flowing sea. Later, the sea solidified itself; then gradually broke up its mass into innumerable lofty white

pillars of about one size, and ranged these across the firmament, in receding and fading perspective, in the

similitude of a stupendous colonnadea mirage without a doubt flung from the far Gates of the Hereafter.

The approaches to Ballarat were beautiful. The features, great green expanses of rolling pastureland,

bisected by eye contenting hedges of commingled newgold and oldgold gorseand a lovely lake. One

must put in the pause, there, to fetch the reader up with a slight jolt, and keep him from gliding by without

noticing the lake. One must notice it; for a lovely lake is not as common a thing along the railways of

Australia as are the dry places. Ninetytwo in the shade again, but balmy and comfortable, fresh and bracing.

Fortyfive years ago the site now occupied by the City of Ballarat was a sylvan solitude as quiet as Eden and

as lovely. Nobody had ever heard of it. On the 25th of August, 1851, the first great goldstrike made in

Australia was made here. The wandering prospectors who made it scraped up two pounds and a half of gold

the first dayworth $600. A few days later the place was a hivea town. The news of the strike spread

everywhere in a sort of instantaneous way spread like a flash to the very ends of the earth. A celebrity so

prompt and so universal has hardly been paralleled in history, perhaps. It was as if the name BALLARAT

had suddenly been written on the sky, where all the world could read it at once.

The smaller discoveries made in the colony of New South Wales three months before had already started

emigrants toward Australia; they had been coming as a stream, but they came as a flood, now. A hundred

thousand people poured into Melbourne from England and other countries in a single month, and flocked

away to the mines. The crews of the ships that brought them flocked with them; the clerks in the government

offices followed; so did the cooks, the maids, the coachmen, the butlers, and the other domestic servants; so

did the carpenters, the smiths, the plumbers, the painters, the reporters, the editors, the lawyers, the clients,

the barkeepers, the bummers, the blacklegs, the thieves, the loose women, the grocers, the butchers, the

bakers, the doctors, the druggists, the nurses; so did the police; even officials of high and hitherto envied

place threw up their positions and joined the procession. This roaring avalanche swept out of Melbourne and

left it desolate, Sundaylike, paralyzed, everything at a standstill, the ships lying idle at anchor, all signs of

life departed, all sounds stilled save the rasping of the cloudshadows as they scraped across the vacant

That grassy and leafy paradise at Ballarat was soon ripped open, and lacerated and scarified and gutted, in the

feverish search for its hidden riches. There is nothing like surfacemining to snatch the graces and beauties

and benignities out of a paradise, and make an odious and repulsive spectacle of it.

What fortunes were made! Immigrants got rich while the ship unloaded and reloadedand went back home

for good in the same cabin they had come out in! Not all of them. Only some. I saw the others in Ballarat

myself, fortyfive years laterwhat were left of them by time and death and the disposition to rove. They

were young and gay, then; they are patriarchal and grave, now; and they do not get excited any more. They

Ballarat was a great region for "nuggets." No such nuggets were found in California as Ballarat produced. In

fact, the Ballarat region has yielded the largest ones known to history. Two of them weighed about 180

pounds each, and together were worth $90,000. They were offered to any poor person who would shoulder

them and carry them away. Gold was so plentiful that it made people liberal like that.

Ballarat was a swarming city of tents in the early days. Everybody was happy, for a time, and apparently

prosperous. Then came trouble. The government swooped down with a mining tax. And in its worst form,

too; for it was not a tax upon what the miner had taken out, but upon what he was going to take outif he

could find it. It was a licensetax license to work his claimand it had to be paid before he could begin

Consider the situation. No business is so uncertain as surfacemining. Your claim may be good, and it may

be worthless. It may make you well off in a month; and then again you may have to dig and slave for half a

year, at heavy expense, only to find out at last that the gold is not there in costpaying quantity, and that your

time and your hard work have been thrown away. It might be wise policy to advance the miner a monthly

sum to encourage him to develop the country's riches; but to tax him monthly in advance insteadwhy, such

a thing was never dreamed of in America. There, neither the claim itself nor its products, howsoever rich or

The Ballarat miners protested, petitioned, complainedit was of no use; the government held its ground, and

went on collecting the tax. And not by pleasant methods, but by ways which must have been very galling to

By and by there was a result; and I think it may be called the finest thing in Australasian history. It was a

revolutionsmall in size; but great politically; it was a strike for liberty, a struggle for a principle, a stand

against injustice and oppression. It was the Barons and John, over again; it was Hampden and ShipMoney;

it was Concord and Lexington; small beginnings, all of them, but all of them great in political results, all of

them epochmaking. It is another instance of a victory won by a lost battle. It adds an honorable page to

history; the people know it and are proud of it. They keep green the memory of the men who fell at the

The surfacesoil of Ballarat was full of gold. This soil the miners ripped and tore and trenched and harried

and disembowled, and made it yield up its immense treasure. Then they went down into the earth with deep

shafts, seeking the gravelly beds of ancient rivers and brooksand found them. They followed the courses of

these streams, and gutted them, sending the gravel up in buckets to the upper world, and washing out of it its

enormous deposits of gold. The next biggest of the two monster nuggets mentioned above came from an old

Finally the quartz lodes were attacked. That is not poorman's mining. Quartzmining and milling require

capital, and stayingpower, and patience. Big companies were formed, and for several decades, now, the

lodes have been successfully worked, and have yielded great wealth. Since the gold discovery in 1853 the

Ballarat minestaking the three kinds of mining togetherhave contributed to the world's pocket

something over three hundred millions of dollars, which is to say that this nearly invisible little spot on the

earth's surface has yielded about onefourth as much gold in fortyfour years as all California has yielded in

fortyseven. The Californian aggregate, from 1848 to 1895, inclusive, as reported by the Statistician of the

A citizen told me a curious thing about those mines. With all my experience of mining I had never heard of

anything of the sort before. The main gold reef runs about north and southof course for that is the custom

of a rich gold reef. At Ballarat its course is between walls of slate. Now the citizen told me that throughout a

stretch of twelve miles along the reef, the reef is crossed at intervals by a straight black streak of a

carbonaceous naturea streak in the slate; a streak no thicker than a penciland that wherever it crosses the

reef you will certainly find gold at the junction. It is called the Indicator. Thirty feet on each side of the

Indicator (and down in the slate, of course) is a still finer streaka streak as fine as a pencil mark; and

indeed, that is its name Pencil Mark. Whenever you find the Pencil Mark you know that thirty feet from it is

the Indicator; you measure the distance, excavate, find the Indicator, trace it straight to the reef, and sink your

shaft; your fortune is made, for certain. If that is true, it is curious. And it is curious anyway.

Ballarat is a town of only 40,000 population; and yet, since it is in Australia, it has every essential of an

advanced and enlightened big city. This is pure matter of course. I must stop dwelling upon these things. It is

hard to keep from dwelling upon them, though; for it is difficult to get away from the surprise of it. I will let

the other details go, this time, but I must allow myself to mention that this little town has a park of 326 acres;

a flower garden of 83 acres, with an elaborate and expensive fernery in it and some costly and unusually fine

statuary; and an artificial lake covering 600 acres, equipped with a fleet of 200 shells, small sail boats, and

At this point I strike out some other praiseful things which I was tempted to add. I do not strike them out

because they were not true or not well said, but because I find them better said by another manand a man

more competent to testify, too, because he belongs on the ground, and knows. I clip them from a chatty

speech delivered some years ago by Mr. William Little, who was at that time mayor of Ballarat:

"The language of our citizens, in this as in other parts of Australasia, is mostly healthy AngloSaxon, free

from Americanisms, vulgarisms, and the conflicting dialects of our Fatherland, and is pure enough to suit a

Trench or a Latham. Our youth, aided by climatic influence, are in point of physique and comeliness

unsurpassed in the Sunny South. Our young men are well ordered; and our maidens, 'not stepping over the

bounds of modesty,' are as fair as Psyches, dispensing smiles as charming as November flowers."

The closing clause has the seeming of a rather frosty compliment, but that is apparent only, not real.

His compliment to the local purity of the language is warranted. It is quite free from impurities; this is

acknowledged far and wide. As in the German Empire all cultivated people claim to speak Hanovarian

German, so in Australasia all cultivated people claim to speak Ballarat English. Even in England this cult has

made considerable progress, and now that it is favored by the two great Universities, the time is not far away

when Ballarat English will come into general use among the educated classes of Great Britain at large. Its

great merit is, that it is shorter than ordinary Englishthat is, it is more compressed. At first you have some

difficulty in understanding it when it is spoken as rapidly as the orator whom I have quoted speaks it. An

illustration will show what I mean. When he called and I handed him a chair, he bowed and said:

Presently, when we were lighting our cigars, he held a match to mine and I said:

Then I saw. 'Q' is the end of the phrase "I thank you" 'Km' is the end of the phrase "You are welcome." Mr.

Little puts no emphasis upon either of them, but delivers them so reduced that they hardly have a sound. All

Ballarat English is like that, and the effect is very soft and pleasant; it takes all the hardness and harshness out

of our tongue and gives to it a delicate whispery and vanishing cadence which charms the ear like the faint

October 23. Got up at 6, left at 7.30; soon reached Castlemaine, one of the rich goldfields of the early days;

waited several hours for a train; left at 3.40 and reached Bendigo in an hour. For comrade, a Catholic priest

who was better than I was, but didn't seem to know ita man full of graces of the heart, the mind, and the

spirit; a lovable man. He will rise. He will be a bishop some day. Later an Archbishop. Later a Cardinal.

Finally an Archangel, I hope. And then he will recall me when I say, "Do you remember that trip we made

from Ballarat to Bendigo, when you were nothing but Father C., and I was nothing to what I am now?" It has

actually taken nine hours to come from Ballarat to Bendigo. We could have saved seven by walking.

Bendigo was another of the rich strikes of the early days. It does a great quartzmining business, nowthat

business which, more than any other that I know of, teaches patience, and requires grit and a steady nerve.

The town is full of towering chimneystacks, and hoistingworks, and looks like a petroleumcity. Speaking

of patience; for example, one of the local companies went steadily on with its deep borings and searchings

without show of gold or a penny of reward for eleven years then struck it, and became suddenly rich. The

eleven years' work had cost $55,000, and the first gold found was a grain the size of a pin's head. It is kept

under locks and bars, as a precious thing, and is reverently shown to the visitor, "hats off." When I saw it I

"It is gold. Examine ittake the glass. Now how much should you say it is worth?"

"Yes, it did. Ballarat and Bendigo have produced the three monumental nuggets of the world, and this one is

the monumentalest one of the three. The other two represent 19,000 a piece; this one a couple of thousand

more. It is small, and not much to look at, but it is entitled to (its) nameAdam. It is the Adamnugget of

Speaking of patience again, another of the mines was worked, under heavy expenses, during 17 years before

pay was struck, and still another one compelled a wait of 21 years before pay was struck; then, in both

Bendigo has turned out even more gold than Ballarat. The two together have produced $650,000,000

It was through Mr. Blanknot to go into particulars about his nameit was mainly through Mr. Blank that

my stay in Bendigo was made memorably pleasant and interesting. He explained this to me himself. He told

me that it was through his influence that the city government invited me to the townhall to hear

complimentary speeches and respond to them; that it was through his influence that I had been taken on a

long pleasuredrive through the city and shown its notable features; that it was through his influence that I

was invited to visit the great mines; that it was through his influence that I was taken to the hospital and

allowed to see the convalescent Chinaman who had been attacked at midnight in his lonely hut eight weeks

before by robbers, and stabbed fortysix times and scalped besides; that it was through his influence that

when I arrived this awful spectacle of piecings and patchings and bandagings was sitting up in his cot letting

on to read one of my books; that it was through his influence that efforts had been made to get the Catholic

Archbishop of Bendigo to invite me to dinner; that it was through his influence that efforts had been made to

get the Anglican Bishop of Bendigo to ask me to supper; that it was through his influence that the dean of the

editorial fraternity had driven me through the woodsy outlying country and shown me, from the summit of

Lone Tree Hill, the mightiest and loveliest expanse of forestclad mountain and valley that I had seen in all

Australia. And when he asked me what had most impressed me in Bendigo and I answered and said it was the

taste and the public spirit which had adorned the streets with 105 miles of shade trees, he said that it was

But I am not representing him quite correctly. He did not say it was through his influence that all these things

had happenedfor that would have been coarse; be merely conveyed that idea; conveyed it so subtly that I

only caught it fleetingly, as one catches vagrant faint breaths of perfume when one traverses the meadows in

summer; conveyed it without offense and without any suggestion of egoism or ostentationbut conveyed it,

He was an Irishman; an educated gentleman; grave, and kindly, and courteous; a bachelor, and about

fortyfive or possibly fifty years old, apparently. He called upon me at the hotel, and it was there that we had

this talk. He made me like him, and did it without trouble. This was partly through his winning and gentle

ways, but mainly through the amazing familiarity with my books which his conversation showed. He was

down to date with them, too; and if he had made them the study of his life he could hardly have been better

posted as to their contents than he was. He made me better satisfied with myself than I had ever been before.

It was plain that he had a deep fondness for humor, yet he never laughed; he never even chuckled; in fact,

humor could not win to outward expression on his face at all. No, he was always gravetenderly, pensively

grave; but he made me laugh, all along; and this was very tryingand very pleasant at the same timefor it

"Yes, many years ago. Twelve or fifteen. Oh, longer than that. But of course you" A musing pause.

He waited a moment, pondering, with the doorknob in his hand, then started out; but turned back and said

that I had once been interested in Corrigan Castle, and asked me if I would go with him to his quarters in the

evening and take a hot Scotch and talk it over. I was a teetotaler and liked relaxation, so I said I would.

We drove from the lecturehall together about halfpast ten. He had a most comfortably and tastefully

furnished parlor, with good pictures on the walls, Indian and Japanese ornaments on the mantel, and here and

there, and books everywherelargely mine; which made me proud. The light was brilliant, the easy chairs

were deepcushioned, the arrangements for brewing and smoking were all there. We brewed and lit up; then

The paper was of a sumptuous quality. At the top was a twisted and interlaced monogram printed from steel

dies in gold and blue and red, in the ornate English fashion of long years ago; and under it, in neat gothic

"It is true. I was its first President. I was reelected annually as long as its meetings were held in my

Then he showed me an album with twentythree photographs of me in it. Five of them were of old dates, the

others of various later crops; the list closed with a picture taken by Falk in Sydney a month before.

This was paradise! We ran late, and talked, talked, talkedsubject, the Mark Twain Club of Corrigan Castle,

My first knowledge of that Club dates away back; all of twenty years, I should say. It came to me in the form

of a courteous letter, written on the notepaper which I have described, and signed "By order of the

President; C. PEMBROKE, Secretary." It conveyed the fact that the Club had been created in my honor, and

added the hope that this token of appreciation of my work would meet with my approval.

I answered, with thanks; and did what I could to keep my gratification from overexposure.

It was then that the long correspondence began. A letter came back, by order of the President, furnishing me

the names of the membersthirtytwo in number. With it came a copy of the Constitution and ByLaws, in

pamphlet form, and artistically printed. The initiation fee and dues were in their proper place; also, schedule

of meetingsmonthlyfor essays upon works of mine, followed by discussions; quarterly for business and

a supper, without essays, but with aftersupper speeches also, there was a list of the officers: President,

VicePresident, Secretary, Treasurer, etc. The letter was brief, but it was pleasant reading, for it told me

about the strong interest which the membership took in their new venture, etc., etc. It also asked me for a

photograph a special one. I went down and sat for it and sent itwith a letter, of course.

Presently came the badge of the Club, and very dainty and pretty it was; and very artistic. It was a frog

peeping out from a graceful tangle of grasssprays and rushes, and was done in enamels on a gold basis, and

had a gold pin back of it. After I had petted it, and played with it, and caressed it, and enjoyed it a couple of

hours, the light happened to fall upon it at a new angle, and revealed to me a cunning new detail; with the

light just right, certain delicate shadings of the grassblades and rush stems wove themselves into a

monogrammine! You can see that that jewel was a work of art. And when you come to consider the

intrinsic value of it, you must concede that it is not every literary club that could afford a badge like that. It

was easily worth $75, in the opinion of Messrs. Marcus and Ward of New York. They said they could not

duplicate it for that and make a profit. By this time the Club was well under way; and from that time forth its

secretary kept my offhours well supplied with business. He reported the Club's discussions of my books

with laborious fullness, and did his work with great spirit and ability. As a, rule, he synopsized; but when a

speech was especially brilliant, he shorthanded it and gave me the best passages from it, written out. There

were five speakers whom he particularly favored in that way: Palmer, Forbes, Naylor, Norris, and Calder.

Palmer and Forbes could never get through a speech without attacking each other, and each in his own way

was formidably effectivePalmer in virile and eloquent abuse, Forbes in courtly and elegant but scalding

satire. I could always tell which of them was talking without looking for his name. Naylor had a polished

style and a happy knack at felicitous metaphor; Norris's style was wholly without ornament, but enviably

compact, lucid, and strong. But after all, Calder was the gem. He never spoke when sober, he spoke

continuously when he wasn't. And certainly they were the drunkest speeches that a man ever uttered. They

were full of good things, but so incredibly mixed up and wandering that it made one's head swim to follow

him. They were not intended to be funny, but they were,funny for the very gravity which the speaker put

into his flowing miracles of incongruity. In the course of five years I came to know the styles of the five

These reports came every month. They were written on foolscap, 600 words to the page, and usually about

twentyfive pages in a reporta good 15,000 words, I should say,a solid week's work. The reports were

absorbingly entertaining, long as they were; but, unfortunately for me, they did not come alone. They were

always accompanied by a lot of questions about passages and purposes in my books, which the Club wanted

answered; and additionally accompanied every quarter by the Treasurer's report, and the Auditor's report, and

the Committee's report, and the President's review, and my opinion of these was always desired; also

By and by I came to dread those things; and this dread grew and grew and grew; grew until I got to

anticipating them with a cold horror. For I was an indolent man, and not fond of letterwriting, and whenever

these things came I had to put everything by and sit downfor my own peace of mindand dig and dig

until I got something out of my head which would answer for a reply. I got along fairly well the first year; but

for the succeeding four years the Mark Twain Club of Corrigan Castle was my curse, my nightmare, the grief

and misery of my life. And I got so, so sick of sitting for photographs. I sat every year for five years, trying to

satisfy that insatiable organization. Then at last I rose in revolt. I could endure my oppressions no longer. I

pulled my fortitude together and tore off my chains, and was a free man again, and happy. From that day I

burned the secretary's fat envelopes the moment they arrived, and by and by they ceased to come.

Well, in the sociable frankness of that night in Bendigo I brought this all out in full confession. Then Mr.

Blank came out in the same frank way, and with a preliminary word of gentle apology said that he was the

Why, it was matter for anger, but I didn't feel any. He said he never had to work for a living, and that by the

time he was thirty life had become a bore and a weariness to him. He had no interests left; they had paled and

perished, one by one, and left him desolate. He had begun to think of suicide. Then all of a sudden he thought

of that happy idea of starting an imaginary club, and went straightway to work at it, with enthusiasm and

love. He was charmed with it; it gave him something to do. It elaborated itself on his hands;it became

twenty times more complex and formidable than was his first rude draft of it. Every new addition to his

original plan which cropped up in his mind gave him a fresh interest and a new pleasure. He designed the

Club badge himself, and worked over it, altering and improving it, a number of days and nights; then sent to

London and had it made. It was the only one that was made. It was made for me; the "rest of the Club" went

He invented the thirtytwo members and their names. He invented the five favorite speakers and their five

separate styles. He invented their speeches, and reported them himself. He would have kept that Club going

until now, if I hadn't deserted, he said. He said he worked like a slave over those reports; each of them cost

him from a week to a fortnight's work, and the work gave him pleasure and kept him alive and willing to be

It was wonderfulthe whole thing; and altogether the most ingenious and laborious and cheerful and

painstaking practical joke I have ever heard of. And I liked it; liked to bear him tell about it; yet I have been a

"Do you remember a note from Melbourne fourteen or fifteen years ago, telling about your lecture tour in

Australia, and your death and burial in Melbourne? a note from Henry Bascomb, of Bascomb Hall, Upper

"Yes, I did it. I don't know why. I just took the notion, and carried it out without stopping to think. It was

wrong. It could have done harm. I was always sorry about it afterward. You must forgive me. I was Mr.

Bascom's guest on his yacht, on his voyage around the world. He often spoke of you, and of the pleasant

times you had had together in his home; and the notion took me, there in Melbourne, and I imitated his hand,

After visits to Maryborough and some other Australian towns, we presently took passage for New Zealand. If

it would not look too much like showing off, I would tell the reader where New Zealand is; for he is as I was;

he thinks he knows. And he thinks he knows where Hertzegovina is; and how to pronounce pariah; and how

to use the word unique without exposing himself to the derision of the dictionary. But in truth, he knows none

of these things. There are but four or five people in the world who possess this knowledge, and these make

their living out of it. They travel from place to place, visiting literary assemblages, geographical societies,

and seats of learning, and springing sudden bets that these people do not know these things. Since all people

think they know them, they are an easy prey to these adventurers. Or rather they were an easy prey until the

law interfered, three months ago, and a New York court decided that this kind of gambling is illegal,

"because it traverses Article IV, Section 9, of the Constitution of the United States, which forbids betting on a

sure thing." This decision was rendered by the full Bench of the New York Supreme Court, after a test sprung

upon the court by counsel for the prosecution, which showed that none of the nine Judges was able to answer

All people think that New Zealand is close to Australia or Asia, or somewhere, and that you cross to it on a

bridge. But that is not so. It is not close to anything, but lies by itself, out in the water. It is nearest to

Australia, but still not near. The gap between is very wide. It will be a surprise to the reader, as it was to me,

to learn that the distance from Australia to New Zealand is really twelve or thirteen hundred miles, and that

there is no bridge. I learned this from Professor X., of Yale University, whom I met in the steamer on the

great lakes when I was crossing the continent to sail across the Pacific. I asked him about New Zealand, in

order to make conversation. I supposed he would generalize a little without compromising himself, and then

turn the subject to something he was acquainted with, and my object would then be attained; the ice would be

broken, and we could go smoothly on, and get acquainted, and have a pleasant time. But, to my surprise, he

was not only not embarrassed by my question, but seemed to welcome it, and to take a distinct interest in it.

He began to talkfluently, confidently, comfortably; and as he talked, my admiration grew and grew; for as

the subject developed under his hands, I saw that he not only knew where New Zealand was, but that he was

minutely familiar with every detail of its history, politics, religions, and commerce, its fauna, flora., geology,

products, and climatic peculiarities. When he was done, I was lost in wonder and admiration, and said to

I wanted to see him do more miracles; and so, just for the pleasure of hearing him answer, I asked him about

Hertzegovina, and pariah, and unique. But he began to generalize then, and show distress. I saw that with

New Zealand gone, he was a Samson shorn of his locks; he was as other men. This was a curious and

He tried to avoid it at first; but then laughed and said that after all, the matter was not worth concealment, so

"Last autumn I was at work one morning at home, when a card came upthe card of a stranger. Under the

name was printed a line which showed that this visitor was Professor of Theological Engineering in

Wellington University, New Zealand. I was troubledtroubled, I mean, by the shortness of the notice.

College etiquette required that he be at once invited to dinner by some member of the Facultyinvited to

dine on that daynot, put off till a subsequent day. I did not quite know what to do. College etiquette

requires, in the case of a foreign guest, that the dinnertalk shall begin with complimentary references to his

country, its great men, its services to civilization, its seats of learning, and things like that; and of course the

host is responsible, and must either begin this talk himself or see that it is done by some one else. I was in

great difficulty; and the more I searched my memory, the more my trouble grew. I found that I knew nothing

about New Zealand. I thought I knew where it was, and that was all. I had an impression that it was close to

Australia, or Asia, or somewhere, and that one went over to it on a bridge. This might turn out to be incorrect;

and even if correct, it would not furnish matter enough for the purpose at the dinner, and I should expose my

College to shame before my guest; he would see that I, a member of the Faculty of the first University in

America, was wholly ignorant of his country, and he would go away and tell this, and laugh at it. The thought

"I sent for my wife and told her how I was situated, and asked for her help, and she thought of a thing which I

might have thought of myself, if I had not been excited and worried. She said she would go and tell the

visitor that I was out but would be in in a few minutes; and she would talk, and keep him busy while I got out

the back way and hurried over and make Professor Lawson give the dinner. For Lawson knew everything,

and could meet the guest in a creditable way and save the reputation of the University. I ran to Lawson, but

was disappointed. He did not know anything about New Zealand. He said that, as far as his recollection went

it was close to Australia, or Asia, or somewhere, and you go over to it on a bridge; but that was all he knew.

It was too bad. Lawson was a perfect encyclopedia of abstruse learning; but now in this hour of our need, it

"We consulted. He saw that the reputation of the University was in very real peril, and he walked the floor in

anxiety, talking, and trying to think out some way to meet the difficulty. Presently he decided that we must

try the rest of the Facultysome of them might know about New Zealand. So we went to the telephone and

called up the professor of astronomy and asked him, and he said that all he knew was, that it was close to

"We shut him off and called up the professor of biology, and he said that all he knew was that it was close to

"We shut him off, and sat down, worried and disheartened, to see if we could think up some other scheme.

We shortly hit upon one which promised well, and this one we adopted, and set its machinery going at once.

It was this. Lawson must give the dinner. The Faculty must be notified by telephone to prepare. We must all

get to work diligently, and at the end of eight hours and a half we must come to dinner acquainted with New

Zealand; at least well enough informed to appear without discredit before this native. To seem properly

intelligent we should have to know about New Zealand's population, and politics, and form of government,

and commerce, and taxes, and products, and ancient history, and modern history, and varieties of religion,

and nature of the laws, and their codification, and amount of revenue, and whence drawn, and methods of

collection, and percentage of loss, and character of climate, andwell, a lot of things like that; we must suck

the maps and cyclopedias dry. And while we posted up in this way, the Faculty's wives must flock over, one

after the other, in a studiedly casual way, and help my wife keep the New Zealander quiet, and not let him get

out and come interfering with our studies. The scheme worked admirably; but it stopped business, stopped it

"It is in the official logbook of Yale, to be read and wondered at by future generationsthe account of the

Great Blank Daythe memorable Blank Daythe day wherein the wheels of culture were stopped, a

Sunday silence prevailed all about, and the whole University stood still while the Faculty readup and

qualified itself to sit at meat, "without shame, in the presence of the Professor of Theological Engineering

"When we assembled at the dinner we were miserably tired and wornbut we were posted. Yes, it is fair to

claim that. In fact, erudition is a pale name for it. New Zealand was the only subject; and it was just beautiful

to hear us ripple it out. And with such an air of unembarrassed ease, and unostentatious familiarity with

detail, and trained and seasoned mastery of the subjectand oh, the grace and fluency of it!

"Well, finally somebody happened to notice that the guest was looking dazed, and wasn't saying anything. So

they stirred him up, of course. Then that man came out with a good, honest, eloquent compliment that made

the Faculty blush. He said be was not worthy to sit in the company of men like these; that he had been silent

from admiration; that he had been silent from another cause alsosilent from shamesilent from

ignorance! 'For,' said he, 'I, who have lived eighteen years in New Zealand and have served five in a

professorship, and ought to know much about that country, perceive, now, that I know almost nothing about

it. I say it with shame, that I have learned fifty times, yes, a hundred times more about New Zealand in these

two hours at this table than I ever knew before in all the eighteen years put together. I was silent because I

could not help myself. What I knew about taxes, and policies, and laws, and revenue, and products, and

history, and all that multitude of things, was but general, and ordinary, and vagueunscientific, in a

wordand it would have been insanity to expose it here to the searching glare of your amazingly accurate

and allcomprehensive knowledge of those matters, gentlemen. I beg you to let me sit silentas becomes

me. But do not change the subject; I can at least follow you, in this one; whereas if you change to one which

shall call out the full strength of your mighty erudition, I shall be as one lost. If you know all this about a

remote little inconsequent patch like New Zealand, ah, what wouldn't you know about any other Subject!'"

November 1noon. A fine day, a brilliant sun. Warm in the sun, cold in the shadean icy breeze blowing

out of the south. A solemn long swell rolling up northward. It comes from the South Pole, with nothing in the

way to obstruct its march and tone its energy down. I have read somewhere that an acute observer among the

early explorersCook? or Tasman?accepted this majestic swell as trustworthy circumstantial evidence

that no important land lay to the southward, and so did not waste time on a useless quest in that direction, but

Afternoon. Passing between Tasmania (formerly Van Diemen's Land) and neighboring islandsislands

whence the poor exiled Tasmanian savages used to gaze at their lost homeland and cry; and die of broken

hearts. How glad I am that all these native races are dead and gone, or nearly so. The work was mercifully

swift and horrible in some portions of Australia. As far as Tasmania is concerned, the extermination was

complete: not a native is left. It was a strife of years, and decades of years. The Whites and the Blacks hunted

each other, ambushed each other, butchered each other. The Blacks were not numerous. But they were wary,

alert, cunning, and they knew their country well. They lasted a long time, few as they were, and inflicted

The Government wanted to save the Blacks from ultimate extermination, if possible. One of its schemes was

to capture them and coop them up, on a neighboring island, under guard. Bodies of Whites volunteered for

the hunt, for the pay was goodL5 for each Black captured and delivered, but the success achieved was not

very satisfactory. The Black was naked, and his body was greased. It was hard to get a grip on him that would

hold. The Whites moved about in armed bodies, and surprised little families of natives, and did make

captures; but it was suspected that in these surprises half a dozen natives were killed to one caughtand that

Another scheme was to drive the natives into a corner of the island and fence them in by a cordon of men

placed in line across the country; but the natives managed to slip through, constantly, and continue their

The governor warned these unlettered savages by printed proclamation that they must stay in the desolate

region officially appointed for them! The proclamation was a dead letter; the savages could not read it.

Afterward a pictureproclamation was issued. It was painted up on boards, and these were nailed to trees in

the forest. Herewith is a photographic reproduction of this fashionplate. Substantially it means:

Upon its several schemes the Government spent L30,000 and employed the labors and ingenuities of several

thousand Whites for a long time with failure as a result. Then, at last, a quarter of a century after the

beginning of the troubles between the two races, the right man was found. No, he found himself. This was

George Augustus Robinson, called in history "The Conciliator." He was not educated, and not conspicuous in

any way. He was a working bricklayer, in Hobart Town. But he must have been an amazing personality; a

man worth traveling far to see. It may be his counterpart appears in history, but I do not know where to look

He set himself this incredible task: to go out into the wilderness, the jungle, and the mountainretreats where

the hunted and implacable savages were hidden, and appear among them unarmed, speak the language of

love and of kindness to them, and persuade them to forsake their homes and the wild free life that was so dear

to them, and go with him and surrender to the hated Whites and live under their watch and ward, and upon

their charity the rest of their lives! On its face it was the dream of a madman.

In the beginning, his moralsuasion project was sarcastically dubbed the sugar plum speculation. If the

scheme was striking, and new to the world's experience, the situation was not less so. It was this. The White

population numbered 40,000 in 1831; the Black population numbered three hundred. Not 300 warriors, but

300 men, women, and children. The Whites were armed with guns, the Blacks with clubs and spears. The

Whites had fought the Blacks for a quarter of a century, and had tried every thinkable way to capture, kill, or

subdue them; and could not do it. If white men of any race could have done it, these would have

accomplished it. But every scheme had failed, the splendid 300, the matchless 300 were unconquered, and

manifestly unconquerable. They would not yield, they would listen to no terms, they would fight to the bitter

end. Yet they had no poet to keep up their heart, and sing the marvel of their magnificent patriotism.

At the end of fiveandtwenty years of hard fighting, the surviving 300 naked patriots were still defiant, still

persistent, still efficacious with their rude weapons, and the Governor and the 40,000 knew not which way to

Then the Bricklayerthat wonderful manproposed to go out into the wilderness, with no weapon but his

tongue, and no protection but his honest eye and his humane heart; and track those embittered savages to their

lairs in the gloomy forests and among the mountain snows. Naturally, he was considered a crank. But he was

not quite that. In fact, he was a good way short of that. He was building upon his long and intimate

knowledge of the native character. The deriders of his project were rightfrom their standpointfor they

believed the natives to be mere wild beasts; and Robinson was right, from his standpointfor he believed the

natives to be human beings. The truth did really lie between the two. The event proved that Robinson's

judgment was soundest; but about once a month for four years the event came near to giving the verdict to the

deriders, for about that frequently Robinson barely escaped falling under the native spears.

But history shows that he had a thinking head, and was not a mere wild sentimentalist. For instance, he

wanted the war parties (called) in before he started unarmed upon his mission of peace. He wanted the best

chance of successnot a halfchance. And he was very willing to have help; and so, high rewards were

advertised, for any who would go unarmed with him. This opportunity was declined. Robinson persuaded

some tamed natives of both sexes to go with hima strong evidence of his persuasive powers, for those

natives well knew that their destruction would be almost certain. As it turned out, they had to face death over

Robinson and his little party had a difficult undertaking upon their hands. They could not ride off, horseback,

comfortably into the woods and call Leonidas and his 300 together for a talk and a treaty the following day;

for the wild men were not in a body; they were scattered, immense distances apart, over regions so desolate

that even the birds could not make a living with the chances offeredscattered in groups of twenty, a dozen,

half a dozen, even in groups of three. And the mission must go on foot. Mr. Bonwick furnishes a description

of those horrible regions, whereby it will be seen that even fugitive gangs of the hardiest and choicest human

devils the world has seenthe convicts set apart to people the "Hell of Macquarrie Harbor Station"were

never able, but once, to survive the horrors of a march through them, but starving and struggling, and fainting

"Onward, still onward, was the order of the indomitable Robinson. No one ignorant of the western country of

Tasmania can form a correct idea of the traveling difficulties. While I was resident in Hobart Town, the

Governor, Sir John Franklin, and his lady, undertook the western journey to Macquarrie Harbor, and suffered

terribly. One man who assisted to carry her ladyship through the swamps, gave me his bitter experience of its

miseries. Several were disabled for life. No wonder that but one party, escaping from Macquarrie Harbor

convict settlement, arrived at the civilized region in safety. Men perished in the scrub, were lost in snow, or

were devoured by their companions. This was the territory traversed by Mr. Robinson and his Black guides.

All honor to his intrepidity, and their wonderful fidelity! When they had, in the depth of winter, to cross deep

and rapid rivers, pass among mountains six thousand feet high, pierce dangerous thickets, and find food in a

"After a frightful journey by Cradle Mountain, and over the lofty plateau of Middlesex Plains, the travelers

experienced unwonted misery, and the circumstances called forth the best qualities of the noble little band.

Mr. Robinson wrote afterwards to Mr. Secretary Burnett some details of this passage of horrors. In that letter,

of Oct 2, 1834, he states that his Natives were very reluctant to go over the dreadful mountain passes; that 'for

seven successive days we continued traveling over one solid body of snow;' that 'the snows were of incredible

depth;' that 'the Natives were frequently up to their middle in snow.' But still the ill clad, illfed, diseased,

and wayworn men and women were sustained by the cheerful voice of their unconquerable friend, and

Mr. Bonwick says that Robinson's friendly capture of the Big River tribe remember, it was a whole

tribe"was by far the grandest feature of the war, and the crowning glory of his efforts." The word "war"

was not well chosen, and is misleading. There was war still, but only the Blacks were conducting itthe

Whites were holding off until Robinson could give his scheme a fair trial. I think that we are to understand

that the friendly capture of that tribe was by far the most important thing, the highest in value, that happened

during the whole thirty years of truceless hostilities; that it was a decisive thing, a peaceful Waterloo, the

surrender of the native Napoleon and his dreaded forces, the happy ending of the long strife. For "that tribe

was the terror of the colony," its chief "the Black Douglas of Bush households."

Robinson knew that these formidable people were lurking somewhere, in some remote corner of the hideous

regions just described, and he and his unarmed little party started on a tedious and perilous hunt for them. At

last, "there, under the shadows of the Frenchman's Cap, whose grim cone rose five thousand feet in the

uninhabited westward interior," they were found. It was a serious moment. Robinson himself believed, for

once, that his mission, successful until now, was to end here in failure, and that his own deathhour had

The redoubtable chief stood in menacing attitude, with his eighteenfoot spear poised; his warriors stood

massed at his back, armed for battle, their faces eloquent with their longcherished loathing for white men.

"They rattled their spears and shouted their warcry." Their women were back of them, laden with supplies

of weapons, and keeping their 150 eager dogs quiet until the chief should give the signal to fall on.

"I think we shall soon be in the resurrection," whispered a member of Robinson's little party.

"I think we shall," answered Robinson; then plucked up heart and began his persuasionsin the tribe's own

dialect, which surprised and pleased the chief. Presently there was an interruption by the chief:

A few minutes passedin byplaysuspensediscussion among the tribesmenRobinson's tamed

squaws ventured to cross the line and begin persuasions upon the wild squaws. Then the chief stepped back

"to confer with the old womenthe real arbiters of savage war." Mr. Bonwick continues:

"As the fallen gladiator in the arena looks for the signal of life or death from the president of the

amphitheatre, so waited our friends in anxious suspense while the conference continued. In a few minutes,

before a word was uttered, the women of the tribe threw up their arms three times. This was the inviolable

sign of peace! Down fell the spears. Forward, with a heavy sigh of relief, and upward glance of gratitude,

came the friends of peace. The impulsive natives rushed forth with tears and cries, as each saw in the other's

"It was a jubilee of joy. A festival followed. And, while tears flowed at the recital of woe, a corrobory of

In four years, without the spilling of a drop of blood, Robinson brought them all in, willing captives, and

delivered them to the white governor, and ended the war which powder and bullets, and thousands of men to

Marsyas charming the wild beasts with his musicthat is fable; but the miracle wrought by Robinson is fact.

It is historyand authentic; and surely, there is nothing greater, nothing more reverencecompelling in the

And in memory of the greatest man Australasia ever developed or ever will develop, there is a stately

monument to George Augustus Robinson, the Conciliator inno, it is to another man, I forget his name.

However, Robertson's own generation honored him, and in manifesting it honored themselves. The

Government gave him a moneyreward and a thousand acres of land; and the people held massmeetings and

"When this desperate tribe was thus captured, there was much surprise to find that the L30,000 of a little

earlier day had been spent, and the whole population of the colony placed under arms, in contention with an

opposing force of sixteen men with wooden spears! Yet such was the fact. The celebrated Big River tribe,

that had been raised by European fears to a host, consisted of sixteen men, nine women, and one child. With a

knowledge of the mischief done by these few, their wonderful marches and their widespread aggressions,

their enemies cannot deny to them the attributes of courage and military tact. A Wallace might harass a large

army with a small and determined band; but the contending parties were at least equal in arms and

civilization. The Zulus who fought us in Africa, the Maories in New Zealand, the Arabs in the Soudan, were

far better provided with weapons, more advanced in the science of war, and considerably more numerous,

These were indeed wonderful people, the natives. They ought not to have been wasted. They should have

been crossed with the Whites. It would have improved the Whites and done the Natives no harm.

But the Natives were wasted, poor heroic wild creatures. They were gathered together in little settlements on

neighboring islands, and paternally cared for by the Government, and instructed in religion, and deprived of

tobacco, because the superintendent of the Sundayschool was not a smoker, and so considered smoking

The Natives were not used to clothes, and houses, and regular hours, and church, and school, and

Sundayschool, and work, and the other misplaced persecutions of civilization, and they pined for their lost

home and their wild free life. Too late they repented that they had traded that heaven for this hell. They sat

homesick on their alien crags, and day by day gazed out through their tears over the sea with unappeasable

longing toward the hazy bulk which was the specter of what had been their paradise; one by one their hearts

In a very few years nothing but a scant remnant remained alive. A handful lingered along into age. In 1864

the last man died, in 1876 the last woman died, and the Spartans of Australasia were extinct.

The Whites always mean well when they take human fish out of the ocean and try to make them dry and

warm and happy and comfortable in a chicken coop; but the kindesthearted white man can always be

depended on to prove himself inadequate when he deals with savages. He cannot turn the situation around

and imagine how he would like it to have a wellmeaning savage transfer him from his house and his church

and his clothes and his books and his choice food to a hideous wilderness of sand and rocks and snow, and

ice and sleet and storm and blistering sun, with no shelter, no bed, no covering for his and his family's naked

bodies, and nothing to eat but snakes and grubs and 'offal. This would be a hell to him; and if he had any

wisdom he would know that his own civilization is a hell to the savagebut he hasn't any, and has never had

any; and for lack of it he shut up those poor natives in the unimaginable perdition of his civilization,

committing his crime with the very best intentions, and saw those poor creatures waste away under his

tortures; and gazed at it, vaguely troubled and sorrowful, and wondered what could be the matter with them.

One is almost betrayed into respecting those criminals, they were so sincerely kind, and tender, and humane;

They didn't know why those exiled savages faded away, and they did their honest best to reason it out. And

one man, in a like case in New South Wales, did reason it out and arrive at a solution:

"It is from the wrath of God, which is revealed from heaven against cold ungodliness and unrighteousness of

The aphorism does really seem true: "Given the Circumstances, the Man will appear." But the man musn't

appear ahead of time, or it will spoil everything. In Robinson's case the Moment had been approaching for a

quarter of a centuryand meantime the future Conciliator was tranquilly laying bricks in Hobart. When all

other means had failed, the Moment had arrived, and the Bricklayer put down his trowel and came forward.

Earlier he would have been jeered back to his trowel again. It reminds me of a tale that was told me by a

Kentuckian on the train when we were crossing Montana. He said the tale was current in Louisville years

ago. He thought it had been in print, but could not remember. At any rate, in substance it was this, as nearly

A few years before the outbreak of the Civil War it began to appear that Memphis, Tennessee, was going to

be a great tobacco entrepotthe wise could see the signs of it. At that time Memphis had a wharf boat, of

course. There was a paved sloping wharf, for the accommodation of freight, but the steamers landed on the

outside of the wharfboat, and all loading and unloading was done across it, between steamer and shore. A

number of wharfboat clerks were needed, and part of the time, every day, they were very busy, and part of the

time tediously idle. They were boiling over with youth and spirits, and they had to make the intervals of

idleness endurable in some way; and as a rule, they did it by contriving practical jokes and playing them upon

The favorite butt for the jokes was Ed Jackson, because he played none himself, and was easy game for other

One day he told the others his scheme for his holiday. He was not going fishing or hunting this timeno, he

had thought out a better plan. Out of his $40 a month he had saved enough for his purpose, in an economical

It was a great and surprising idea. It meant travel immense travelin those days it meant seeing the world; it

was the equivalent of a voyage around it in ours. At first the other youths thought his mind was affected, but

when they found that he was in earnest, the next thing to be thought of was, what sort of opportunity this

The young men studied over the matter, then held a secret consultation and made a plan. The idea was, that

one of the conspirators should offer Ed a letter of introduction to Commodore Vanderbilt, and trick him into

delivering it. It would be easy to do this. But what would Ed do when he got back to Memphis? That was a

serious matter. He was goodhearted, and had always taken the jokes patiently; but they had been jokes

which did not humiliate him, did not bring him to shame; whereas, this would be a cruel one in that way, and

to play it was to meddle with fire; for with all his good nature, Ed was a Southernerand the English of that

was, that when he came back he would kill as many of the conspirators as he could before falling himself.

So the letter was prepared with great care and elaboration. It was signed Alfred Fairchild, and was written in

an easy and friendly spirit. It stated that the bearer was the bosom friend of the writer's son, and was of good

parts and sterling character, and it begged the Commodore to be kind to the young stranger for the writer's

sake. It went on to say, "You may have forgotten me, in this long stretch of time, but you will easily call me

back out of your boyhood memories when I remind you of how we robbed old Stevenson's orchard that night;

and how, while he was chasing down the road after us, we cut across the field and doubled back and sold his

own apples to his own cook for a hatfull of doughnuts; and the time that we" and so forth and so on,

bringing in names of imaginary comrades, and detailing all sorts of wild and absurd and, of course, wholly

imaginary schoolboy pranks and adventures, but putting them into lively and telling shape.

With all gravity Ed was asked if he would like to have a letter to Commodore Vanderbilt, the great

"No; but my father does. They were schoolboys together. And if you like, I'll write and ask father. I know

Ed could not find words capable of expressing his gratitude and delight. The three days passed, and the letter

was put into his bands. He started on his trip, still pouring out his thanks while he shook goodbye all

around. And when he was out of sight his comrades let fly their laughter in a storm of happy

satisfactionand then quieted down, and were less happy, less satisfied. For the old doubts as to the wisdom

Arrived in New York, Ed found his way to Commodore Vanderbilt's business quarters, and was ushered into

a large anteroom, where a score of people were patiently awaiting their turn for a twominute interview with

the millionaire in his private office. A servant asked for Ed's card, and got the letter instead. Ed was sent for a

" Ahsit down, Mr. Jackson. By the opening sentences it seems to be a letter from an old friend. Allow

meI will run my eye through it. He says he sayswhy, who is it?" He turned the sheet and found the

signature. "Alfred FairchildhmFairchildI don't recall the name. But that is nothinga thousand

names have gone from me. He sayshe sayshmhmoh, dear, but it's good! Oh, it's rare! I don't quite

remember it, but I seem to it'll all come back to me presently. He says he sayshmhmoh, but that was

a game! Oh, splendid ! How it carries me back! It's all dim, of course it's a long time agoand the

namessome of the names are wavery and indistinctbut sho', I know it happenedI can feel it! and lord,

how it warms my heart, and brings back my lost youth! Well, well, well, I've got to come back into this

workaday world nowbusiness presses and people are waitingI'll keep the rest for bed tonight, and

live my youth over again. And you'll thank Fairchild for me when you see himI used to call him Alf, I

think and you'll give him my gratitude forwhat this letter has done for the tired spirit of a hardworked

man; and tell him there isn't anything that I can do for him or any friend of his that I won't do. And as for you,

my lad, you are my guest; you can't stop at any hotel in New York. Sit. where you are a little while, till I get

through with these people, then we'll go home. I'll take care of you, my boymake yourself easy as to that."

Ed stayed a week, and had an immense timeand never suspected that the Commodore's shrewd eye was on

him, and that he was daily being weighed and measured and analyzed and tried and tested.

Yes, he had an immense time; and never wrote home, but saved it all up to tell when he should get back.

Twice, with proper modesty and decency, he proposed to end his visit, but the Commodore said, "Nowait;

In those days the Commodore was making some of those vast combinations of hisconsolidations of

warring odds and ends of railroads into harmonious systems, and concentrations of floating and rudderless

commerce in effective centersand among other things his farseeing eye had detected the convergence of

that huge tobaccocommerce, already spoken of, toward Memphis, and he had resolved to set his grasp upon

"Now you can start home. But first we will have some more talk about that tobacco matter. I know you now. I

know your abilities as well as you know them yourselfperhaps better. You understand that tobacco matter;

you understand that I am going to take possession of it, and you also understand the plans which I have

matured for doing it. What I want is a man who knows my mind, and is qualified to represent me in

Memphis, and be in supreme command of that important businessand I appoint you."

"Yes. Your salary will be highof coursefor you are representing me. Later you will earn increases of it,

and will get them. You will need a small army of assistants; choose them yourselfand carefully. Take no

man for friendship's sake; but, all things being equal, take the man you know, take your friend, in preference

When Ed reached Memphis he rushed down to the wharf in a fever to tell his great news and thank the boys

over and over again for thinking to give him the letter to Mr. Vanderbilt. It happened to be one of those idle

times. Blazing hot noonday, and no sign of life on the wharf. But as Ed threaded his way among the freight

piles, he saw a white linen figure stretched in slumber upon a pile of grainsacks under an awning, and said

to himself, "That's one of them," and hastened his step; next, he said, "It's Charleyit's Fairchild good"; and

the next moment laid an affectionate hand on the sleeper's shoulder. The eyes opened lazily, took one glance,

the face blanched, the form whirled itself from the sackpile, and in an instant Ed was alone and Fairchild

Ed was dazed, stupefied. Was Fairchild crazy? What could be the meaning of this? He started slow and

dreamily down toward the wharfboat; turned the corner of a freightpile and came suddenly upon two of the

boys. They were lightly laughing over some pleasant matter; they heard his step, and glanced up just as he

discovered them; the laugh died abruptly; and before Ed could speak they were off, and sailing over barrels

and bales like hunted deer. Again Ed was paralyzed. Had the boys all gone mad? What could be the

explanation of this extraordinary conduct? And so, dreaming along, he reached the wharfboat, and stepped

aboard nothing but silence there, and vacancy. He crossed the deck, turned the corner to go down the outer

"Never mind what you didn't docome out of that! What makes you all act so? What have I done?"

"Goodness knows I'll be glad to! Why, I'm just starving to shake hands with somebody!"

The swimmer muttered, "Hang him, he smelt a rat and never delivered the letter!but it's all right, I'm not

going to fetch up the subject." And he crawled out and came dripping and draining to shake hands. First one

and then another of the conspirators showed up cautiouslyarmed to the teethtook in the amicable

And to Ed's eager inquiry as to what made them act as they had been acting, they answered evasively, and

pretended that they had put it up as a joke, to see what he would do. It was the best explanation they could

invent at such short notice. And each said to himself, "He never delivered that letter, and the joke is on us, if

"Come right up on the boiler deck and order the drinks it's my treat. I'm going to tell you all about it. And

"Did you deliver it?" And they looked at each other as people might who thought that maybe they were

Then they settled to listening; and as the story deepened and its marvels grew, the amazement of it made

them dumb, and the interest of it took their breath. They hardly uttered a whisper during two hours, but sat

like petrifactions and drank in the immortal romance. At last the tale was ended, and Ed said

"And it's all owing to you, boys, and you'll never find me ungrateful bless your hearts, the best friends a

fellow ever had! You'll all have places; I want every one of you. I know youI know you 'by the back,' as

the gamblers say. You're jokers, and all that, but you're sterling, with the hallmark on. And Charley Fairchild,

you shall be my first assistant and right hand, because of your firstclass ability, and because you got me the

letter, and for your father's sake who wrote it for me, and to please Mr. Vanderbilt, who said it would! And

Yes, when the Moment comes, the Man appearseven if he is a thousand miles away, and has to be

Necessarily, the human interest is the first interest in the logbook of any country. The annals of Tasmania,

in whose shadow we were sailing, are lurid with that feature. Tasmania was a convictdump, in old times;

this has been indicated in the account of the Conciliator, where reference is made to vain attempts of

desperate convicts to win to permanent freedom, after escaping from Macquarrie Harbor and the "Gates of

Hell." In the early days Tasmania had a great population of convicts, of both sexes and all ages, and a bitter

hard life they had. In one spot there was a settlement of juvenile convictschildrenwho had been sent

thither from their home and their friends on the other side of the globe to expiate their "crimes."

In due course our ship entered the estuary called the Derwent, at whose head stands Hobart, the capital of

Tasmania. The Derwent's shores furnish scenery of an interesting sort. The historian Laurie, whose book,

"The Story of Australasia," is just out, invoices its features with considerable truth and intemperance: "The

marvelous picturesqueness of every point of view, combined with the clear balmy atmosphere and the

transparency of the ocean depths, must have delighted and deeply impressed" the early explorers. "If the

rockbound coasts, sullen, defiant, and lowering, seemed uninviting, these were occasionally broken into

charmingly alluring coves floored with golden sand, clad with evergreen shrubbery, and adorned with every

variety of indigenous wattle, sheoak, wild flower, and fern, from the delicately graceful 'maiden hair' to the

palmlike 'old man'; while the majestic gumtree, clean and smooth as the mast of 'some tall admiral' pierces

It looked so to me. "Coasting along Tasman's Peninsula, what a shock of pleasant wonder must have struck

the early mariner on suddenly sighting Cape Pillar, with its cluster of blackribbed basaltic columns rising to

a height of 900 feet, the hydra head wreathed in a turban of fleecy cloud, the base lashed by jealous waves

That is well enough, but I did not suppose those snags were 900 feet high. Still they were a very fine show.

They stood boldly out by themselves, and made a fascinatingly odd spectacle. But there was nothing about

their appearance to suggest the heads of a hydra. They looked like a row of lofty slabs with their upper ends

tapered to the shape of a carvingknife point; in fact, the early voyager, ignorant of their great height, might

have mistaken them for a rusty old rank of piles that had sagged this way and that out of the perpendicular.

The Peninsula is lofty, rocky, and densely clothed with scrub, or brush, or both. It is joined to the main by a

low neck. At this junction was formerly a convict station called Port Arthura place hard to escape from.

Behind it was the wilderness of scrub, in which a fugitive would soon starve; in front was the narrow neck,

with a cordon of chained dogs across it, and a line of lanterns, and a fence of living guards, armed. We saw

the place as we swept bythat is, we had a glimpse of what we were told was the entrance to Port Arthur.

The voyage thence up the Derwent Frith displays a grand succession of fairy visions, in its entire length

elsewhere unequaled. In gliding over the deep blue sea studded with lovely islets luxuriant to the water's

edge, one is at a loss which scene to choose for contemplation and to admire most. When the Huon and Bruni

have been passed, there seems no possible chance of a rival; but suddenly Mount Wellington, massive and

noble like his brother Etna, literally heaves in sight, sternly guarded on either hand by Mounts Nelson and

It is an attractive town. It sits on low hills that slope to the harbor a harbor that looks like a river, and is as

smooth as one. Its still surface is pictured with dainty reflections of boats and grassy banks and luxuriant

foliage. Back of the town rise highlands that are clothed in woodland loveliness, and over the way is that

noble mountain, Wellington, a stately bulk, a most majestic pile. How beautiful is the whole region, for form,

and grouping, and opulence, and freshness of foliage, and variety of color, and grace and shapeliness of the

hills, the capes, the, promontories; and then, the splendor of the sunlight, the dim rich distances, the charm of

the waterglimpses! And it was in this paradise that the yellowliveried convicts were landed, and the

Corpsbandits quartered, and the wanton slaughter of the kangaroochasing black innocents consummated

on that autumn day in May, in the brutish old time. It was all out of keeping with the place, a sort of bringing

The remembrance of this paradise reminds me that it was at Hobart that we struck the head of the procession

of Junior Englands. We were to encounter other sections of it in New Zealand, presently, and others later in

Natal. Wherever the exiled Englishman can find in his new home resemblances to his old one, he is touched

to the marrow of his being; the love that is in his heart inspires his imagination, and these allied forces

transfigure those resemblances into authentic duplicates of the revered originals. It is beautiful, the feeling

which works this enchantment, and it compels one's homage; compels it, and also compels one's

assentcompels it alwayseven when, as happens sometimes, one does not see the resemblances as clearly

The resemblances do exist, it is quite true; and often they cunningly approximate the originalsbut after all,

in the matter of certain physical patent rights there is only one England. Now that I have sampled the globe, I

am not in doubt. There is a beauty of Switzerland, and it is repeated in the glaciers and snowy ranges of many

parts of the earth; there is a beauty of the fiord, and it is repeated in New Zealand and Alaska; there is a

beauty of Hawaii, and it is repeated in ten thousand islands of the Southern seas; there is a beauty of the

prairie and the plain, and it is repeated here and there in the earth; each of these is worshipful, each is perfect

in its way, yet holds no monopoly of its beauty; but that beauty which is England is aloneit has no

It is made up of very simple detailsjust grass, and trees, and shrubs, and roads, and hedges, and gardens,

and houses, and vines, and churches, and castles, and here and there a ruinand over it all a mellow dream

Hobart has a peculiarityit is the neatest town that the sun shines on; and I incline to believe that it is also

the cleanest. However that may be, its supremacy in neatness is not to be questioned. There cannot be another

town in the world that has no shabby exteriors; no rickety gates and fences, no neglected houses crumbling to

ruin, no crazy and unsightly sheds, no weedgrown frontyards of the poor, no backyards littered with tin

cans and old boots and empty bottles, no rubbish in the gutters, no clutter on the sidewalks, no outerborders

fraying out into dirty lanes and tinpatched huts. No, in Hobart all the aspects are tidy, and all a comfort to

the eye; the modestest cottage looks combed and brushed, and has its vines, its flowers, its neat fence, its neat

We had a glimpse of the museum, by courtesy of the American gentleman who is curator of it. It has samples

of halfadozen different kinds of marsupials[A marsupial is a plantigrade vertebrate whose specialty is

its pocket. In some countries it is extinct, in the others it is rare. The first American marsupials were Stephen

Girard, Mr. Aston and the opossum; the principal marsupials of the Southern Hemisphere are Mr. Rhodes,

and the kangaroo. I, myself, am the latest marsupial. Also, I might boast that I have the largest pocket of them

all. But there is nothing in that.]one, the " Tasmanian devil;" that is, I think he was one of them. And there

was a fish with lungs. When the water dries up it can live in the mud. Most curious of all was a parrot that

kills sheep. On one great sheeprun this bird killed a thousand sheep in a whole year. He doesn't want the

whole sheep, but only the kidneyfat. This restricted taste makes him an expensive bird to support. To get the

fat he drives his beak in and rips it out; the wound is mortal. This parrot furnishes a notable example of

evolution brought about by changed conditions. When the sheep culture was introduced, it presently brought

famine to the parrot by exterminating a kind of grub which had always thitherto been the parrot's diet. The

miseries of hunger made the bird willing to eat raw flesh, since it could get no other food, and it began to pick

remnants of meat from sheep skins hung out on the fences to dry. It soon came to prefer sheep meat to any

other food, and by and by it came to prefer the kidneyfat to any other detail of the sheep. The parrot's bill

was not well shaped for digging out the fat, but Nature fixed that matter; she altered the bill's shape, and now

the parrot can dig out kidneyfat better than the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, or anybody else, for that

And there was another curiosityquite a stunning one, I thought: Arrow heads and knives just like those

which Primeval Man made out of flint, and thought he had done such a wonderful thingyes, and has been

humored and coddled in that superstition by this age of admiring scientists until there is probably no living

with him in the other world by now. Yet here is his finest and nicest work exactly duplicated in our day; and

by people who have never heard of him or his works: by aborigines who lived in the islands of these seas,

within our time. And they not only duplicated those works of art but did it in the brittlest and most

treacherous of substancesglass: made them out of old brandy bottles flung out of the British camps;

millions of tons of them. It is time for Primeval Man to make a little less noise, now. He has had his day. He

is not what he used to be. We had a drive through a bloomy and odorous fairyland, to the Refuge for the

Indigenta spacious and comfortable home, with hospitals, etc., for both sexes. There was a crowd in there,

of the oldest people I have ever seen. It was like being suddenly set down in a new worlda weird world

where Youth has never been, a world sacred to Age, and bowed forms, and wrinkles. Out of the 359 persons

present, 223, were exconvicts, and could have told stirring tales, no doubt, if they had been minded to talk;

42 of the 359 were past 80, and several were close upon 90; the average age at death there is 76 years. As for

me, I have no use for that place; it is too healthy. Seventy is old enoughafter that, there is too much risk.

Youth and gaiety might vanish, any dayand then, what is left? Death in life; death without its privileges,

death without its benefits. There were 185 women in that Refuge, and 81 of them were exconvicts.

The steamer disappointed us. Instead of making a long visit at Hobart, as usual, she made a short one. So we

We spent part of an afternoon and a night at sea, and reached Bluff, in New Zealand, early in the morning.

Bluff is at the bottom of the middle island, and is away down south, nearly fortyseven degrees below the

equator. It lies as far south of the line as Quebec lies north of it, and the climates of the two should be alike;

but for some reason or other it has not been so arranged. Quebec is hot in the summer and cold in the winter,

but Bluff's climate is less intense; the cold weather is not very cold, the hot weather is not very hot; and the

difference between the hottest month and the coldest is but 17 degrees Fahrenheit.

In New Zealand the rabbit plague began at Bluff. The man who introduced the rabbit there was banqueted

and lauded; but they would hang him, now, if they could get him. In England the natural enemy of the rabbit

is detested and persecuted; in the Bluff region the natural enemy of the rabbit is honored, and his person is

sacred. The rabbit's natural enemy in England is the poacher, in Bluff its natural enemy is the stoat, the

weasel, the ferret, the cat, and the mongoose. In England any person below the Heir who is caught with a

rabbit in his possession must satisfactorily explain how it got there, or he will suffer fine and imprisonment,

together with extinction of his peerage; in Bluff, the cat found with a rabbit in its possession does not have to

explaineverybody looks the other way; the person caught noticing would suffer fine and imprisonment,

with extinction of peerage. This is a sure way to undermine the moral fabric of a cat. Thirty years from now

there will not be a moral cat in New Zealand. Some think there is none there now. In England the poacher is

watched, tracked, huntedhe dare not show his face; in Bluff the cat, the weasel, the stoat, and the

mongoose go up and down, whither they will, unmolested. By a law of the legislature, posted where all may

read, it is decreed that any person found in possession of one of these creatures (dead) must satisfactorily

explain the circumstances or pay a fine of not less than L5, nor more than L20. The revenue from this source

is not large. Persons who want to pay a hundred dollars for a dead cat are getting rarer and rarer every day.

This is bad, for the revenue was to go to the endowment of a University. All governments are more or less

shortsighted: in England they fine the poacher, whereas he ought to be banished to New Zealand. New

It was from Bluff that we ought to have cut across to the west coast and visited the New Zealand Switzerland,

a land of superb scenery, made up of snowy grandeurs, anal mighty glaciers, and beautiful lakes; and over

there, also, are the wonderful rivals of the Norwegian and Alaskan fiords; and for neighbor, a waterfall of

1,900 feet; but we were obliged to postpone the trip to some later and indefinite time.

November 6. A lovely summer morning; brilliant blue sky. A few miles out from Invercargill, passed through

vast level green expanses snowed over with sheep. Fine to see. The green, deep and very vivid sometimes; at

other times less so, but delicate and lovely. A passenger reminds me that I am in "the England of the Far

Dunedin, same date. The town justifies Michael Davitt's praises. The people are Scotch. They stopped here

on their way from home to heaven thinking they had arrived. The population is stated at 40,000, by

Malcolm Ross, journalist; stated by an M. P. at 60,000. A journalist cannot lie.

To the residence of Dr. Hockin. He has a fine collection of books relating to New Zealand; and his house is a

museum of Maori art and antiquities. He has pictures and prints in color of many native chiefs of the

pastsome of them of note in history. There is nothing of the savage in the faces; nothing could be finer

than these men's features, nothing more intellectual than these faces, nothing more masculine, nothing nobler

than their aspect. The aboriginals of Australia and Tasmania looked the savage, but these chiefs looked like

Roman patricians. The tattooing in these portraits ought to suggest the savage, of course, but it does not. The

designs are so flowing and graceful and beautiful that they are a most satisfactory decoration. It takes but

fifteen minutes to get reconciled to the tattooing, and but fifteen more to perceive that it is just the thing.

Dr. Hockiu gave us a ghastly curiositya lignified caterpillar with a plant growing out of the back of its

necka plant with a slender stem 4 inches high. It happened not by accident, but by designNature's

design. This caterpillar was in the act of loyally carrying out a law inflicted upon him by Naturea law

purposely inflicted upon him to get him into troublea law which was a trap; in pursuance of this law he

made the proper preparations for turning himself into a nightmoth; that is to say, he dug a little trench, a

little grave, and then stretched himself out in it on his stomach and partially buried himselfthen Nature was

ready for him. She blew the spores of a peculiar fungus through the air with a purpose. Some of them fell into

a crease in the back of the caterpillar's neck, and began to sprout and growfor there was soil therehe had

not washed his neck. The roots forced themselves down into the worm's person, and rearward along through

its body, sucking up the creature's juices for sap; the worm slowly died, and turned to wood. And here he was

now, a wooden caterpillar, with every detail of his former physique delicately and exactly preserved and

perpetuated, and with that stem standing up out of him for his monumentmonument commemorative of his

Nature is always acting like that. Mrs. X. said (of course) that the caterpillar was not conscious and didn't

suffer. She should have known better. No caterpillar can deceive Nature. If this one couldn't suffer, Nature

would have known it and would have hunted up another caterpillar. Not that she would have let this one go,

merely because it was defective. No. She would have waited and let him turn into a nightmoth; and then

Nature cakes a fish's eyes over with parasites, so that it shan't be able to avoid its enemies or find its food.

She sends parasites into a star fish's system, which clog up its prongs and swell them and make them so

uncomfortable that the poor creature delivers itself from the prong to ease its misery; and presently it has to

part with another prong for the sake of comfort, and finally with a third. If it regrows the prongs, the

parasite returns and the same thing is repeated. And finally, when the ability to reproduce prongs is lost

through age, that poor old star fish can't get around any more, and so it dies of starvation.

In Australia is prevalent a horrible disease due to an "unperfected tapeworm." Unperfectedthat is what they

call it, I do not know why, for it transacts business just as well as if it were finished and frescoed and gilded,

November 9. To the museum and public picture gallery with the president of the Society of Artists. Some fine

pictures there, lent by the S. of A. several of them they bought, the others came to them by gift. Next, to the

gallery of the S. of A.annual exhibitionjust opened. Fine. Think of a town like this having two such

collections as this, and a Society of Artists. It is so all over Australasia. If it were a monarchy one might

understand it. I mean an absolute monarchy, where it isn't necessary to vote money, but take it. Then art

flourishes. But these colonies are republicsrepublics with a wide suffrage; voters of both sexes, this one of

New Zealand. In republics, neither the government nor the rich private citizen is much given to propagating

art. All over Australasia pictures by famous European artists are bought for the public galleries by the State

and by societies of citizens. Living citizensnot dead ones. They rob themselves to give, not their heirs.

November 11. On the road. This trainexpress goes twenty and onehalf miles an hour, schedule time; but it

is fast enough, the outlook upon sea and land is so interesting, and the cars so comfortable. They are not

English, and not American; they are the Swiss combination of the two. A narrow and railed porch along the

side, where a person can walk up and down. A lavatory in each car. This is progress; this is nineteenth

century spirit. In New Zealand, these fast expresses run twice a week. It is well to know this if you want to be

a bird and fly through the country at a 20mile gait; otherwise you may start on one of the five wrong days,

By contrast, these pleasant cars call to mind the branchroad cars at Maryborough, Australia, and the

Somewhere on the road to Maryborough I changed for a while to a smoking carriage. There were two

gentlemen there; both riding backward, one at each end of the compartment. They were acquaintances of

each other. I sat down facing the one that sat at the starboard window. He had a good face, and a friendly

look, and I judged from his dress that he was a dissenting minister. He was along toward fifty. Of his own

motion he struck a match, and shaded it with his hand for me to light my cigar. I take the rest from my diary:

In order to start conversation I asked him something about Maryborough. He said, in a most pleasanteven

I was astonished. It seemed so odd to hear a minister swear out loud. He went placidly on:

"It's the worst hotel in Australia. Well, one may go further, and say in Australasia."

"Yes, the pillows, too. Just sand. And not a good quality of sand. It packs too hard, and has never been

"Plenty of it. There is as good bedsand in this region as the world can furnish. Aerated sandand loose; but

"Eight feet square; and a sheet of iced oilcloth to step on in the morning when you get out of the

"There isn't any slopjar. The hotels don't keep them. That is, outside of Sydney and Melbourne."

"Yes, I knew that. I was only talking. It's the oddest thing in Australia. Another thing: I've got to get up in the

"Nobody. You'll call yourself. And you'll light yourself, too. There'll not be a light burning in the halls or

"Nobody. However, I will tell you what to do. In Maryborough there's an American who has lived there half

a lifetime; a fine man, and prosperous and popular. He will be on the lookout for you; you won't have any

trouble. Sleep in peace; he will rout you out, and you will make your train. Where is your manager?"

"I left him at Ballarat, studying the language. And besides, he had to go to Melbourne and get us ready for

"Easy! You've selected the very most difficult piece of railroad in Australia for your experiment. There are

twelve miles of this road which no man without good executive ability can ever hopetell me, have you

"That settles it. The tone ofoh, you wouldn't ever make it in the world. However, that American will

"Ah, there it is, you see! You are going in the 5 o'clock by Castlemainetwelve milesinstead of the 7.15

by Ballaratin order to save two hours of fooling along the road. Now then, don't interruptlet me have the

floor. You're going to save the government a deal of hauling, but that's nothing; your ticket is by Ballarat, and

"Goodness knows! Ask of the winds that far away with fragments strewed the sea, as the boy that stood on

the burning deck used to say. The government chooses to do its railway business in its own way, and it

doesn't know as much about it as the French. In the beginning they tried idiots; then they imported the

Frenchwhich was going backwards, you see; now it runs the roads itselfwhich is going backwards

again, you see. Why, do you know, in order to curry favor with the voters, the government puts down a road

wherever anybody wants itanybody that owns two sheep and a dog; and by consequence we've got, in the

colony of Victoria, 800 railway stations, and the business done at eighty of them doesn't foot up twenty

"I know it. And the stationbusiness doesn't pay for the sheepdip to sanctify their coffee with. It's just as I

say. And accommodating? Why, if you shake a rag the train will stop in the midst of the wilderness to pick

you up. All that kind of politics costs, you see. And then, besides, any town that has a good many votes and

wants a fine station, gets it. Don't you overlook that Maryborough station, if you take an interest in

governmental curiosities. Why, you can put the whole population of Maryborough into it, and give them a

sofa apiece, and have room for more. You haven't fifteen stations in America that are as big, and you

probably haven't five that are half as fine. Why, it's per fectly elegant. And the clock! Everybody will show

yon the clock. There isn't a station in Europe that's got such a clock. It doesn't strikeand that's one mercy. It

hasn't any bell; and as you'll have cause to remember, if you keep your reason, all Australia is simply

bedamned with bells. On every quarterhour, night and day, they jingle a tiresome chime of half a dozen

notesall the clocks in town at once, all the clocks in Australasia at once, and all the very same notes; first,

downward scale: mi, re, do, solthen upward scale: sol, si, re, dodown again: mi, re, do, solup again:

you'rehello, what's all this excitement about? a runawayscared by the train; why, you think this train

could scare anything. Well, when they build eighty stations at a loss and a lot of palacestations and clocks

like Maryborough's at another loss, the government has got to economize somewhere hasn't it? Very well

look at the rolling stock. That's where they save the money. Why, that train from Maryborough will consist of

eighteen freightcars and two passenger kennels; cheap, poor, shabby, slovenly; no drinking water, no

sanitary arrangements, every imaginable inconvenience; and slow?oh, the gait of cold molasses; no

airbrake, no springs, and they'll jolt your head off every time they start or stop. That's where they make their

little economies, you see. They spend tons of money to house you palatially while you wait fifteen minutes

for a train, then degrade you to six hours' convicttransportation to get the foolish outlay back. What a

rational man really needs is discomfort while he's waiting, then his journey in a nice train would be a grateful

change. But no, that would be common senseand out of place in a government. And then, besides, they

save in that other little detail, you knowrepudiate their own tickets, and collect a poor little illegitimate

"Waitthere's more. Leave that American out of the account and see what would happen. There's nobody on

hand to examine your ticket when you arrive. But the conductor will come and examine it when the train is

ready to start. It is too late to buy your extra ticket now; the train can't wait, and won't. You must climb out."

"No, he is not authorized to receive the money, and he won't. You must climb out. There's no other way. I tell

you, the railway management is about the only thoroughly European thing herecontinentally European I

mean, not English. It's the continental business in perfection; down fine. Oh, yes, even to the

"Yes, you'll like Maryborough. Plenty of intelligence there. It's a charming placewith a hell of a hotel."

It was Junior England all the way to Christchurchin fact, just a garden. And Christchurch is an English

town, with an Englishpark annex, and a winding English brook just like the Avonand named the Avon;

but from a man, not from Shakespeare's river. Its grassy banks are bordered by the stateliest and most

impressive weeping willows to be found in the world, I suppose. They continue the line of a great ancestor;

they were grown from sprouts of the willow that sheltered Napoleon's grave in St. Helena. It is a settled old

community, with all the serenities, the graces, the conveniences, and the comforts of the ideal homelife. If it

had an established Church and social inequality it would be England over again with hardly a lack.

In the museum we saw many curious and interesting things; among others a fine native house of the olden

time, with all the details true to the facts, and the showy colors right and in their proper places. All the details:

the fine mats and rugs and things; the elaborate and wonderful wood carvingswonderful, surely,

considering who did them wonderful in design and particularly in execution, for they were done with

admirable sharpness and exactness, and yet with no better tools than flint and jade and shell could furnish;

and the totemposts were there, ancestor above ancestor, with tongues protruded and hands clasped

comfortably over bellies containing other people's ancestorsgrotesque and ugly devils, every one, but

lovingly carved, and ably; and the stuffed natives were present, in their proper places, and looking as natural

as life; and the housekeeping utensils were there, too, and close at hand the carved and finely ornamented war

And we saw little jade gods, to hang around the necknot everybody's, but sacred to the necks of natives of

rank. Also jade weapons, and many kinds of jade trinketsall made out of that excessively hard stone

without the help of any tool of iron. And some of these things had small round holes bored through

themnobody knows how it was done; a mystery, a lost art. I think it was said that if you want such a hole

bored in a piece of jade now, you must send it to London or Amsterdam where the lapidaries are.

Also we saw a complete skeleton of the giant Moa. It stood ten feet high, and must have been a sight to look

at when it was a living bird. It was a kicker, like the ostrich; in fight it did not use its beak, but its foot. It

must have been a convincing kind of kick. If a person had his back to the bird and did not see who it was that

There must have been a sufficiency of moas in the old forgotten days when his breed walked the earth. His

bones are found in vast masses, all crammed together in huge graves. They are not in caves, but in the

ground. Nobody knows how they happened to get concentrated there. Mind, they are bones, not fossils. This

means that the moa has not been extinct very long. Still, this is the only New Zealand creature which has no

mention in that otherwise comprehensive literature, the native legends. This is a significant detail, and is

good circumstantial evidence that the moa has been extinct 500 years, since the Maori has himselfby

traditionbeen in New Zealand since the end of the fifteenth century. He came from an unknown landthe

first Maori didthen sailed back in his canoe and brought his tribe, and they removed the aboriginal peoples

into the sea and into the ground and took the land. That is the tradition. That that first Maori could come, is

understandable, for anybody can come to a place when he isn't trying to; but how that discoverer found his

way back home again without a compass is his secret, and he died with it in him. His language indicates that

he came from Polynesia. He told where he came from, but he couldn't spell well, so one can't find the place

on the map, because people who could spell better than he could, spelt the resemblance all out of it when they

made the map. However, it is better to have a map that is spelt right than one that has information in it.

In New Zealand women have the right to vote for members of the legislature, but they cannot be members

themselves. The law extending the suffrage to them event into effect in 1893. The population of Christchurch

(census of 1891) was 31,454. The first election under the law was held in November of that year. Number of

men who voted, 6,313; number of women who voted, 5,989. These figures ought to convince us that women

are not as indifferent about politics as some people would have us believe. In New Zealand as a whole, the

estimated adult female population was 139,915; of these 109,461 qualified and registered their names on the

rolls 78.23 per cent. of the whole. Of these, 90,290 went to the polls and voted85.18 per cent. Do men ever

turn out better than thatin America or elsewhere? Here is a remark to the other sex's credit, tooI take it

"A feature of the election was the orderliness and sobriety of the people. Women were in no way molested."

At home, a standing argument against woman suffrage has always been that women could not go to the polls

without being insulted. The arguments against woman suffrage have always taken the easy form of prophecy.

The prophets have been prophesying ever since the woman's rights movement began in 1848and in

Men ought to begin to feel a sort of respect for their mothers and wives and sisters by this time. The women

deserve a change of attitude like that, for they have wrought well. In fortyseven years they have swept an

imposingly large number of unfair laws from the statute books of America. In that brief time these serfs have

set themselves free essentially. Men could not have done so much for themselves in that time without

bloodshedat least they never have; and that is argument that they didn't know how. The women have

accomplished a peaceful revolution, and a very beneficent one; and yet that has not convinced the average

man that they are intelligent, and have courage and energy and perseverance and fortitude. It takes much to

convince the average man of anything; and perhaps nothing can ever make him realize that he is the average

woman's inferioryet in several important details the evidences seems to show that that is what he is. Man

has ruled the human race from the beginningbut he should remember that up to the middle of the present

century it was a dull world, and ignorant and stupid; but it is not such a dull world now, and is growing less

and less dull all the time. This is woman's opportunityshe has had none before. I wonder where man will

In the New Zealand law occurs this: "The word person wherever it occurs throughout the Act includes

That is promotion, you see. By that enlargement of the word, the matron with the garnered wisdom and

experience of fifty years becomes at one jump the political equal of her callow kid of twentyone. The white

population of the colony is 626,000, the Maori population is 42,000. The whites elect seventy members of the

House of Representatives, the Maoris four. The Maori women vote for their four members.

November 16. After four pleasant days in Christchurch, we are to leave at midnight tonight. Mr. Kinsey

So we did. I remember it yet. The people who sailed in the Flora that night may forget some other things if

they live a good while, but they will not live long, enough to forget that. The Flora is about the equivalent of

a cattlescow; but when the Union Company find it inconvenient to keep a contract and lucrative to break it,

They give no notice of their projected depredation; you innocently buy tickets for the advertised passenger

boat, and when you get down to Lyttelton at midnight, you find that they have substituted the scow. They

have plenty of good boats, but no competitionand that is the trouble. It is too late now to make other

It is a powerful company, it has a monopoly, and everybody is afraid of itincluding the government's

representative, who stands at the end of the stageplank to tally the passengers and see that no boat receives a

greater number than the law allows her to carry. This convenientlyblind representative saw the scow receive

a number which was far in excess of its privilege, and winked a politic wink and said nothing. The passengers

bore with meekness the cheat which had been put upon them, and made no complaint.

It was like being at home in America, where abused passengers act in just the same way. A few days before,

the Union Company had discharged a captain for getting a boat into danger, and had advertised this act as

evidence of its vigilance in looking after the safety of the passengers for thugging a captain costs the

company nothing, but when opportunity offered to send this dangerously overcrowded tub to sea and save a

little trouble and a tidy penny by it, it forgot to worry about the passenger's safety.

The first officer told me that the Flora was privileged to carry 125 passengers. She must have had all of 200

on board. All the cabins were full, all the cattlestalls in the main stable were full, the spaces at the heads of

companionways were full, every inch of floor and table in the swillroom was packed with sleeping men and

remained so until the place was required for breakfast, all the chairs and benches on the hurricane deck were

If the Flora had gone down that night, half of the people on board would have been wholly without means of

The owners of that boat were not technically guilty of conspiracy to commit murder, but they were morally

I had a cattlestall in the main stablea cavern fitted up with a long double file of twostoried bunks, the

files separated by a calico partitiontwenty men and boys on one side of it, twenty women and girls on the

other. The place was as dark as the soul of the Union Company, and smelt like a kennel. When the vessel got

out into the heavy seas and began to pitch and wallow, the cavern prisoners became immediately seasick, and

then the peculiar results that ensued laid all my previous experiences of the kind well away in the shade. And

the wails, the groans, the cries, the shrieks, the strange ejaculationsit was wonderful.

The women and children and some of the men and boys spent the night in that place, for they were too ill to

leave it; but the rest of us got up, by and by, and finished the night on the hurricanedeck.

That boat was the foulest I was ever in; and the smell of the breakfast saloon when we threaded our way

among the layers of steaming passengers stretched upon its floor and its tables was incomparable for

A good many of us got ashore at the first wayport to seek another ship. After a wait of three hours we got

good rooms in the Mahinapua, a wee little bridalparlor of a boatonly 205 tons burthen; clean and

comfortable; good service; good beds; good table, and no crowding. The seas danced her about like a duck,

Next morning early she went through the French Passa narrow gateway of rock, between bold

headlandsso narrow, in fact, that it seemed no wider than a street. The current tore through there like a

millrace, and the boat darted through like a telegram. The passage was made in half a minute; then we were

in a wide place where noble vast eddies swept grandly round and round in shoal water, and I wondered what

they would do with the little boat. They did as they pleased with her. They picked her up and flung her

around like nothing and landed her gently on the solid, smooth bottom of sandso gently, indeed, that we

barely felt her touch it, barely felt her quiver when she came to a standstill. The water was as clear as glass,

the sand on the bottom was vividly distinct, and the fishes seemed to be swimming about in nothing. Fishing

lines were brought out, but before we could bait the hooks the boat was off and away again.

We soon reached the town of Nelson, and spent the most of the day there, visiting acquaintances and driving

with them about the gardenthe whole region is a garden, excepting the scene of the "Maungatapu

Murders," of thirty years ago. That is a wild placewild and lonely; an ideal place for a murder. It is at the

base of a vast, rugged, densely timbered mountain. In the deep twilight of that forest solitude four desperate

rascalsBurgess, Sullivan, Levy, and Kelleyambushed themselves beside the mountaintrail to murder

and rob four travelersKempthorne, Mathieu, Dudley, and De Pontius, the latter a New Yorker. A harmless

old laboring man came wandering along, and as his presence was an embarrassment, they choked him, hid

him, and then resumed their watch for the four. They had to wait a while, but eventually everything turned

That dark episode is the one large event in the history of Nelson. The fame of it traveled far. Burgess made a

confession. It is a remarkable paper. For brevity, succinctness, and concentration, it is perhaps without its

peer in the literature of murder. There are no waste words in it; there is no obtrusion of matter not pertinent to

the occasion, nor any departure from the dispassionate tone proper to a formal business statementfor that is

what it is: a business statement of a murder, by the chief engineer of it, or superintendent, or foreman, or

"We were getting impatient, when we saw four men and a packhorse coming. I left my cover and had a look

at the men, for Levy had told me that Mathieu was a small man and wore a large beard, and that it was a

chestnut horse. I said, 'Here they come.' They were then a good distance away; I took the caps off my gun,

and put fresh ones on. I said, 'You keep where you are, I'll put them up, and you give me your gun while you

tie them.' It was arranged as I have described. The men came; they arrived within about fifteen yards when I

stepped up and said, 'Stand! bail up!' That means all of them to get together. I made them fall back on the

upper side of the road with their faces up the range, and Sullivan brought me his gun, and then tied their

hands behind them. The horse was very quiet all the time, he did not move. When they were all tied, Sullivan

took the horse up the hill, and put him in the bush; he cut the rope and let the swags'[A "swag" is a kit, a

pack, small baggage.]fall on the ground, and then came to me. We then marched the men down the incline

to the creek; the water at this time barely running. Up this creek we took the men; we went, I daresay, five or

six hundred yards up it, which took us nearly halfanhour to accomplish. Then we turned to the right up the

range; we went, I daresay, one hundred and fifty yards from the creek, and there we sat down with the men. I

said to Sullivan, 'Put down your gun and search these men,' which he did. I asked them their several names;

they told me. I asked them if they were expected at Nelson. They said, 'No.' If such their lives would have

been spared. In money we took L60 odd. I said, 'Is this all you have? You had better tell me.' Sullivan said,

'Here is a bag of gold.' I said, 'What's on that packhorse? Is there any gold ?' when Kempthorne said, 'Yes,

my gold is in the portmanteau, and I trust you will not take it all.' 'Well,' I said, 'we must take you away one at

a time, because the range is steep just here, and then we will let you go.' They said, 'All right,' most

cheerfully. We tied their feet, and took Dudley with us; we went about sixty yards with him. This was

through a scrub. It was arranged the night previously that it would be best to choke them, in case the report of

the arms might be heard from the road, and if they were missed they never would be found. So we tied a

handkerchief over his eyes, when Sullivan took the sash off his waist, put it round his neck, and so strangled

him. Sullivan, after I had killed the old laboring man, found fault with the way he was choked. He said, 'The

next we do I'll show you my way.' I said, 'I have never done such a thing before. I have shot a man, but never

choked one.' We returned to the others, when Kempthorne said, 'What noise was that?' I said it was caused by

breaking through the scrub. This was taking too much time, so it was agreed to shoot them. With that I said,

'We'll take you no further, but separate you, and then loose one of you, and he can relieve the others.' So with

that, Sullivan took De Pontius to the left of where Kempthorne was sitting. I took Mathieu to the right. I tied

a strap round his legs, and shot him with a revolver. He yelled, I ran from him with my gun in my hand, I

sighted Kempthorne, who had risen to his feet. I presented the gun, and shot him behind the right ear; his

life's blood welled from him, and he died instantaneously. Sullivan had shot. De Pontius in the meantime, and

then came to me. I said, 'Look to Mathieu,' indicating the spot where he lay. He shortly returned and said, 'I

had to "chiv" that fellow, he was not dead,' a cant word, meaning that he had to stab him. Returning to the

road we passed where De Pontius lay and was dead. Sullivan said, 'This is the digger, the others were all

storekeepers; this is the digger, let's cover him up, for should the others be found, they'll think he done it and

sloped,' meaning he had gone. So with that we threw all the stones on him, and then left him. This bloody

Anyone who reads that confession will think that the man who wrote it was destitute of emotions, destitute of

feeling. That is partly true. As regarded others he was plainly without feelingutterly cold and pitiless; but

as regarded himself the case was different. While he cared nothing for the future of the murdered men, he

cared a great deal for his own. It makes one's flesh creep to read the introduction to his confession. The judge

on the bench characterized it as "scandalously blasphemous," and it certainly reads so, but Burgess meant no

blasphemy. He was merely a brute, and whatever he said or wrote was sure to expose the fact. His

redemption was a very real thing to him, and he was as jubilantly happy on the gallows as ever was Christian

martyr at the stake. We dwellers in this world are strangely made, and mysteriously circumstanced. We have

to suppose that the murdered men are lost, and that Burgess is saved; but we cannot suppress our natural

"Written in my dungeon drear this 7th of August, in the year of Grace, 1866. To God be ascribed all power

and glory in subduing the rebellious spirit of a most guilty wretch, who has been brought, through the

instrumentality of a faithful follower of Christ, to see his wretched and guilty state, inasmuch as hitherto he

has led an awful and wretched life, and through the assurance of this faithful soldier of Christ, he has been led

and also believes that Christ will yet receive and cleanse him from all his deepdyed and bloody sins. I lie

under the imputation which says, 'Come now and let us reason together, saith the Lord: though your sins be

as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.' On this

We sailed in the afternoon late, spent a few hours at New Plymouth, then sailed again and reached Auckland

the next day, November 20th, and remained in that fine city several days. Its situation is commanding, and

the seaview is superb. There are charming drives all about, and by courtesy of friends we had opportunity to

enjoy them. From the grassy cratersummit of Mount Eden one's eye ranges over a grand sweep and variety

of sceneryforests clothed in luxuriant foliage, rolling green fields, conflagrations of flowers, receding and

dimming stretches of green plain, broken by lofty and symmetrical old cratersthen the blue bays twinkling

and sparkling away into the dreamy distances where the mountains loom spiritual in their veils of haze.

It is from Auckland that one goes to Rotorua, the region of the renowned hot lakes and geysersone of the

chief wonders of New Zealand; but I was not well enough to make the trip. The government has a sanitorium

there, and everything is comfortable for the tourist and the invalid. The government's official physician is

almost overcautious in his estimates of the efficacy of the baths, when he is talking about rheumatism, gout,

paralysis, and such things; but when he is talking about the effectiveness of the waters in eradicating the

whiskyhabit, he seems to have no reserves. The baths will cure the drinkinghabit no matter how chronic it

isand cure it so effectually that even the desire to drink intoxicants will come no more. There should be a

rush from Europe and America to that place; and when the victims of alcoholism find out what they can get

The Thermalsprings District of New Zealand comprises an area of upwards of 600,000 acres, or close on

1,000 square miles. Rotorua is the favorite place. It is the center of a rich field of lake and mountain scenery;

from Rotorua as a base the pleasureseeker makes excursions. The crowd of sick people is great, and

It is from Auckland that the Kauri gum is shipped. For a long time now about 8,000 tons of it have been

brought into the town per year. It is worth about $300 per ton, unassorted; assorted, the finest grades are

worth about $1,000. It goes to America, chiefly. It is in lumps, and is hard and smooth, and looks like

amberthe lightcolored like new amber, and the dark brown like rich old amber. And it has the pleasant

feel of amber, too. Some of the lightcolored samples were a tolerably fair counterfeit of uncut South African

diamonds, they were so perfectly smooth and polished and transparent. It is manufactured into varnish; a

The gum is dug up out of the ground; it has been there for ages. It is the sap of the Kauri tree. Dr. Campbell

of Auckland told me he sent a cargo of it to England fifty years ago, but nothing came of the venture. Nobody

November 263 P.M., sailed. Vast and beautiful harbor. Land all about for hours. Tangariwa, the mountain

that "has the same shape from every point of view." That is the common belief in Auckland. And so it has

from every point of view except thirteen. Perfect summer weather. Large school of whales in the distance.

Nothing could be daintier than the puffs of vapor they spout up, when seen against the pink glory of the

sinking sun, or against the dark mass of an island reposing in the deep blue shadow of a storm cloud . . . .

Great Barrier rock standing up out of the sea away to the left. Sometime ago a ship hit it full speed in a

fog20 miles out of her course140 lives lost; the captain committed suicide without waiting a moment.

He knew that, whether he was to blame or not, the company owning the vessel would discharge him and

make a devotiontopassengers' safety advertisement out of it, and his chance to make a livelihood would

November 27. Today we reached Gisborne, and anchored in a big bay; there was a heavy sea on, so we

We were a mile from shore; a little steamtug put out from the land; she was an object of thrilling interest;

she would climb to the summit of a billow, reel drunkenly there a moment, dim and gray in the driving storm

of spindrift, then make a plunge like a diver and remain out of sight until one had given her up, then up she

would dart again, on a steep slant toward the sky, shedding Niagaras of water from her forecastleand this

she kept up, all the way out to us. She brought twentyfive passengers in her stomachmen and women

mainly a traveling dramatic company. In sight on deck were the crew, in sou'westers, yellow waterproof

canvas suits, and boots to the thigh. The deck was never quiet for a moment, and seldom nearer level than a

ladder, and noble were the seas which leapt aboard and went flooding aft. We rove a long line to the

yardarm, hung a most primitive basketchair to it and swung it out into the spacious air of heaven, and there

it swayed, pendulumfashion, waiting for its chancethen down it shot, skillfully aimed, and was grabbed

by the two men on the forecastle. A young fellow belonging to our crew was in the chair, to be a protection to

the ladycomers. At once a couple of ladies appeared from below, took seats in his lap, we hoisted them into

the sky, waited a moment till the roll of the ship brought them in overhead, then we lowered suddenly away,

and seized the chair as it struck the deck. We took the twentyfive aboard, and delivered twentyfive into the

tugamong them several aged ladies, and one blind oneand all without accident. It was a fine piece of

Ours is a nice ship, roomy, comfortable, wellordered, and satisfactory. Now and then we step on a rat in a

hotel, but we have had no rats on shipboard lately; unless, perhaps in the Flora; we had more serious things to

think of there, and did not notice. I have noticed that it is only in ships and hotels which still employ the

odious Chinese gong, that you find rats. The reason would seem to be, that as a rat cannot tell the time of day

November 29. The doctor tells me of several old drunkards, one spiritless loafer, and several fargone moral

wrecks who have been reclaimed by the Salvation Army and have remained staunch people and hard workers

these two years. Wherever one goes, these testimonials to the Army's efficiency are forthcoming . . . . This

morning we had one of those whizzing green Ballarat flies in the room, with his stunning buzz saw

noisethe swiftest creature in the world except the lightningflash. It is a stupendous force that is stored up

in that little body. If we had it in a ship in the same proportion, we could spin from Liverpool to New York in

the space of an hourthe time it takes to eat luncheon. The New Zealand express train is called the Ballarat

Fly . . . . Bad teeth in the colonies. A citizen told me they don't have teeth filled, but pull them out and put in

false ones, and that now and then one sees a young lady with a full set. She is fortunate. I wish I had been

born with false teeth and a false liver and false carbuncles. I should get along better.

December 2. Monday. Left Napier in the Ballarat Fly the one that goes twice a week. From Napier to

Hastings, twelve miles; time, fiftyfive minutesnot so far short of thirteen miles an hour . . . . A perfect

summer day; cool breeze, brilliant sky, rich vegetation. Two or three times during the afternoon we saw

wonderfully dense and beautiful forests, tumultuously piled skyward on the broken highlandsnot the

customary rooflike slant of a hillside, where the trees are all the same height. The noblest of these trees were

of the Kauri breed, we were told the timber that is now furnishing the woodpaving for Europe, and is the

best of all wood for that purpose. Sometimes these towering upheavals of forestry were festooned and

garlanded with vinecables, and sometimes the masses of undergrowth were cocooned in another sort of vine

of a delicate cobwebby texturethey call it the "supplejack," I think. Tree ferns everywherea stem fifteen

feet high, with a graceful chalice of fern fronds sprouting from its topa lovely forest ornament. And there

was a tenfoot reed with a flowing suit of what looked like yellow hair hanging from its upper end. I do not

know its name, but if there is such a thing as a scalpplant, this is it. A romantic gorge, with a brook flowing

Waitukurau. Twenty minutes for luncheon. With me sat my wife and daughter, and my manager, Mr. Carlyle

Smythe. I sat at the head of the table, and could see the righthand wall; the others had their backs to it. On

that wall, at a good distance away, were a couple of framed pictures. I could not see them clearly, but from

the groupings of the figures I fancied that they represented the killing of Napoleon III's son by the Zulus in

South Africa. I broke into the conversation, which was about poetry and cabbage and art, and said to my

There was no collusion. She had not seen the pictures, and they had not been mentioned. She ought to have

thought of some recent news that came to Paris, for we were but seven months from there and had been living

there a couple of years when we started on this trip; but instead of that she thought of an incident of our brief

Here was a clear case of mental telegraphy; of mindtransference; of my mind telegraphing a thought into

hers. How do I know? Because I telegraphed an error. For it turned out that the pictures did not represent the

killing of Lulu at all, nor anything connected with Lulu. She had to get the error from my headit existed

WAUGANIUI, December 3. A pleasant trip, yesterday, per Ballarat Fly. Four hours. I do not know the

distance, but it must have been well along toward fifty miles. The Fly could have spun it out to eight hours

and not discommoded me; for where there is comfort, and no need for hurry, speed is of no valueat least to

me; and nothing that goes on wheels can be more comfortable, more satisfactory, than the New Zealand

trains. Outside of America there are no cars that are so rationally devised. When you add the constant

presence of charming scenery and the nearly constant absence of dustwell, if one is not content then, he

ought to get out and walk. That would change his spirit, perhaps? I think so. At the end of an hour you would

Much horseback riding, in and around this town; many comely girls in cool and pretty summer gowns; much

Salvation Army; lots of Maoris; the faces and bodies of some of the old ones very tastefully frescoed. Maori

Council House over the riverlarge, strong, carpeted from end to end with matting, and decorated with

I was assured by a member of the House of Representatives that the native race is not decreasing, but actually

increasing slightly. It is another evidence that they are a superior breed of savages. I do not call to mind any

savage race that built such good houses, or such strong and ingenious and scientific fortresses, or gave so

much attention to agriculture, or had military arts and devices which so nearly approached the white man's.

These, taken together with their high abilities in boatbuilding, and their tastes and capacities in the

ornamental arts modify their savagery to a semicivilizationor at least to, a quarter civilization.

It is a compliment to them that the British did not exterminate them, as they did the Australians and the

Tasmanians, but were content with subduing them, and showed no desire to go further. And it is another

compliment to them that the British did not take the whole of their choicest lands, but left them a

considerable part, and then went further and protected them from the rapacities of landsharksa protection

which the New Zealand Government still extends to them. And it is still another compliment to the Maoris

that the Government allows native representationin both the legislature and the cabinet, and gives both

sexes the vote. And in doing these things the Government also compliments itself; it has not been the custom

The highest class white men Who lived among the Maoris in the earliest time had a high opinion of them and

a strong affection for them. Among the whites of this sort was the author of "Old New Zealand;" and Dr.

Campbell of Auckland was another. Dr. Campbell was a close friend of several chiefs, and has many pleasant

things to say of their fidelity, their magnanimity, and their generosity. Also of their quaint notions about the

white man's queer civilization, and their equally quaint comments upon it. One of them thought the

missionary had got everything wrong end first and upside down. "Why, he wants us to stop worshiping and

supplicating the evil gods, and go to worshiping and supplicating the Good One! There is no sense in that. A

The Maoris had the tabu; and had it on a Polynesian scale of comprehensiveness and elaboration. Some of its

features could have been importations from India and Judea. Neither the Maori nor the Hindoo of common

degree could cook by a fire that a person of higher caste had used, nor could the high Maori or high Hindoo

employ fire that had served a man of low grade; if a lowgrade Maori or Hindoo drank from a vessel

belonging to a highgrade man, the vessel was defiled, and had to be destroyed. There were other

Yesterday a lunatic burst into my quarters and warned me that the Jesuits were going to "cook" (poison) me

in my food, or kill me on the stage at night. He said a mysterious sign was visible upon my posters and meant

my death. He said he saved Rev. Mr. Haweis's life by warning him that there were three men on his platform

who would kill him if he took his eyes off them for a moment during his lecture. The same men were in my

audience last night, but they saw that he was there. "Will they be there again tonight?" He hesitated; then

said no, he thought they would rather take a rest and chance the poison. This lunatic has no delicacy. But he

was not uninteresting. He told me a lot of things. He said he had "saved so many lecturers in twenty years,

that they put him in the asylum." I think he has less refinement than any lunatic I have met.

December 8. A couple of curious warmonuments here at Wanganui. One is in honor of white men "who fell

in defence of law and order against fanaticism and barbarism." Fanaticism. We Americans are English in

blood, English in speech, English in religion, English in the essentials of our governmental system, English in

the essentials of our civilization; and so, let us hope, for the honor of the blend, for the honor of the blood, for

the honor of the race, that that word got there through lack of heedfulness, and will not be suffered to remain.

If you carve it at Thermopylae, or where Winkelried died, or upon Bunker Hill monument, and read it again

"who fell in defence of law and order against fanaticism" you will perceive what the word means, and how

mischosen it is. Patriotism is Patriotism. Calling it Fanaticism cannot degrade it; nothing can degrade it. Even

though it be a political mistake, and a thousand times a political mistake, that does not affect it; it is

honorable always honorable, always nobleand privileged to hold its head up and look the nations in the

face. It is right to praise these brave white men who fell in the Maori warthey deserve it; but the presence

of that word detracts from the dignity of their cause and their deeds, and makes them appear to have spilt

their blood in a conflict with ignoble men, men not worthy of that costly sacrifice. But the men were worthy.

It was no shame to fight them. They fought for their homes, they fought for their country; they bravely fought

and bravely fell; and it would take nothing from the honor of the brave Englishmen who lie under the

monument, but add to it, to say that they died in defense of English laws and English homes against men

The other monument cannot be rectified. Except with dynamite. It is a mistake all through, and a strangely

thoughtless one. It is a monument erected by white men to Maoris who fell fighting with the whites and

against their own people, in the Maori war. "Sacred to the memory of the brave men who fell on the 14th of

May, 1864," etc. On one side are the names of about twenty Maoris. It is not a fancy of mine; the monument

exists. I saw it. It is an objectlesson to the rising generation. It invites to treachery, disloyalty, unpatriotism.

Its lesson, in frank terms is, "Desert your flag, slay your people, burn their homes, shame your

December 9. Wellington. Ten hours from Wanganui by the Fly. December 12. It is a fine city and nobly

situated. A busy place, and full of life and movement. Have spent the three days partly in walking about,

partly in enjoying social privileges, and largely in idling around the magnificent garden at Hutt, a little

distance away, around the shore. I suppose we shall not see such another one soon.

We are packing tonight for the returnvoyage to Australia. Our stay in New Zealand has been too brief;

The sturdy Maoris made the settlement of the country by the whites rather difficult. Not at firstbut later. At

first they welcomed the whites, and were eager to trade with themparticularly for muskets; for their

pastime was internecine war, and they greatly preferred the white man's weapons to their own. War was their

pastimeI use the word advisedly. They often met and slaughtered each other just for a lark, and when there

was no quarrel. The author of "Old New Zealand" mentions a case where a victorious army could have

followed up its advantage and exterminated the opposing army, but declined to do it; explaining naively that

"if we did that, there couldn't be any more fighting." In another battle one army sent word that it was out of

ammunition, and would be obliged to stop unless the opposing army would send some. It was sent, and the

In the early days things went well enough. The natives sold land without clearly understanding the terms of

exchange, and the whites bought it without being much disturbed about the native's confusion of mind. But

by and by the Maori began to comprehend that he was being wronged; then there was trouble, for he was not

the man to swallow a wrong and go aside and cry about it. He had the Tasmanian's spirit and endurance, and

a notable share of military science besides; and so he rose against the oppressor, did this gallant "fanatic," and

started a war that was not brought to a definite end until more than a generation had sped.

Friday, December 13. Sailed, at 3 p.m., in the 'Mararoa'. Summer seas and a good shiplife has nothing

Monday. Three days of paradise. Warm and sunny and smooth; the sea a luminous Mediterranean blue . . . .

One lolls in a long chair all day under deckawnings, and reads and smokes, in measureless content. One

does not read prose at such a time, but poetry. I have been reading the poems of Mrs. Julia A. Moore, again,

and I find in them the same grace and melody that attracted me when they were first published, twenty years

"The Sentimental Song Book" has long been out of print, and has been forgotten by the world in general, but

Indeed, it has the same deep charm for me that the Vicar of Wakefield has, and I find in it the same subtle

touchthe touch that makes an intentionally humorous episode pathetic and an intentionally pathetic one

funny. In her time Mrs. Moore was called "the Sweet Singer of Michigan," and was best known by that name.

I have read her book through twice today, with the purpose of determining which of her pieces has most

merit, and I am persuaded that for wide grasp and sustained power, "William Upson" may claim first place

Air"The Major's Only Son." Come all good people far and near, Oh, come and see what you can hear, It's

Now, William Upson was his name If it's not that, it's all the same He did enlist in a cruel strife, And it

He was Perry Upson's eldest son, His father loved his noble son, This son was nineteen years of age When

His father said that he might go, But his dear mother she said no, "Oh! stay at home, dear Billy," she said, But

He went to Nashville, in Tennessee, There his kind friends he could not see; He died among strangers, so far

He was taken sick and lived four weeks, And Oh! how his parents weep, But now they must in sorrow mourn,

Oh! if his mother could have seen her son, For she loved him, her darling son; If she could heard his dying

How it would relieve his mother's heart To see her son from this world depart, And hear his noble words of

Now it will relieve his mother's heart, For her son is laid in our graveyard; For now she knows that his grave

Although she knows not that it was her son, For his coffin could not be opened It might be someone in his

December, 19. In the train. Fellow of 30 with four valises; a slim creature, with teeth which made his mouth

look like a neglected churchyard. He had solidified hairsolidified with pomatum; it was all one shell. He

smoked the most extraordinary cigarettesmade of some kind of manure, apparently. These and his hair

made him smell like the very nation. He had a lowcut vest on, which exposed a deal of frayed and broken

and unclean shirtfront. Showy studs, of imitation goldthey had made black disks on the linen. Oversized

sleeve buttons of imitation gold, the copper base showing through. Ponderous watchchain of imitation gold.

I judge that he couldn't tell the time by it, for he asked Smythe what time it was, once. He wore a coat which

had been gay when it was young; 5o'clockteatrousers of a light tint, and marvelously soiled; yellow

mustache with a dashing upward whirl at the ends; foxy shoes, imitation patent leather. He was a

noveltyan imitation dude. He would have been a real one if he could have afforded it. But he was satisfied

with himself. You could see it in his expression, and in all his attitudes and movements. He was living in a

dude dreamland where all his squalid shams were genuine, and himself a sincerity. It disarmed criticism, it

mollified spite, to see him so enjoy his imitation languors, and arts, and airs, and his studied daintinesses of

gesture and misbegotten refinements. It was plain to me that be was imagining himself the Prince of Wales,

and was doing everything the way he thought the Prince would do it. For bringing his four valises aboard and

stowing them in the nettings, he gave his porter four cents, and lightly apologized for the smallness of the

gratuity just with the condescendingest little royal air in the world. He stretched himself out on the front

seat and rested his pomatumcake on the middle arm, and stuck his feet out of the window, and began to pose

as the Prince and work his dreams and languors for exhibition; and he would indolently watch the blue films

curling up from his cigarette, and inhale the stench, and look so grateful; and would flip the ash away with

the daintiest gesture, unintentionally displaying his brass ring in the most intentional way; why, it was as

There was other scenery in the trip. That of the Hawksbury river, in the National Park region,

fineextraordinarily fine, with spacious views of stream and lake imposingly framed in woody hills; and

every now and then the noblest groupings of mountains, and the most enchanting rearrangements of the water

effects. Further along, green flats, thinly covered with gum forests, with here and there the huts and cabins of

small farmers engaged in raising children. Still further along, arid stretches, lifeless and melancholy. Then

Newcastle, a rushing town, capital of the rich coal regions. Approaching Scone, wide farming and grazing

levels, with pretty frequent glimpses of a troublesome planta particularly devilish little prickly pear, daily

damned in the orisons of the agriculturist; imported by a lady of sentiment, and contributed gratis to the

December 20. Back to Sydney. Blazing hot again. From the newspaper, and from the map, I have made a

collection of curious names of Australasian towns, with the idea of making a poem out of them:

Tumut Takee Murriwillumba Bowral Ballarat Mullengudgery Murrurundi WaggaWagga Wyalong

Murrumbidgee Goomeroo Wolloway Wangary Wanilla Worrow Koppio Yankalilla Yaranyacka

Yackamoorundie Kaiwaka Coomooroo Tauranga Geelong Tongariro Kaikoura Wakatipu Oohipara

Waitpinga Goelwa Munno Para Nangkita Myponga Kapunda Kooringa Penola Nangwarry Kongorong

Comaum Koolywurtie Killanoola Naracoorte Muloowurtie Binnum Wallaroo Wirrega Mundoora Hauraki

Rangiriri Teawamute Taranaki Toowoomba Goondiwindi Jerrilderie Whangaroa Wollongong

Mittagong Jamberoo Kondoparinga Kuitpo Tungkillo Oukaparinga Talunga Yatala Parawirra Moorooroo

Whangarei Woolundunga Booleroo Pernatty Parramatta Taroom Narrandera Deniliquin Kawakawa.

The Bombola faints in the hot Bowral tree, Where fierce Mullengudgery's smothering fires Far from the

And Murriwillumba complaineth in song For the garlanded bowers of Woolloomooloo, And the Ballarat Fly

The wallabi sighs for the Murrubidgee, For the velvety sod of the Munno Parah, Where the waters of healing

The Koppio sorrows for lost Wolloway, And sigheth in secret for Murrurundi, The Whangeroo wombat

The Teawamute Tumut from Wirrega's glade, The Nangkita swallow, the Wallaroo swan, They long for the

The Kooringa buffalo pants in the sun, The Kondoparinga lies gaping for breath, The Kongorong Camaum to

In the weltering hell of the Moorooroo plain The Yatala Wangary withers and dies, And the Worrow Wanilla,

Sweet Nangwarry's desolate, Coonamble wails, And Tungkillo Kuito in sables is drest, For the Whangerei

Mypongo, Kapunda, O slumber no more Yankalilla, Parawirra, be warned There's death in the air!

Cootamundra, and Takee, and Wakatipu, Toowoomba, Kaikoura are lost From Onkaparinga to far Oamaru

Paramatta and Binnum are gone to their rest In the vale of Tapanni Taroom, Kawakawa, Deniliquinall that

Narrandera mourns, Cameron answers not When the roll of the scathless we cry Tongariro, Goondiwindi,

Those are good words for poetry. Among the best I have ever seen. There are 81 in the list. I did not need

them all, but I have knocked down 66 of them; which is a good bag, it seems to me, for a person not in the

business. Perhaps a poet laureate could do better, but a poet laureate gets wages, and that is different. When I

write poetry I do not get any wages; often I lose money by it. The best word in that list, and the most musical

and gurgly, is Woolloomoolloo. It is a place near Sydney, and is a favorite pleasureresort. It has eight O's in

MONDAY,December 23, 1895. Sailed from Sydney for Ceylon in the P. O. steamer 'Oceana'. A Lascar

crew mans this shipthe first I have seen. White cotton petticoat and pants; barefoot; red shawl for belt;

straw cap, brimless, on head, with red scarf wound around it; complexion a rich dark brown; short straight

black hair; whiskers fine and silky; lustrous and intensely black. Mild, good faces; willing and obedient

people; capable, too; but are said to go into hopeless panics when there is danger. They are from Bombay and

the coast thereabouts. Left some of the trunks in Sydney, to be shipped to South Africa by a vessel advertised

to sail three months hence. The proverb says: "Separate not yourself from your baggage."

This 'Oceana' is a stately big ship, luxuriously appointed. She has spacious promenade decks. Large rooms; a

surpassingly comfortable ship. The officers' library is well selected; a ship's library is not usually that . . . .

For meals, the bugle call, manofwar fashion; a pleasant change from the terrible gong . . . . Three big

catsvery friendly loafers; they wander all over the ship; the white one follows the chief steward around like

a dog. There is also a basket of kittens. One of these cats goes ashore, in port, in England, Australia, and

India, to see how his various families are getting along, and is seen no more till the ship is ready to sail. No

one knows how he finds out the sailing date, but no doubt he comes down to the dock every day and takes a

look, and when he sees baggage and passengers flocking in, recognizes that it is time to get aboard. This is

what the sailors believe. The Chief Engineer has been in the China and India trade thirty three years, and has

had but three Christmases at home in that time . . . . Conversational items at dinner, "Mocha! sold all over the

world! It is not true. In fact, very few foreigners except the Emperor of Russia have ever seen a grain of it, or

ever will, while they live." Another man said: "There is no sale in Australia for Australian wine. But it goes

to France and comes back with a French label on it, and then they buy it." I have heard that the most of the

Frenchlabeled claret in New York is made in California. And I remember what Professor S. told me once

about Veuve Cliquotif that was the wine, and I think it was. He was the guest of a great wine merchant

whose town was quite near that vineyard, and this merchant asked him if very much V. C. was drunk in

"It depends on the style of the hotelfrom fifteen to twentyfive francs a bottle."

"Yesand there was never a bottle of the genuine in America since Columbus's time. That wine all comes

from a little bit of a patch of ground which isn't big enough to raise many bottles; and all of it that is produced

goes every year to one personthe Emperor of Russia. He takes the whole crop in advance, be it big or

January 4, 1898. Christmas in Melbourne, New Year's Day in Adelaide, and saw most of the friends again in

both places . . . . Lying here at anchor all dayAlbany (King George's Sound), Western Australia. It is a

perfectly landlocked harbor, or roadsteadspacious to look at, but not deep water. Desolatelooking rocks

and scarred hills. Plenty of ships arriving now, rushing to the new goldfields. The papers are full of

wonderful tales of the sort always to be heard in connection with new gold diggings. A sample: a youth

staked out a claim and tried to sell half for L5; no takers; he stuck to it fourteen days, starving, then struck it

rich and sold out for L10,000. . . About sunset, strong breeze blowing, got up the anchor. We were in a small

deep puddle, with a narrow channel leading out of it, minutely buoyed, to the sea.

I stayed on deck to see how we were going to manage it with such a big ship and such a strong wind. On the

bridge our giant captain, in uniform; at his side a little pilot in elaborately goldlaced uniform; on the

forecastle a white mate and quartermaster or two, and a brilliant crowd of lascars standing by for business.

Our stern was pointing straight at the head of the channel; so we must turn entirely around in the

puddleand the wind blowing as described. It was done, and beautifully. It was done by help of a jib. We

stirred up much mud, but did not touch the bottom. We turned right around in our tracksa seeming

impossibility. We had several casts of quarterless 5, and one cast of half 427 feet; we were drawing 26

astern. By the time we were entirely around and pointed, the first buoy was not more than a hundred yards in

front of us. It was a fine piece of work, and I was the only passenger that saw it. However, the others got their

dinner; the P. O. Company got mine . . . . More cats developed. Smythe says it is a British law that they must

be carried; and he instanced a case of a ship not allowed to sail till she sent for a couple. The bill came, too:

"Debtor, to 2 cats, 20 shillings." . . . News comes that within this week Siam has acknowledged herself to be,

in effect, a French province. It seems plain that all savage and semicivilized countries are going to be

grabbed . . . . A vulture on board; bald, red, queershaped head, featherless red places here and there on his

body, intense great black eyes set in featherless rims of inflamed flesh; dissipated look; a businesslike style, a

selfish, conscienceless, murderous aspectthe very look of a professional assassin, and yet a bird which

does no murder. What was the use of getting him up in that tragic style for so innocent a trade as his? For this

one isn't the sort that wars upon the living, his diet is offaland the more out of date it is the better he likes

it. Nature should give him a suit of rusty black; then he would be all right, for he would look like an

undertaker and would harmonize with his business; whereas the way he is now he is horribly out of true.

January 5. At 9 this morning we passed Cape Leeuwin (lioness) and ceased from our long duewest course

along the southern shore of Australia. Turning this extreme southwestern corner, we now take a long straight

slant nearly N. W., without a break, for Ceylon. As we speed northward it will grow hotter very fastbut it

isn't chilly, now. . . . The vulture is from the public menagerie at Adelaidea great and interesting

collection. It was there that we saw the baby tiger solemnly spreading its mouth and trying to roar like its

majestic mother. It swaggered, scowling, back and forth on its short legs just as it had seen her do on her long

ones, and now and then snarling viciously, exposing its teeth, with a threatening lift of its upper lip and

bristling moustache; and when it thought it was impressing the visitors, it would spread its mouth wide and

do that screechy cry which it meant for a roar, but which did not deceive. It took itself quite seriously, and

was lovably comical. And there was a hyenaan ugly creature; as ugly as the tigerkitty was pretty. It

repeatedly arched its back and delivered itself of such a human cry; a startling resemblance; a cry which was

just that of a grown person badly hurt. In the dark one would assuredly go to its assistanceand be

disappointed . . . . Many friends of Australasian Federation on board. They feel sure that the good day is not

far off, now. But there seems to be a party that would go further have Australasia cut loose from the

British Empire and set up housekeeping on her own hook. It seems an unwise idea. They point to the United

States, but it seems to me that the cases lack a good deal of being alike. Australasia governs herself

whollythere is no interference; and her commerce and manufactures are not oppressed in any way. If our

January 13. Unspeakably hot. The equator is arriving again. We are within eight degrees of it. Ceylon

present. Dear me, it is beautiful! And most sumptuously tropical, as to character of foliage and opulence of it.

"What though the spicy breezes blow soft o'er Ceylon's isle"an eloquent line, an incomparable line; it says

little, but conveys whole libraries of sentiment, and Oriental charm and mystery, and tropic deliciousnessa

line that quivers and tingles with a thousand unexpressed and inexpressible things, things that haunt one and

find no articulate voice . . . . Colombo, the capital. An Oriental town, most manifestly; and fascinating.

In this palatial ship the passengers dress for dinner. The ladies' toilettes make a fine display of color, and this

is in keeping with the elegance of the vessel's furnishings and the flooding brilliancies of the electric light. On

the stormy Atlantic one never sees a man in evening dress, except at the rarest intervals; and then there is

only one, not two; and he shows up but once on the voyagethe night before the ship makes portthe night

when they have the "concert" and do the amateur wailings and recitations. He is the tenor, as a rule . . . .

There has been a deal of cricketplaying on board; it seems a queer game for a ship, but they enclose the

promenade deck with nettings and keep the ball from flying overboard, and the sport goes very well, and is

January 14. Hotel Bristol. Servant Brompy. Alert, gentle, smiling, winning young brown creature as ever

was. Beautiful shining black hair combed back like a woman's, and knotted at the back of his head

tortoiseshell comb in it, sign that he is a Singhalese; slender, shapely form; jacket; under it is a beltless and

flowing white cotton gownfrom neck straight to heel; he and his outfit quite unmasculine. It was an

We drove to the market, using the Japanese jinrikshaour first acquaintanceship with it. It is a light cart,

with a native to draw it. He makes good speed for halfanhour, but it is hard work for him; he is too slight

for it. After the halfhour there is no more pleasure for you; your attention is all on the man, just as it would

be on a tired horse, and necessarily your sympathy is there too. There's a plenty of these 'rickshas, and the

I was in Cairo years ago. That was Oriental, but there was a lack. When you are in Florida or New Orleans

you are in the Souththat is granted; but you are not in the South; you are in a modified South, a tempered

South. Cairo was a tempered Orientan Orient with an indefinite something wanting. That feeling was not

present in Ceylon. Ceylon was Oriental in the last measure of completenessutterly Oriental; also utterly

tropical; and indeed to one's unreasoning spiritual sense the two things belong together. All the requisites

were present. The costumes were right; the black and brown exposures, unconscious of immodesty, were

right; the juggler was there, with his basket, his snakes, his mongoose, and his arrangements for growing a

tree from seed to foliage and ripe fruitage before one's eves; in sight were plants and flowers familiar to one

on books but in no other way celebrated, desirable, strange, but in production restricted to the hot belt of the

equator; and out a little way in the country were the proper deadly snakes, and fierce beasts of prey, and the

wild elephant and the monkey. And there was that swoon in the air which one associates with the tropics, and

that smother of heat, heavy with odors of unknown flowers, and that sudden invasion of purple gloom

fissured with lightnings,then the tumult of crashing thunder and the downpour and presently all sunny and

smiling again; all these things were there; the conditions were complete, nothing was lacking. And away off

in the deeps of the jungle and in the remotenesses of the mountains were the ruined cities and mouldering

temples, mysterious relics of the pomps of a forgotten time and a vanished raceand this was as it should

be, also, for nothing is quite satisfyingly Oriental that lacks the somber and impressive qualities of mystery

The drive through the town and out to the Galle Face by the seashore, what a dream it was of tropical

splendors of bloom and blossom, and Oriental conflagrations of costume! The walking groups of men,

women, boys, girls, babieseach individual was a flame, each group a house afire for color. And such

stunning colors, such intensely vivid colors, such rich and exquisite minglings and fusings of rainbows and

lightnings! And all harmonious, all in perfect taste; never a discordant note; never a color on any person

swearing at another color on him or failing to harmonize faultlessly with the colors of any group the wearer

might join. The stuffs were silkthin, soft, delicate, clinging; and, as a rule, each piece a solid color: a

splendid green, a splendid blue, a splendid yellow, a splendid purple, a splendid ruby, deep, and rich with

smouldering fires they swept continuously by in crowds and legions and multitudes, glowing, flashing,

burning, radiant; and every five seconds came a burst of blinding red that made a body catch his breath, and

filled his heart with joy. And then, the unimaginable grace of those costumes! Sometimes a woman's whole

dress was but a scarf wound about her person and her head, sometimes a man's was but a turban and a

careless rag or twoin both cases generous areas of polished dark skin showingbut always the

arrangement compelled the homage of the eye and made the heart sing for gladness.

I can see it to this day, that radiant panorama, that wilderness of rich color, that incomparable

dissolvingview of harmonious tints, and lithe halfcovered forms, and beautiful brown faces, and gracious

and graceful gestures and attitudes and movements, free, unstudied, barren of stiffness and restraint, and

Just then, into this dream of fairyland and paradise a grating dissonance was injected.

Out of a missionary school came marching, two and two, sixteen prim and pious little Christian black girls,

Europeanly clotheddressed, to the last detail, as they would have been dressed on a summer Sunday in an

English or American village. Those clothesoh, they were unspeakably ugly! Ugly, barbarous, destitute of

taste, destitute of grace, repulsive as a shroud. I looked at my womenfolk's clothesjust fullgrown

duplicates of the outrages disguising those poor little abused creatures and was ashamed to be seen in the

street with them. Then I looked at my own clothes, and was ashamed to be seen in the street with myself.

However, we must put up with our clothes as they arethey have their reason for existing. They are on us to

expose usto advertise what we wear them to conceal. They are a sign; a sign of insincerity; a sign of

suppressed vanity; a pretense that we despise gorgeous colors and the graces of harmony and form; and we

put them on to propagate that lie and back it up. But we do not deceive our neighbor; and when we step into

Ceylon we realize that we have not even deceived ourselves. We do love brilliant colors and graceful

costumes; and at home we will turn out in a storm to see them when the procession goes byand envy the

wearers. We go to the theater to look at them and grieve that we can't be clothed like that. We go to the

King's ball, when we get a chance, and are glad of a sight of the splendid uniforms and the glittering orders.

When we are granted permission to attend an imperial drawingroom we shut ourselves up in private and

parade around in the theatrical courtdress by the hour, and admire ourselves in the glass, and are utterly

happy; and every member of every governor's staff in democratic America does the same with his grand new

uniformand if he is not watched he will get himself photographed in it, too. When I see the Lord Mayor's

footman I am dissatisfied with my lot. Yes, our clothes are a lie, and have been nothing short of that these

hundred years. They are insincere, they are the ugly and appropriate outward exposure of an inward sham and

The last little brown boy I chanced to notice in the crowds and swarms of Colombo had nothing on but a

twine string around his waist, but in my memory the frank honesty of his costume still stands out in pleasant

contrast with the odious flummery in which the little Sundayschool dowdies were masquerading.

EVENING11th. Sailed in the Rosetta. This is a poor old ship, and ought to be insured and sunk. As in the

'Oceana', just so here: everybody dresses for dinner; they make it a sort of pious duty. These fine and formal

costumes are a rather conspicuous contrast to the poverty and shabbiness of the surroundings . . . . If you

want a slice of a lime at four o'clock tea, you must sign an order on the bar. Limes cost 14 cents a barrel.

January 18th. We have been running up the Arabian Sea, latterly. Closing up on Bombay now, and due to

January 20th. Bombay! A bewitching place, a bewildering place, an enchanting placethe Arabian Nights

come again? It is a vast city; contains about a million inhabitants. Natives, they are, with a slight sprinkling of

white peoplenot enough to have the slightest modifying effect upon the massed dark complexion of the

public. It is winter here, yet the weather is the divine weather of June, and the foliage is the fresh and

heavenly foliage of June. There is a rank of noble great shade trees across the way from the hotel, and under

them sit groups of picturesque natives of both sexes; and the juggler in his turban is there with his snakes and

his magic; and all day long the cabs and the multitudinous varieties of costumes flock by. It does not seem as

if one could ever get tired of watching this moving show, this shining and shifting spectacle . . . . In the great

bazar the pack and jam of natives was marvelous, the sea of richcolored turbans and draperies an inspiring

sight, and the quaint and showy Indian architecture was just the right setting for it. Toward sunset another

show; this is the drive around the seashore to Malabar Point, where Lord Sandhurst, the Governor of the

Bombay Presidency, lives. Parsee palaces all along the first part of the drive; and past them all the world is

driving; the private carriages of wealthy Englishmen and natives of rank are manned by a driver and three

footmen in stunning oriental liveriestwo of these turbaned statues standing up behind, as fine as

monuments. Sometimes even the public carriages have this superabundant crew, slightly modifiedone to

drive, one to sit by and see it done, and one to stand up behind and yellyell when there is anybody in the

way, and for practice when there isn't. It all helps to keep up the liveliness and augment the general sense of

In the region of Scandal Pointfelicitous namewhere there are handy rocks to sit on and a noble view of

the sea on the one hand, and on the other the passing and reprising whirl and tumult of gay carriages, are

great groups of comfortablyoff Parsee womenperfect flowerbeds of brilliant color, a fascinating

spectacle. Tramp, tramp, tramping along the road, in singles, couples, groups, and gangs, you have the

working man and the workingwomanbut not clothed like ours. Usually the man is a noblybuilt great

athlete, with not a rag on but his loinhandkerchief; his color a deep dark brown, his skin satin, his rounded

muscles knobbing it as if it had eggs under it. Usually the woman is a slender and shapely creature, as erect as

a lightningrod, and she has but one thing ona brightcolored piece of stuff which is wound about her

head and her body down nearly halfway to her knees, and which clings like her own skin. Her legs and feet

are bare, and so are her arms, except for her fanciful bunches of loose silver rings on her ankles and on her

arms. She has jewelry bunched on the side of her nose also, and showy clusterrings on her toes. When she

undresses for bed she takes off her jewelry, I suppose. If she took off anything more she would catch cold. As

a rule she has a large shiney brass water jar of graceful shape on her head, and one of her naked arms curves

up and the hand holds it there. She is so straight, so erect, and she steps with such style, and such easy grace

and dignity; and her curved arm and her brazen jar are such a help to the picture indeed, our workingwomen

It is all color, bewitching color, enchanting coloreverywhere all aroundall the way around the curving

great opaline bay clear to Government House, where the turbaned big native 'chuprassies' stand grouped in

state at the door in their robes of fiery red, and do most properly and stunningly finish up the splendid show

This is indeed India! the land of dreams and romance, of fabulous wealth and fabulous poverty, of splendor

and rags, of palaces and hovels, of famine and pestilence, of genii and giants and Aladdin lamps, of tigers and

elephants, the cobra and the jungle, the country of a hundred nations and a hundred tongues, of a thousand

religions and two million gods, cradle of the human race, birthplace of human speech, mother of history,

grandmother of legend, greatgrandmother of tradition, whose yesterdays bear date with the mouldering

antiquities of the rest of the nationsthe one sole country under the sun that is endowed with an

imperishable interest for alien prince and alien peasant, for lettered and ignorant, wise and fool, rich and poor,

bond and free, the one land that all men desire to see, and having seen once, by even a glimpse, would not

give that glimpse for the shows of all the rest of the globe combined. Even now, after the lapse of a year, the

delirium of those days in Bombay has not left me, and I hope never will. It was all new, no detail of it

hackneyed. And India did not wait for morning, it began at the hotel straight away. The lobbies and halls

were full of turbaned, and fez'd and embroidered, cap'd, and barefooted, and cottonclad dark natives, some

of them rushing about, others at rest squatting, or sitting on the ground; some of them chattering with energy,

others still and dreamy; in the diningroom every man's own private native servant standing behind his chair,

Our rooms were high up, on the front. A white man he was a burly German went up with us, and brought

three natives along to see to arranging things. About fourteen others followed in procession, with the hand

baggage; each carried an articleand only one; a bag, in some cases, in other cases less. One strong native

carried my overcoat, another a parasol, another a box of cigars, another a novel, and the last man in the

procession had no load but a fan. It was all done with earnestness and sincerity, there was not a smile in the

procession from the head of it to the tail of it. Each man waited patiently, tranquilly, in no sort of hurry, till

one of us found time to give him a copper, then he bent his head reverently, touched his forehead with his

fingers, and went his way. They seemed a soft and gentle race, and there was something both winning and

There was a vast glazed door which opened upon the balcony. It needed closing, or cleaning, or something,

and a native got down on his knees and went to work at it. He seemed to be doing it well enough, but perhaps

he wasn't, for the burly German put on a look that betrayed dissatisfaction, then without explaining what was

wrong, gave the native a brisk cuff on the jaw and then told him where the defect was. It seemed such a

shame to do that before us all. The native took it with meekness, saying nothing, and not showing in his face

or manner any resentment. I had not seen the like of this for fifty years. It carried me back to my boyhood,

and flashed upon me the forgotten fact that this was the usual way of explaining one's desires to a slave. I was

able to remember that the method seemed right and natural to me in those days, I being born to it and

unaware that elsewhere there were other methods; but I was also able to remember that those unresented

cuffings made me sorry for the victim and ashamed for the punisher. My father was a refined and kindly

gentleman, very grave, rather austere, of rigid probity, a sternly just and upright man, albeit he attended no

church and never spoke of religious matters, and had no part nor lot in the pious joys of his Presbyterian

family, nor ever seemed to suffer from this deprivation. He laid his hand upon me in punishment only twice

in his life, and then not heavily; once for telling him a liewhich surprised me, and showed me how

unsuspicious he was, for that was not my maiden effort. He punished me those two times only, and never any

other member of the family at all; yet every now and then he cuffed our harmless slave boy, Lewis, for

trifling little blunders and awkardnesses. My father had passed his life among the slaves from his cradle up,

and his cuffings proceeded from the custom of the time, not from his nature. When I was ten years old I saw a

man fling a lump of ironore at a slaveman in anger, for merely doing something awkwardlyas if that were

a crime. It bounded from the man's skull, and the man fell and never spoke again. He was dead in an hour. I

knew the man had a right to kill his slave if he wanted to, and yet it seemed a pitiful thing and somehow

wrong, though why wrong I was not deep enough to explain if I had been asked to do it. Nobody in the

It is curiousthe spaceannihilating power of thought. For just one second, all that goes to make the me in

me was in a Missourian village, on the other side of the globe, vividly seeing again these forgotten pictures of

fifty years ago, and wholly unconscious of all things but just those; and in the next second I was back in

Bombay, and that kneeling native's smitten cheek was not done tingling yet! Back to boyhoodfifty years;

back to age again, another fifty; and a flight equal to the circumference of the globeall in two seconds by the

Some nativesI don't remember how manywent into my bedroom, now, and put things to rights and

arranged the mosquitobar, and I went to bed to nurse my cough. It was about nine in the evening. What a

state of things! For three hours the yelling and shouting of natives in the hall continued, along with the

velvety patter of their swift bare feetwhat a racket it was! They were yelling orders and messages down

three flights. Why, in the matter of noise it amounted to a riot, an insurrection, a revolution. And then there

were other noises mixed up with these and at intervals tremendously accenting themroofs falling in, I

judged, windows smashing, persons being murdered, crows squawking, and deriding, and cursing, canaries

screeching, monkeys jabbering, macaws blaspheming, and every now and then fiendish bursts of laughter and

explosions of dynamite. By midnight I had suffered all the different kinds of shocks there are, and knew that I

could never more be disturbed by them, either isolated or in combination. Then came peacestillness deep

Then it all broke loose again. And who restarted it? The Bird of Birds the Indian crow. I came to know him

well, by and by, and be infatuated with him. I suppose he is the hardest lot that wears feathers. Yes, and the

cheerfulest, and the best satisfied with himself. He never arrived at what he is by any careless process, or any

sudden one; he is a work of art, and "art is long"; he is the product of immemorial ages, and of deep

calculation; one can't make a bird like that in a day. He has been reincarnated more times than Shiva; and he

has kept a sample of each incarnation, and fused it into his constitution. In the course of his evolutionary

promotions, his sublime march toward ultimate perfection, he has been a gambler, a low comedian, a

dissolute priest, a fussy woman, a blackguard, a scoffer, a liar, a thief, a spy, an informer, a trading politician,

a swindler, a professional hypocrite, a patriot for cash, a reformer, a lecturer, a lawyer, a conspirator, a rebel,

a royalist, a democrat, a practicer and propagator of irreverence, a meddler, an intruder, a busybody, an

infidel, and a wallower in sin for the mere love of it. The strange result, the incredible result, of this patient

accumulation of all damnable traits is, that be does not know what care is, he does not know what sorrow is,

he does not know what remorse is, his life is one long thundering ecstasy of happiness, and he will go to his

death untroubled, knowing that he will soon turn up again as an author or something, and be even more

In his straddling wide forwardstep, and his springy sidewise series of hops, and his impudent air, and his

cunning way of canting his head to one side upon occasion, he reminds one of the American blackbird. But

the sharp resemblances stop there. He is much bigger than the blackbird; and he lacks the blackbird's trim and

slender and beautiful build and shapely beak; and of course his sober garb of gray and rusty black is a poor

and humble thing compared with the splendid lustre of the blackbird's metallic sables and shifting and

flashing bronze glories. The blackbird is a perfect gentleman, in deportment and attire, and is not noisy, I

believe, except when holding religious services and political conventions in a tree; but this Indian sham

Quaker is just a rowdy, and is always noisy when awakealways chaffing, scolding, scoffing, laughing,

ripping, and cursing, and carrying on about something or other. I never saw such a bird for delivering

opinions. Nothing escapes him; he notices everything that happens, and brings out his opinion about it,

particularly if it is a matter that is none of his business. And it is never a mild opinion, but always

violentviolent and profanethe presence of ladies does not affect him. His opinions are not the outcome

of reflection, for he never thinks about anything, but heaves out the opinion that is on top in his mind, and

which is often an opinion about some quite different thing and does not fit the case. But that is his way; his

main idea is to get out an opinion, and if he stopped to think he would lose chances.

I suppose he has no enemies among men. The whites and Mohammedans never seemed to molest him; and

the Hindoos, because of their religion, never take the life of any creature, but spare even the snakes and tigers

and fleas and rats. If I sat on one end of the balcony, the crows would gather on the railing at the other end

and talk about me; and edge closer, little by little, till I could almost reach them; and they would sit there, in

the most unabashed way, and talk about my clothes, and my hair, and my complexion, and probable character

and vocation and politics, and how I came to be in India, and what I had been doing, and how many days I

had got for it, and how I had happened to go unhanged so long, and when would it probably come off, and

might there be more of my sort where I came from, and when would they be hanged,and so on, and so on,

until I could not longer endure the embarrassment of it; then I would shoo them away, and they would circle

around in the air a little while, laughing and deriding and mocking, and presently settle on the rail and do it

They were very sociable when there was anything to eatoppressively so. With a little encouragement they

would come in and light on the table and help me eat my breakfast; and once when I was in the other room

and they found themselves alone, they carried off everything they could lift; and they were particular to

choose things which they could make no use of after they got them. In India their number is beyond estimate,

and their noise is in proportion. I suppose they cost the country more than the government does; yet that is

not a light matter. Still, they pay; their company pays; it would sadden the land to take their cheerful voice

You soon find your longago dreams of India rising in a sort of vague and luscious moonlight above the

horizonrim of your opaque consciousness, and softly lighting up a thousand forgotten details which were

parts of a vision that had once been vivid to you when you were a boy, and steeped your spirit in tales of the

East. The barbaric gorgeousnesses, for instance; and the princely titles, the sumptuous titles, the sounding

titles,how good they taste in the mouth! The Nizam of Hyderabad; the Maharajah of Travancore; the

Nabob of Jubbelpore; the Begum of Bhopal; the Nawab of Mysore; the Rance of Gulnare; the Ahkoond of

Swat's; the Rao of Rohilkund; the Gaikwar of Baroda. Indeed, it is a country that runs richly to name. The

great god Vishnu has 108108 special ones108 peculiarly holy onesnames just for Sunday use only. I

learned the whole of Vishnu's 108 by heart once, but they wouldn't stay; I don't remember any of them now

And the romances connected with, those princely native housesto this day they are always turning up, just

as in the old, old times. They were sweating out a romance in an English court in Bombay a while before we

were there. In this case a native prince, 16 1/2 years old, who has been enjoying his titles and dignities and

estates unmolested for fourteen years, is suddenly haled into court on the charge that he is rightfully no prince

at all, but a pauper peasant; that the real prince died when two and onehalf years old; that the death was

concealed, and a peasant child smuggled into the royal cradle, and that this present incumbent was that

smuggled substitute. This is the very material that so many oriental tales have been made of.

The case of that great prince, the Gaikwar of Baroda, is a reversal of the theme. When that throne fell vacant,

no heir could be found for some time, but at last one was found in the person of a peasant child who was

making mud pies in a village street, and having an innocent good time. But his pedigree was straight; he was

Lately there was another hunt for an heir to another princely house, and one was found who was

circumstanced about as the Gaikwar had been. His fathers were traced back, in humble life, along a branch of

the ancestral tree to the point where it joined the stem fourteen generations ago, and his heirship was thereby

squarely established. The tracing was done by means of the records of one of the great Hindoo shrines, where

princes on pilgrimage record their names and the date of their visit. This is to keep the prince's religious

account straight, and his spiritual person safe; but the record has the added value of keeping the pedigree

When I think of Bombay now, at this distance of time, I seem to have a kaleidoscope at my eye; and I hear

the clash of the glass bits as the splendid figures change, and fall apart, and flash into new forms, figure after

figure, and with the birth of each new form I feel my skin crinkle and my nerveweb tingle with a new thrill

of wonder and delight. These remembered pictures float past me in a sequence of contracts; following the

same order always, and always whirling by and disappearing with the swiftness of a dream, leaving me with

the sense that the actuality was the experience of an hour, at most, whereas it really covered days, I think.

The series begins with the hiring of a "bearer"native manservanta person who should be selected with

some care, because as long as he is in your employ he will be about as near to you as your clothes.

In India your day may be said to begin with the "bearer's" knock on the bedroom door, accompanied by a

formula of, wordsa formula which is intended to mean that the bath is ready. It doesn't really seem to mean

anything at all. But that is because you are not used to "bearer" English. You will presently understand.

Where he gets his English is his own secret. There is nothing like it elsewhere in the earth; or even in

paradise, perhaps, but the other place is probably full of it. You hire him as soon as you touch Indian soil; for

no matter what your sex is, you cannot do without him. He is messenger, valet, chambermaid, tablewaiter,

lady's maid, courierhe is everything. He carries a coarse linen clothesbag and a quilt; he sleeps on the

stone floor outside your chamber door, and gets his meals you do not know where nor when; you only know

that he is not fed on the premises, either when you are in a hotel or when you are a guest in a, private house.

His wages are largefrom an Indian point of viewand he feeds and clothes himself out of them. We had

three of him in two and a half months. The first one's rate was thirty rupees a month that is to say,

twentyseven cents a day; the rate of the others, Rs. 40 (40 rupees) a month. A princely sum; for the native

switchman on a railway and the native servant in a private family get only Rs. 7 per month, and the

farmhand only 4. The two former feed and clothe themselves and their families on their $1.90 per month;

but I cannot believe that the farmhand has to feed himself on his $1.08. I think the farm probably feeds him,

and that the whole of his wages, except a trifle for the priest, go to the support of his family. That is, to the

feeding of his family; for they live in a mud hut, handmade, and, doubtless, rentfree, and they wear no

clothes; at least, nothing more than a rag. And not much of a rag at that, in the case of the males. However,

these are handsome times for the farmhand; he was not always the child of luxury that he is now. The Chief

Commissioner of the Central Provinces, in a recent official utterance wherein he was rebuking a native

deputation for complaining of hard times, reminded them that they could easily remember when a farm

hand's wages were only half a rupee (former value) a monththat is to say, less than a cent a day; nearly

$2.90 a year. If such a wageearner had a good deal of a familyand they all have that, for God is very good

to these poor natives in some wayshe would save a profit of fifteen cents, clean and clear, out of his year's

toil; I mean a frugal, thrifty person would, not one given to display and ostentation. And if he owed $13.50

and took good care of his health, he could pay it off in ninety years. Then he could hold up his head, and look

Think of these facts and what they mean. India does not consist of cities. There are no cities in Indiato

speak of. Its stupendous population consists of farmlaborers. India is one vast farmone almost

interminable stretch of fields with mud fences between. . . Think of the above facts; and consider what an

The first Bearer that applied, waited below and sent up his recommendations. That was the first morning in

Bombay. We read them over; carefully, cautiously, thoughtfully. There was not a fault to find with

themexcept one; they were all from Americans. Is that a slur? If it is, it is a deserved one. In my

experience, an American's recommendation of a servant is not usually valuable. We are too good natured a

race; we hate to say the unpleasant thing; we shrink from speaking the unkind truth about a poor fellow

whose bread depends upon our verdict; so we speak of his good points only, thus not scrupling to tell a liea

silent liefor in not mentioning his bad ones we as good as say he hasn't any. The only difference that I

know of between a silent lie and a spoken one is, that the silent lie is a less respectable one than the other.

And it can deceive, whereas the other can'tas a rule. We not only tell the silent lie as to a servant's faults,

but we sin in another way: we overpraise his merits; for when it comes to writing recommendations of

servants we are a nation of gushers. And we have not the Frenchman's excuse. In France you must give the

departing servant a good recommendation; and you must conceal his faults; you have no choice. If you

mention his faults for the protection of the next candidate for his services, he can sue you for damages; and

the court will award them, too; and, moreover, the judge will give you a sharp dressingdown from the bench

for trying to destroy a poor man's character, and rob him of his bread. I do not state this on my own authority,

I got it from a French physician of fame and reputea man who was born in Paris, and had practiced there

all his life. And he said that he spoke not merely from common knowledge, but from exasperating personal

As I was saying, the Bearer's recommendations were all from American tourists; and St. Peter would have

admitted him to the fields of the blest on themI mean if he is as unfamiliar with our people and our ways as

I suppose he is. According to these recommendations, Manuel X. was supreme in all the arts connected with

his complex trade; and these manifold arts were mentionedand praisedin detail. His English was spoken

of in terms of warm admirationadmiration verging upon rapture. I took pleased note of that, and hoped that

We had to have some one right away; so the family went down stairs and took him a week on trial; then sent

him up to me and departed on their affairs. I was shut up in my quarters with a bronchial cough, and glad to

have something fresh to look at, something new to play with. Manuel filled the bill; Manuel was very

welcome. He was toward fifty years old, tall, slender, with a slight stoopan artificial stoop, a deferential

stoop, a stoop rigidified by long habitwith face of European mould; short hair intensely black; gentle black

eyes, timid black eyes, indeed; complexion very dark, nearly black in fact; face smoothshaven. He was

bareheaded and barefooted, and was never otherwise while his week with us lasted; his clothing was

He stood before me and inclined his head (and body) in the pathetic Indian way, touching his forehead with

"Manuel, you are evidently Indian, but you seem to have a Spanish name when you put it all together. How is

A perplexed look gathered in his face; it was plain that he had not understoodbut he didn't let on. He spoke

I saw that I must simplify my language and spread my words apart, if I would be understood by this English

"Oh, he,"brightening a little"he ChristianPortygee; live in Goa; I born Goa; mother not Portygee,

mother nativehighcaste BrahminCoolin Brahmin; highest caste; no other so high caste. I highcaste

Brahmin, too. Christian, too, same like father; highcaste Christian Brahmin, masterSalvation Army."

All this haltingly, and with difficulty. Then he had an inspiration, and began to pour out a flood of words that

"Not Hindostani, masterEnglish. Always I speaking English sometimes when I talking every day all the

"Very well, stick to that; that is intelligible. It is not up to my hopes, it is not up to the promise of the

recommendations, still it is English, and I understand it. Don't elaborate it; I don't like elaborations when they

"Oh, never mind; it was only a random thought; I didn't expect you to understand it. How did you get your

"Yes, he very good. Christian god very good, Hindoo god very good, too. Two million Hindoo god, one

Christian godmake two million and one. All mine; two million and one god. I got a plenty. Sometime I

pray all time at those, keep it up, go all time every day; give something at shrine, all good for me, make me

Then he had another inspiration, and went rambling off into fervent confusions and incoherencies, and I had

to stop him again. I thought we had talked enough, so I told him to go to the bathroom and clean it up and

remove the slopsthis to get rid of him. He went away, seeming to understand, and got out some of my

clothes and began to brush them. I repeated my desire several times, simplifying and resimplifying it, and at

last he got the idea. Then he went away and put a coolie at the work, and explained that he would lose caste if

he did it himself; it would be pollution, by the law of his caste, and it would cost him a deal of fuss and

trouble to purify himself and accomplish his rehabilitation. He said that that kind of work was strictly

forbidden to persons of caste, and as strictly restricted to the very bottom layer of Hindoo societythe

despised 'Sudra' (the toiler, the laborer). He was right; and apparently the poor Sudra has been content with

his strange lot, his insulting distinction, for ages and agesclear back to the beginning of things, so to speak.

Buckle says that his namelaboreris a term of contempt; that it is ordained by the Institutes of Menu (900

B.C.) that if a Sudra sit on a level with his superior he shall be exiled or branded[Without going into

particulars I will remark that as a rule they wear no clothing that would conceal the brand.M. T.] . . . ; if

he speak contemptuously of his superior or insult him he shall suffer death; if he listen to the reading of the

sacred books he shall have burning oil poured in his ears; if he memorize passages from them he shall be

killed; if he marry his daughter to a Brahmin the husband shall go to hell for defiling himself by contact with

a woman so infinitely his inferior; and that it is forbidden to a Sudra to acquire wealth. "The bulk of the

population of India," says Bucklet[Population today, 300,000,000.] "is the Sudrasthe workers, the

Manuel was a failure, poor old fellow. His age was against him. He was desperately slow and phenomenally

forgetful. When he went three blocks on an errand he would be gone two hours, and then forget what it was

he went for. When he packed a trunk it took him forever, and the trunk's contents were an unimaginable

chaos when he got done. He couldn't wait satisfactorily at tablea prime defect, for if you haven't your own

servant in an Indian hotel you are likely to have a slow time of it and go away hungry. We couldn't

understand his English; he couldn't understand ours; and when we found that he couldn't understand his own,

it seemed time for us to part. I had to discharge him; there was no help for it. But I did it as kindly as I could,

and as gently. We must part, said I, but I hoped we should meet again in a better world. It was not true, but it

But now that he was gone, and was off my mind and heart, my spirits began to rise at once, and I was soon

feeling brisk and ready to go out and have adventures. Then his newlyhired successor flitted in, touched his

forehead, and began to fly around here, there, and everywhere, on his velvet feet, and in five minutes he had

everything in the room "ship shape and Bristol fashion," as the sailors say, and was standing at the salute,

waiting for orders. Dear me, what a rustler he was after the slumbrous way of Manuel, poor old slug! All my

heart, all my affection, all my admiration, went out spontaneously to this frisky little forked black thing, this

compact and compressed incarnation of energy and force and promptness and celerity and confidence, this

smart, smily, engaging, shineyeyed little devil, feruled on his upper end by a gleaming fire coal of a fez

"Let me see if I can make a selection out of itfor business uses, I mean; we will keep the rest for Sundays.

He did it. But there did not seem to be any short ones, except Mousawhich suggested mouse. It was out of

character; it was too soft, too quiet, too conservative; it didn't fit his splendid style. I considered, and said

"Mousa is short enough, but I don't quite like it. It seems colorless inharmoniousinadequate; and I am

There was a rap at the door. Satan covered the ground with a single skip; there was a word or two of

Hindostani, then he disappeared. Three minutes later he was before me again, militarily erect, and waiting for

"Why, this is so unusual, thatthatwell, you see indeed I am so unpreparedI don't quite know what I do

Wasn't it curiousand amazing, and tremendous, and all that? Such a personage going around calling on

such as I, and sending up his card, like a mortalsending it up by Satan. It was a bewildering collision of the

impossibles. But this was the land of the Arabian Nights, this was India! and what is it that cannot happen in

We had the interview. Satan was rightthe Visitor was indeed a God in the conviction of his multitudinous

followers, and was worshiped by them in sincerity and humble adoration. They are troubled by no doubts as

to his divine origin and office. They believe in him, they pray to him, they make offerings to him, they beg of

him remission of sins; to them his person, together with everything connected with it, is sacred; from his

barber they buy the parings of his nails and set them in gold, and wear them as precious amulets.

I tried to seem tranquilly conversational and at rest, but I was not. Would you have been? I was in a

suppressed frenzy of excitement and curiosity and glad wonder. I could not keep my eyes off him. I was

looking upon a god, an actual god, a recognized and accepted god; and every detail of his person and his

dress had a consuming interest for me. And the thought went floating through my head, "He is

worshipedthink of ithe is not a recipient of the pale homage called compliment, wherewith the highest

human clay must make shift to be satisfied, but of an infinitely richer spiritual food: adoration,

worship!men and women lay their cares and their griefs and their broken hearts at his feet; and he gives

And just then the Awful Visitor said, in the simplest way"There is a feature of the philosophy of Huck

Finn which"and went luminously on with the construction of a compact and nicelydiscriminated literary

It is a land of surprisesIndia! I had had my ambitionsI had hoped, and almost expected, to be read by

kings and presidents and emperorsbut I had never looked so high as That. It would be false modesty to

pretend that I was not inordinately pleased. I was. I was much more pleased than I should have been with a

He remained half an hour, and I found him a most courteous and charming gentleman. The godship has been

in his family a good while, but I do not know how long. He is a Mohammedan deity; by earthly rank he is a

prince; not an Indian but a Persian prince. He is a direct descendant of the Prophet's line. He is comely; also

youngfor a god; not forty, perhaps not above thirtyfive years old. He wears his immense honors with

tranquil brace, and with a dignity proper to his awful calling. He speaks English with the ease and purity of a

person born to it. I think I am not overstating this. He was the only god I had ever seen, and I was very

favorably impressed. When he rose to say goodbye, the door swung open and I caught the flash of a red fez,

"Yes." And these mismated Beings passed from view Satan in the lead and The Other following after.

The next picture in my mind is Government House, on Malabar Point, with the wide seaview from the

windows and broad balconies; abode of His Excellency the Governor of the Bombay Presidencya

residence which is European in everything but the native guards and servants, and is a home and a palace of

That was England, the English power, the English civilization, the modern civilizationwith the quiet

elegancies and quiet colors and quiet tastes and quiet dignity that are the outcome of the modern cultivation.

And following it came a picture of the ancient civilization of Indiaan hour in the mansion of a native

The young lad, his heir, was with the prince; also, the lad's sister, a wee brown sprite, very pretty, very

serious, very winning, delicately moulded, costumed like the daintiest butterfly, a dear little fairyland

princess, gravely willing to be friendly with the strangers, but in the beginning preferring to hold her father's

hand until she could take stock of them and determine how far they were to be trusted. She must have been

eight years old; so in the natural (Indian) order of things she would be a bride in three or four years from now,

and then this free contact with the sun and the air and the other belongings of outdoor nature and

comradeship with visiting male folk would end, and she would shut herself up in the zenana for life, like her

mother, and by inherited habit of mind would be happy in that seclusion and not look upon it as an irksome

The game which the prince amuses his leisure withhowever, never mind it, I should never be able to

describe it intelligibly. I tried to get an idea of it while my wife and daughter visited the princess in the

zenana, a lady of charming graces and a fluent speaker of English, but I did not make it out. It is a

complicated game, and I believe it is said that nobody can learn to play it wellbut an Indian. And I was not

able to learn how to wind a turban. It seemed a simple art and easy; but that was a deception. It is a piece of

thin, delicate stuff a foot wide or more, and forty or fifty feet long; and the exhibitor of the art takes one end

of it in his hands, and winds it in and out intricately about his head, twisting it as he goes, and in a minute or

two the thing is finished, and is neat and symmetrical and fits as snugly as a mould.

We were interested in the wardrobe and the jewels, and in the silverware, and its grace of shape and beauty

and delicacy of ornamentation. The silverware is kept locked up, except at mealtimes, and none but the

chief butler and the prince have keys to the safe. I did not clearly understand why, but it was not for the

protection of the silver. It was either to protect the prince from the contamination which his caste would

suffer if the vessels were touched by lowcaste hands, or it was to protect his highness from poison. Possibly

it was both. I believe a salaried taster has to taste everything before the prince ventures itan ancient and

judicious custom in the East, and has thinned out the tasters a good deal, for of course it is the cook that puts

the poison in. If I were an Indian prince I would not go to the expense of a taster, I would eat with the cook.

Ceremonials are always interesting; and I noted that the Indian good morning is a ceremonial, whereas ours

doesn't amount to that. In salutation the son reverently touches the father's forehead with a small silver

implement tipped with vermillion paste which leaves a red spot there, and in return the son receives the

father's blessing. Our good morning is well enough for the rowdy West, perhaps, but would be too brusque

After being properly necklaced, according to custom, with great garlands made of yellow flowers, and

provided with betelnut to chew, this pleasant visit closed, and we passed thence to a scene of a different

sort: from this glow of color and this sunny life to those grim receptacles of the Parsee dead, the Towers of

Silence. There is something stately about that name, and an impressiveness which sinks deep; the hush of

death is in it. We have the Grave, the Tomb, the Mausoleum, God's Acre, the Cemetery; and association has

made them eloquent with solemn meaning; but we have no name that is so majestic as that one, or lingers

On lofty ground, in the midst of a paradise of tropical foliage and flowers, remote from the world and its

turmoil and noise, they stoodthe Towers of Silence; and away below was spread the wide groves of cocoa

palms, then the city, mile on mile, then the ocean with its fleets of creeping ships all steeped in a stillness as

deep as the hush that hallowed this high place of the dead. The vultures were there. They stood close together

in a great circle all around the rim of a massive low towerwaiting; stood as motionless as sculptured

ornaments, and indeed almost deceived one into the belief that that was what they were. Presently there was a

slight stir among the score of persons present, and all moved reverently out of the path and ceased from

talking. A funeral procession entered the great gate, marching two and two, and moved silently by, toward the

Tower. The corpse lay in a shallow shell, and was under cover of a white cloth, but was otherwise naked. The

bearers of the body were separated by an interval of thirty feet from the mourners. They, and also the

mourners, were draped all in pure white, and each couple of mourners was figuratively bound together by a

piece of white rope or a handkerchiefthough they merely held the ends of it in their hands. Behind the

procession followed a dog, which was led in a leash. When the mourners had reached the neighborhood of

the Tower neither they nor any other human being but the bearers of the dead must approach within thirty

feet of itthey turned and went back to one of the prayerhouses within the gates, to pray for the spirit of

their dead. The bearers unlocked the Tower's sole door and disappeared from view within. In a little while

they came out bringing the bier and the white coveringcloth, and locked the door again. Then the ring of

vultures rose, flapping their wings, and swooped down into the Tower to devour the body. Nothing was left

of it but a cleanpicked skeleton when they flockedout again a few minutes afterward.

The principle which underlies and orders everything connected with a Parsee funeral is Purity. By the tenets

of the Zoroastrian religion, the elements, Earth, Fire, and Water, are sacred, and must not be contaminated by

contact with a dead body. Hence corpses must not be burned, neither must they be buried. None may touch

the dead or enter the Towers where they repose except certain men who are officially appointed for that

purpose. They receive high pay, but theirs is a dismal life, for they must live apart from their species, because

their commerce with the dead defiles them, and any who should associate with them would share their

defilement. When they come out of the Tower the clothes they are wearing are exchanged for others, in a

building within the grounds, and the ones which they have taken off are left behind, for they are

contaminated, and must never be used again or suffered to go outside the grounds. These bearers come to

every funeral in new garments. So far as is known, no human being, other than an official

corpsebearersave onehas ever entered a Tower of Silence after its consecration. Just a hundred years

ago a European rushed in behind the bearers and fed his brutal curiosity with a glimpse of the forbidden

mysteries of the place. This shabby savage's name is not given; his quality is also concealed. These two

details, taken in connection with the fact that for his extraordinary offense the only punishment he got from

the East India Company's Government was a solemn official "reprimand"suggest the suspicion that he was

a European of consequence. The same public document which contained the reprimand gave warning that

future offenders of his sort, if in the Company's service, would be dismissed; and if merchants, suffer

The Towers are not tall, but are low in proportion to their circumference, like a gasometer. If you should fill a

gasometer half way up with solid granite masonry, then drive a wide and deep well down through the center

of this mass of masonry, you would have the idea of a Tower of Silence. On the masonry surrounding the

well the bodies lie, in shallow trenches which radiate like wheelspokes from the well. The trenches slant

toward the well and carry into it the rainfall. Underground drains, with charcoal filters in them, carry off this

When a skeleton has lain in the Tower exposed to the rain and the flaming sun a month it is perfectly dry and

clean. Then the same bearers that brought it there come gloved and take it up with tongs and throw it into the

well. There it turns to dust. It is never seen again, never touched again, in the world. Other peoples separate

their dead, and preserve and continue social distinctions in the gravethe skeletons of kings and statesmen

and generals in temples and pantheons proper to skeletons of their degree, and the skeletons of the

commonplace and the poor in places suited to their meaner estate; but the Parsees hold that all men rank alike

in deathall are humble, all poor, all destitute. In sign of their poverty they are sent to their grave naked, in

sign of their equality the bones of the rich, the poor, the illustrious and the obscure are flung into the common

well together. At a Parsee funeral there are no vehicles; all concerned must walk, both rich and poor,

howsoever great the distance to be traversed may be. In the wells of the Five Towers of Silence is mingled

the dust of all the Parsee men and women and children who have died in Bombay and its vicinity during the

two centuries which have elapsed since the Mohammedan conquerors drove the Parsees out of Persia, and

into that region of India. The earliest of the five towers was built by the Modi family something more than

200 years ago, and it is now reserved to the heirs of that house; none but the dead of that blood are carried

The origin of at least one of the details of a Parsee funeral is not now knownthe presence of the dog.

Before a corpse is borne from the house of mourning it must be uncovered and exposed to the gaze of a dog;

a dog must also be led in the rear of the funeral. Mr. Nusserwanjee Byranijee, Secretary to the Parsee

Punchayet, said that these formalities had once had a meaning and a reason for their institution, but that they

were survivals whose origin none could now account for. Custom and tradition continue them in force,

antiquity hallows them. It is thought that in ancient times in Persia the dog was a sacred animal and could

guide souls to heaven; also that his eye had the power of purifying objects which had been contaminated by

the touch of the dead; and that hence his presence with the funeral cortege provides an everapplicable

The Parsees claim that their method of disposing of the dead is an effective protection of the living; that it

disseminates no corruption, no impurities of any sort, no diseasegerms; that no wrap, no garment which has

touched the dead is allowed to touch the living afterward; that from the Towers of Silence nothing proceeds

which can carry harm to the outside world. These are just claims, I think. As a sanitary measure, their system

seems to be about the equivalent of cremation, and as sure. We are drifting slowlybut hopefullytoward

cremation in these days. It could not be expected that this progress should be swift, but if it be steady and

continuous, even if slow, that will suffice. When cremation becomes the rule we shall cease to shudder at it;

we should shudder at burial if we allowed ourselves to think what goes on in the grave.

The dog was an impressive figure to me, representing as he did a mystery whose key is lost. He was humble,

and apparently depressed; and he let his head droop pensively, and looked as if he might be trying to call

back to his mind what it was that he had used to symbolize ages ago when he began his function. There was

another impressive thing close at hand, but I was not privileged to see it. That was the sacred firea fire

which is supposed to have been burning without interruption for more than two centuries; and so, living by

The Parsees are a remarkable community. There are only about 60,000 in Bombay, and only about half as

many as that in the rest of India; but they make up in importance what they lack in numbers. They are highly

educated, energetic, enterprising, progressive, rich, and the Jew himself is not more lavish or catholic in his

charities and benevolences. The Parsees build and endow hospitals, for both men and animals; and they and

their womenkind keep an open purse for all great and good objects. They are a political force, and a valued

support to the government. They have a pure and lofty religion, and they preserve it in its integrity and order

We took a final sweep of the wonderful view of plain and city and ocean, and so ended our visit to the garden

and the Towers of Silence; and the last thing I noticed was another symbola voluntary symbol this one; it

was a vulture standing on the sawedoff top of a tall and slender and branchless palm in an open space in the

ground; he was perfectly motionless, and looked like a piece of sculpture on a pillar. And he had a mortuary

The next picture that drifts across the field of my memory is one which is connected with religious things.

We were taken by friends to see a Jain temple. It was small, and had many flags or streamers flying from

poles standing above its roof; and its little battlements supported a great many small idols or images.

Upstairs, inside, a solitary Jain was praying or reciting aloud in the middle of the room. Our presence did not

interrupt him, nor even incommode him or modify his fervor. Ten or twelve feet in front of him was the idol,

a small figure in a sitting posture. It had the pinkish look of a wax doll, but lacked the doll's roundness of

limb and approximation to correctness of form and justness of proportion. Mr. Gandhi explained every thing

to us. He was delegate to the Chicago Fair Congress of Religions. It was lucidly done, in masterly English,

but in time it faded from me, and now I have nothing left of that episode but an impression: a dim idea of a

religious belief clothed in subtle intellectual forms, lofty and clean, barren of fleshly grossnesses; and with

this another dim impression which connects that intellectual system somehow with that crude image, that

inadequate idol how, I do not know. Properly they do not seem to belong together. Apparently the idol

symbolized a person who had become a saint or a god through accessions of steadily augmenting holiness

acquired through a series of reincarnations and promotions extending over many ages; and was now at last a

saint and qualified to vicariously receive worship and transmit it to heaven's chancellery. Was that it?

And thence we went to Mr. Premchand Roychand's bungalow, in Lovelane, Byculla, where an Indian prince

was to receive a deputation of the Jain community who desired to congratulate him upon a high honor lately

conferred upon him by his sovereign, Victoria, Empress of India. She had made him a knight of the order of

the Star of India. It would seem that even the grandest Indian prince is glad to add the modest title "Sir" to his

ancient native grandeurs, and is willing to do valuable service to win it. He will remit taxes liberally, and will

spend money freely upon the betterment of the condition of his subjects, if there is a knighthood to be gotten

by it. And he will also do good work and a deal of it to get a gun added to the salute allowed him by the

British Government. Every year the Empress distributes knighthoods and adds guns for public services done

by native princes. The salute of a small prince is three or four guns; princes of greater consequence have

salutes that run higher and higher, gun by gun,oh, clear away up to eleven; possibly more, but I did not

hear of any above elevengun princes. I was told that when a fourgun prince gets a gun added, he is pretty

troublesome for a while, till the novelty wears off, for he likes the music, and keeps hunting up pretexts to get

himself saluted. It may be that supremely grand folk, like the Nyzam of Hyderabad and the Gaikwar of

When we arrived at the bungalow, the large hall on the ground floor was already about full, and carriages

were still flowing into the grounds. The company present made a fine show, an exhibition of human

fireworks, so to speak, in the matters of costume and comminglings of brilliant color. The variety of form

noticeable in the display of turbans was remarkable. We were told that the explanation of this was, that this

Jain delegation was drawn from many parts of India, and that each man wore the turban that was in vogue in

I could have wished to start a rival exhibition there, of Christian hats and clothes. I would have cleared one

side of the room of its Indian splendors and repacked the space with Christians drawn from America,

England, and the Colonies, dressed in the hats and habits of now, and of twenty and forty and fifty years ago.

It would have been a hideous exhibition, a thoroughly devilish spectacle. Then there would have been the

added disadvantage of the white complexion. It is not an unbearably unpleasant complexion when it keeps to

itself, but when it comes into competition with masses of brown and black the fact is betrayed that it is

endurable only because we are used to it. Nearly all black and brown skins are beautiful, but a beautiful white

skin is rare. How rare, one may learn by walking down a street in Paris, New York, or London on a

weekday particularly an unfashionable streetand keeping count of the satisfactory complexions

encountered in the course of a mile. Where dark complexions are massed, they make the whites look

bleachedout, unwholesome, and sometimes frankly ghastly. I could notice this as a boy, down South in the

slavery days before the war. The splendid black satin skin of the South African Zulus of Durban seemed to

me to come very close to perfection. I can see those Zulus yet'ricksha athletes waiting in front of the hotel

for custom; handsome and intensely black creatures, moderately clothed in loose summer stuffs whose snowy

whiteness made the black all the blacker by contrast. Keeping that group in my mind, I can compare those

complexions with the white ones which are streaming past this London window now:

Elderly mana drinker. Boiledcauliflower nose in a flabby face veined with purple crinklings.

No end of people whose skins are dull and characterless modifications of the tint which we miscall white.

Some of these faces are pimply; some exhibit other signs of diseased blood; some show scars of a tint out of a

harmony with the surrounding shades of color. The white man's complexion makes no concealments. It can't.

It seemed to have been designed as a catchall for everything that can damage it. Ladies have to paint it, and

powder it, and cosmetic it, and diet it with arsenic, and enamel it, and be always enticing it, and persuading it,

and pestering it, and fussing at it, to make it beautiful; and they do not succeed. But these efforts show what

they think of the natural complexion, as distributed. As distributed it needs these helps. The complexion

which they try to counterfeit is one which nature restricts to the fewto the very few. To ninetynine

persons she gives a bad complexion, to the hundredth a good one. The hundredth can keep ithow long?

The advantage is with the Zulu, I think. He starts with a beautiful complexion, and it will last him through.

And as for the Indian brown firm, smooth, blemishless, pleasant and restful to the eye, afraid of no color,

harmonizing with all colors and adding a grace to them allI think there is no sort of chance for the average

To return to the bungalow. The most gorgeous costume present were worn by some children. They seemed to

blaze, so bright were the colors, and so brilliant the jewels strum over the rich materials. These children were

professional nautchdancers, and looked like girls, but they were boys, They got up by ones and twos and

fours, and danced and sang to an accompaniment of weird music. Their posturings and gesturings were

elaborate and graceful, but their voices were stringently raspy and unpleasant, and there was a good deal of

By and by there was a burst of shouts and cheers outside and the prince with his train entered in fine dramatic

style. He was a stately man, he was ideally costumed, and fairly festooned with ropes of gems; some of the

ropes were of pearls, some were of uncut great emeraldsemeralds renowned in Bombay for their quality

and value. Their size was marvelous, and enticing to the eye, those rocks. A boya princeling was with

The ceremonies were not tedious. The prince strode to his throne with the port and majestyand the

sternnessof a Julius Caesar coming to receive and receipt for a backcountry kingdom and have it over and

get out, and no fooling. There was a throne for the young prince, too, and the two sat there, side by side, with

their officers grouped at either hand and most accurately and creditably reproducing the pictures which one

sees in the books pictures which people in the prince's line of business have been furnishing ever since

Solomon received the Queen of Sheba and showed her his things. The chief of the Jain delegation read his

paper of congratulations, then pushed it into a beautifully engraved silver cylinder, which was delivered with

ceremony into the prince's hands and at once delivered by him without ceremony into the hands of an officer.

I will copy the address here. It is interesting, as showing what an Indian prince's subject may have

opportunity to thank him for in these days of modern English rule, as contrasted with what his ancestor would

have given them opportunity to thank him for a century and a half agothe days of freedom unhampered by

English interference. A century and a half ago an address of thanks could have been put into small space. It

2. For not stripping them bare by sudden and arbitrary tax levies, and bringing famine upon them;

4. For not killing, blinding, imprisoning, or banishing the relatives of the royal house to protect the throne

5. For not betraying the subject secretly, for a bribe, into the hands of bands of professional Thugs, to be

Those were rather common princely industries in the old times, but they and some others of a harsh sort

ceased long ago under English rule. Better industries have taken their place, as this Address from the Jain

"Your Highness,We the undersigned members of the Jain community of Bombay have the pleasure to

approach your Highness with the expression of our heartfelt congratulations on the recent conference on your

Highness of the Knighthood of the Most Exalted Order of the Star of India. Ten years ago we had the

pleasure and privilege of welcoming your Highness to this city under circumstances which have made a

memorable epoch in the history of your State, for had it not been for a generous and reasonable spirit that

your Highness displayed in the negotiations between the Palitana Durbar and the Jain community, the

conciliatory spirit that animated our people could not have borne fruit. That was the first step in your

Highness's administration, and it fitly elicited the praise of the Jain community, and of the Bombay

Government. A decade of your Highness's administration, combined with the abilities, training, and

acquirements that your Highness brought to bear upon it, has justly earned for your Highness the unique and

honourable distinctionthe Knighthood of the Most Exalted Order of the Star of India, which we understand

your Highness is the first to enjoy among Chiefs of your, Highness's rank and standing. And we assure your

Highness that for this mark of honour that has been conferred on you by Her Most Gracious Majesty, the

QueenEmpress, we feel no less proud than your Highness. Establishment of commercial factories, schools,

hospitals, etc., by your Highness in your State has marked your Highness's career during these ten years, and

we trust that your Highness will be spared to rule over your people with wisdom and foresight, and foster the

many reforms that your Highness has been pleased to introduce in your State. We again offer your Highness

our warmest felicitations for the honour that has been conferred on you. We beg to remain your Highness's

Factories, schools, hospitals, reforms. The prince propagates that kind of things in the modern times, and gets

After the address the prince responded with snap and brevity; spoke a moment with half a dozen guests in

English, and with an official or two in a native tongue; then the garlands were distributed as usual, and the

Toward midnight, that night, there was another function. This was a Hindoo weddingno, I think it was a

betrothal ceremony. Always before, we had driven through streets that were multitudinous and tumultuous

with picturesque native life, but now there was nothing of that. We seemed to move through a city of the

dead. There was hardly a suggestion of life in those still and vacant streets. Even the crows were silent. But

everywhere on the ground lay sleeping nativeshundreds and hundreds. They lay stretched at full length and

tightly wrapped in blankets, beads and all. Their attitude and their rigidity counterfeited death. The plague

was not in Bombay then, but it is devastating the city now. The shops are deserted, now, half of the people

have fled, and of the remainder the smitten perish by shoals every day. No doubt the city looks now in the

daytime as it looked then at night. When we had pierced deep into the native quarter and were threading its

narrow dim lanes, we had to go carefully, for men were stretched asleep all about and there was hardly room

to drive between them. And every now and then a swarm of rats would scamper across past the horses' feet in

the vague lightthe forbears of the rats that are carrying the plague from house to house in Bombay now.

The shops were but sheds, little booths open to the street; and the goods had been removed, and on the

counters families were sleeping, usually with an oil lamp present. Recurrent dead watches, it looked like.

But at last we turned a corner and saw a great glare of light ahead. It was the home of the bride, wrapped in a

perfect conflagration of illuminations,mainly gaswork designs, gotten up specially for the occasion.

Within was abundance of brilliancyflames, costumes, colors, decorations, mirrorsit was another Aladdin

The bride was a trim and comely little thing of twelve years, dressed as we would dress a boy, though more

expensively than we should do it, of course. She moved about very much at her ease, and stopped and talked

with the guests and allowed her wedding jewelry to be examined. It was very fine. Particularly a rope of great

diamonds, a lovely thing to look at and handle. It had a great emerald hanging to it.

The bridegroom was not present. He was having betrothal festivities of his own at his father's house. As I

understood it, he and the bride were to entertain company every night and nearly all night for a week or more,

then get married, if alive. Both of the children were a little elderly, as brides and grooms go, in

Indiatwelve; they ought to have been married a year or two sooner; still to a, stranger twelve seems quite

A while after midnight a couple of celebrated and highpriced nautch girls appeared in the gorgeous place,

and danced and sang. With them were men who played upon strange instruments which made uncanny noises

of a sort to make one's flesh creep. One of these instruments was a pipe, and to its music the girls went

through a performance which represented snake charming. It seemed a doubtful sort of music to charm

anything with, but a native gentleman assured me that snakes like it and will come out of their holes and

listen to it with every evidence of refreshment And gratitude. He said that at an entertainment in his grounds

once, the pipe brought out half a dozen snakes, and the music had to be stopped before they would be

persuaded to go. Nobody wanted their company, for they were bold, familiar, and dangerous; but no one

would kill them, of course, for it is sinful for a Hindoo to kill any kind of a creature.

We withdrew from the festivities at two in the morning. Another picture, thenbut it has lodged itself in my

memory rather as a stagescene than as a reality. It is of a porch and short flight of steps crowded with dark

faces and ghostlywhite draperies flooded with the strong glare from the dazzling concentration of

illuminations; and midway of the steps one conspicuous figure for accenta turbaned giant, with a name

according to his size: Rao Bahadur Baskirao Balinkanje Pitale, Vakeel to his Highness the Gaikwar of

Baroda. Without him the picture would not have been complete; and if his name had been merely Smith, he

wouldn't have answered. Close at hand on housefronts on both sides of the narrow street were illuminations

of a kind commonly employed by the natives scores of glass tumblers (containing tapers) fastened a few in

inches apart all over great latticed frames, forming starry constellations which showed out vividly against

their black back grounds. As we drew away into the distance down the dim lanes the illuminations gathered

together into a single mass, and glowed out of the enveloping darkness like a sun.

Then again the deep silence, the skurrying rats, the dim forms stretched everywhere on the ground; and on

either hand those open booths counterfeiting sepulchres, with counterfeit corpses sleeping motionless in the

flicker of the counterfeit death lamps. And now, a year later, when I read the cablegrams I seem to be reading

of what I myself partly sawsaw before it happenedin a prophetic dream, as it were. One cablegram says,

"Business in the native town is about suspended. Except the wailing and the tramp of the funerals. There is

but little life or movement. The closed shops exceed in number those that remain open." Another says that

325,000 of the people have fled the city and are carrying the plague to the country. Three days later comes

the news, "The population is reduced by half." The refugees have carried the disease to Karachi; "220 cases,

The plague carries with it a terror which no other disease can excite; for of all diseases known to men it is the

deadliestby far the deadliest. "Fiftytwo fresh casesall fatal." It is the Black Death alone that slays like

that. We can all imagine, after a fashion, the desolation of a plaguestricken city, and the stupor of stillness

broken at intervals by distant bursts of wailing, marking the passing of funerals, here and there and yonder,

but I suppose it is not possible for us to realize to ourselves the nightmare of dread and fear that possesses the

living who are present in such a place and cannot get away. That half million fled from Bombay in a wild

panic suggests to us something of what they were feeling, but perhaps not even they could realize what the

half million were feeling whom they left stranded behind to face the stalking horror without chance of escape.

Kinglake was in Cairo many years ago during an epidemic of the Black Death, and he has imagined the

terrors that creep into a man's heart at such a time and follow him until they themselves breed the fatal sign in

the armpit, and then the delirium with confused images, and homedreams, and reeling billiardtables, and

"To the contagionist, filled as he is with the dread of final causes, having no faith in destiny, nor in the fixed

will of God, and with none of the devilmaycare indifference which might stand him instead of creedsto

such one, every rag that shivers in the breeze of a plaguestricken city has this sort of sublimity. If by any

terrible ordinance he be forced to venture forth, be sees death dangling from every sleeve; and, as he creeps

forward, he poises his shuddering limbs between the imminent jacket that is stabbing at his right elbow and

the murderous pelisse that threatens to mow him clean down as it sweeps along on his left. But most of all he

dreads that which most of all he should lovethe touch of a woman's dress; for mothers and wives, hurrying

forth on kindly errands from the bedsides of the dying, go slouching along through the streets more willfully

and less courteously than the men. For a while it may be that the caution of the poor Levantine may enable

him to avoid contact, but sooner or later, perhaps, the dreaded chance arrives; that bundle of linen, with the

dark tearful eyes at the top of it, that labors along with the voluptuous clumsiness of Grisi she has touched

the poor Levantine with the hem of her sleeve! From that dread moment his peace is gone; his mind for ever

hanging upon the fatal touch invites the blow which he fears; he watches for the symptoms of plague so

carefully, that sooner or later they come in truth. The parched mouth is a signhis mouth is parched; the

throbbing brainhis brain does throb; the rapid pulsehe touches his own wrist (for he dares not ask

counsel of any man lest he be deserted), he touches his wrist, and feels how his frighted blood goes galloping

out of his heart. There is nothing but the fatal swelling that is wanting to make his sad conviction complete;

immediately, he has an odd feel under the armno pain, but a little straining of the skin; he would to God it

were his fancy that were strong enough to give him that sensation; this is the worst of all. It now seems to

him that he could be happy and contented with his parched mouth, and his throbbing brain, and his rapid

pulse, if only he could know that there were no swelling under the left arm; but dares he try?in a moment

of calmness and deliberation he dares not; but when for a while he has writhed under the torture of suspense,

a sudden strength of will drives him to seek and know his fate; he touches the gland, and finds the skin sane

and sound but under the cuticle there lies a small lump like a pistolbullet, that moves as he pushes it. Oh!

but is this for all certainty, is this the sentence of death? Feel the gland of the other arm. There is not the same

lump exactly, yet something a little like it. Have not some people glands naturally enlarged?would to

heaven he were one! So he does for himself the work of the plague, and when the Angel of Death thus

courted does indeed and in truth come, he has only to finish that which has been so well begun; he passes his

fiery hand over the brain of the victim, and lets him rave for a season, but all chancewise, of people and

things once dear, or of people and things indifferent. Once more the poor fellow is back at his home in fair

Provence, and sees the sundial that stood in his childhood's gardensees his mother, and the longsince

forgotten face of that little dear sister(he sees her, he says, on a Sunday morning, for all the church bells

are ringing); he looks up and down through the universe, and owns it well piled with bales upon bales of

cotton, and cotton eternalso much so that he feelshe knowshe swears he could make that winning

hazard, if the billiardtable would not slant upwards, and if the cue were a cue worth playing with; but it is

notit's a cue that won't movehis own arm won't movein short, there's the devil to pay in the brain of

the poor Levantine; and perhaps, the next night but one he becomes the "life and the soul" of some squalling

One day during our stay in Bombay there was a criminal trial of a most interesting sort, a terribly realistic

chapter out of the "Arabian Nights," a strange mixture of simplicities and pieties and murderous practicalities,

which brought back the forgotten days of Thuggee and made them live again; in fact, even made them

believable. It was a case where a young girl had been assassinated for the sake of her trifling ornaments,

things not worth a laborer's day's wages in America. This thing could have been done in many other

countries, but hardly with the cold businesslike depravity, absence of fear, absence of caution, destitution of

the sense of horror, repentance, remorse, exhibited in this case. Elsewhere the murderer would have done his

crime secretly, by night, and without witnesses; his fears would have allowed him no peace while the dead

body was in his neighborhood; he would not have rested until he had gotten it safe out of the way and hidden

as effectually as he could hide it. But this Indian murderer does his deed in the full light of day, cares nothing

for the society of witnesses, is in no way incommoded by the presence of the corpse, takes his own time

about disposing of it, and the whole party are so indifferent, so phlegmatic, that they take their regular sleep

as if nothing was happening and no halters hanging over them; and these five bland people close the episode

with a religious service. The thing reads like a MeadowsTaylor Thugtale of half a century ago, as may be

"At the Mazagon Police Court yesterday, Superintendent Nolan again charged Tookaram Suntoo Savat Baya,

woman, her daughter Krishni, and Gopal Yithoo Bhanayker, before Mr. Phiroze Hoshang Dastur, Fourth

Presidency Magistrate, under sections 302 and 109 of the Code, with having on the night of the 30th of

December last murdered a Hindoo girl named Cassi, aged 12, by strangulation, in the room of a chawl at

Jakaria Bunder, on the Sewriroad, and also with aiding and abetting each other in the commission of the

"Mr. F. A. Little, Public Prosecutor, conducted the case on behalf of the Crown, the accused being

"Mr. Little applied under the provisions of the Criminal Procedure Code to tender pardon to one of the

accused, Krishni, woman, aged 22, on her undertaking to make a true and full statement of facts under which

"The Magistrate having granted the Public Prosecutor's application, the accused Krishni went into the

witnessbox, and, on being examined by Mr. Little, made the following confession:I am a mill hand

employed at the Jubilee Mill. I recollect the day (Tuesday; on which the body of the deceased Cassi was

found. Previous to that I attended the mill for half a day, and then returned home at 3 in the afternoon, when I

saw five persons in the house, viz.: the first accused Tookaram, who is my paramour, my mother, the second

accused Baya, the accused Gopal, and two guests named Ramji Daji and Annaji Gungaram. Tookaram rented

the room of the chawl situated at Jakaria Bunderroad from its owner, Girdharilal Radhakishan, and in that

room I, my paramour, Tookaram, and his younger brother, Yesso Mahadhoo, live. Since his arrival in

Bombay from his native country Yesso came and lived with us. When I returned from the mill on the

afternoon of that day, I saw the two guests seated on a cot in the veranda, and a few minutes after the accused

Gopal came and took his seat by their side, while I and my mother were seated inside the room. Tookaram,

who had gone out to fetch some 'pan' and betelnuts, on his return home had brought the two guests with him.

After returning home he gave them 'pan supari'. While they were eating it my mother came out of the room

and inquired of one of the guests, Ramji, what had happened to his foot, when he replied that he had tried

many remedies, but they had done him no good. My mother then took some rice in her hand and prophesied

that the disease which Ramji was suffering from would not be cured until he returned to his native country. In

the meantime the deceased Casi came from the direction of an outhouse, and stood in front on the

threshhold of our room with a 'lota' in her hand. Tookaram then told his two guests to leave the room, and

they then went up the steps towards the quarry. After the guests had gone away, Tookaram seized the

deceased, who had come into the room, and he afterwards put a waistband around her, and tied her to a post

which supports a loft. After doing this, he pressed the girl's throat, and, having tied her mouth with the

'dhotur' (now shown in Court), fastened it to the post. Having killed the girl, Tookaram removed her gold

head ornament and a gold 'putlee', and also took charge of her 'lota'. Besides these two ornaments Cassi had

on her person earstuds a nosering, some silver toerings, two necklaces, a pair of silver anklets and

bracelets. Tookaram afterwards tried to remove the silver amulets, the earstuds, and the nosering; but he

failed in his attempt. While he was doing so, I, my mother, and Gopal were present. After removing the two

gold ornaments, he handed them over to Gopal, who was at the time standing near me. When he killed Cassi,

Tookaram threatened to strangle me also if I informed any one of this. Gopal and myself were then standing

at the door of our room, and we both were threatened by Tookaram. My mother, Baya, had seized the legs of

the deceased at the time she was killed, and whilst she was being tied to the post. Cassi then made a noise.

Tookaram and my mother took part in killing the girl. After the murder her body was wrapped up in a

mattress and kept on the loft over the door of our room. When Cassi was strangled, the door of the room was

fastened from the inside by Tookaram. This deed was committed shortly after my return home from work in

the mill. Tookaram put the body of the deceased in the mattress, and, after it was left on the loft, he went to

have his head shaved by a barber named Sambhoo Raghoo, who lives only one door away from me. My

mother and myself then remained in the possession of the information. I was slapped and threatened by my

paramour, Tookaram, and that was the only reason why I did not inform any one at that time. When I told

Tookaram that I would give information of the occurrence, he slapped me. The accused Gopal was asked by

Tookaram to go back to his room, and he did so, taking away with him the two gold ornaments and the 'lota'.

Yesso Mahadhoo, a brotherinlaw of Tookaram, came to the house and asked Taokaram why he was

washing, the waterpipe being just opposite. Tookaram replied that he was washing his dhotur, as a fowl had

polluted it. About 6 o'clock of the evening of that day my mother gave me three pice and asked me to buy a

cocoanut, and I gave the money to Yessoo, who went and fetched a cocoanut and some betel leaves. When

Yessoo and others were in the room I was bathing, and, after I finished my bath, my mother took the

cocoanut and the betel leaves from Yessoo, and we five went to the sea. The party consisted of Tookaram,

my mother, Yessoo, Tookaram's younger brother, and myself. On reaching the seashore, my mother made the

offering to the sea, and prayed to be pardoned for what we had done. Before we went to the sea, some one

came to inquire after the girl Cassi. The police and other people came to make these inquiries both before and

after we left the house for the seashore. The police questioned my mother about the girl, and she replied that

Cassi had come to her door, but had left. The next day the police questioned Tookaram, and he, too, gave a

similar reply. This was said the same night when the search was made for the girl. After the offering was

made to the sea, we partook of the cocoanut and returned home, when my mother gave me some food; but

Tookaram did not partake of any food that night. After dinner I and my mother slept inside the room, and

Tookaram slept on a cot near his brotherinlaw, Yessoo Mahadhoo, just outside the door. That was not the

usual place where Tookaram slept. He usually slept inside the room. The body of the deceased remained on

the loft when I went to sleep. The room in which we slept was locked, and I heard that my paramour,

Tookaram, was restless outside. About 3 o'clock the following morning Tookaram knocked at the door, when

both myself and my mother opened it. He then told me to go to the steps leading to the quarry, and see if any

one was about. Those steps lead to a stable, through which we go to the quarry at the back of the compound.

When I got to the steps I saw no one there. Tookaram asked me if any one was there, and I replied that I

could see no one about. He then took the body of the deceased from the loft, and having wrapped it up in his

saree, asked me to accompany him to the steps of the quarry, and I did so. The 'saree' now produced here was

the same. Besides the 'saree', there was also a 'cholee' on the body. He then carried the body in his arms, and

went up the steps, through the stable, and then to the right hand towards a Sahib's bungalow, where

Tookaram placed the body near a wall. All the time I and my mother were with him. When the body was

taken down, Yessoo was lying on the cot. After depositing the body under the wall, we all returned home, and

soon after 5 a.m. the police again came and took Tookaram away. About an hour after they returned and took

me and my mother away. We were questioned about it, when I made a statement. Two hours later I was taken

to the room, and I pointed out this waistband, the 'dhotur', the mattress, and the wooden post to

Superintendent Nolan and Inspectors Roberts and Rashanali, in the presence of my mother and Tookaram.

Tookaram killed the girl Cassi for her ornaments, which he wanted for the girl to whom he was shortly going

to be married. The body was found in the same place where it was deposited by Tookaram."

The criminal side of the native has always been picturesque, always readable. The Thuggee and one or two

other particularly outrageous features of it have been suppressed by the English, but there is enough of it left

to keep it darkly interesting. One finds evidence of these survivals in the newspapers. Macaulay has a

lightthrowing passage upon this matter in his great historical sketch of Warren Hastings, where he is

describing some effects which followed the temporary paralysis of Hastings' powerful government brought

"The natives considered Hastings as a fallen man; and they acted after their kind. Some of our readers may

have seen, in India, a cloud of crows pecking a sick vulture to deathno bad type of what happens in that

country as often as fortune deserts one who has been great and dreaded. In an instant all the sycophants, who

had lately been ready to lie for him, to forge for him, to pander for him, to poison for him, hasten to purchase

the favor of his victorious enemies by accusing him. An Indian government has only to let it be understood

that it wishes a particular man to be ruined, and in twentyfour hours it will be furnished with grave charges,

supported by depositions so full and circumstantial that any person unaccustomed to Asiatic mendacity would

regard them as decisive. It is well if the signature of the destined victim is not counterfeited at the foot of

some illegal compact, and if some treasonable paper is not slipped into a hidingplace in his house."

That was nearly a century and a quarter ago. An article in one of the chief journals of India (the Pioneer)

shows that in some respects the native of today is just what his ancestor was then. Here are niceties of so

subtle and delicate a sort that they lift their breed of rascality to a place among the fine arts, and almost entitle

"The records of the Indian courts might certainly be relied upon to prove that swindlers as a class in the East

come very close to, if they do not surpass, in brilliancy of execution and originality of design the most expert

of their fraternity in Europe and America. India in especial is the home of forgery. There are some particular

districts which are noted as marts for the finest specimens of the forger's handiwork. The business is carried

on by firms who possess stores of stamped papers to suit every emergency. They habitually lay in a store of

fresh stamped papers every year, and some of the older and more thriving houses can supply documents for

the past forty years, bearing the proper watermark and possessing the genuine appearance of age. Other

districts have earned notoriety for skilled perjury, a preeminence that excites a respectful admiration when

one thinks of the universal prevalence of the art, and persons desirous of succeeding in false suits are ready to

pay handsomely to avail themselves of the services of these local experts as witnesses."

Various instances illustrative of the methods of these swindlers are given. They exhibit deep cunning and

total depravity on the part of the swindler and his pals, and more obtuseness on the part of the victim than one

would expect to find in a country where suspicion of your neighbor must surely be one of the earliest things

learned. The favorite subject is the young fool who has just come into a fortune and is trying to see how poor

"Sometimes another form of confidence trick is adopted, which is invariably successful. The particular

pigeon is spotted, and, his acquaintance having been made, he is encouraged in every form of vice. When the

friendship is thoroughly established, the swindler remarks to the young man that he has a brother who has

asked him to lend him Rs.10,000. The swindler says he has the money and would lend it; but, as the borrower

is his brother, he cannot charge interest. So he proposes that he should hand the dupe the money, and the

latter should lend it to the swindler's brother, exacting a heavy prepayment of interest which, it is pointed

out, they may equally enjoy in dissipation. The dupe sees no objection, and on the appointed day receives

Rs.7,000 from the swindler, which he hands over to the confederate. The latter is profuse in his thanks, and

executes a promissory note for Rs.10,000, payable to bearer. The swindler allows the scheme to remain

quiescent for a time, and then suggests that, as the money has not been repaid and as it would be unpleasant

to sue his brother, it would be better to sell the note in the bazaar. The dupe hands the note over, for the

money he advanced was not his, and, on being informed that it would be necessary to have his signature on

the back so as to render the security negotiable, he signs without any hesitation. The swindler passes it on to

confederates, and the latter employ a respectable firm of solicitors to ask the dupe if his signature is genuine.

He admits it at once, and his fate is sealed. A suit is filed by a confederate against the dupe, two accomplices

being made co defendants. They admit their Signatures as indorsers, and the one swears he bought the note

for value from the dupe The latter has no defense, for no court would believe the apparently idle explanation

There is only one India! It is the only country that has a monopoly of grand and imposing specialties. When

another country has a remarkable thing, it cannot have it all to itselfsome other country has a duplicate.

But Indiathat is different. Its marvels are its own; the patents cannot be infringed; imitations are not

possible. And think of the size of them, the majesty of them, the weird and outlandish character of the most of

There is the Plague, the Black Death: India invented it; India is the cradle of that mighty birth.

So was the Suttee; and within the time of men still living eight hundred widows willingly, and, in fact,

rejoicingly, burned themselves to death on the bodies of their dead husbands in a single year. Eight hundred

Famine is India's specialty. Elsewhere famines are inconsequential incidentsin India they are devastating

India had 2,000,000 gods, and worships them all. In religion all other countries are paupers; India is the only

With her everything is on a giant scaleeven her poverty; no other country can show anything to compare

with it. And she has been used to wealth on so vast a scale that she has to shorten to single words the

expressions describing great sums. She describes 100,000 with one word a 'lahk'; she describes ten

In the bowels of the granite mountains she has patiently carved out dozens of vast temples, and made them

glorious with sculptured colonnades and stately groups of statuary, and has adorned the eternal walls with

noble paintings. She has built fortresses of such magnitude that the showstrongholds of the rest of the world

are but modest little things by comparison; palaces that are wonders for rarity of materials, delicacy and

beauty of workmanship, and for cost; and one tomb which men go around the globe to see. It takes eighty

nations, speaking eighty languages, to people her, and they number three hundred millions.

On top of all this she is the mother and home of that wonder of wonders casteand of that mystery of

India had the start of the whole world in the beginning of things. She had the first civilization; she had the

first accumulation of material wealth; she was populous with deep thinkers and subtle intellects; she had

mines, and woods, and a fruitful soil. It would seem as if she should have kept the lead, and should be today

not the meek dependent of an alien master, but mistress of the world, and delivering law and command to

every tribe and nation in it. But, in truth, there was never any possibility of such supremacy for her. If there

had been but one India and one languagebut there were eighty of them! Where there are eighty nations and

several hundred governments, fighting and quarreling must be the common business of life; unity of purpose

and policy are impossible; out of such elements supremacy in the world cannot come. Even caste itself could

have had the defeating effect of a multiplicity of tongues, no doubt; for it separates a people into layers, and

layers, and still other layers, that have no community of feeling with each other; and in such a condition of

It was the division of the country into so many States and nations that made Thuggee possible and

prosperous. It is difficult to realize the situation. But perhaps one may approximate it by imagining the States

of our Union peopled by separate nations, speaking separate languages, with guards and customhouses

strung along all frontiers, plenty of interruptions for travelers and traders, interpreters able to handle all the

languages very rare or nonexistent, and a few wars always going on here and there and yonder as a further

embarrassment to commerce and excursioning. It would make intercommunication in a measure ungeneral.

India had eighty languages, and more customhouses than cats. No clever man with the instinct of a highway

robber could fail to notice what a chance for business was here offered. India was full of clever men with the

highwayman instinct, and so, quite naturally, the brotherhood of the Thugs came into being to meet the

How long ago that was nobody knowscenturies, it is supposed. One of the chiefest wonders connected with

it was the success with which it kept its secret. The English trader did business in India two hundred years

and more before he ever heard of it; and yet it was assassinating its thousands all around him every year, the

January 28. I learned of an official Thugbook the other day. I was not aware before that there was such a

thing. I am allowed the temporary use of it. We are making preparations for travel. Mainly the preparations

are purchases of bedding. This is to be used in sleeping berths in the trains; in private houses sometimes; and

in ninetenths of the hotels. It is not realizable; and yet it is true. It is a survival; an apparently unnecessary

thing which in some strange way has outlived the conditions which once made it necessary. It comes down

from a time when the railway and the hotel did not exist; when the occasional white traveler went horseback

or by bullockcart, and stopped over night in the small dakbungalow provided at easy distances by the

governmenta shelter, merely, and nothing more. He had to carry bedding along, or do without. The

dwellings of the English residents are spacious and comfortable and commodiously furnished, and surely it

must be an odd sight to see half a dozen guests come filing into such a place and dumping blankets and

pillows here and there and everywhere. But custom makes incongruous things congruous.

One buys the bedding, with waterproof holdall for it at almost any shop there is no difficulty about it.

January 30. What a spectacle the railway station was, at traintime! It was a very large station, yet when we

arrived it seemed as if the whole world was presenthalf of it inside, the other half outside, and both halves,

bearing mountainous headloads of bedding and other freight, trying simultaneously to pass each other, in

opposing floods, in one narrow door. These opposing floods were patient, gentle, longsuffering natives,

with whites scattered among them at rare intervals; and wherever a white man's native servant appeared, that

native seemed to have put aside his natural gentleness for the time and invested himself with the white man's

privilege of making a way for himself by promptly shoving all intervening black things out of it. In these

exhibitions of authority Satan was scandalous. He was probably a Thug in one of his former incarnations.

Inside the great station, tides upon tides of rainbowcostumed natives swept along, this way and that, in

massed and bewildering confusion, eager, anxious, belated, distressed; and washed up to the long trains and

flowed into them with their packs and bundles, and disappeared, followed at once by the next wash, the next

wave. And here and there, in the midst of this hurlyburly, and seemingly undisturbed by it, sat great groups

of natives on the bare stone floor,young, slender brown women, old, gray wrinkled women, little soft

brown babies, old men, young men, boys; all poor people, but all the females among them, both big and little,

bejeweled with cheap and showy noserings, toerings, leglets, and armlets, these things constituting all their

wealth, no doubt. These silent crowds sat there with their humble bundles and baskets and small household

gear about them, and patiently waitedfor what? A train that was to start at some time or other during the

day or night! They hadn't timed themselves well, but that was no matterthe thing had been so ordered from

on high, therefore why worry? There was plenty of time, hours and hours of it, and the thing that was to

The natives traveled third class, and at marvelously cheap rates. They were packed and crammed into cars

that held each about fifty; and it was said that often a Brahmin of the highest caste was thus brought into

personal touch, and consequent defilement, with persons of the lowest castesno doubt a very shocking

thing if a body could understand it and properly appreciate it. Yes, a Brahmin who didn't own a rupee and

couldn't borrow one, might have to touch elbows with a rich hereditary lord of inferior caste, inheritor of an

ancient title a couple of yards long, and he would just have to stand it; for if either of the two was allowed to

go in the cars where the sacred white people were, it probably wouldn't be the august poor Brahmin. There

was an immense string of those thirdclass cars, for the natives travel by hordes; and a weary hard night of it

When we reached our car, Satan and Barney had already arrived there with their train of porters carrying

bedding and parasols and cigar boxes, and were at work. We named him Barney for short; we couldn't use his

It was a car that promised comfort; indeed, luxury. Yet the cost of it well, economy could no further go;

even in France; not even in Italy. It was built of the plainest and cheapest partiallysmoothed boards, with a

coating of dull paint on them, and there was nowhere a thought of decoration. The floor was bare, but would

not long remain so when the dust should begin to fly. Across one end of the compartment ran a netting for the

accommodation of handbaggage; at the other end was a door which would shut, upon compulsion, but

wouldn't stay shut; it opened into a narrow little closet which had a washbowl in one end of it, and a place to

put a towel, in case you had one with youand you would be sure to have towels, because you buy them

with the bedding, knowing that the railway doesn't furnish them. On each side of the car, and running fore

and aft, was a broad leathercovered sofa to sit on in the day and sleep on at night. Over each sofa hung, by

straps, a wide, flat, leather covered shelfto sleep on. In the daytime you can hitch it up against the wall,

out of the wayand then you have a big unencumbered and most comfortable room to spread out in. No car

in any country is quite its equal for comfort (and privacy) I think. For usually there are but two persons in it;

and even when there are four there is but little sense of impaired privacy. Our own cars at home can surpass

the railway world in all details but that one: they have no cosiness; there are too many people together.

At the foot of each sofa was a sidedoor, for entrance and exit. Along the whole length of the sofa on each

side of the car ran a row of large singleplate windows, of a blue tintblue to soften the bitter glare of the sun

and protect one's eyes from torture. These could be let down out of the way when one wanted the breeze. In

the roof were two oil lamps which gave a light strong enough to read by; each had a greencloth attachment

While we talked outside with friends, Barney and Satan placed the hand baggage, books, fruits, and

sodabottles in the racks, and the holdalls and heavy baggage in the closet, hung the overcoats and

sunhelmets and towels on the hooks, hoisted the two bedshelves up out of the way, then shouldered their

Now then, you see what a handsome, spacious, light, airy, homelike place it was, wherein to walk up and

down, or sit and write, or stretch out and read and smoke. A central door in the forward end of the

compartment opened into a similar compartment. It was occupied by my wife and daughter. About nine in the

evening, while we halted a while at a station, Barney and Satan came and undid the clumsy big holdalls, and

spread the bedding on the sofas in both compartmentsmattresses, sheets, gay coverlets, pillows, all

complete; there are no chambermaids in India apparently it was an office that was never heard of. Then

they closed the communicating door, nimbly tidied up our place, put the night clothing on the beds and the

January 31. It was novel and pleasant, and I stayed awake as long as I could, to enjoy it, and to read about

those strange people the Thugs. In my sleep they remained with me, and tried to strangle me. The leader of

the gang was that giant Hindoo who was such a picture in the strong light when we were leaving those

Hindoo betrothal festivities at two o'clock in the morningRao Bahadur Baskirao Balinkanje Pitale, Vakeel

to the Gaikwar of Baroda. It was he that brought me the invitation from his master to go to Baroda and

lecture to that princeand now he was misbehaving in my dreams. But all things can happen in dreams. It is

indeed as the Sweet Singer of Michigan saysirrelevantly, of course, for the one and unfailing great quality

which distinguishes her poetry from Shakespeare's and makes it precious to us is its stern and simple

My heart was gay and happy, This was ever in my mind, There is better times a coming, And I hope some

day to find Myself capable of composing, It was my heart's delight To compose on a sentimental subject If it

["The Sentimental Song Book," p. 49; theme, "The Author's Early Life," 19th stanza.]

Barroda. Arrived at 7 this morning. The dawn was just beginning to show. It was forlorn to have to turn out

in a strange place at such a time, and the blinking lights in the station made it seem night still. But the

gentlemen who had come to receive us were there with their servants, and they make quick work; there was

no lost time. We were soon outside and moving swiftly through the soft gray light, and presently were

comfortably housedwith more servants to help than we were used to, and with rather embarassingly

important officials to direct them. But it was custom; they spoke Ballarat English, their bearing was charming

Breakfast was a satisfaction. Across the lawns was visible in the distance through the open window an Indian

well, with two oxen tramping leisurely up and down long inclines, drawing water; and out of the stillness

came the suffering screech of the machinerynot quite musical, and yet soothingly melancholy and dreamy

and reposefula wail of lost spirits, one might imagine. And commemorative and reminiscent, perhaps; for

of course the Thugs used to throw people down that well when they were done with them.

After breakfast the day began, a sufficiently busy one. We were driven by winding roads through a vast park,

with noble forests of great trees, and with tangles and jungles of lovely growths of a humbler sort; and at one

place three large gray apes came out and pranced across the roada good deal of a surprise and an

unpleasant one, for such creatures belong in the menagerie, and they look artificial and out of place in a

We came to the city, by and by, and drove all through it. Intensely Indian, it was, and crumbly, and

mouldering, and immemorially old, to all appearance. And the housesoh, indescribably quaint and curious

they were, with their fronts an elaborate lacework of intricate and beautiful woodcarving, and now and

then further adorned with rude pictures of elephants and princes and gods done in shouting colors; and all the

ground floors along these cramped and narrow lanes occupied as shops shops unbelievably small and

impossibly packed with merchantable rubbish, and with ninetenthsnaked natives squatting at their work of

hammering, pounding, brazing, soldering, sewing, designing, cooking, measuring out grain, grinding it,

repairing idolsand then the swarm of ragged and noisy humanity under the horses' feet and everywhere,

Imagine a file of elephants marching through such a crevice of a street and scraping the paint off both sides of

it with their hides. How big they must look, and how little they must make the houses look; and when the

elephants are in their glittering court costume, what a contrast they must make with the humble and sordid

surroundings. And when a mad elephant goes raging through, belting right and left with his trunk, how do

these swarms of people get out of the way? I suppose it is a thing which happens now and then in the mad

I wonder how old the town is. There are patches of buildingmassive structures, monuments,

apparentlythat are so battered and worn, and seemingly so tired and so burdened with the weight of age,

and so dulled and stupefied with trying to remember things they forgot before history began, that they give

one the feeling that they must have been a part of original Creation. This is indeed one of the oldest of the

princedoms of India, and has always been celebrated for its barbaric pomps and splendors, and for the wealth

Out of the town again; a long drive through open country, by winding roads among secluded villages nestling

in the inviting shade of tropic vegetation, a Sabbath stillness everywhere, sometimes a pervading sense of

solitude, but always barefoot natives gliding by like spirits, without sound of footfall, and others in the

distance dissolving away and vanishing like the creatures of dreams. Now and then a string of stately camels

passed byalways interesting things to look atand they were velvetshod by nature, and made no noise.

Indeed, there were no noises of any sort in this paradise. Yes, once there was one, for a moment: a file of

native convicts passed along in charge of an officer, and we caught the soft clink of their chains. In a retired

spot, resting himself under a tree, was a holy persona naked black fakeer, thin and skinny, and

By and by to the elephant stables, and I took a ride; but it was by requestI did not ask for it, and didn't

want it; but I took it, because otherwise they would have thought I was afraid, which I was. The elephant

kneels down, by commandone end of him at a timeand you climb the ladder and get into the howdah,

and then he gets up, one end at a time, just as a ship gets up over a wave; and after that, as he strides

monstrously about, his motion is much like a ship's motion. The mahout bores into the back of his head with

a great iron prod and you wonder at his temerity and at the elephant's patience, and you think that perhaps the

patience will not last; but it does, and nothing happens. The mahout talks to the elephant in a low voice all the

time, and the elephant seems to understand it all and to be pleased with it; and he obeys every order in the

most contented and docile way. Among these twentyfive elephants were two which were larger than any I

had ever seen before, and if I had thought I could learn to not be afraid, I would have taken one of them while

In the howdahhouse there were many howdahs that were made of silver, one of gold, and one of old ivory,

and equipped with cushions and canopies of rich and costly stuffs. The wardrobe of the elephants was there,

too; vast velvet covers stiff and heavy with gold embroidery; and bells of silver and gold; and ropes of these

metals for fastening the things on harness, so to speak; and monster hoops of massive gold for the elephant to

But we did not see the treasury of crown jewels, and that was a disappointment, for in mass and richness it

ranks only second in India. By mistake we were taken to see the new palace instead, and we used up the last

remnant of our spare time there. It was a pity, too; for the new palace is mixed modern AmericanEuropean,

and has not a merit except costliness. It is wholly foreign to India, and impudent and out of place. The

architect has escaped. This comes of overdoing the suppression of the Thugs; they had their merits. The old

palace is oriental and charming, and in consonance with the country. The old palace would still be great if

there were nothing of it but the spacious and lofty hall where the durbars are held. It is not a good place to

lecture in, on account of the echoes, but it is a good place to hold durbars in and regulate the affairs of a

kingdom, and that is what it is for. If I had it I would have a durbar every day, instead of once or twice a year.

The prince is an educated gentleman. His culture is European. He has been in Europe five times. People say

that this is costly amusement for him, since in crossing the sea he must sometimes be obliged to drink water

from vessels that are more or less public, and thus damage his caste. To get it purified again he must make

pilgrimage to some renowned Hindoo temples and contribute a fortune or two to them. His people are like the

other Hindoos, profoundly religious; and they could not be content with a master who was impure.

We failed to see the jewels, but we saw the gold cannon and the silver onethey seemed to be sixpounders.

They were not designed for business, but for salutes upon rare and particularly important state occasions. An

ancestor of the present Gaikwar had the silver one made, and a subsequent ancestor had the gold one made, in

This sort of artillery is in keeping with the traditions of Baroda, which was of old famous for style and show.

It used to entertain visiting rajahs and viceroys with tigerfights, elephantfights, illuminations, and

In the train, during a part of the return journey from Baroda, we had the company of a gentleman who had

with him a remarkable looking dog. I had not seen one of its kind before, as far as I could remember; though

of course I might have seen one and not noticed it, for I am not acquainted with dogs, but only with cats. This

dog's coat was smooth and shiny and black, and I think it had tan trimmings around the edges of the dog, and

perhaps underneath. It was a long, low dog, with very short, strange legslegs that curved inboard,

something like parentheses wrong way (. Indeed, it was made on the plan of a bench for length and lowness.

It seemed to be satisfied, but I thought the plan poor, and structurally weak, on account of the distance

between the forward supports and those abaft. With age the dog's back was likely to sag; and it seemed to me

that it would have been a stronger and more practicable dog if it had had some more legs. It had not begun to

sag yet, but the shape of the legs showed that the undue weight imposed upon them was beginning to tell. It

had a long nose, and floppy ears that hung down, and a resigned expression of countenance. I did not like to

ask what kind of a dog it was, or how it came to be deformed, for it was plain that the gentleman was very

fond of it, and naturally he could be sensitive about it. From delicacy I thought it best not to seem to notice it

too much. No doubt a man with a dog like that feels just as a person does who has a child that is out of true.

The gentleman was not merely fond of the dog, he was also proud of itjust the same again, as a mother

feels about her child when it is an idiot. I could see that he was proud of it, not withstanding it was such a

long dog and looked so resigned and pious. It had been all over the world with him, and had been pilgriming

like that for years and years. It had traveled 50,000 miles by sea and rail, and had ridden in front of him on

his horse 8,000. It had a silver medal from the Geographical Society of Great Britain for its travels, and I saw

it. It had won prizes in dog shows, both in India and in EnglandI saw them. He said its pedigree was on

record in the Kennel Club, and that it was a wellknown dog. He said a great many people in London could

recognize it the moment they saw it. I did not say anything, but I did not think it anything strange; I should

know that dog again, myself, yet I am not careful about noticing dogs. He said that when he walked along in

London, people often stopped and looked at the dog. Of course I did not say anything, for I did not want to

hurt his feelings, but I could have explained to him that if you take a great long low dog like that and waddle

it along the street anywhere in the world and not charge anything, people will stop and look. He was gratified

because the dog took prizes. But that was nothing; if I were built like that I could take prizes myself. I wished

I knew what kind of a dog it was, and what it was for, but I could not very well ask, for that would show that

I did not know. Not that I want a dog like that, but only to know the secret of its birth.

I think he was going to hunt elephants with it, because I know, from remarks dropped by him, that he has

hunted large game in India and Africa, and likes it. But I think that if he tries to hunt elephants with it, he is

I do not believe that it is suited for elephants. It lacks energy, it lacks force of character, it lacks bitterness.

These things all show in the meekness and resignation of its expression. It would not attack an elephant, I am

sure of it. It might not run if it saw one coming, but it looked to me like a dog that would sit down and pray.

I wish he had told me what breed it was, if there are others; but I shall know the dog next time, and then if I

can bring myself to it I will put delicacy aside and ask. If I seem strangely interested in dogs, I have a reason

for it; for a dog saved me from an embarrassing position once, and that has made me grateful to these

animals; and if by study I could learn to tell some of the kinds from the others, I should be greatly pleased. I

only know one kind apart, yet, and that is the kind that saved me that time. I always know that kind when I

meet it, and if it is hungry or lost I take care of it. The matter happened in this way

It was years and years ago. I had received a note from Mr. Augustin Daly of the Fifth Avenue Theatre, asking

me to call the next time I should be in New York. I was writing plays, in those days, and he was admiring

them and trying to get me a chance to get them played in Siberia. I took the first trainthe early onethe

one that leaves Hartford at 8.29 in the morning. At New Haven I bought a paper, and found it filled with

glaring displaylines about a "benchshow" there. I had often heard of benchshows, but had never felt any

interest in them, because I supposed they were lectures that were not well attended. It turned out, now, that it

was not that, but a dogshow. There was a doubleleaded column about the kingfeature of this one, which

was called a Saint Bernard, and was worth $10,000, and was known to be the largest and finest of his species

in the world. I read all this with interest, because out of my school boy readings I dimly remembered how

the priests and pilgrims of St. Bernard used to go out in the storms and dig these dogs out of the snowdrifts

when lost and exhausted, and give them brandy and save their lives, and drag them to the monastery and

Also, there was a picture of this prizedog in the paper, a noble great creature with a benignant countenance,

standing by a table. He was placed in that way so that one could get a right idea of his great dimensions. You

could see that he was just a shade higher than the tableindeed, a huge fellow for a dog. Then there was a

description which event into the details. It gave his enormous weight150 1/2 pounds, and his length 4 feet

2 inches, from stem to sternpost; and his height3 feet 1 inch, to the top of his back. The pictures and the

figures so impressed me, that I could see the beautiful colossus before me, and I kept on thinking about him

In the swirl and tumult of the hotel lobby I ran across Mr. Daly's comedian, the late James Lewis, of beloved

memory, and I casually mentioned that I was going to call upon Mr. Daly in the evening at 8. He looked

surprised, and said he reckoned not. For answer I handed him Mr. Daly's note. Its substance was: "Come to

my private den, over the theater, where we cannot be interrupted. And come by the back way, not the front.

No. 642 Sixth Avenue is a cigar shop; pass through it and you are in a paved court, with high buildings all

"Because you won't. Or if you do you can draw on me for a hundred dollars; for you will be the first man that

has accomplished it in twentyfive years. I can't think what Mr. Daly can have been absorbed in. He has

forgotten a most important detail, and he will feel humiliated in the morning when he finds that you tried to

At that point we were swept apart by the crowd, somebody detained me with a moment's talk, and we did not

At eight in the evening I passed through the cigar shop and into the court and knocked at the second door.

I entered. It was a small room, carpetless, dusty, with a naked deal table, and two cheap wooden chairs for

furniture. A giant Irishman was standing there, with shirt collar and vest unbuttoned, and no coat on. I put my

hat on the table, and was about to say something, when the Irishman took the innings himself. And not with

I was a little disconcerted, and my easy confidence suffered a shrinkage. The man stood as motionless as

Gibraltar, and kept his unblinking eye upon me. It was very embarrassing, very humiliating. I stammered at a

I laid my cigar on the windowledge; chased my flighty thoughts a moment, then said in a placating manner:

For a moment I fancied there would be a change in the atmosphere, now; but this idea was premature. The

big man was examining the note searchingly under the gasjet. A glance showed me that he had it upside

I thought that that was a home shot, but he did not betray that he had been hit. He said:

"H'm. H'm. Mike Train. H'm. I don't remember ut. What is it ye want to see him about?"

"Ye don't know! And ye confess it, becod ! Well, I can tell ye wan thingye'll not see him. Are ye in the

A fatal question. I recognized that I was defeated. If I answered no, he would cut the matter short and wave

me to the door without the grace of a wordI saw it in his uncompromising eye; if I said I was a lecturer, he

would despise me, and dismiss me with opprobrious words; if I said I was a dramatist, he would throw me

out of the window. I saw that my case was hopeless, so I chose the course which seemed least humiliating: I

would pocket my shame and glide out without answering. The silence was growing lengthy.

I said it with splendid confidence; for in that moment the very twin of that grand New Haven dog loafed into

the room, and I saw that Irishman's eye light eloquently with pride and affection.

"You don't say, sir! And that's your show, sir! Oh, it's a grand show, it's a wonderful show, sir, and a proud

man I am to see your honor this day. And ye'll be an expert, sir, and ye'll know all about dogsmore than

"Ye have some reputation, your honor! Bedad I believe you! There's not a jintleman in the worrld that can lay

over ye in the judgmint of a dog, sir. Now I'll vinture that your honor'll know that dog's dimensions there

better than he knows them his own self, and just by the casting of your educated eye upon him. Would you

I knew that upon my answer would depend my fate. If I made this dog bigger than the prizedog, it would be

bad diplomacy, and suspicious; if I fell too far short of the prizedog, that would be equally damaging. The

dog was standing by the table, and I believed I knew the difference between him and the one whose picture I

"It's no trouble to guess this noble creature's figures height, three feet; length, four feet and threequarters of

"Ye've hardly missed it the hair's breadth, hardly the shade of a shade, your honor! Oh, it's the miraculous eye

And still pouring out his admiration of my capacities, he snatched off his vest and scoured off one of the

"There, sit down, your honor, I'm ashamed of meself that I forgot ye were standing all this time; and do put

on your hat, ye mustn't take cold, it's a drafty place; and here is your cigar, sir, a getting cold, I'll give ye a

light. There. The place is all yours, sir, and if ye'll just put your feet on the table and make yourself at home,

I'll stir around and get a candle and light ye up the ould crazy stairs and see that ye don't come to anny harm,

for be this time Mr. Daly'll be that impatient to see your honor that he'll be taking the roof off."

He conducted me cautiously and tenderly up the stairs, lighting the way and protecting me with friendly

warnings, then pushed the door open and bowed me in and went his way, mumbling hearty things about my

wonderful eye for points of a dog. Mr. Daly was writing and had his back to me. He glanced over his

"Oh, dear me, I forgot all about giving instructions. I was just writing you to beg a thousand pardons. But

how is it you are here? How did you get by that Irishman? You are the first man that's done it in five and

twenty years. You didn't bribe him, I know that; there's not money enough in New York to do it. And you

didn't persuade him; he is all ice and iron: there isn't a soft place nor a warm one in him anywhere. That is

your secret? Look here; you owe me a hundred dollars for unintentionally giving you a chance to perform a

That good dog not only did me that good turn in the time of my need, but he won for me the envious

reputation among all the theatrical people from the Atlantic to the Pacific of being the only man in history

On the Train. Fifty years ago, when I was a boy in the then remote and sparsely peopled Mississippi valley,

vague tales and rumors of a mysterious body of professional murderers came wandering in from a country

which was constructively as far from us as the constellations blinking in spaceIndia; vague tales and

rumors of a sect called Thugs, who waylaid travelers in lonely places and killed them for the contentment of a

god whom they worshiped; tales which everybody liked to listen to and nobody believed, except with

reservations. It was considered that the stories had gathered bulk on their travels. The matter died down and a

lull followed. Then Eugene Sue's "Wandering Jew" appeared, and made great talk for a while. One character

in it was a chief of Thugs"Feringhea"a mysterious and terrible Indian who was as slippery and sly as a

serpent, and as deadly; and he stirred up the Thug interest once more. But it did not last. It presently died

At first glance it seems strange that this should have happened; but really it was not strangeon the

contrary,. it was natural; I mean on our side of the water. For the source whence the Thug tales mainly came

was a Government Report, and without doubt was not republished in America; it was probably never even

seen there. Government Reports have no general circulation. They are distributed to the few, and are not

always read by those few. I heard of this Report for the first time a day or two ago, and borrowed it. It is full

of fascinations; and it turns those dim, dark fairy tales of my boyhood days into realities.

The Report was made in 1889 by Major Sleeman, of the Indian Service, and was printed in Calcutta in 1840.

It is a clumsy, great, fat, poor sample of the printer's art, but good enough for a government printingoffice in

that old day and in that remote region, perhaps. To Major Sleeman was given the general superintendence of

the giant task of ridding India of Thuggee, and he and his seventeen assistants accomplished it. It was the

Augean Stables over again. Captain Vallancey, writing in a Madras journal in those old times, makes this

"The day that sees this farspread evil eradicated from India and known only in name, will greatly tend to

He did not overestimate the magnitude and difficulty of the work, nor the immensity of the credit which

Thuggee became known to the British authorities in India about 1810, but its wide prevalence was not

suspected; it was not regarded as a serious matter, and no systematic measures were taken for its suppression

until about 1830. About that time Major Sleeman captured Eugene Sue's Thug chief, "Feringhea," and got

him to turn King's evidence. The revelations were so stupefying that Sleeman was not able to believe them.

Sleeman thought he knew every criminal within his jurisdiction, and that the worst of them were merely

thieves; but Feringhea told him that he was in reality living in the midst of a swarm of professional

murderers; that they had been all about him for many years, and that they buried their dead close by. These

seemed insane tales; but Feringhea said come and seeand he took him to a grave and dug up a hundred

bodies, and told him all the circumstances of the killings, and named the Thugs who had done the work. It

was a staggering business. Sleeman captured some of these Thugs and proceeded to examine them separately,

and with proper precautions against collusion; for he would not believe any Indian's unsupported word. The

evidence gathered proved the truth of what Feringhea had said, and also revealed the fact that gangs of Thugs

were plying their trade all over India. The astonished government now took hold of Thuggee, and for ten

years made systematic and relentless war upon it, and finally destroyed it. Gang after gang was captured,

tried, and punished. The Thugs were harried and hunted from one end of India to the other. The government

got all their secrets out of them; and also got the names of the members of the bands, and recorded them in a

The Thugs were worshipers of Bhowanee; and to this god they sacrificed anybody that came handy; but they

kept the dead man's things themselves, for the god cared for nothing but the corpse. Men were initiated into

the sect with solemn ceremonies. Then they were taught how to strangle a person with the sacred

chokecloth, but were not allowed to perform officially with it until after long practice. No halfeducated

strangler could choke a man to death quickly enough to keep him from uttering a sounda muffled scream,

gurgle, gasp, moan, or something of the sort; but the expert's work was instantaneous: the cloth was whipped

around the victim's neck, there was a sudden twist, and the head fell silently forward, the eyes starting from

the sockets; and all was over. The Thug carefully guarded against resistance. It was usual to to get the victims

If the Thug had planned India itself it could not have been more conveniently arranged for the needs of his

There were no public conveyances. There were no conveyances for hire. The traveler went on foot or in a

bullock cart or on a horse which he bought for the purpose. As soon as he was out of his own little State or

principality he was among strangers; nobody knew him, nobody took note of him, and from that time his

movements could no longer be traced. He did not stop in towns or villages, but camped outside of them and

sent his servants in to buy provisions. There were no habitations between villages. Whenever he was between

villages he was an easy prey, particularly as he usually traveled by night, to avoid the heat. He was always

being overtaken by strangers who offered him the protection of their company, or asked for the protection of

hisand these strangers were often Thugs, as he presently found out to his cost. The landholders, the native

police, the petty princes, the village officials, the customs officers were in many cases protectors and

harborers of the Thugs, and betrayed travelers to them for a share of the spoil. At first this condition of things

made it next to impossible for the government to catch the marauders; they were spirited away by these

watchful friends. All through a vast continent, thus infested, helpless people of every caste and kind moved

along the paths and trails in couples and groups silently by night, carrying the commerce of the

countrytreasure, jewels, money, and petty batches of silks, spices, and all manner of wares. It was a

When the autumn opened, the Thugs began to gather together by pre concert. Other people had to have

interpreters at every turn, but not the Thugs; they could talk together, no matter how far apart they were born,

for they had a language of their own, and they had secret signs by which they knew each other for Thugs; and

they were always friends. Even their diversities of religion and caste were sunk in devotion to their calling,

and the Moslem and the highcaste and lowcaste Hindoo were staunch and affectionate brothers in

When a gang had been assembled, they had religious worship, and waited for an omen. They had definite

notions about the omens. The cries of certain animals were good omens, the cries of certain other creatures

The sword and the stranglingcloth were sacred emblems. The Thugs worshiped the sword at home before

going out to the assemblingplace; the stranglingcloth was worshiped at the place of assembly. The chiefs

of most of the bands performed the religious ceremonies themselves; but the Kaets delegated them to certain

official stranglers (Chaurs). The rites of the Kaets were so holy that no one but the Chaur was allowed to

Thug methods exhibit a curious mixture of caution and the absence of it; cold business calculation and

sudden, unreflecting impulse; but there were two details which were constant, and not subject to caprice:

patient persistence in following up the prey, and pitilessness when the time came to act.

Caution was exhibited in the strength of the bands. They never felt comfortable and confident unless their

strength exceeded that of any party of travelers they were likely to meet by four or fivefold. Yet it was never

their purpose to attack openly, but only when the victims were off their guard. When they got hold of a party

of travelers they often moved along in their company several days, using all manner of arts to win their

friendship and get their confidence. At last, when this was accomplished to their satisfaction, the real business

began. A few Thugs were privately detached and sent forward in the dark to select a good killingplace and

dig the graves. When the rest reached the spot a halt was called, for a rest or a smoke. The travelers were

invited to sit. By signs, the chief appointed certain Thugs to sit down in front of the travelers as if to wait

upon them, others to sit down beside them and engage them in conversation, and certain expert stranglers to

stand behind the travelers and be ready when the signal was given. The signal was usually some

commonplace remark, like "Bring the tobacco." Sometimes a considerable wait ensued after all the actors

were in their placesthe chief was biding his time, in order to make everything sure. Meantime, the talk

droned on, dim figures moved about in the dull light, peace and tranquility reigned, the travelers resigned

themselves to the pleasant reposefulness and comfort of the situation, unconscious of the death angels

standing motionless at their backs. The time was ripe, now, and the signal came: "Bring the tobacco." There

was a mute swift movement, all in the same instant the men at each victim's sides seized his hands, the man

in front seized his feet, and pulled, the man at his back whipped the cloth around his neck and gave it a twist

the head sunk forward, the tragedy was over. The bodies were stripped and covered up in the graves, the spoil

packed for transportation, then the Thugs gave pious thanks to Bhowanee, and departed on further holy

The Report shows that the travelers moved in exceedingly small groups twos, threes, fours, as a rule; a

party with a dozen in it was rare. The Thugs themselves seem to have been the only people who moved in

force. They went about in gangs of 10, 15, 25, 40, 60, 100, 150, 200, 250, and one gang of 310 is mentioned.

Considering their numbers, their catch was not extraordinaryparticularly when you consider that they were

not in the least fastidious, but took anybody they could get, whether rich or poor, and sometimes even killed

children. Now and then they killed women, but it was considered sinful to do it, and unlucky. The "season"

was six or eight months long. One season the half dozen Bundelkand and Gwalior gangs aggregated 712 men,

and they murdered 210 people. One season the Malwa and Kandeish gangs aggregated 702 men, and they

murdered 232. One season the Kandeish and Berar gangs aggregated 963 men, and they murdered 385

Here is the tallysheet of a gang of sixty Thugs for a whole seasongang under two noted chiefs, "Chotee

"Went through Aurungabad to Walagow; there met a Havildar of the barber caste and 5 sepoys (native

soldiers); in the evening came to Jokur, and in the morning killed them near the place where the

"Between Jokur and Dholeea met a sepoy of the shepherd caste; killed him in the jungle.

"Passed through Dholeea and lodged in a village; two miles beyond, on the road to Indore, met a Byragee

"In the morning, beyond the Thapa, fell in with 3 Marwarie travelers; murdered them.

"Two miles further on, overtaken by three treasurebearers; took them two miles and murdered them in the

Chotee (to save his neck) was informer, and furnished these facts. Several things are noticeable about his

resume. 1. Business brevity; 2, absence of emotion; 3, smallness of the parties encountered by the 60; 4,

variety in character and quality of the game captured; 5, Hindoo and Mohammedan chiefs in business

together for Bhowanee; 6, the sacred caste of the Brahmins not respected by either; 7, nor yet the character of

A beggar is a holy creature, and some of the gangs spared him on that account, no matter how slack business

might be; but other gangs slaughtered not only him, but even that sacredest of sacred creatures, the

fakeerthat repulsive skinandbone thing that goes around naked and mats his bushy hair with dust and

dirt, and so beflours his lean body with ashes that he looks like a specter. Sometimes a fakeer trusted a shade

too far in the protection of his sacredness. In the middle of a tallysheet of Feringhea's, who had been out

with forty Thugs, I find a case of the kind. After the killing of thirtynine men and one woman, the fakeer

"Approaching Doregow, met 3 pundits; also a fakeer, mounted on a pony; he was plastered over with sugar to

collect flies, and was covered with them. Drove off the fakeer, and killed the other three.

"Leaving Doregow, the fakeer joined again, and went on in company to Raojana; met 6 Khutries on their way

from Bombay to Nagpore. Drove off the fakeer with stones, and killed the 6 men in camp, and buried them in

"Next day the fakeer joined again; made him leave at Mana. Beyond there, fell in with two Kahars and a

sepoy, and came on towards the place selected for the murder. When near it, the fakeer came again. Losing

all patience with him, gave Mithoo, one of the gang, 5 rupees ($2.50) to murder him, and take the sin upon

himself. All four were strangled, including the fakeer. Surprised to find among the fakeer's effects 30 pounds

of coral, 350 strings of small pearls, 15 strings of large pearls, and a gilt necklace."

It it curious, the little effect that time has upon a really interesting circumstance. This one, so old, so long ago

gone down into oblivion, reads with the same freshness and charm that attach to the news in the morning

paper; one's spirits go up, then down, then up again, following the chances which the fakeer is running; now

you hope, now you despair, now you hope again; and at last everything comes out right, and you feel a great

wave of personal satisfaction go weltering through you, and without thinking, you put out your hand to pat

Mithoo on the back, when puff! the whole thing has vanished away, there is nothing there; Mithoo and all

the crowd have been dust and ashes and forgotten, oh, so many, many, many lagging years! And then comes

a sense of injury: you don't know whether Mithoo got the swag, along with the sin, or had to divide up the

swag and keep all the sin himself. There is no literary art about a government report. It stops a story right in

These reports of Thug expeditions run along interminably in one monotonous tune: "Met a sepoykilled

him; met 5 punditskilled them; met 4 Rajpoots and a womankilled them"and so on, till the statistics

get to be pretty dry. But this small trip of Feringhea's Forty had some little variety about it. Once they came

across a man hiding in a grave a thief; he had stolen 1,100 rupees from Dhunroj Seith of Parowtee. They

strangled him and took the money. They had no patience with thieves. They killed two treasurebearers, and

got 4,000 rupees. They came across two bullocks "laden with copper pice," and killed the four drivers and

took the money. There must have been half a ton of it. I think it takes a double handful of pice to make an

anna, and 16 annas to make a rupee; and even in those days the rupee was worth only half a dollar. Coming

back over their tracks from Baroda, they had another picturesque stroke of luck: "The Lohars of Oodeypore "

put a traveler in their charge for safety." Dear, dear, across this abyssmal gulf of time we still see Feringhea's

lips uncover his teeth, and through the dim haze we catch the incandescent glimmer of his smile. He accepted

Even Rajahs had no terrors for Feringhea; he came across an elephant driver belonging to the Rajah of

Among the reports of expeditions we find mention of victims of almost every quality and estate.

Also a prince's cook; and even the watercarrier of that sublime lord of lords and king of kings, the

GovernorGeneral of India! How broad they were in their tastes! They also murdered actorspoor

wandering barnstormers. There are two instances recorded; the first one by a gang of Thugs under a chief

"After murdering 4 sepoys, going on toward Indore, met 4 strolling players, and persuaded them to come with

us, on the pretense that we would see their performance at the next stage. Murdered them at a temple near

But this gang was a particularly bad crew. On that expedition they murdered a fakeer and twelve beggars.

And yet Bhowanee protected them; for once when they were strangling a man in a wood when a crowd was

going by close at hand and the noose slipped and the man screamed, Bhowanee made a camel burst out at the

same moment with a roar that drowned the scream; and before the man could repeat it the breath was choked

The cow is so sacred in India that to kill her keeper is an awful sacrilege, and even the Thugs recognized this;

yet now and then the lust for blood was too strong, and so they did kill a few cowkeepers. In one of these

instances the witness who killed the cowherd said, "In Thuggee this is strictly forbidden, and is an act from

which no good can come. I was ill of a fever for ten days afterward. I do believe that evil will follow the

murder of a man with a cow. If there be no cow it does not signify." Another Thug said he held the cowherd's

feet while this witness did the strangling. He felt no concern, "because the bad fortune of such a deed is upon

the strangler and not upon the assistants; even if there should be a hundred of them."

There were thousands of Thugs roving over India constantly, during many generations. They made Thug gee

a hereditary vocation and taught it to their sons and to their son's sons. Boys were in full membership as early

as 16 years of age; veterans were still at work at 70. What was the fascination, what was the impulse?

Apparently, it was partly piety, largely gain, and there is reason to suspect that the sport afforded was the

chiefest fascination of all. Meadows Taylor makes a Thug in one of his books claim that the pleasure of

killing men was the white man's beasthunting instinct enlarged, refined, ennobled. I will quote the passage:

"How many of you English are passionately devoted to sporting! Your days and months are passed in its

excitement. A tiger, a panther, a buffalo or a hog rouses your utmost energies for its destructionyou even

That must really be the secret of the rise and development of Thuggee. The joy of killing! the joy of seeing

killing donethese are traits of the human race at large. We white people are merely modified Thugs; Thugs

fretting under the restraints of a not very thick skin of civilization; Thugs who long ago enjoyed the slaughter

of the Roman arena, and later the burning of doubtful Christians by authentic Christians in the public squares,

and who now, with the Thugs of Spain and Nimes, flock to enjoy the blood and misery of the bullring. We

have no tourists of either sex or any religion who are able to resist the delights of the bullring when

opportunity offers; and we are gentle Thugs in the huntingseason, and love to chase a tame rabbit and kill it.

Still, we have made some progressmicroscopic, and in truth scarcely worth mentioning, and certainly

nothing to be proud ofstill, it is progress: we no longer take pleasure in slaughtering or burning helpless

men. We have reached a little altitude where we may look down upon the Indian Thugs with a complacent

shudder; and we may even hope for a day, many centuries hence, when our posterity will look down upon us

There are many indications that the Thug often hunted men for the mere sport of it; that the fright and pain of

the quarry were no more to him than are the fright and pain of the rabbit or the stag to us; and that he was no

more ashamed of beguiling his game with deceits and abusing its trust than are we when we have imitated a

wild animal's call and shot it when it honored us with its confidence and came to see what we wanted:

"Madara, son of Nihal, and I, Ramzam, set out from Kotdee in the cold weather and followed the high road

for about twenty days in search of travelers, until we came to Selempore, where we met a very old man going

to the east. We won his confidence in this manner: he carried a load which was too heavy for his old age; I

said to him, 'You are an old man, I will aid you in carrying your load, as you are from my part of the country.'

He said, 'Very well, take me with you.' So we took him with us to Selempore, where we slept that night. We

woke him next morning before dawn and set out, and at the distance of three miles we seated him to rest

while it was still very dark. Madara was ready behind him, and strangled him. He never spoke a word. He

Another gang fell in with a couple of barbers and persuaded them to come along in their company by

promising them the job of shaving the whole crew30 Thugs. At the place appointed for the murder 15 got

shaved, and actually paid the barbers for their work. Then killed them and took back the money.

A gang of fortytwo Thugs came across two Brahmins and a shopkeeper on the road, beguiled them into a

grove and got up a concert for their entertainment. While these poor fellows were listening to the music the

stranglers were standing behind them; and at the proper moment for dramatic effect they applied the noose.

The most devoted fisherman must have a bite at least as often as once a week or his passion will cool and he

will put up his tackle. The tiger sportsman must find a tiger at least once a fortnight or he will get tired and

quit. The elephanthunter's enthusiasm will waste away little by little, and his zeal will perish at last if he

plod around a month without finding a member of that noble family to assassinate.

But when the lust in the hunter's heart is for the noblest of all quarries, man, how different is the case! and

how watery and poor is the zeal and how childish the endurance of those other hunters by comparison. Then,

neither hunger, nor thirst, nor fatigue, nor deferred hope, nor monotonous disappointment, nor leadenfooted

lapse of time can conquer the hunter's patience or weaken the joy of his quest or cool the splendid rage of his

desire. Of all the huntingpassions that burn in the breast of man, there is none that can lift him superior to

discouragements like these but the onethe royal sport, the supreme sport, whose quarry is his brother. By

comparison, tigerhunting is a colorless poor thing, for all it has been so bragged about.

Why, the Thug was content to tramp patiently along, afoot, in the wasting heat of India, week after week, at

an average of nine or ten miles a day, if he might but hope to find game some time or other and refresh his

"I (Ramzam) and Hyder set out, for the purpose of strangling travelers, from Guddapore, and proceeded via

the Fort of Julalabad, Newulgunge, Bangermow, on the banks of the Ganges (upwards of 100 miles), from

whence we returned by another route. Still no travelers! till we reached Bowaneegunge, where we fell in with

a traveler, a boatman; we inveigled him and about two miles east of there Hyder strangled him as he

stoodfor he was troubled and afraid, and would not sit. We then made a long journey (about 130 miles)

and reached Hussunpore Bundwa, where at the tank we fell in with a travelerhe slept there that night; next

morning we followed him and tried to win his confidence; at the distance of two miles we endeavored to

induce him to sit downbut he would not, having become aware of us. I attempted to strangle him as he

walked along, but did not succeed; both of us then fell upon him, he made a great outcry, 'They are murdering

me!' at length we strangled him and flung his body into a well. After this we returned to our homes, having

been out a month and traveled about 260 miles. A total of two men murdered on the expedition."

And here is another caserelated by the terrible Futty Khan, a man with a tremendous record, to be

"I, with three others, traveled for about 45 days a distance of about 200 miles in search of victims along the

highway to Bundwa and returned by Davodpore (another 200 miles) during which journey we had only one

murder, which happened in this manner. Four miles to the east of Noubustaghat we fell in with a traveler, an

old man. I, with Koshal and Hyder, inveigled him and accompanied him that day within 3 miles of Rampoor,

where, after dark, in a lonely place, we got him to sit down and rest; and while I kept him in talk, seated

before him, Hyder behind strangled him : he made no resistance. Koshal stabbed him under the arms and in

the throat, and we flung the body into a running stream. We got about 4 or 5 rupees each ($2 or $2.50). We

There. They tramped 400 miles, were gone about three months, and harvested two dollars and a half apiece.

But the mere pleasure of the hunt was sufficient. That was pay enough. They did no grumbling.

Every now and then in this big book one comes across that pathetic remark: "we tried to get him to sit down

but he would not." It tells the whole story. Some accident had awakened the suspicion in him that these

smooth friends who had been petting and coddling him and making him feel so safe and so fortunate after his

forlorn and lonely wanderings were the dreaded Thugs; and now their ghastly invitation to "sit and rest" had

confirmed its truth. He knew there was no help for him, and that he was looking his last upon earthly things,

There are a number of instances which indicate that when a man had once tasted the regal joys of

manhunting he could not be content with the dull monotony of a crimeless life after ward. Example, from a

"We passed through to Kurnaul, where we found a former Thug named Junooa, an old comrade of ours, who

had turned religious mendicant and become a disciple and holy. He came to us in the serai and weeping with

Neither wealth nor honors nor dignities could satisfy a reformed Thug for long. He would throw them all

away, someday, and go back to the lurid pleasures of hunting men, and being hunted himself by the British.

Ramzam was taken into a great native grandee's service and given authority over five villages. "My authority

extended over these people to summons them to my presence, to make them stand or sit. I dressed well, rode

my pony, and had two sepoys, a scribe and a village guard to attend me. During three years I used to pay each

village a monthly visit, and no one suspected that I was a Thug! The chief man used to wait on me to transact

And yet during that very three years he got leave of absence "to attend a wedding," and instead went off on a

Thugging lark with six other Thugs and hunted the highway for fifteen days!with satisfactory results.

Afterwards he held a great office under a Rajah. There he had ten miles of country under his command and a

military guard of fifteen men, with authority to call out 2,000 more upon occasion. But the British got on his

track, and they crowded him so that he had to give himself up. See what a figure he was when he was gotten

up for style and had all his things on: "I was fully armeda sword, shield, pistols, a matchlock musket and a

flint gun, for I was fond of being thus arrayed, and when so armed feared not though forty men stood before

He gave himself up and proudly proclaimed himself a Thug. Then by request he agreed to betray his friend

and pal, Buhram, a Thug with the most tremendous record in India. "I went to the house where Buhram slept

(often has he led our gangs!) I woke him, he knew me well, and came outside to me. It was a cold night, so

under pretence of warming myself, but in reality to have light for his seizure by the guards, I lighted some

straw and made a blaze. We were warming our hands. The guards drew around us. I said to them, "This is

Buhram," and he was seized just as a cat seizes a mouse. Then Buhram said, "I am a Thug! my father was a

So spoke the mighty hunter, the mightiest of the mighty, the Gordon Cumming of his day. Not much regret

noticeable in it.[" Having planted a bullet in the shoulderbone of an elephant, and caused the agonized

creature to lean for support against a tree, I proceeded to brew some coffee. Having refreshed myself, taking

observations of the elephant's spasms and writhings between the sips, I resolved to make experiments on

vulnerable points, and, approaching very near, I fired several bullets at different parts of his enormous skull.

He only acknowledged the shots by a salaamlike movement of his trunk, with the point of which he gently

touched the wounds with a striking and peculiar action. Surprised and shocked to find that I was only

prolonging the suffering of the noble beast, which bore its trials with such dignified composure, I resolved to

finish the proceeding with all possible despatch, and accordingly opened fire upon him from the left side.

Aiming at the shoulder, I fired six shots with the twogrooved rifle, which must have eventually proved

mortal, after which I fired six shots at the same part with the Dutch sixfounder. Large tears now trickled

down from his eyes, which he slowly shut and opened, his colossal frame shivered convulsively, and falling

So many many times this Official Report leaves one's curiosity unsatisfied. For instance, here is a little

paragraph out of the record of a certain band of 193 Thugs, which has that defect:

"Fell in with Lall Sing Subahdar and his family, consisting of nine persons. Traveled with them two days, and

the third put them all to death except the two children, little boys of one and a half years old."

There it stops. What did they do with those poor little fellows? What was their subsequent history? Did they

purpose training them up as Thugs? How could they take care of such little creatures on a march which

stretched over several months ? No one seems to have cared to ask any questions about the babies. But I do

One would be apt to imagine that the Thugs were utterly callous, utterly destitute of human feelings, heartless

toward their own families as well as toward other people's; but this was not so. Like all other Indians, they

had a passionate love for their kin. A shrewd British officer who knew the Indian character, took that

characteristic into account in laying his plans for the capture of Eugene Sue's famous Feringhea. He found out

Feringhea's hidingplace, and sent a guard by night to seize him, but the squad was awkward and he got

away. However, they got the rest of the familythe mother, wife, child, and brotherand brought them to

the officer, at Jubbulpore; the officer did not fret, but bided his time: "I knew Feringhea would not go far

while links so dear to him were in my hands." He was right. Feringhea knew all the danger he was running by

staying in the neighborhood, still he could not tear himself away. The officer found that he divided his time

between five villages where be had relatives and friends who could get news for him from his family in

Jubbulpore jail; and that he never slept two consecutive nights in the same village. The officer traced out his

several haunts, then pounced upon all the five villages on the one night and at the same hour, and got his

Another example of family affection. A little while previously to the capture of Feringhea's family, the

British officer had captured Feringhea's fosterbrother, leader of a gang of ten, and had tried the eleven and

condemned them to be hanged. Feringhea's captured family arrived at the jail the day before the execution

was to take place. The fosterbrother, Jhurhoo, entreated to be allowed to see the aged mother and the others.

The prayer was granted, and this is what took placeit is the British officer who speaks:

"In the morning, just before going to the scaffold, the interview took place before me. He fell at the old

woman's feet and begged that she would relieve him from the obligations of the milk with which she had

nourished him from infancy, as he was about to die before he could fulfill any of them. She placed her hands

on his head, and he knelt, and she said she forgave him all, and bid him die like a man."

If a capable artist should make a picture of it, it would be full of dignity and solemnity and pathos; and it

could touch you. You would imagine it to be anything but what it was. There is reverence there, and

tenderness, and gratefulness, and compassion, and resignation, and fortitude, and selfrespectand no sense

of disgrace, no thought of dishonor. Everything is there that goes to make a noble parting, and give it a

moving grace and beauty and dignity. And yet one of these people is a Thug and the other a mother of Thugs!

I wish to make note of one curious thing while I think of it. One of the very commonest remarks to be found

"Strangled him and threw him an a well!" In one case they threw sixteen into a welland they had thrown

And there is another very curious thing. The bands of Thugs had private graveyards. They did not like to kill

and bury at random, here and there and everywhere. They preferred to wait, and toll the victims along, and

get to one of their regular buryingplaces ('bheels') if they could. In the little kingdom of Oude, which was

about half as big as Ireland and about as big as the State of Maine, they had two hundred and seventyfour

'bheels'. They were scattered along fourteen hundred miles of road, at an average of only five miles apart, and

the British government traced out and located each and every one of them and set them down on the map.

The Oude bands seldom went out of their own country, but they did a thriving business within its borders. So

did outside bands who came in and helped. Some of the Thug leaders of Oude were noted for their successful

careers. Each of four of them confessed to above 300 murders; another to nearly 400; our friend Ramzam to

604he is the one who got leave of absence to attend a wedding and went thugging instead; and he is also

But the biggest records of all were the murderlists of Futty Khan and Buhram. Futty Khan's number is

smaller than Ramzam's, but he is placed at the head because his average is the best in OudeThug history per

year of service. His slaughter was 508 men in twenty years, and he was still a young man when the British

stopped his industry. Buhram's list was 931 murders, but it took him forty years. His average was one man

and nearly all of another man per month for forty years, but Futty Khan's average was two men and a little of

There is one very striking thing which I wish to call attention to. You have surmised from the listed callings

followed by the victims of the Thugs that nobody could travel the Indian roads unprotected and live to get

through; that the Thugs respected no quality, no vocation, no religion, nobody; that they killed every unarmed

man that came in their way. That is wholly truewith one reservation. In all the long file of Thug

confessions an English traveler is mentioned but onceand this is what the Thug says of the circumstance:

"He was on his way from Mhow to Bombay. We studiously avoided him. He proceeded next morning with a

number of travelers who had sought his protection, and they took the road to Baroda."

We do not know who he was; he flits across the page of this rusty old book and disappears in the obscurity

beyond; but he is an impressive figure, moving through that valley of death serene and unafraid, clothed in

We have now followed the big official book through, and we understand what Thuggee was, what a bloody

terror it was, what a desolating scourge it was. In 1830 the English found this cancerous organization

imbedded in the vitals of the empire, doing its devastating work in secrecy, and assisted, protected, sheltered,

and hidden by innumerable confederates big and little native chiefs, customs officers, village officials, and

native police, all ready to lie for it, and the mass of the people, through fear, persistently pretending to know

nothing about its doings; and this condition of things had existed for generations, and was formidable with

the sanctions of age and old custom. If ever there was an unpromising task, if ever there was a hopeless task

in the world, surely it was offered herethe task of conquering Thuggee. But that little handful of English

officials in India set their sturdy and confident grip upon it, and ripped it out, root and branch! How modest

do Captain Vallancey's words sound now, when we read them again, knowing what we know:

"The day that sees this farspread evil completely eradicated from India, and known only in name, will

It would be hard to word a claim more modestly than that for this most noble work.

We left Bombay for Allahabad by a night train. It is the custom of the country to avoid day travel when it can

conveniently be done. But there is one trouble: while you can seemingly "secure" the two lower berths by

making early application, there is no ticket as witness of it, and no other producible evidence in case your

proprietorship shall chance to be challenged. The word "engaged" appears on the window, but it doesn't state

who the compartment is engaged, for. If your Satan and your Barney arrive before somebody else's servants,

and spread the bedding on the two sofas and then stand guard till you come, all will be well; but if they step

aside on an errand, they may find the beds promoted to the two shelves, and somebody else's demons

standing guard over their master's beds, which in the meantime have been spread upon your sofas.

You do not pay anything extra for your sleeping place; that is where the trouble lies. If you buy a fareticket

and fail to use it, there is room thus made available for someone else; but if the place were secured to you it

would remain vacant, and yet your ticket would secure you another place when you were presently ready to

However, no explanation of such a system can make it seem quite rational to a person who has been used to a

more rational system. If our people had the arranging of it, we should charge extra for securing the place, and

The present system encourages good mannersand also discourages them. If a young girl has a lower berth

and an elderly lady comes in, it is usual for the girl to offer her place to this late comer; and it is usual for the

late comer to thank her courteously and take it. But the thing happens differently sometimes. When we were

ready to leave Bombay my daughter's satchels were holding possession of her bertha lower one. At the last

moment, a middleaged American lady swarmed into the compartment, followed by native porters laden with

her baggage. She was growling and snarling and scolding, and trying to make herself phenomenally

disagreeable; and succeeding. Without a word, she hoisted the satchels into the hanging shelf, and took

On one of our trips Mr. Smythe and I got out at a station to walk up and down, and when we came back

Smythe's bed was in the hanging shelf and an English cavalry officer was in bed on the sofa which he had

lately been occupying. It was mean to be glad about it, but it is the way we are made; I could not have been

gladder if it had been my enemy that had suffered this misfortune. We all like to see people in trouble, if it

doesn't cost us anything. I was so happy over Mr. Smythe's chagrin that I couldn't go to sleep for thinking of

it and enjoying it. I knew he supposed the officer had committed the robbery himself, whereas without a

doubt the officer's servant had done it without his knowledge. Mr. Smythe kept this incident warm in his

heart, and longed for a chance to get even with somebody for it. Sometime afterward the opportunity came, in

Calcutta. We were leaving on a 24hour journey to Darjeeling. Mr. Barclay, the general superintendent, has

made special provision for our accommodation, Mr. Smythe said; so there was no need to hurry about getting

When we arrived, the usual immense turmoil and confusion of a great Indian station were in full blast. It was

an immoderately long train, for all the natives of India were going by it somewhither, and the native officials

were being pestered to frenzy by belated and anxious people. They didn't know where our car was, and

couldn't remember having received any orders about it. It was a deep disappointment; moreover, it looked as

if our half of our party would be left behind altogether. Then Satan came running and said he had found a

compartment with one shelf and one sofa unoccupied, and had made our beds and had stowed our baggage.

We rushed to the place, and just as the train was ready to pull out and the porters were slamming the doors to,

all down the line, an officer of the Indian Civil Service, a good friend of ours, put his head in and said:

"I have been hunting for you everywhere. What are you doing here? Don't you know"

The train started before he could finish. Mr. Smythe's opportunity was come. His bedding, on the shelf, at

once changed places with the beddinga stranger'sthat was occupying the sofa that was opposite to mine.

About ten o'clock we stopped somewhere, and a large Englishman of official military bearing stepped in. We

pretended to be asleep. The lamps were covered, but there was light enough for us to note his look of

surprise. He stood there, grand and fine, peering down at Smythe, and wondering in silence at the situation.

But that was enough. It was easy to understand. It meant: "This is extraordinary. This is highhanded. I

He sat down on his baggage, and for twenty minutes we watched him through our eyelashes, rocking and

swaying there to the motion of the train. Then we came to a station, and he got up and went out, muttering: "I

must find a lower berth, or wait over." His servant came presently and carried away his things.

Mr. Smythe's sore place was healed, his hunger for revenge was satisfied. But he couldn't sleep, and neither

could I; for this was a venerable old. car, and nothing about it was taut. The closet door slammed all night,

and defied every fastening we could invent. We got up very much jaded, at dawn, and stepped out at a way

station; and, while we were taking a cup of coffee, that Englishman ranged up alongside, and somebody said

"No. The guard found a place for me that had been, engaged and not occupied. I had a whole saloon car all to

That was our car, you see. We moved into it, straight off, the family and all. But I asked the English

gentleman to remain, and he did. A pleasant man, an infantry colonel; and doesn't know, yet, that Smythe

robbed him of his berth, but thinks it was done by Smythe's servant without Smythe's knowledge. He was

The Indian trains are manned by natives exclusively. The Indian stations except very large and important

onesare manned entirely by natives, and so are the posts and telegraphs. The rank and file of the police are

natives. All these people are pleasant and accommodating. One day I left an express train to lounge about in

that perennially ravishing show, the ebb and flow and whirl of gaudy natives, that is always surging up and

down the spacious platform of a great Indian station; and I lost myself in the ecstasy of it, and when I turned,

the train was moving swiftly away. I was going to sit down and wait for another train, as I would have done

at home; I had no thought of any other course. But a native official, who had a green flag in his hand, saw me,

He waved his flag, and the train came back! And he put me aboard with as much ceremony as if I had been

the General Superintendent. They are kindly people, the natives. The face and the bearing that indicate a surly

spirit and a bad heart seemed to me to be so rare among Indiansso nearly nonexistent, in factthat I

sometimes wondered if Thuggee wasn't a dream, and not a reality. The bad hearts are there, but I believe that

they are in a small, poor minority. One thing is sure: They are much the most interesting people in the

worldand the nearest to being incomprehensible. At any rate, the hardest to account for. Their character

and their history, their customs and their religion, confront you with riddles at every turnriddles which are a

trifle more perplexing after they are explained than they were before. You can get the facts of a customlike

caste, and Suttee, and Thuggee, and so onand with the facts a theory which tries to explain, but never quite

does it to your satisfaction. You can never quite understand how so strange a thing could have been born, nor

A woman who throws away her life when her husband dies is instantly joined to him again, and is forever

afterward happy with him in heaven; her family will build a little monument to her, or a temple, and will hold

her in honor, and, indeed, worship her memory always; they will themselves be held in honor by the public;

the woman's selfsacrifice has conferred a noble and lasting distinction upon her posterity. And, besides, see

what she has escaped: If she had elected to live, she would be a disgraced person; she could not remarry; her

family would despise her and disown her; she would be a friendless outcast, and miserable all her days.

Very well, you say, but the explanation is not complete yet. How did people come to drift into such a strange

custom? What was the origin of the idea? "Well, nobody knows; it was probably a revelation sent down by

the gods." One more thing: Why was such a cruel death chosenwhy wouldn't a gentle one have answered?

Noyou can never understand it. It all seems impossible. You resolve to believe that a widow never burnt

herself willingly, but went to her death because she was afraid to defy public opinion. But you are not able to

keep that position. History drives you from it. Major Sleeman has a convincing case in one of his books. In

his government on the Nerbudda he made a brave attempt on the 28th of March, 1828, to put down Suttee on

his own hook and without warrant from the Supreme Government of India. He could not foresee that the

Government would put it down itself eight months later. The only backing he had was a bold nature and a

compassionate heart. He issued his proclamation abolishing the Suttee in his district. On the morning of

Tuesdaynote the day of the weekthe 24th of the following November, Ummed Singh Upadhya, head of

the most respectable and most extensive Brahmin family in the district, died, and presently came a deputation

of his sons and grandsons to beg that his old widow might be allowed to burn herself upon his pyre. Sleeman

threatened to enforce his order, and punish severely any man who assisted; and he placed a police guard to

see that no one did so. From the early morning the old widow of sixtyfive had been sitting on the bank of

the sacred river by her dead, waiting through the long hours for the permission; and at last the refusal came

instead. In one little sentence Sleeman gives you a pathetic picture of this lonely old gray figure: all day and

all night "she remained sitting by the edge of the water without eating or drinking." The next morning the

body of the husband was burned to ashes in a pit eight feet square and three or four feet deep, in the view of

several thousand spectators. Then the widow waded out to a bare rock in the river, and everybody went away

but her sons and other relations. All day she sat there on her rock in the blazing sun without food or drink,

The relatives remained with her and all tried to persuade her to desist from her purpose, for they deeply loved

her. She steadily refused. Then a part of the family went to Sleeman's house, ten miles away, and tried again

All that day she scorched in her sheet on the rock, and all that night she kept her vigil there in the bitter cold.

Thursday morning, in the sight of her relatives, she went through a ceremonial which said more to them than

any words could have done; she put on the dhaja (a coarse red turban) and broke her bracelets in pieces. By

these acts she became a dead person in the eye of the law, and excluded from her caste forever. By the iron

rule of ancient custom, if she should now choose to live she could never return to her family. Sleeman was in

deep trouble. If she starved herself to death her family would be disgraced; and, moreover, starving would be

a more lingering misery than the death by fire. He went back in the evening thoroughly worried. The old

woman remained on her rock, and there in the morning he found her with her dhaja still on her head. "She

talked very collectedly, telling me that she had determined to mix her ashes with those of her departed

husband, and should patiently wait my permission to do so, assured that God would enable her to sustain life

till that was given, though she dared not eat or drink. Looking at the sun, then rising before her over a long

and beautiful reach of the river, she said calmly, 'My soul has been for five days with my husband's near that

sun; nothing but my earthly frame is left; and this, I know, you will in time suffer to be mixed with his ashes

in yonder pit, because it is not in your nature or usage wantonly to prolong the miseries of a poor old

He assured her that it was his desire and duty to save her, and to urge her to live, and to keep her family from

the disgrace of being thought her murderers. But she said she was not afraid of their being thought so; that

they had all, like good children, done everything in their power to induce her to live, and to abide with them;

and if I should consent I know they would love and honor me, but my duties to them have now ended. I

commit them all to your care, and I go to attend my husband, Ummed Singh Upadhya, with whose ashes on

She believed that she and he had been upon the earth three several times as wife and husband, and that she

had burned herself to death three times upon his pyre. That is why she said that strange thing. Since she had

broken her bracelets and put on the red turban she regarded herself as a corpse; otherwise she would not have

allowed herself to do her husband the irreverence of pronouncing his name. "This was the first time in her

long life that she had ever uttered her husband's name, for in India no woman, high or low, ever pronounces

Major Sleeman still tried to shake her purpose. He promised to build her a fine house among the temples of

her ancestors upon the bank of the river and make handsome provision for her out of rentfree lands if she

would consent to live; and if she wouldn't he would allow no stone or brick to ever mark the place where she

died. But she only smiled and said, "My pulse has long ceased to beat, my spirit has departed; I shall suffer

nothing in the burning; and if you wish proof, order some fire and you shall see this arm consumed without

Sleeman was now satisfied that he could not alter her purpose. He sent for all the chief members of the family

and said he would suffer her to burn herself if they would enter into a written engagement to abandon the

suttee in their family thenceforth. They agreed; the papers were drawn out and signed, and at noon, Saturday,

word was sent to the poor old woman. She seemed greatly pleased. The ceremonies of bathing were gone

through with, and by three o'clock she was ready and the fire was briskly burning in the pit. She had now

gone without food or drink during more than four days and a half. She came ashore from her rock, first

wetting her sheet in the waters of the sacred river, for without that safeguard any shadow which might fall

upon her would convey impurity to her; then she walked to the pit, leaning upon one of her sons and a

"I had sentries placed all around, and no other person was allowed to approach within five paces. She came

on with a calm and cheerful countenance, stopped once, and casting her eyes upwards, said, 'Why have they

kept me five days from thee, my husband?' On coming to the sentries her supporters stopped and remained

standing; she moved on, and walked once around the pit, paused a moment, and while muttering a prayer,

threw some flowers into the fire. She then walked up deliberately and steadily to the brink, stepped into the

centre of the flame, sat down, and leaning back in the midst as if reposing upon a couch, was consumed

It is fine and beautiful. It compels one's reverence and respectno, has it freely, and without compulsion.

We see how the custom, once started, could continue, for the soul of it is that stupendous power, Faith; faith

brought to the pitch of effectiveness by the cumulative force of example and long use and custom; but we

cannot understand how the first widows came to take to it. That is a perplexing detail.

Sleeman says that it was usual to play music at the suttee, but that the white man's notion that this was to

drown the screams of the martyr is not correct; that it had a quite different purpose. It was believed that the

martyr died prophecying; that the prophecies sometimes foretold disaster, and it was considered a kindness to

those upon whom it was to fall to drown the voice and keep them in ignorance of the misfortune that was to

It was a long journeytwo nights, one day, and part of another day, from Bombay eastward to Allahabad;

but it was always interesting, and it was not fatiguing. At first the, night travel promised to be fatiguing, but

that was on account of pyjamas. This foolish nightdress consists of jacket and drawers. Sometimes they are

made of silk, sometimes of a raspy, scratchy, slazy woolen material with a sandpaper surface. The drawers

are loose elephantlegged and elephantwaisted things, and instead of buttoning around the body there is a

drawstring to produce the required shrinkage. The jacket is roomy, and one buttons it in front. Pyjamas are

hot on a hot night and cold on a cold nightdefects which a nightshirt is free from. I tried the pyjamas in

order to be in the fashion; but I was obliged to give them up, I couldn't stand them. There was no sufficient

change from daygear to nightgear. I missed the refreshing and luxurious sense, induced by the

nightgown, of being undressed, emancipated, set free from restraints and trammels. In place of that, I had

the worried, confined, oppressed, suffocated sense of being abed with my clothes on. All through the warm

half of the night the coarse surfaces irritated my skin and made it feel baked and feverish, and the dreams

which came in the fitful flurries of slumber were such as distress the sleep of the damned, or ought to; and all

through the cold other half of the night I could get no time for sleep because I had to employ it all in stealing

blankets. But blankets are of no value at such a time; the higher they are piled the more effectively they cork

the cold in and keep it from getting out. The result is that your legs are ice, and you know how you will feel

by and by when you are buried. In a sane interval I discarded the pyjamas, and led a rational and comfortable

Out in the country in India, the day begins early. One sees a plain, perfectly flat, dustcolored and

brickyardy, stretching limitlessly away on every side in the dim gray light, striped everywhere with

hardbeaten narrow paths, the vast flatness broken at wide intervals by bunches of spectral trees that mark

where villages are; and along all the paths are slender women and the black forms of lanky naked men

moving, to their work, the women with brass waterjars on their heads, the men carrying hoes. The man is

not entirely naked; always there is a bit of white rag, a loincloth; it amounts to a bandage, and is a white

accent on his black person, like the silver band around the middle of a pipestem. Sometimes he also wears a

fluffy and voluminous white turban, and this adds a second accent. He then answers properly to Miss Gordon

Cumming's flash light picture of himas a person who is dressed in "a turban and a pocket handkerchief."

All day long one has this monotony of dustcolored dead levels and scattering bunches of trees and mud

villages. You soon realize that India is not beautiful; still there is an enchantment about it that is beguiling,

and which does not pall. You cannot tell just what it is that makes the spell, perhaps, but you feel it and

confess it, nevertheless. Of course, at bottom, you know in a vague way that it is history; it is that that affects

you, a haunting sense of the myriads of human lives that have blossomed, and withered, and perished here,

repeating and repeating and repeating, century after century, and age after age, the barren and meaningless

process; it is this sense that gives to this forlorn, uncomely land power to speak to the spirit and make friends

with it; to, speak to it with a voice bitter with satire, but eloquent with melancholy. The deserts of Australia

and the icebarrens of Greenland have no speech, for they have no venerable history; with nothing to tell of

man and his vanities, his fleeting glories and his miseries, they have nothing wherewith to spiritualize their

There is nothing pretty about an Indian villagea mud oneand I do not remember that we saw any but

mud ones on that long flight to Allahabad. It is a little bunch of dirtcolored mud hovels jammed together

within a mud wall. As a rule, the rains had beaten down parts of some of the houses, and this gave the village

the aspect of a mouldering and hoary ruin. I believe the cattle and the vermin live inside the wall; for I saw

cattle coming out and cattle going in; and whenever I saw a villager, he was scratching. This last is only

circumstantial evidence, but I think it has value. The village has a battered little temple or two, big enough to

hold an idol, and with custom enough to fatup a priest and keep him comfortable. Where there are

Mohammedans there are generally a few sorry tombs outside the village that have a decayed and neglected

look. The villages interested me because of things which Major Sleeman says about them in his

booksparticularly what he says about the division of labor in them. He says that the whole face of India is

parceled out into estates of villages; that ninetenths of the vast population of the land consist of cultivators

of the soil; that it is these cultivators who inhabit the villages; that there are certain "established" village

servantsmechanics and others who are apparently paid a wage by the village at large, and whose callings

remain in certain families and are handed down from father to son, like an estate. He gives a list of these

established servants: Priest, blacksmith, carpenter, accountant, washerman, basketmaker, potter, watchman,

barber, shoemaker, brazier, confectioner, weaver, dyer, etc. In his day witches abounded, and it was not

thought good business wisdom for a man to marry his daughter into a family that hadn't a witch in it, for she

would need a witch on the premises to protect her children from the evil spells which would certainly be cast

The office of midwife was hereditary in the family of the basketmaker. It belonged to his wife. She might

not be competent, but the office was hers, anyway. Her pay was not high25 cents for a boy, and half as

much for a girl. The girl was not desired, because she would be a disastrous expense by and by. As soon as

she should be old enough to begin to wear clothes for propriety's sake, it would be a disgrace to the family if

she were not married; and to marry her meant financial ruin; for by custom the father must spend upon

feasting and weddingdisplay everything he had and all he could borrowin fact, reduce himself to a

It was the dread of this prospective ruin which made the killing of girl babies so prevalent in India in the old

days before England laid the iron hand of her prohibitions upon the piteous slaughter. One may judge of how

prevalent the custom was, by one of Sleeman's casual electrical remarks, when he speaks of children at play

The weddingdisplay folly is still in full force in India, and by consequence the destruction of girlbabies is

still furtively practiced; but not largely, because of the vigilance of the government and the sternness of the

In some parts of India the village keeps in its pay three other servants: an astrologer to tell the villager when

he may plant his crop, or make a journey, or marry a wife, or strangle a child, or borrow a dog, or climb a

tree, or catch a rat, or swindle a neighbor, without offending the alert and solicitous heavens; and what his

dream means, if he has had one and was not bright enough to interpret it himself by the details of his dinner;

the two other established servants were the tigerpersuader and the hailstorm discourager. The one kept away

the tigers if he could, and collected the wages anyway, and the other kept off the hailstorms, or explained

why he failed. He charged the same for explaining a failure that he did for scoring a success. A man is an

Major Sleeman reveals the fact that the trade union and the boycott are antiquities in India. India seems to

have originated everything. The "sweeper" belongs to the bottom caste; he is the lowest of the lowall other

castes despise him and scorn his office. But that does not trouble him. His caste is a caste, and that is

"It is perhaps not known to many of my countrymen, even in India, that in every town and city in the country

the right of sweeping the houses and streets is a monopoly, and is supported entirely by the pride of castes

among the scavengers, who are all of the lowest class. The right of sweeping within a certain range is

recognized by the caste to belong to a certain member; and if any other member presumes to sweep within

that range, he is excommunicatedno other member will smoke out of his pipe or drink out of his jug; and

he can get restored to caste only by a feast to the whole body of sweepers. If any housekeeper within a

particular circle happens to offend the sweeper of that range, none of his filth will be removed till he pacifies

him, because no other sweeper will dare to touch it; and the people of a town are often more tyrannized over

A footnote by Major Sleeman's editor, Mr. Vincent Arthur Smith, says that in our day this tyranny of the

sweepers' guild is one of the many difficulties which bar the progress of Indian sanitary reform. Think of this:

"The sweepers cannot be readily coerced, because no Hindoo or Mussulman would do their work to save his

They certainly do seem to have the whiphand; it would be difficult to imagine a more impregnable position.

"The vested rights described in the text are so fully recognized in practice that they are frequently the subject

Just like a milkroute; or like a London crossingsweepership. It is said that the London crossingsweeper's

right to his crossing is recognized by the rest of the guild; that they protect him in its possession; that certain

choice crossings are valuable property, and are saleable at high figures. I have noticed that the man who

sweeps in front of the Army and Navy Stores has a wealthy South African aristocratic style about him; and

when he is off his guard, he has exactly that look on his face which you always see in the face of a man who

It appears from Sleeman that in India the occupation of elephantdriver is confined to Mohammedans. I

wonder why that is. The watercarrier ('bheestie') is a Mohammedan, but it is said that the reason of that is,

that the Hindoo's religion does not allow him to touch the skin of dead kine, and that is what the watersack

is made of; it would defile him. And it doesn't allow him to eat meat; the animal that furnished the meat was

murdered, and to take any creature's life is a sin. It is a good and gentle religion, but inconvenient.

A great Indian river, at low water, suggests the familiar anatomical picture of a skinned human body, the

intricate mesh of interwoven muscles and tendons to stand for waterchannels, and the archipelagoes of fat

and flesh inclosed by them to stand for the sandbars. Somewhere on this journey we passed such a river, and

on a later journey we saw in the Sutlej the duplicate of that river. Curious rivers they are; low shores a dizzy

distance apart, with nothing between but an enormous acreage of sandflats with sluggish little veins of water

dribbling around amongst them; Saharas of sand, smallpoxpitted with footprints punctured in belts as

straight as the equator clear from the one shore to the other (barring the channelinterruptions)a dryshod

ferry, you see. Long railway bridges are required for this sort of rivers, and India has them. You approach

Allahabad by a very long one. It was now carrying us across the bed of the Jumna, a bed which did not seem

to have been slept in for one while or more. It wasn't all riverbedmost of it was overflow ground.

Allahabad means "City of God." I get this from the books. From a printed curiositya letter written by one

of those brave and confident Hindoo strugglers with the English tongue, called a "babu"I got a more

compressed translation: "Godville." It is perfectly correct, but that is the most that can be said for it.

We arrived in the forenoon, and shorthanded; for Satan got left behind somewhere that morning, and did not

overtake us until after nightfall. It seemed very peaceful without him. The world seemed asleep and

I did not see the native town, I think. I do not remember why; for an incident connects it with the Great

Mutiny, and that is enough to make any place interesting. But I saw the English part of the city. It is a town of

wide avenues and noble distances, and is comely and alluring, and full of suggestions of comfort and leisure,

and of the serenity which a good conscience buttressed by a sufficient bank account gives. The bungalows

(dwellings) stand well back in the seclusion and privacy of large enclosed compounds (private grounds, as we

should say) and in the shade and shelter of trees. Even the photographer and the prosperous merchant ply

their industries in the elegant reserve of big compounds, and the citizens drive in thereupon their business

occasions. And not in cabsno; in the Indian cities cabs are for the drifting stranger; all the white citizens

have private carriages; and each carriage has a flock of whiteturbaned black footmen and drivers all over it.

The vicinity of a lecturehall looks like a snowstorm,and makes the lecturer feel like an opera. India has

many names, and they are correctly descriptive. It is the Land of Contradictions, the Land of Subtlety and

Superstition, the Land of Wealth and Poverty, the Land of Splendor and Desolation, the Land of Plague and

Famine, the Land of the Thug and the Poisoner, and of the Meek and the Patient, the Land of the Suttee, the

Land of the Unreinstatable Widow, the Land where All Life is Holy, the Land of Cremation, the Land where

the Vulture is a Grave and a Monument, the Land of the Multitudinous Gods; and if signs go for anything, it

In Bombay the forewoman of a millinery shop came to the hotel in her private carriage to take the measure

for a gownnot for me, but for another. She had come out to India to make a temporary stay, but was

extending it indefinitely; indeed, she was purposing to end her days there. In London, she said, her work had

been hard, her hours long; for economy's sake she had had to live in shabby rooms and far away from the

shop, watch the pennies, deny herself many of the common comforts of life, restrict herself in effect to its

bare necessities, eschew cabs, travel thirdclass by underground train to and from her work, swallowing

coalsmoke and cinders all the way, and sometimes troubled with the society of men and women who were

less desirable than the smoke and the cinders. But in Bombay, on almost any kind of wages, she could live in

comfort, and keep her carriage, and have six servants in place of the womanofallwork she had had in her

English home. Later, in Calcutta, I found that the Standard Oil clerks had small onehorse vehicles, and did

no walking; and I was told that the clerks of the other large concerns there had the like equipment. But to

I was up at dawn, the next morning. In India the tourist's servant does not sleep in a room in the hotel, but

rolls himself up head and ears in his blanket and stretches himself on the veranda, across the front of his

master's door, and spends the night there. I don't believe anybody's servant occupies a room. Apparently, the

bungalow servants sleep on the veranda; it is roomy, and goes all around the house. I speak of menservants; I

saw none of the other sex. I think there are none, except childnurses. I was up at dawn, and walked around

the veranda, past the rows of sleepers. In front of one door a Hindoo servant was squatting, waiting for his

master to call him. He had polished the yellow shoes and placed them by the door, and now he had nothing to

do but wait. It was freezing cold, but there he was, as motionless as a sculptured image, and as patient. It

troubled me. I wanted to say to him, Don't crouch there like that and freeze; nobody requires it of you; stir

around and get warm." But I hadn't the words. I thought of saying 'jeldy jow', but I couldn't remember what it

meant, so I didn't say it. I knew another phrase, but it wouldn't come to my mind. I moved on, purposing to

dismiss him from my thoughts, but his bare legs and bare feet kept him there. They kept drawing me back

from the sunny side to a point whence I could see him. At the end of an hour he had not changed his attitude

in the least degree. It was a curious and impressive exhibition of meekness and patience, or fortitude or

indifference, I did not know which. But it worried me, and it was spoiling my morning. In fact, it spoiled two

hours of it quite thoroughly. I quitted this vicinity, then, and left him to punish himself as much as he might

want to. But up to that time the man had not changed his attitude a hair. He will always remain with me, I

suppose; his figure never grows vague in my memory. Whenever I read of Indian resignation, Indian patience

under wrongs, hardships, and misfortunes, he comes before me. He becomes a personification, and stands for

India in trouble. And for untold ages India in trouble has been pursued with the very remark which I was

going to utter but didn't, because its meaning had slipped me: Jeddy jow! ("Come, shove along!")

In the early brightness we made a long drive out to the Fort. Part of the way was beautiful. It led under stately

trees and through groups of native houses and by the usual village well, where the picturesque gangs are

always flocking to and fro and laughing and chattering; and this time brawny men were deluging their bronze

bodies with the limpid water, and making a refreshing and enticing show of it; enticing, for the sun was

already transacting business, firing India up for the day. There was plenty of this early bathing going on, for it

was getting toward breakfast time, and with an unpurified body the Hindoo must not eat.

Then we struck into the hot plain, and found the roads crowded with pilgrims of both sexes, for one of the

great religious fairs of India was being held, just beyond the Fort, at the junction of the sacred rivers, the

Ganges and the Jumna. Three sacred rivers, I should have said, for there is a subterranean one. Nobody has

seen it, but that doesn't signify. The fact that it is there is enough. These pilgrims had come from all over

India; some of them had been months on the way, plodding patiently along in the heat and dust, worn, poor,

hungry, but supported and sustained by an unwavering faith and belief; they were supremely happy and

content, now; their full and sufficient reward was at hand; they were going to be cleansed from every vestige

of sin and corruption by these holy waters which make utterly pure whatsoever thing they touch, even the

dead and rotten. It is wonderful, the power of a faith like that, that can make multitudes upon multitudes of

the old and weak and the young and frail enter without hesitation or complaint upon such incredible journeys

and endure the resultant miseries without repining. It is done in love, or it is done in fear; I do not know

which it is. No matter what the impulse is, the act born of it is beyond imagination marvelous to our kind of

people, the cold whites. There are choice great natures among us that could exhibit the equivalent of this

prodigious selfsacrifice, but the rest of us know that we should not be equal to anything approaching it. Still,

we all talk selfsacrifice, and this makes me hope that we are large enough to honor it in the Hindoo.

Two millions of natives arrive at this fair every year. How many start, and die on the road, from age and

fatigue and disease and scanty nourishment, and how many die on the return, from the same causes, no one

knows; but the tale is great, one may say enormous. Every twelfth year is held to be a year of peculiar grace;

a greatly augmented volume of pilgrims results then. The twelfth year has held this distinction since the

remotest times, it is said. It is said also that there is to be but one more twelfth yearfor the Ganges. After

that, that holiest of all sacred rivers will cease to be holy, and will be abandoned by the pilgrim for many

centuries; how many, the wise men have not stated. At the end of that interval it will become holy again.

Meantime, the data will be arranged by those people who have charge of all such matters, the great chief

Brahmins. It will be like shutting down a mint. At a first glance it looks most unbrahminically uncommercial,

but I am not disturbed, being soothed and tranquilized by their reputation. "Brer fox he lay low," as Uncle

Remus says; and at the judicious time he will spring something on the Indian public which will show that he

Great numbers of the natives along the roads were bringing away holy water from the rivers. They would

carry it far and wide in India and sell it. Tavernier, the French traveler (17th century), notes that Ganges

water is often given at weddings, "each guest receiving a cup or two, according to the liberality of the host;

The Fort is a huge old structure, and has had a large experience in religions. In its great court stands a

monolith which was placed there more than 2,000 years ago to preach (Budhism) by its pious inscription; the

Fort was built three centuries ago by a Mohammedan Emperora resanctification of the place in the interest

of that religion. There is a Hindoo temple, too, with subterranean ramifications stocked with shrines and

idols; and now the Fort belongs to the English, it contains a Christian Church. Insured in all the companies.

From the lofty ramparts one has a fine view of the sacred rivers. They join at that pointthe pale blue

Jumna, apparently clean and clear, and the muddy Ganges, dull yellow and not clean. On a long curved spit

between the rivers, towns of tents were visible, with a multitude of fluttering pennons, and a mighty swarm of

pilgrims. It was a troublesome place to get down to, and not a quiet place when you arrived; but it was

interesting. There was a world of activity and turmoil and noise, partly religious, partly commercial; for the

Mohammedans were there to curse and sell, and the Hindoos to buy and pray. It is a fair as well as a religious

festival. Crowds were bathing, praying, and drinking the purifying waters, and many sick pilgrims had come

long journeys in palanquins to be healed of their maladies by a bath; or if that might not be, then to die on the

blessed banks and so make sure of heaven. There were fakeers in plenty, with their bodies dusted over with

ashes and their long hair caked together with cowdung; for the cow is holy and so is the rest of it; so holy

that the good Hindoo peasant frescoes the walls of his hut with this refuse, and also constructs ornamental

figures out of it for the gracing of his dirt floor. There were seated families, fearfully and wonderfully

painted, who by attitude and grouping represented the families of certain great gods. There was a holy man

who sat naked by the day and by the week on a cluster of iron spikes, and did not seem to mind it; and

another holy man, who stood all day holding his withered arms motionless aloft, and was said to have been

doing it for years. All of these performers have a cloth on the ground beside them for the reception of

contributions, and even the poorest of the people give a trifle and hope that the sacrifice will be blessed to

him. At last came a procession of naked holy people marching by and chanting, and I wrenched myself away.

The journey to Benares was all in daylight, and occupied but a few hours. It was admirably dusty. The dust

settled upon you in a thick ashy layer and turned you into a fakeer, with nothing lacking to the role but the

cow manure and the sense of holiness. There was a change of cars about midafternoon at Moghulseraiif

that was the nameand a wait of two hours there for the Benares train. We could have found a carriage and

driven to the sacred city, but we should have lost the wait. In other countries a long wait at a station is a dull

thing and tedious, but one has no right to have that feeling in India. You have the monster crowd of

bejeweled natives, the stir, the bustle, the confusion, the shifting splendors of the costumesdear me, the

delight of it, the charm of it are beyond speech. The twohour wait was over too soon. Among other

satisfying things to look at was a minor native prince from the backwoods somewhere, with his guard of

honor, a ragged but wonderfully gaudy gang of fifty dark barbarians armed with rusty flintlock muskets.

The general show came so near to exhausting variety that one would have said that no addition to it could be

conspicuous, but when this Falstaff and his motleys marched through it one saw that that seeming

We got away by and by, and soon reached the outer edge of Benares; then there was another wait; but, as

usual, with something to look at. This was a cluster of little canvasboxespalanquins. A canvasbox is not

much of a sightwhen empty; but when there is a lady in it, it is an object of interest. These boxes were

grouped apart, in the full blaze of the terrible sun during the threequarters of an hour that we tarried there.

They contained zenana ladies. They had to sit up; there was not room enough to stretch out. They probably

did not mind it. They are used to the close captivity of the dwellings all their lives; when they go a journey

they are carried to the train in these boxes; in the train they have to be secluded from inspection. Many people

pity them, and I always did it myself and never charged anything; but it is doubtful if this compassion is

valued. While we were in India some goodhearted Europeans in one of the cities proposed to restrict a large

park to the use of zenana ladies, so that they could go there and in assured privacy go about unveiled and

enjoy the sunshine and air as they had never enjoyed them before. The good intentions back of the

proposition were recognized, and sincere thanks returned for it, but the proposition itself met with a prompt

declination at the hands of those who were authorized to speak for the zenana ladies. Apparently, the idea

was shocking to the ladiesindeed, it was quite manifestly shocking. Was that proposition the equivalent of

inviting European ladies to assemble scantily and scandalously clothed in the seclusion of a private park? It

Without doubt modesty is nothing less than a holy feeling; and without doubt the person whose rule of

modesty has been trangressed feels the same sort of wound that he would feel if something made holy to him

by his religion had suffered a desecration. I say "rule of modesty" because there are about a million rules in

the world, and this makes a million standards to be looked out for. Major Sleeman mentions the case of some

highcaste veiled ladies who were profoundly scandalized when some English young ladies passed by with

faces bare to the world; so scandalized that they spoke out with strong indignation and wondered that people

could be so shameless as to expose their persons like that. And yet "the legs of the objectors were naked to

midthigh." Both parties were cleanminded and irreproachably modest, while abiding by their separate

rules, but they couldn't have traded rules for a change without suffering considerable discomfort. All human

rules are more or less idiotic, I suppose. It is best so, no doubt. The way it is now, the asylums can hold the

sane people, but if we tried to shut up the insane we should run out of building materials.

You have a long drive through the outskirts of Benares before you get to the hotel. And all the aspects are

melancholy. It is a vision of dusty sterility, decaying temples, crumbling tombs, broken mud walls, shabby

huts. The whole region seems to ache with age and penury. It must take ten thousand years of want to

produce such an aspect. We were still outside of the great native city when we reached the hotel. It was a

quiet and homelike house, inviting, and manifestly comfortable. But we liked its annex better, and went

thither. It was a mile away, perhaps, and stood in the midst of a large compound, and was built bungalow

fashion, everything on the ground floor, and a veranda all around. They have doors in India, but I don't know

why. They don't fasten, and they stand open, as a rule, with a curtain hanging in the doorspace to keep out the

glare of the sun. Still, there is plenty of privacy, for no white person will come in without notice, of course.

The native men servants will, but they don't seem to count. They glide in, barefoot and noiseless, and are in

the midst before one knows it. At first this is a shock, and sometimes it is an embarrassment; but one has to

There was one tree in the compound, and a monkey lived in it. At first I was strongly interested in the tree,

for I was told that it was the renowned peepulthe tree in whose shadow you cannot tell a lie. This one

failed to stand the test, and I went away from it disappointed. There was a softly creaking well close by, and a

couple of oxen drew water from it by the hour, superintended by two natives dressed in the usual "turban and

pockethandkerchief." The tree and the well were the only scenery, and so the compound was a soothing and

lonesome and satisfying place; and very restful after so many activities. There was nobody in our bungalow

but ourselves; the other guests were in the next one, where the table d'hote was furnished. A body could not

be more pleasantly situated. Each room had the customary bath attacheda room ten or twelve feet square,

with a roomy stonepaved pit in it and abundance of water. One could not easily improve upon this

arrangement, except by furnishing it with cold water and excluding the hot, in deference to the fervency of

the climate; but that is forbidden. It would damage the bather's health. The stranger is warned against taking

cold baths in India, but even the most intelligent strangers are fools, and they do not obey, and so they

presently get laid up. I was the most intelligent fool that passed through, that year. But I am still more

I wonder if the 'dorian', if that is the name of it, is another superstition, like the peepul tree. There was a great

abundance and variety of tropical fruits, but the dorian was never in evidence. It was never the season for the

dorian. It was always going to arrive from Burma sometime or other, but it never did. By all accounts it was a

most strange fruit, and incomparably delicious to the taste, but not to the smell. Its rind was said to exude a

stench of so atrocious a nature that when a dorian was in the room even the presence of a polecat was a

refreshment. We found many who had eaten the dorian, and they all spoke of it with a sort of rapture. They

said that if you could hold your nose until the fruit was in your mouth a sacred joy would suffuse you from

head to foot that would make you oblivious to the smell of the rind, but that if your grip slipped and you

caught the smell of the rind before the fruit was in your mouth, you would faint. There is a fortune in that

Benares was not a disappointment. It justified its reputation as a curiosity. It is on high ground, and

overhangs a grand curve of the Ganges. It is a vast mass of building, compactly crusting a hill, and is cloven

in all directions by an intricate confusion of cracks which stand for streets. Tall, slim minarets and beflagged

templespires rise out of it and give it picturesqueness, viewed from the river. The city is as busy as an

anthill, and the hurlyburly of human life swarming along the web of narrow streets reminds one of the

ants. The sacred cow swarms along, too, and goes whither she pleases, and takes toll of the grain shops, and

is very much in the way, and is a good deal of a nuisance, since she must not be molested.

Benares is older than history, older than tradition, older even than legend, and looks twice as old as all of

them put together. From a Hindoo statement quoted in Rev. Mr. Parker's compact and lucid Guide to

Benares, I find that the site of the town was the beginningplace of the Creation. It was merely an upright

"lingam," at first, no larger than a stovepipe, and stood in the midst of a shoreless ocean. This was the work

of the God Vishnu. Later he spread the lingam out till its surface was ten miles across. Still it was not large

enough for the business; therefore he presently built the globe around it. Benares is thus the center of the

It has had a tumultuous history, both materially and spiritually. It started Brahminically, many ages ago; then

by and by Buddha came in recent times 2,500 years ago, and after that it was Buddhist during many

centuriestwelve, perhapsbut the Brahmins got the upper hand again, then, and have held it ever since. It

is unspeakably sacred in Hindoo eyes, and is as unsanitary as it is sacred, and smells like the rind of the

dorian. It is the headquarters of the Brahmin faith, and oneeighth of the population are priests of that church.

But it is not an overstock, for they have all India as a prey. All India flocks thither on pilgrimage, and pours

its savings into the pockets of the priests in a generous stream, which never fails. A priest with a good stand

on the shore of the Ganges is much better off than the sweeper of the best crossing in London. A good stand

is worth a world of money. The holy proprietor of it sits under his grand spectacular umbrella and blesses

people all his life, and collects his commission, and grows fat and rich; and the stand passes from father to

son, down and down and down through the ages, and remains a permanent and lucrative estate in the family.

As Mr. Parker suggests, it can become a subject of dispute, at one time or another, and then the matter will be

settled, not by prayer and fasting and consultations with Vishnu, but by the intervention of a much more

puissant poweran English court. In Bombay I was told by an American missionary that in India there are

640 Protestant missionaries at work. At first it seemed an immense force, but of course that was a thoughtless

idea. One missionary to 500,000 nativesno, that is not a force; it is the reverse of it; 640 marching against

an intrenched camp of 300,000,000the odds are too great. A force of 640 in Benares alone would have its

hands overfull with 8,000 Brahmin priests for adversary. Missionaries need to be well equipped with hope

and confidence, and this equipment they seem to have always had in all parts of the world. Mr. Parker has it.

It enables him to get a favorable outlook out of statistics which might add up differently with other

"During the past few years competent observers declare that the number of pilgrims to Benares has

"But the revival, if so it may be called, has in it the marks of death. It is a spasmodic struggle before

In this world we have seen the Roman Catholic power dying, upon these same terms, for many centuries.

Many a time we have gotten all ready for the funeral and found it postponed again, on account of the weather

or something. Taught by experience, we ought not to put on our things for this Brahminical one till we see the

procession move. Apparently one of the most uncertain things in the world is the funeral of a religion.

I should have been glad to acquire some sort of idea of Hindoo theology, but the difficulties were too great,

There is a trinityBrahma, Shiva, and Vishnuindependent powers, apparently, though one cannot feel

quite sure of that, because in one of the temples there is an image where an attempt has been made to

concentrate the three in one person. The three have other names and plenty of them, and this makes confusion

in one's mind. The three have wives and the wives have several names, and this increases the confusion.

There are children, the children have many names, and thus the confusion goes on and on. It is not worth

while to try to get any grip upon the cloud of minor gods, there are too many of them.

It is even a justifiable economy to leave Brahma, the chiefest god of all, out of your studies, for he seems to

cut no great figure in India. The vast bulk of the national worship is lavished upon Shiva and Vishnu and

their families. Shiva's symbolthe "lingam" with which Vishnu began the Creationis worshiped by

everybody, apparently. It is the commonest object in Benares. It is on view everywhere, it is garlanded with

flowers, offerings are made to it, it suffers no neglect. Commonly it is an upright stone, shaped like a

thimblesometimes like an elongated thimble. This priapusworship, then, is older than history. Mr. Parker

In Benares there are many Mohammedan mosques. There are Hindoo temples without numberthese

quaintly shaped and elaborately sculptured little stone jugs crowd all the lanes. The Ganges itself and every

individual drop of water in it are temples. Religion, then, is the business of Benares, just as goldproduction

is the business of Johannesburg. Other industries count for nothing as compared with the vast and

allabsorbing rush and drive and boom of the town's specialty. Benares is the sacredest of sacred cities. The

moment you step across the sharply defined line which separates it from the rest of the globe, you stand

upon ineffably and unspeakably holy ground. Mr. Parker says: "It is impossible to convey any adequate idea

of the intense feelings of veneration and affection with which the pious Hindoo regards 'Holy Kashi'

"Let a Hindoo regiment be marched through the district, and as soon as they cross the line and enter the limits

of the holy place they rend the air with cries of ' Kashi ji ki jaijaijai! (Holy Kashi! Hail to thee! Hail!

Hail! Hail)'. The weary pilgrim scarcely able to stand, with age and weakness, blinded by the dust and heat,

and almost dead with fatigue, crawls out of the ovenlike railway carriage and as soon as his feet touch the

ground he lifts up his withered hands and utters the same pious exclamation. Let a European in some distant

city in casual talk in the bazar mention the fact that he has lived at Benares, and at once voices will be raised

to call down blessings on his head, for a dweller in Benares is of all men most blessed."

It makes our own religious enthusiasm seem pale and cold. Inasmuch as the life of religion is in the heart, not

the head, Mr. Parker's touching picture seems to promise a sort of indefinite postponement of that funeral.

Yes, the city of Benares is in effect just a big church, a religious hive, whose every cell is a temple, a shrine

or a mosque, and whose every conceivable earthly and heavenly good is procurable under one roof, so to

I will make out a little itinerary for the pilgrim; then you will see how handy the system is, how convenient,

how comprehensive. If you go to Benares with a serious desire to spiritually benefit yourself, you will find it

valuable. I got some of the facts from conversations with the Rev. Mr. Parker and the others from his Guide

1. Purification. At sunrise you must go down to the Ganges and bathe, pray, and drink some of the water.

2. Protection against Hunger. Next, you must fortify yourself against the sorrowful earthly ill just named.

This you will do by worshiping for a moment in the Cow Temple. By the door of it you will find an image of

Ganesh, son of Shiva; it has the head of an elephant on a human body; its face and hands are of silver. You

will worship it a little, and pass on, into a covered veranda, where you will find devotees reciting from the

sacred books, with the help of instructors. In this place are groups of rude and dismal idols. You may

contribute something for their support; then pass into the temple, a grim and stenchy place, for it is populous

with sacred cows and with beggars. You will give something to the beggars, and "reverently kiss the tails" of

such cows as pass along, for these cows are peculiarly holy, and this act of worship will secure you from

3. "The Poor Man's Friend." You will next worship this god. He is at the bottom of a stone cistern in the

temple of Dalbhyeswar, under the shade of a noble peepul tree on the bluff overlooking the Ganges, so you

must go back to the river. The Poor Man's Friend is the god of material prosperity in general, and the god of

the rain in particular. You will secure material prosperity, or both, by worshiping him. He is Shiva, under a

new alias, and he abides in the bottom of that cistern, in the form of a stone lingam. You pour Ganges water

over him, and in return for this homage you get the promised benefits. If there is any delay about the rain, you

must pour water in until the cistern is full; the rain will then be sure to come.

4. Fever. At the Kedar Ghat you will find a long flight of stone steps leading down to the river. Half way

down is a tank filled with sewage. Drink as much of it as you want. It is for fever.

5. Smallpox. Go straight from there to the central Ghat. At its upstream end you will find a small

whitewashed building, which is a temple sacred to Sitala, goddess of smallpox. Her understudy is there a

rude human figure behind a brass screen. You will worship this for reasons to be furnished presently.

6. The Well of Fate. For certain reasons you will next go and do homage at this well. You will find it in the

Dandpan Temple, in the city. The sunlight falls into it from a square hole in the masonry above. You will

approach it with awe, for your life is now at stake. You will bend over and look. If the fates are propitious,

you will see your face pictured in the water far down in the well. If matters have been otherwise ordered, a

sudden cloud will mask the sun and you will see nothing. This means that you have not six months to live. If

you are already at the point of death, your circumstances are now serious. There is no time to lose. Let this

world go, arrange for the next one. Handily situated, at your very elbow, is opportunity for this. You turn and

worship the image of Maha Kal, the Great Fate, and happiness in the life to come is secured. If there is breath

in your body yet, you should now make an effort to get a further lease of the present life. You have a chance.

There is a chance for everything in this admirably stocked and wonderfully systemized Spiritual and

7. Well of Long Life. This is within the precincts of the mouldering and venerable Briddhkal Temple, which

is one of the oldest in Benares. You pass in by a stone image of the monkey god, Hanuman, and there, among

the ruined courtyards, you will find a shallow pool of stagnant sewage. It smells like the best limburger

cheese, and is filthy with the washings of rotting lepers, but that is nothing, bathe in it; bathe in it gratefully

and worshipfully, for this is the Fountain of Youth; these are the Waters of Long Life. Your gray hairs will

disappear, and with them your wrinkles and your rheumatism, the burdens of care and the weariness of age,

and you will come out young, fresh, elastic, and full of eagerness for the new race of life. Now will come

flooding upon you the manifold desires that haunt the dear dreams of the morning of life. You will go whither

8. Fulfillment of Desire. To wit, to the Kameshwar Temple, sacred to Shiva as the Lord of Desires. Arrange

for yours there. And if you like to look at idols among the pack and jam of temples, there you will find

enough to stock a museum. You will begin to commit sins now with a fresh, new vivacity; therefore, it will

9. Temporary Cleansing from Sin. To wit, to the Well of the Earring. You must approach this with the

profoundest reverence, for it is unutterably sacred. It is, indeed, the most sacred place in Benares, the very

Holy of Holies, in the estimation of the people. It is a railed tank, with stone stairways leading down to the

water. The water is not clean. Of course it could not be, for people are always bathing in it. As long as you

choose to stand and look, you will see the files of sinners descending and ascendingdescending soiled with

sin, ascending purged from it. "The liar, the thief, the murderer, and the adulterer may here wash and be

clean," says the Rev. Mr. Parker, in his book. Very well. I know Mr. Parker, and I believe it; but if anybody

else had said it, I should consider him a person who had better go down in the tank and take another wash.

The god Vishnu dug this tank. He had nothing to dig with but his "discus." I do not know what a discus is,

but I know it is a poor thing to dig tanks with, because, by the time this one was finished, it was full of

sweatVishnu's sweat. He constructed the site that Benares stands on, and afterward built the globe around

it, and thought nothing of it, yet sweated like that over a little thing like this tank. One of these statements is

doubtful. I do not know which one it is, but I think it difficult not to believe that a god who could build a

world around Benares would not be intelligent enough to build it around the tank too, and not have to dig it.

Youth, long life, temporary purification from sin, salvation through propitiation of the Great Fate these are

10. Make ,Salvation ,Sure. There are several ways. To get drowned in the Ganges is one, but that is not

pleasant. To die within the limits of Benares is another; but that is a risky one, because you might be out of

town when your time came. The best one of all is the Pilgrimage Around the City. You must walk; also, you

must go barefoot. The tramp is fortyfour miles, for the road winds out into the country a piece, and you will

be marching five or six days. But you will have plenty of company. You will move with throngs and hosts of

happy pilgrims whose radiant costumes will make the spectacle beautiful and whose glad songs and holy

pans of triumph will banish your fatigues and cheer your spirit; and at intervals there will be temples where

you may sleep and be refreshed with food. The pilgrimage completed, you have purchased salvation, and paid

11. Get Your Redemption Recorded. You can get this done at the Sakhi Binayak Temple, and it is best to do

it, for otherwise you might not be able to prove that you had made the pilgrimage in case the matter should

some day come to be disputed. That temple is in a lane back of the Cow Temple. Over the door is a red image

of Ganesh of the elephant head, son and heir of Shiva, and Prince of Wales to the Theological Monarchy, so

to speak. Within is a god whose office it is to record your pilgrimage and be responsible for you. You will not

see him, but you will see a Brahmin who will attend to the matter and take the money. If he should forget to

collect the money, you can remind him. He knows that your salvation is now secure, but of course you would

like to know it yourself. You have nothing to do but go and pray, and pay at the

12. Well of the Knowledge of Salvation. It is close to the Golden Temple. There you will see, sculptured out

of a single piece of black marble, a bull which is much larger than any living bull you have ever seen, and yet

is not a good likeness after all. And there also you will see a very uncommon thingan image of Shiva. You

have seen his lingam fifty thousand times already, but this is Shiva himself, and said to be a good likeness. It

has three eyes. He is the only god in the firm that has three. "The well is covered by a fine canopy of stone

supported by forty pillars," and around it you will find what you have already seen at almost every shrine you

have visited in Benares, a mob of devout and eager pilgrims. The sacred water is being ladled out to them;

with it comes to them the knowledge, clear, thrilling, absolute, that they are saved; and you can see by their

faces that there is one happiness in this world which is supreme, and to which no other joy is comparable.

You receive your water, you make your deposit, and now what more would you have? Gold, diamonds,

power, fame? All in a single moment these things have withered to dirt, dust, ashes. The world has nothing to

I do not claim that the pilgrims do their acts of worship in the order and sequence above charted out in this

Itinerary of mine, but I think logic suggests that they ought to do so. Instead of a helterskelter worship, we

then have a definite startingplace, and a march which carries the pilgrim steadily forward by reasoned and

logical progression to a definite goal. Thus, his Ganges bath in the early morning gives him an appetite; he

kisses the cowtails, and that removes it. It is now business hours, and longings for material prosperity rise in

his mind, and be goes and pours water over Shiva's symbol; this insures the prosperity, but also brings on a

rain, which gives him a fever. Then he drinks the sewage at the Kedar Ghat to cure the fever; it cures the

fever but gives him the smallpox. He wishes to know how it is going to turn out; he goes to the Dandpan

Temple and looks down the well. A clouded sun shows him that death is near. Logically his best course for

the present, since he cannot tell at what moment he may die, is to secure a happy hereafter; this he does,

through the agency of the Great Fate. He is safe, now, for heaven; his next move will naturally be to keep out

of it as long as he can. Therefore he goes to the Briddhkal Temple and secures Youth and long life by bathing

in a puddle of leperpus which would kill a microbe. Logically, Youth has reequipped him for sin and with

the disposition to commit it; he will naturally go to the fane which is consecrated to the Fulfillment of

Desires, and make arrangements. Logically, he will now go to the Well of the Earring from time to time to

unload and freshen up for further banned enjoyments. But first and last and all the time he is human, and

therefore in his reflective intervals he will always be speculating in "futures." He will make the Great

Pilgrimage around the city and so make his salvation absolutely sure; he will also have record made of it, so

that it may remain absolutely sure and not be forgotten or repudiated in the confusion of the Final Settlement.

Logically, also, he will wish to have satisfying and tranquilizing personal knowledge that that salvation is

secure; therefore he goes to the Well of the Knowledge of Salvation, adds that completing detail, and then

goes about his affairs serene and content; serene and content, for he is now royally endowed with an

advantage which no religion in this world could give him but his own; for henceforth he may commit as

Thus the system, properly and logically ordered, is neat, compact, clearly defined, and covers the whole

ground. I desire to recommend it to such as find the other systems too difficult, exacting, and irksome for the

However, let me not deceive any one. My Itinerary lacks a detail. I must put it in. The truth is, that after the

pilgrim has faithfully followed the requirements of the Itinerary through to the end and has secured his

salvation and also the personal knowledge of that fact, there is still an accident possible to him which can

annul the whole thing. If he should ever cross to the other side of the Ganges and get caught out and die there

he would at once come to life again in the form of an ass. Think of that, after all this trouble and expense.

You see how capricious and uncertain salvation is there. The Hindoo has a childish and unreasoning aversion

to being turned into an ass. It is hard to tell why. One could properly expect an ass to have an aversion to

being turned into a Hindoo. One could understand that he could lose dignity by it; also selfrespect, and

ninetenths of his intelligence. But the Hindoo changed into an ass wouldn't lose anything, unless you count

his religion. And he would gain muchrelease from his slavery to two million gods and twenty million

priests, fakeers, holy mendicants, and other sacred bacilli; he would escape the Hindoo hell; he would also

escape the Hindoo heaven. These are advantages which the Hindoo ought to consider; then he would go over

Benares is a religious Vesuvius. In its bowels the theological forces have been heaving and tossing, rumbling,

thundering and quaking, boiling, and weltering and flaming and smoking for ages. But a little group of

missionaries have taken post at its base, and they have hopes. There are the Baptist Missionary Society, the

Church Missionary Society, the London Missionary Society, the Wesleyan Missionary Society, and the

Zenana Bible and Medical Mission. They have schools, and the principal work seems to be among the

children. And no doubt that part of the work prospers best, for grown people everywhere are always likely to

In one of those Benares temples we saw a devotee working for salvation in a curious way. He had a huge wad

of clay beside him and was making it up into little wee gods no bigger than carpet tacks. He stuck a grain of

rice into eachto represent the lingam, I think. He turned them out nimbly, for he had had long practice and

had acquired great facility. Every day he made 2,000 gods, then threw them into the holy Ganges. This act of

homage brought him the profound homage of the piousalso their coppers. He had a sure living here, and

The Ganges front is the supreme showplace of Benares. Its tall bluffs are solidly caked from water to

summit, along a stretch of three miles, with a splendid jumble of massive and picturesque masonry, a

bewildering and beautiful confusion of stone platforms, temples, stairflights, rich and stately

palacesnowhere a break, nowhere a glimpse of the bluff itself; all the long face of it is compactly walled

from sight by this crammed perspective of platforms, soaring stairways, sculptured temples, majestic palaces,

softening away into the distances; and there is movement, motion, human life everywhere, and brilliantly

costumed streaming in rainbows up and down the lofty stairways, and massed in metaphorical

All this masonry, all this architecture represents piety. The palaces were built by native princes whose homes,

as a rule, are far from Benares, but who go there from time to time to refresh their souls with the sight and

touch of the Ganges, the river of their idolatry. The stairways are records of acts of piety; the crowd of costly

little temples are tokens of money spent by rich men for present credit and hope of future reward. Apparently,

the rich Christian who spends large sums upon his religion is conspicuous with us, by his rarity, but the rich

Hindoo who doesn't spend large sums upon his religion is seemingly non existent. With us the poor spend

money on their religion, but they keep back some to live on. Apparently, in India, the poor bankrupt

themselves daily for their religion. The rich Hindoo can afford his pious outlays; he gets much glory for his

spendings, yet keeps back a sufficiency of his income for temporal purposes; but the poor Hindoo is entitled

We made the usual trip up and down the river, seated in chairs under an awning on the deck of the usual

commodious handpropelled ark; made it two or three times, and could have made it with increasing interest

and enjoyment many times more; for, of course, the palaces and temples would grow more and more

beautiful every time one saw them, for that happens with all such things; also, I think one would not get tired

of the bathers, nor their costumes, nor of their ingenuities in getting out of them and into them again without

exposing too much bronze, nor of their devotional gesticulations and absorbed beadtellings.

But I should get tired of seeing them wash their mouths with that dreadful water and drink it. In fact, I did get

tired of it, and very early, too. At one place where we halted for a while, the foul gush from a sewer was

making the water turbid and murky all around, and there was a random corpse slopping around in it that had

floated down from up country. Ten steps below that place stood a crowd of men, women, and comely young

maidens waist deep in the waterand they were scooping it up in their hands and drinking it. Faith can

certainly do wonders, and this is an instance of it. Those people were not drinking that fearful stuff to assuage

thirst, but in order to purify their souls and the interior of their bodies. According to their creed, the Ganges

water makes everything pure that it touchesinstantly and utterly pure. The sewer water was not an offence

to them, the corpse did not revolt them; the sacred water had touched both, and both were now snowpure,

and could defile no one. The memory of that sight will always stay by me; but not by request.

A word further concerning the nasty but allpurifying Ganges water. When we went to Agra, by and by, we

happened there just in time to be in at the birth of a marvela memorable scientific discoverythe

discovery that in certain ways the foul and derided Ganges water is the most puissant purifier in the world!

This curious fact, as I have said, had just been added to the treasury of modern science. It had long been

noted as a strange thing that while Benares is often afflicted with the cholera she does not spread it beyond

her borders. This could not be accounted for. Mr. Henkin, the scientist in the employ of the government of

Agra, concluded to examine the water. He went to Benares and made his tests. He got water at the mouths of

the sewers where they empty into the river at the bathing ghats; a cubic centimetre of it contained millions of

germs; at the end of six hours they were all dead. He caught a floating corpse, towed it to the shore, and from

beside it he dipped up water that was swarming with cholera germs; at the end of six hours they were all

dead. He added swarm after swarm of cholera germs to this water; within the six hours they always died, to

the last sample. Repeatedly, he took pure well water which was bare of animal life, and put into it a few

cholera germs; they always began to propagate at once, and always within six hours they swarmedand

For ages and ages the Hindoos have had absolute faith that the water of the Ganges was absolutely pure,

could not be defiled by any contact whatsoever, and infallibly made pure and clean whatsoever thing touched

it. They still believe it, and that is why they bathe in it and drink it, caring nothing for its seeming filthiness

and the floating corpses. The Hindoos have been laughed at, these many generations, but the laughter will

need to modify itself a little from now on. How did they find out the water's secret in those ancient ages? Had

they germ scientists then? We do not know. We only know that they had a civilization long before we

emerged from savagery. But to return to where I was before; I was about to speak of the burningghat.

They do not burn fakeersthose revered mendicants. They are so holy that they can get to their place

without that sacrament, provided they be consigned to the consecrating river. We saw one carried to

midstream and thrown overboard. He was sandwiched between two great slabs of stone.

We lay off the cremationghat half an hour and saw nine corpses burned. I should not wish to see any more

of it, unless I might select the parties. The mourners follow the bier through the town and down to the ghat;

then the bierbearers deliver the body to some lowcaste natives Domsand the mourners turn about and

go back home. I heard no crying and saw no tears, there was no ceremony of parting. Apparently, these

expressions of grief and affection are reserved for the privacy of the home. The dead women came draped in

red, the men in white. They are laid in the water at the river's edge while the pyre is being prepared.

The first subject was a man. When the Doms unswathed him to wash him, he proved to be a sturdily built,

wellnourished and handsome old gentleman, with not a sign about him to suggest that he had ever been ill.

Dry wood was brought and built up into a loose pile; the corpse was laid upon it and covered over with fuel.

Then a naked holy man who was sitting on high ground a little distance away began to talk and shout with

great energy, and he kept up this noise right along. It may have been the funeral sermon, and probably was. I

forgot to say that one of the mourners remained behind when the others went away. This was the dead man's

son, a boy of ten or twelve, brown and handsome, grave and self possessed, and clothed in flowing white.

He was there to burn his father. He was given a torch, and while he slowly walked seven times around the

pyre the naked black man on the high ground poured out his sermon more clamorously than ever. The

seventh circuit completed, the boy applied the torch at his father's head, then at his feet; the flames sprang

briskly up with a sharp crackling noise, and the lad went away. Hindoos do not want daughters, because their

weddings make such a ruinous expense; but they want sons, so that at death they may have honorable exit

from the world; and there is no honor equal to the honor of having one's pyre lighted by one's son. The father

who dies sonless is in a grievous situation indeed, and is pitied. Life being uncertain, the Hindoo marries

while he is still a boy, in the hope that he will have a son ready when the day of his need shall come. But if he

Meantime the corpse is burning, also several others. It is a dismal business. The stokers did not sit down in

idleness, but moved briskly about, punching up the fires with long poles, and now and then adding fuel.

Sometimes they hoisted the half of a skeleton into the air, then slammed it down and beat it with the pole,

breaking it up so that it would burn better. They hoisted skulls up in the same way and banged and battered

them. The sight was hard to bear; it would have been harder if the mourners had stayed to witness it. I had but

a moderate desire to see a cremation, so it was soon satisfied. For sanitary reasons it would be well if

cremation were universal; but this form is revolting, and not to be recommended.

The fire used is sacred, of coursefor there is money in it. Ordinary fire is forbidden; there is no money in it.

I was told that this sacred fire is all furnished by one person, and that he has a monopoly of it and charges a

good price for it. Sometimes a rich mourner pays a thousand rupees for it. To get to paradise from India is an

expensive thing. Every detail connected with the matter costs something, and helps to fatten a priest. I

Close to the cremationground stand a few timeworn stones which are remembrances of the suttee. Each

has a rough carving upon it, representing a man and a woman standing or walking hand in hand, and marks

the spot where a widow went to her death by fire in the days when the suttee flourished. Mr. Parker said that

widows would burn themselves now if the government would allow it. The family that can point to one of

these little memorials and say: "She who burned herself there was an ancestress of ours," is envied.

It is a curious people. With them, all life seems to be sacred except human life. Even the life of vermin is

sacred, and must not be taken. The good Jain wipes off a seat before using it, lest he cause the death ofsome

valueless insect by sitting down on it. It grieves him to have to drink water, because the provisions in his

stomach may not agree with the microbes. Yet India invented Thuggery and the Suttee. India is a hard

country to understand. We went to the temple of the Thug goddess, Bhowanee, or Kali, or Durga. She has

these names and others. She is the only god to whom living sacrifices are made. Goats are sacrificed to her.

Monkeys would be cheaper. There are plenty of them about the place. Being sacred, they make themselves

very free, and scramble around wherever they please. The temple and its porch are beautifully carved, but this

is not the case with the idol. Bhowanee is not pleasant to look at. She has a silver face, and a projecting

In fact, none of the idols in Benares are handsome or attractive. And what a swarm of them there is! The town

is a vast museum of idolsand all of them crude, misshapen, and ugly. They flock through one's dreams at

night, a wild mob of nightmares. When you get tired of them in the temples and take a trip on the river, you

find idol giants, flashily painted, stretched out side by side on the shore. And apparently wherever there is

room for one more lingam, a lingam is there. If Vishnu had foreseen what his town was going to be, he would

The most conspicuous feature of Benares is the pair of slender white minarets which tower like masts from

the great Mosque of Aurangzeb. They seem to be always in sight, from everywhere, those airy, graceful,

inspiring things. But masts is not the right word, for masts have a perceptible taper, while these minarets have

not. They are 142 feet high, and only 8 1/2 feet in diameter at the base, and 7 1/2 at the summitscarcely

any taper at all. These are the proportions of a candle; and fair and fairylike candles these are. Will be,

anyway, some day, when the Christians inherit them and top them with the electric light. There is a great

view from up therea wonderful view. A large gray monkey was part of it, and damaged it. A monkey has

no judgment. This one was skipping about the upper great heights of the mosque skipping across empty

yawning intervals which were almost too wide for him, and which he only just barely cleared, each time, by

the skin of his teeth. He got me so nervous that I couldn't look at the view. I couldn't look at anything but

him. Every time he went sailing over one of those abysses my breath stood still, and when he grabbed for the

perch he was going for, I grabbed too, in sympathy. And he was perfectly indifferent, perfectly unconcerned,

and I did all the panting myself. He came within an ace of losing his life a dozen times, and I was so troubled

about him that I would have shot him if I had had anything to do it with. But I strongly recommend the view.

There is more monkey than view, and there is always going to be more monkey while that idiot survives, but

what view you get is superb. All Benares, the river, and the region round about are spread before you. Take a

The next thing I saw was more reposeful. It was a new kind of art. It was a picture painted on water. It was

done by a native. He sprinkled fine dust of various colors on the still surface of a basin of water, and out of

these sprinklings a dainty and pretty picture gradually grew, a picture which a breath could destroy.

Somehow it was impressive, after so much browsing among massive and battered and decaying fanes that

rest upon ruins, and those ruins upon still other ruins, and those upon still others again. It was a sermon, an

allegory, a symbol of Instability. Those creations in stone were only a kind of water pictures, after all.

A prominent episode in the Indian career of Warren Hastings had Benares for its theater. Wherever that

extraordinary man set his foot, he left his mark. He came to Benares in 1781 to collect a fine of L500,000

which he had levied upon its Rajah, Cheit Singly on behalf of the East India Company. Hastings was a long

way from home and help. There were, probably, not a dozen Englishmen within reach; the Rajah was in his

fort with his myriads around him. But no matter. From his little camp in a neighboring garden, Hastings sent

a party to arrest the sovereign. He sent on this daring mission a couple of hundred native soldiers sepoys

under command of three young English lieutenants. The Rajah submitted without a word. The incident lights

up the Indian situation electrically, and gives one a vivid sense of the strides which the English had made and

the mastership they had acquired in the land since the date of Clive's great victory. In a quarter of a century,

from being nobodies, and feared by none, they were become confessed lords and masters, feared by all,

sovereigns included, and served by all, sovereigns included. It makes the fairy tales sound true. The English

had not been afraid to enlist native soldiers to fight against their own people and keep them obedient. And

now Hastings was not afraid to come away out to this remote place with a handful of such soldiers and send

The lieutenants imprisoned the Rajah in his own fort. It was beautiful, the pluckiness of it, the impudence of

it. The arrest enraged the Rajah's people, and all Benares came storming about the place and threatening

vengeance. And yet, but for an accident, nothing important would have resulted, perhaps. The mob found out

a most strange thing, an almost incredible thingthat this handful of soldiers had come on this hardy errand

with empty guns and no ammunition. This has been attributed to thoughtlessness, but it could hardly have

been that, for in such large emergencies as this, intelligent people do think. It must have been indifference, an

overconfidence born of the proved submissiveness of the native character, when confronted by even one or

two stern Britons in their war paint. But, however that may be, it was a fatal discovery that the mob had

made. They were full of courage, now, and they broke into the fort and massacred the helpless soldiers and

their officers. Hastings escaped from Benares by night and got safely away, leaving the principality in a state

of wild insurrection; but he was back again within the month, and quieted it down in his prompt and virile

way, and took the Rajah's throne away from him and gave it to another man. He was a capable kind of person

was Warren Hastings. This was the only time he was ever out of ammunition. Some of his acts have left

stains upon his name which can never be washed away, but he saved to England the Indian Empire, and that

was the best service that was ever done to the Indians themselves, those wretched heirs of a hundred centuries

It was in Benares that I saw another living god. That makes two. I believe I have seen most of the greater and

lesser wonders of the world, but I do not remember that any of them interested me so overwhelmingly as did

When I try to account for this effect I find no difficulty about it. I find that, as a rule, when a thing is a

wonder to us it is not because of what we see in it, but because of what others have seen in it. We get almost

all our wonders at second hand. We are eager to see any celebrated thingand we never fail of our reward;

just the deep privilege of gazing upon an object which has stirred the enthusiasm or evoked the reverence or

affection or admiration of multitudes of our race is a thing which we value; we are profoundly glad that we

have seen it, we are permanently enriched from having seen it, we would not part with the memory of that

experience for a great price. And yet that very spectacle may be the Taj. You cannot keep your enthusiasms

down, you cannot keep your emotions within bounds when that soaring bubble of marble breaks upon your

view. But these are not your enthusiasms and emotionsthey are the accumulated emotions and enthusiasms

of a thousand fervid writers, who have been slowly and steadily storing them up in your heart day by day and

year by year all your life; and now they burst out in a flood and overwhelm you; and you could not be a whit

happier if they were your very own. By and by you sober down, and then you perceive that you have been

drunk on the smell of somebody else's cork. For ever and ever the memory of my distant first glimpse of the

Taj will compensate me for creeping around the globe to have that great privilege.

But the Tajwith all your inflation of delusive emotions, acquired at secondhand from people to whom in

the majority of cases they were also delusions acquired at secondhanda thing which you fortunately did

not think of or it might have made you doubtful of what you imagined were your own what is the Taj as a

marvel, a spectacle and an uplifting and overpowering wonder, compared with a living, breathing, speaking

personage whom several millions of human beings devoutly and sincerely and unquestioningly believe to be

He was sixty years old when I saw him. He is called Sri 108 Swami Bhaskarananda Saraswati. That is one

form of it. I think that that is what you would call him in speaking to himbecause it is short. But you would

use more of his name in addressing a letter to him; courtesy would require this. Even then you would not

You do not put "Esq." after it, for that is not necessary. The word which opens the volley is itself a title of

honor "Sri." The "108" stands for the rest of his names, I believe. Vishnu has 108 names which he does not

use in business, and no doubt it is a custom of gods and a privilege sacred to their order to keep 108 extra

ones in stock. Just the restricted name set down above is a handsome property, without the 108. By my count

it has 58 letters in it. This removes the long German words from competition; they are permanently out of the

Sri 108 S. B. Saraswati has attained to what among the Hindoos is called the "state of perfection." It is a state

which other Hindoos reach by being born again and again, and over and over again into this world, through

one reincarnation after anothera tiresome long job covering centuries and decades of centuries, and one

that is full of risks, too, like the accident of dying on the wrong side of the Ganges some time or other and

waking up in the form of an ass, with a fresh start necessary and the numerous trips to be made all over again.

But in reaching perfection, Sri 108 S. B. S. has escaped all that. He is no longer a part or a feature of this

world; his substance has changed, all earthiness has departed out of it; he is utterly holy, utterly pure; nothing

can desecrate this holiness or stain this purity; he is no longer of the earth, its concerns are matters foreign to

him, its pains and griefs and troubles cannot reach him. When he dies, Nirvana is his; he will be absorbed into

The Hindoo Scriptures point out how this state is to be reached, but it is only once in a thousand years,

perhaps, that candidate accomplishes it. This one has traversed the course required, stage by stage, from the

beginning to the end, and now has nothing left to do but wait for the call which shall release him from a

world in which he has now no part nor lot. First, he passed through the student stage, and became learned in

the holy books. Next he became citizen, householder, husband, and father. That was the required second

stage. Thenlike John Bunyan's Christian he bade perpetual goodbye to his family, as required, and went

wandering away. He went far into the desert and served a term as hermit. Next, he became a beggar, "in

accordance with the rites laid down in the Scriptures," and wandered about India eating the bread of

mendicancy. A quarter of a century ago he reached the stage of purity. This needs no garment; its symbol is

nudity; he discarded the waistcloth which he had previously worn. He could resume it now if he chose, for

There are several other stages, I believe, but I do not remember what they are. But he has been through them.

Throughout the long course he was perfecting himself in holy learning, and writing commentaries upon the

White marble reliefportraits of him are sold all about India. He lives in a good house in a noble great garden

in Benares, all meet and proper to his stupendous rank. Necessarily he does not go abroad in the streets.

Deities would never be able to move about handily in any country. If one whom we recognized and adored as

a god should go abroad in our streets, and the day it was to happen were known, all traffic would be blocked

This god is comfortably housed, and yet modestly, all things considered, for if he wanted to live in a palace

he would only need to speak and his worshipers would gladly build it. Sometimes he sees devotees for a

moment, and comforts them and blesses them, and they kiss his feet and go away happy. Rank is nothing to

him, he being a god. To him all men are alike. He sees whom he pleases and denies himself to whom he

pleases. Sometimes he sees a prince and denies himself to a pauper; at other times he receives the pauper and

turns the prince away. However, he does not receive many of either class. He has to husband his time for his

meditations. I think he would receive Rev. Mr. Parker at any time. I think he is sorry for Mr. Parker, and I

think Mr. Parker is sorry for him; and no doubt this compassion is good for both of them.

When we arrived we had to stand around in the garden a little while and wait, and the outlook was not good,

for he had been turning away Maharajas that day and receiving only the riffraff, and we belonged in

between, somewhere. But presently, a servant came out saying it was all right, he was coming.

And sure enough, he came, and I saw himthat object of the worship of millions. It was a strange sensation,

and thrilling. I wish I could feel it stream through my veins again. And yet, to me he was not a god, he was

only a Taj. The thrill was not my thrill, but had come to me secondhand from those invisible millions of

believers. By a handshake with their god I had groundcircuited their wire and got their monster battery's

He was tall and slender, indeed emaciated. He had a clean cut and conspicuously intellectual face, and a deep

and kindly eye. He looked many years older than he really was, but much study and meditation and fasting

and prayer, with the arid life he had led as hermit and beggar, could account for that. He is wholly nude when

he receives natives, of whatever rank they may be, but he had white cloth around his loins now, a concession

As soon as I had sobered down a little we got along very well together, and I found him a most pleasant and

friendly deity. He had heard a deal about Chicago, and showed a quite remarkable interest in it, for a god. It

all came of the World's Fair and the Congress of Religions. If India knows about nothing else American, she

He proposed an exchange of autographs, a delicate attention which made me believe in him, but I had been

having my doubts before. He wrote his in his book, and I have a reverent regard for that book, though the

words run from right to left, and so I can't read it. It was a mistake to print in that way. It contains his

voluminous comments on the Hindoo holy writings, and if I could make them out I would try for perfection

myself. I gave him a copy of Huckleberry Finn. I thought it might rest him up a little to mix it in along with

his meditations on Brahma, for he looked tired, and I knew that if it didn't do him any good it wouldn't do

He has a scholar meditating under himMina Bahadur Ranabut we did not see him. He wears clothes and

is very imperfect. He has written a little pamphlet about his master, and I have that. It contains a wood cut

of the master and himself seated on a rug in the garden. The portrait of the master is very good indeed. The

posture is exactly that which Brahma himself affects, and it requires long arms and limber legs, and can be

accumulated only by gods and the indiarubber man. There is a lifesize marble relief of Shri 108, S.B.S. in

Dear me! It is a strange world. Particularly the Indian division of it. This pupil, Mina Bahadur Rana, is not a

commonplace person, but a man of distinguished capacities and attainments, and, apparently, he had a fine

worldly career in front of him. He was serving the Nepal Government in a high capacity at the Court of the

Viceroy of India, twenty years ago. He was an able man, educated, a thinker, a man of property. But the

longing to devote himself to a religious life came upon him, and he resigned his place, turned his back upon

the vanities and comforts of the world, and went away into the solitudes to live in a hut and study the sacred

writings and meditate upon virtue and holiness and seek to attain them. This sort of religion resembles ours.

Christ recommended the rich to give away all their property and follow Him in poverty, not in worldly

comfort. American and English millionaires do it every day, and thus verify and confirm to the world the

tremendous forces that lie in religion. Yet many people scoff at them for this loyalty to duty, and many will

scoff at Mina Bahadur Rana and call him a crank. Like many Christians of great character and intellect, he

has made the study of his Scriptures and the writing of books of commentaries upon them the loving labor of

his life. Like them, he has believed that his was not an idle and foolish waste of his life, but a most worthy

and honorable employment of it. Yet, there are many people who will see in those others, men worthy of

homage and deep reverence, but in him merely a crank. But I shall not. He has my reverence. And I don't

offer it as a common thing and poor, but as an unusual thing and of value. The ordinary reverence, the

reverence defined and explained by the dictionary costs nothing. Reverence for one's own sacred

thingsparents, religion, flag, laws, and respect for one's own beliefsthese are feelings which we cannot

even help. They come natural to us; they are involuntary, like breathing. There is no personal merit in

breathing. But the reverence which is difficult, and which has personal merit in it, is the respect which you

pay, without compulsion, to the political or religious attitude of a man whose beliefs are not yours. You can't

revere his gods or his politics, and no one expects you to do that, but you could respect his belief in them if

you tried hard enough; and you could respect him, too, if you tried hard enough. But it is very, very difficult;

it is next to impossible, and so we hardly ever try. If the man doesn't believe as we do, we say he is a crank,

We are always canting about people's "irreverence," always charging this offense upon somebody or other,

and thereby intimating that we are better than that person and do not commit that offense ourselves.

Whenever we do this we are in a lying attitude, and our speech is cant; for none of us are reverentin a

meritorious way; deep down in our hearts we are all irreverent. There is probably not a single exception to

this rule in the earth. There is probably not one person whose reverence rises higher than respect for his own

sacred things; and therefore, it is not a thing to boast about and be proud of, since the most degraded savage

has that and, like the best of us, has nothing higher. To speak plainly, we despise all reverences and all

objects of reverence which are outside the pale of our own list of sacred things. And yet, with strange

inconsistency, we are shocked when other people despise and defile the things which are holy to us. Suppose

"Yesterday a visiting party of the British nobility had a picnic at Mount Vernon, and in the tomb of

Washington they ate their luncheon, sang popular songs, played games, and danced waltzes and polkas."

Should we be shocked? Should we feel outraged? Should we be amazed? Should we call the performance a

desecration? Yes, that would all happen. We should denounce those people in round terms, and call them

"Yesterday a visiting party of American porkmillionaires had a picnic in Westminster Abbey, and in that

sacred place they ate their luncheon, sang popular songs, played games, and danced waltzes and polkas."

Would the English be shocked? Would they feel outraged? Would they be amazed? Would they call the

performance a desecration? That would all happen. The porkmillionaires would be denounced in round

In the tomb at Mount Vernon lie the ashes of America's most honored son; in the Abbey, the ashes of

England's greatest dead; the tomb of tombs, the costliest in the earth, the wonder of the world, the Taj, was

built by a great Emperor to honor the memory of a perfect wife and perfect mother, one in whom there was

no spot or blemish, whose love was his stay and support, whose life was the light of the world to him; in it

her ashes lie, and to the Mohammedan millions of India it is a holy place; to them it is what Mount Vernon is

"I would here enter my humble protest against the quadrille and lunch parties which are sometimes given to

European ladies and gentlemen of the station at this imperial tomb; drinking and dancing are no doubt very

Were there any Americans among those lunch parties? If they were invited, there were.

If my imagined lunchparties in Westminster and the tomb of Washington should take place, the incident

would cause a vast outbreak of bitter eloquence about Barbarism and Irreverence; and it would come from

two sets of people who would go next day and dance in the Taj if they had a chance.

As we took our leave of the Benares god and started away we noticed a group of natives waiting respectfully

just within the gatea Rajah from somewhere in India, and some people of lesser consequence. The god

beckoned them to come, and as we passed out the Rajah was kneeling and reverently kissing his sacred feet.

If Barnumbut Barnum's ambitions are at rest. This god will remain in the holy peace and seclusion of his

garden, undisturbed. Barnum could not have gotten him, anyway. Still, he would have found a substitute that

A comfortable railway journey of seventeen and a half hours brought us to the capital of India, which is

likewise the capital of BengalCalcutta. Like Bombay, it has a population of nearly a million natives and a

small gathering of white people. It is a huge city and fine, and is called the City of Palaces. It is rich in

historical memories; rich in British achievementmilitary, political, commercial; rich in the results of the

miracles done by that brace of mighty magicians, Clive and Hastings. And has a cloud kissing monument to

It is a fluted candlestick 250 feet high. This lingam is the only large monument in Calcutta, I believe. It is a

Wherever you are, in Calcutta, and for miles around, you can see it; and always when you see it you think of

Ochterlony. And so there is not an hour in the day that you do not think of Ochterlony and wonder who he

was. It is good that Clive cannot come back, for he would think it was for Plassey; and then that great spirit

would be wounded when the revelation came that it was not. Clive would find out that it was for Ochterlony;

and he would think Ochterlony was a battle. And he would think it was a great one, too, and he would say,

"With three thousand I whipped sixty thousand and founded the Empireand there is no monument; this

But he would be mistaken. Ochterlony was a man, not a battle. And he did good and honorable service, too;

as good and honorable service as has been done in India by seventyfive or a hundred other Englishmen of

courage, rectitude, and distinguished capacity. For India has been a fertile breedingground of such men, and

remains so; great men, both in war and in the civil service, and as modest as great. But they have no

monuments, and were not expecting any. Ochterlony could not have been expecting one, and it is not at all

likely that he desired onecertainly not until Clive and Hastings should be supplied. Every day Clive and

Hastings lean on the battlements of heaven and look down and wonder which of the two the monument is for;

and they fret and worry because they cannot find out, and so the peace of heaven is spoiled for them and lost.

But not for Ochterlony. Ochterlony is not troubled. He doesn't suspect that it is his monument. Heaven is

Indeed, if monuments were always given in India for high achievements, duty straitly performed, and

smirchless records, the landscape would be monotonous with them. The handful of English in India govern

the Indian myriads with apparent ease, and without noticeable friction, through tact, training, and

distinguished administrative ability, reinforced by just and liberal lawsand by keeping their word to the

England is far from India and knows little about the eminent services performed by her servants there, for it is

the newspaper correspondent who makes fame, and he is not sent to India but to the continent, to report the

doings of the princelets and the dukelets, and where they are visiting and whom they are marrying. Often a

British official spends thirty or forty years in India, climbing from grade to grade by services which would

make him celebrated anywhere else, and finishes as a vice sovereign, governing a great realm and millions

of subjects; then he goes home to England substantially unknown and unheard of, and settles down in some

modest corner, and is as one extinguished. Ten years later there is a twentyline obituary in the London

papers, and the reader is paralyzed by the splendors of a career which he is not sure that he had ever heard of

before. But meanwhile he has learned all about the continental princelets and dukelets.

The average man is profoundly ignorant of countries that lie remote from his own. When they are mentioned

in his presence one or two facts and maybe a couple of names rise like torches in his mind, lighting up an

inch or two of it and leaving the rest all dark. The mention of Egypt suggests some Biblical facts and the

Pyramidsnothing more. The mention of South Africa suggests Kimberly and the diamonds and there an end.

Formerly the mention, to a Hindoo, of America suggested a nameGeorge Washingtonwith that his

familiarity with our country was exhausted. Latterly his familiarity with it has doubled in bulk; so that when

America is mentioned now, two torches flare up in the dark caverns of his mind and he says, " Ah, the

country of the great man Washington; and of the Holy CityChicago." For he knows about the Congress of

When India is mentioned to the citizen of a far country it suggests Clive, Hastings, the Mutiny, Kipling, and a

number of other great events; and the mention of Calcutta infallibly brings up the Black Hole. And so, when

that citizen finds himself in the capital of India he goes first of all to see the Black Hole of Calcuttaand is

The Black Hole was not preserved; it is gone, long, long ago. It is strange. Just as it stood, it was itself a

monument; a readymade one. It was finished, it was complete, its materials were strong and lasting, it

needed no furbishing up, no repairs; it merely needed to be let alone. It was the first brick, the Foundation

Stone, upon which was reared a mighty Empirethe Indian Empire of Great Britain. It was the ghastly

episode of the Black Hole that maddened the British and brought Clive, that young military marvel, raging up

from Madras; it was the seed from which sprung Plassey; and it was that extraordinary battle, whose like had

not been seen in the earth since Agincourt, that laid deep and strong the foundations of England's colossal

And yet within the time of men who still live, the Black Hole was torn down and thrown away as carelessly

as if its bricks were common clay, not ingots of historic gold. There is no accounting for human beings.

The supposed site of the Black Hole is marked by an engraved plate. I saw that; and better that than nothing.

The Black Hole was a prisona cell is nearer the right wordeighteen feet square, the dimensions of an

ordinary bedchamber; and into this place the victorious Nabob of Bengal packed 146 of his English prisoners.

There was hardly standing room for them; scarcely a breath of air was to be got; the time was night, the

weather sweltering hot. Before the dawn came, the captives were all dead but twentythree. Mr. Holwell's

long account of the awful episode was familiar to the world a hundred years ago, but one seldom sees in print

even an extract from it in our day. Among the striking things in it is this. Mr. Holwell, perishing with thirst,

kept himself alive by sucking the perspiration from his sleeves. It gives one a vivid idea of the situation. He

presently found that while he was busy drawing life from one of his sleeves a young English gentleman was

stealing supplies from the other one. Holwell was an unselfish man, a man of the most generous impulses; he

lived and died famous for these fine and rare qualities; yet when he found out what was happening to that

unwatched sleeve, he took the precaution to suck that one dry first. The miseries of the Black Hole were able

to change even a nature like his. But that young gentleman was one of the twentythree survivors, and he

said it was the stolen perspiration that saved his life. From the middle of Mr. Holwell's narrative I will make a

"Then a general prayer to Heaven, to hasten the approach of the flames to the right and left of us, and put a

period to our misery. But these failing, they whose strength and spirits were quite exhausted laid themselves

down and expired quietly upon their fellows: others who had yet some strength and vigor left made a last

effort at the windows, and several succeeded by leaping and scrambling over the backs and heads of those in

the first rank, and got hold of the bars, from which there was no removing them. Many to the right and left

sunk with the violent pressure, and were soon suffocated; for now a steam arose from the living and the dead,

which affected us in all its circumstances as if we were forcibly held with our heads over a bowl full of strong

volatile spirit of hartshorn, until suffocated; nor could the effluvia of the one be distinguished from the other,

and frequently, when I was forced by the load upon my head and shoulders to hold my face down, I was

obliged, near as I was to the window, instantly to raise it again to avoid suffocation. I need not, my dear

friend, ask your commiseration, when I tell you, that in this plight, from half an hour past eleven till near two

in the morning, I sustained the weight of a heavy man, with his knees in my back, and the pressure of his

whole body on my head. A Dutch surgeon who had taken his seat upon my left shoulder, and a Topaz (a

black Christian soldier) bearing on my right; all which nothing could have enabled me to support but the

props and pressure equally sustaining me all around. The two latter I frequently dislodged by shifting my

hold on the bars and driving my knuckles into their ribs; but my friend above stuck fast, held immovable by

"I exerted anew my strength and fortitude; but the repeated trials and efforts I made to dislodge the

insufferable incumbrances upon me at last quite exhausted me; and towards two o'clock, finding I must quit

the window or sink where I was, I resolved on the former, having bore, truly for the sake of others, infinitely

more for life than the best of it is worth. In the rank close behind me was an officer of one of the ships, whose

name was Cary, and who had behaved with much bravery during the siege (his wife, a fine woman, though

country born, would not quit him, but accompanied him into the prison, and was one who survived). This

poor wretch had been long raving for water and air; I told him I was determined to give up life, and

recommended his gaining my station. On my quitting it he made a fruitless attempt to get my place; but the

Dutch surgeon, who sat on my shoulder, supplanted him. Poor Cary expressed his thankfulness, and said he

would give up life too; but it was with the utmost labor we forced our way from the window (several in the

inner ranks appearing to me dead standing, unable to fall by the throng and equal pressure around). He laid

himself down to die; and his death, I believe, was very sudden; for he was a short, full, sanguine man. His

strength was great; and, I imagine, had he not retired with me, I should never have been able to force my way.

I was at this time sensible of no pain, and little uneasiness; I can give you no better idea of my situation than

by repeating my simile of the bowl of spirit of hartshorn. I found a stupor coming on apace, and laid myself

down by that gallant old man, the Rev. Mr. Jervas Bellamy, who laid dead with his son, the lieutenant, hand

in hand, near the southernmost wall of the prison. When I had lain there some little time, I still had reflection

enough to suffer some uneasiness in the thought that I should be trampled upon, when dead, as I myself had

done to others. With some difficulty I raised myself, and gained the platform a second time, where I presently

lost all sensation; the last trace of sensibility that I have been able to recollect after my laying down, was my

sash being uneasy about my waist, which I untied, and threw from me. Of what passed in this interval, to the

There was plenty to see in Calcutta, but there was not plenty of time for it. I saw the fort that Clive built; and

the place where Warren Hastings and the author of the Junius Letters fought their duel; and the great

botanical gardens; and the fashionable afternoon turnout in the Maidan; and a grand review of the garrison in

a great plain at sunrise; and a military tournament in which great bodies of native soldiery exhibited the

perfection of their drill at all arms, a spectacular and beautiful show occupying several nights and closing

with the mimic storming of a native fort which was as good as the reality for thrilling and accurate detail, and

better than the reality for security and comfort; we had a pleasure excursion on the 'Hoogly' by courtesy of

friends, and devoted the rest of the time to social life and the Indian museum. One should spend a month in

the museum, an enchanted palace of Indian antiquities. Indeed, a person might spend half a year among the

It was winter. We were of Kipling's "hosts of tourists who travel up and down India in the cold weather

showing how things ought to be managed." It is a common expression there, "the cold weather," and the

people think there is such a thing. It is because they have lived there half a lifetime, and their perceptions

have become blunted. When a person is accustomed to 138 in the shade, his ideas about cold weather are not

valuable. I had read, in the histories, that the June marches made between Lucknow and Cawnpore by the

British forces in the time of the Mutiny were made weather138 in the shade and had taken it for historical

embroidery. I had read it again in SerjeantMajor Forbes Mitchell's account of his military experiences in

the Mutinyat least I thought I hadand in Calcutta I asked him if it was true, and he said it was. An

officer of high rank who had been in the thick of the Mutiny said the same. As long as those men were talking

about what they knew, they were trustworthy, and I believed them; but when they said it was now "cold

weather," I saw that they had traveled outside of their sphere of knowledge and were floundering. I believe

that in India "cold weather" is merely a conventional phrase and has come into use through the necessity of

having some way to distinguish between weather which will melt a brass doorknob and weather which will

only make it mushy. It was observable that brass ones were in use while I was in Calcutta, showing that it

was not yet time to change to porcelain; I was told the change to porcelain was not usually made until May.

But this cold weather was too warm for us; so we started to Darjeeling, in the Himalayasa twentyfour

February 14. We left at 4:30 P.M. Until dark we moved through rich vegetation, then changed to a boat and

February 15. Up with the sun. A brilliant morning, and frosty. A double suit of flannels is found necessary.

The plain is perfectly level, and seems to stretch away and away and away, dimming and softening, to the

uttermost bounds of nowhere. What a soaring, strenuous, gushing fountain spray of delicate greenery a bunch

of bamboo is! As far as the eye can reach, these grand vegetable geysers grace the view, their spoutings

refined to steam by distance. And there are fields of bananas, with the sunshine glancing from the varnished

surface of their drooping vast leaves. And there are frequent groves of palm; and an effective accent is given

to the landscape by isolated individuals of this picturesque family, towering, cleanstemmed, their plumes

broken and hanging ragged, Nature's imitation of an umbrella that has been out to see what a cyclone is like

and is trying not to look disappointed. And everywhere through the soft morning vistas we glimpse the

villages, the countless villages, the myriad villages, thatched, built of clean new matting, snuggling among

grouped palms and sheaves of bamboo; villages, villages, no end of villages, not three hundred yards apart,

and dozens and dozens of them in sight all the time; a mighty City, hundreds of miles long, hundreds of miles

broad, made all of villages, the biggest city in the earth, and as populous as a European kingdom. I have seen

no such city as this before. And there is a continuously repeated and replenished multitude of naked men in

view on both sides and ahead. We fly through it mile after mile, but still it is always there, on both sides and

aheadbrownbodied, naked men and boys, plowing in the fields. But not woman. In these two hours I have

From Greenland's icy mountains, From India's coral strand, Where Afric's sunny fountains Roll down their

golden sand. From many an ancient river, From many a palmy plain, They call us to deliver Their land from

Those are beautiful verses, and they have remained in my memory all my life. But if the closing lines are

true, let us hope that when we come to answer the call and deliver the land from its errors, we shall secrete

from it some of our highcivilization ways, and at the same time borrow some of its pagan ways to enrich our

high system with. We have a right to do this. If we lift those people up, we have a right to lift ourselves up

nine or ten grades or so, at their expense. A few years ago I spent several weeks at Tolz, in Bavaria. It is a

Roman Catholic region, and not even Benares is more deeply or pervasively or intelligently devout. In my

"We took a long drive yesterday around about the lovely country roads. But it was a drive whose pleasure

was damaged in a couple of ways: by the dreadful shrines and by the shameful spectacle of gray and

venerable old grandmothers toiling in the fields. The shrines were frequent along the roadsfigures of the

Saviour nailed to the cross and streaming with blood from the wounds of the nails and the thorns.

"When missionaries go from here do they find fault with the pagan idols? I saw many women seventy and

even eighty years old mowing and binding in the fields, and pitchforking the loads into the wagons."

I was in Austria later, and in Munich. In Munich I saw gray old women pushing trucks up hill and down, long

distances, trucks laden with barrels of beer, incredible loads. In my Austrian diary I find this:

"In the fields I often see a woman and a cow harnessed to the plow, and a man driving.

"In the public street of Marienbad today, I saw an old, bent, gray headed woman, in harness with a dog,

drawing a laden sled over bare dirt roads and bare pavements; and at his ease walked the driver, smoking his

Five or six years ago I bought an open boat, made a kind of a canvas wagonroof over the stern of it to

shelter me from sun and rain; hired a courier and a boatman, and made a twelveday floating voyage down

the Rhone from Lake Bourget to Marseilles. In my diary of that trip I find this entry. I was far down the

"Passing St. Etienne, 2:15 P.M. On a distant ridge inland, a tall openwork structure commandingly situated,

with a statue of the Virgin standing on it. A devout country. All down this river, wherever there is a crag

there is a statue of the Virgin on it. I believe I have seen a hundred of them. And yet, in many respects, the

peasantry seem to be mere pagans, and destitute of any considerable degree of civilization.

" . . . . We reached a not very promising looking village about 4 o'clock, and I concluded to tie up for the day;

munching fruit and fogging the hood with pipesmoke had grown monotonous; I could not have the hood

furled, because the floods of rain fell unceasingly. The tavern was on the river bank, as is the custom. It was

dull there, and melancholynothing to do but look out of the window into the drenching rain, and shiver;

one could do that, for it was bleak and cold and windy, and country France furnishes no fire. Winter

overcoats did not help me much; they had to be supplemented with rugs. The raindrops were so large and

struck the river with such force that they knocked up the water like pebblesplashes.

"With the exception of a very occasional woodenshod peasant, nobody was abroad in this bitter weatherI

mean nobody of our sex. But all weathers are alike to the women in these continental countries. To them and

the other animals, life is serious; nothing interrupts their slavery. Three of them were washing clothes in the

river under the window when I arrived, and they continued at it as long as there was light to work by. One

was apparently thirty; anotherthe mother!above fifty; the thirdgrandmother!so old and worn and

gray she could have passed for eighty; I took her to be that old. They had no waterproofs nor rubbers, of

course; over their shoulders they wore gunnysackssimply conductors for rivers of water; some of the

"At last a vigorous fellow of thirtyfive arrived, dry and comfortable, smoking his pipe under his big

umbrella in an open donkeycarthusband, son, and grandson of those women! He stood up in the cart,

sheltering himself, and began to superintend, issuing his orders in a masterly tone of command, and showing

Without complaint or murmur the drowned women patiently carried out the orders, lifting the immense

baskets of soggy, wrungout clothing into the cart and stowing them to the man's satisfaction. There were six

of the great baskets, and a man of mere ordinary strength could not have lifted any one of them. The cart

being full now, the Frenchman descended, still sheltered by his umbrella, entered the tavern, and the women

went drooping homeward, trudging in the wake of the cart, and soon were blended with the deluge and lost to

"When I went down into the public room, the Frenchman had his bottle of wine and plate of food on a bare

table black with grease, and was "chomping" like a horse. He had the little religious paper which is in

everybody's hands on the Rhone borders, and was enlightening himself with the histories of French saints

who used to flee to the desert in the Middle Ages to escape the contamination of woman. For two hundred

years France has been sending missionaries to other savage lands. To spare to the needy from poverty like

It is because Bavaria and Austria and France have not introduced their civilization to him yet. But Bavaria

and Austria and France are on their way. They are coming. They will rescue him; they will refine the vileness

Some time during the forenoon, approaching the mountains, we changed from the regular train to one

composed of little canvassheltered cars that skimmed along within a foot of the ground and seemed to be

going fifty miles an hour when they were really making about twenty. Each car had seating capacity for

halfadozen persons; and when the curtains were up one was substantially out of doors, and could see

everywhere, and get all the breeze, and be luxuriously comfortable. It was not a pleasure excursion in name

After a while the stopped at a little wooden coop of a station just within the curtain of the sombre jungle, a

place with a deep and dense forest of great trees and scrub and vines all about it. The royal Bengal tiger is in

great force there, and is very bold and unconventional. From this lonely little station a message once went to

the railway manager in Calcutta: "Tiger eating stationmaster on front porch; telegraph instructions."

It was there that I had my first tiger hunt. I killed thirteen. We were presently away again, and the train began

to climb the mountains. In one place seven wild elephants crossed the track, but two of them got away before

I could overtake them. The railway journey up the mountain is forty miles, and it takes eight hours to make it.

It is so wild and interesting and exciting and enchanting that it ought to take a week. As for the vegetation, it

is a museum. The jungle seemed to contain samples of every rare and curious tree and bush that we had ever

seen or heard of. It is from that museum, I think, that the globe must have been supplied with the trees and

The road is infinitely and charmingly crooked. It goes winding in and out under lofty cliffs that are smothered

in vines and foliage, and around the edges of bottomless chasms; and all the way one glides by files of

picturesque natives, some carrying burdens up, others going down from their work in the teagardens; and

once there was a gaudy wedding procession, all bright tinsel and color, and a bride, comely and girlish, who

peeped out from the curtains of her palanquin, exposing her face with that pure delight which the young and

By and by we were well up in the region of the clouds, and from that breezy height we looked down and afar

over a wonderful picturethe Plains of India, stretching to the horizon, soft and fair, level as a floor,

shimmering with heat, mottled with cloudshadows, and cloven with shining rivers. Immediately below us,

and receding down, down, down, toward the valley, was a shaven confusion of hilltops, with ribbony roads

and paths squirming and snaking creamyellow all over them and about them, every curve and twist sharply

At an elevation of 6,000 feet we entered a thick cloud, and it shut out the world and kept it shut out. We

climbed 1,000 feet higher, then began to descend, and presently got down to Darjeeling, which is 6,000 feet

We had passed many a mountain village on the way up, and seen some new kinds of natives, among them

many samples of the fighting Ghurkas. They are not large men, but they are strong and resolute. There are no

better soldiers among Britain's native troops. And we had passed shoals of their women climbing the forty

miles of steep road from the valley to their mountain homes, with tall baskets on their backs hitched to their

foreheads by a band, and containing a freightage weighingI will not say how many hundreds of pounds,

for the sum is unbelievable. These were young women, and they strode smartly along under these astonishing

burdens with the air of people out for a holiday. I was told that a woman will carry a piano on her back all the

way up the mountain; and that more than once a woman had done it. If these were old women I should regard

the Ghurkas as no more civilized than the Europeans. At the railway station at Darjeeling you find plenty of

cabsubstitutes open coffins, in which you sit, and are then borne on men's shoulders up the steep roads

Up there we found a fairly comfortable hotel, the property of an indiscriminate and incoherent landlord, who

looks after nothing, but leaves everything to his army of Indian servants. No, he does look after the billto

be just to himand the tourist cannot do better than follow his example. I was told by a resident that the

summit of Kinchinjunga is often hidden in the clouds, and that sometimes a tourist has waited twentytwo

days and then been obliged to go away without a sight of it. And yet went not disappointed; for when he got

his hotel bill he recognized that he was now seeing the highest thing in the Himalayas. But this is probably a

After lecturing I went to the Club that night, and that was a comfortable place. It is loftily situated, and looks

out over a vast spread of scenery; from it you can see where the boundaries of three countries come together,

some thirty miles away; Thibet is one of them, Nepaul another, and I think Herzegovina was the other.

Apparently, in every town and city in India the gentlemen of the British civil and military service have a club;

sometimes it is a palatial one, always it is pleasant and homelike. The hotels are not always as good as they

might be, and the stranger who has access to the Club is grateful for his privilege and knows how to value it.

Next day was Sunday. Friends came in the gray dawn with horses, and my party rode away to a distant point

where Kinchinjunga and Mount Everest show up best, but I stayed at home for a private view; for it was very

old, and I was not acquainted with the horses, any way. I got a pipe and a few blankets and sat for two hours

at the window, and saw the sun drive away the veiling gray and touch up the snowpeaks one after another

with pale pink splashes and delicate washes of gold, and finally flood the whole mighty convulsion of

Kinchinjunga's peak was but fitfully visible, but in the between times it was vividly clear against the

skyaway up there in the blue dome more than 28,000 feet above sea levelthe loftiest land I had ever

seen, by 12,000 feet or more. It was 45 miles away. Mount Everest is a thousand feet higher, but it was not a

part of that sea of mountains piled up there before me, so I did not see it; but I did not care, because I think

I changed from the back to the front of the house and spent the rest of the morning there, watching the

swarthy strange tribes flock by from their far homes in the Himalayas. All ages and both sexes were

represented, and the breeds were quite new to me, though the costumes of the Thibetans made them look a

good deal like Chinamen. The prayerwheel was a frequent feature. It brought me near to these people, and

made them seem kinfolk of mine. Through our preacher we do much of our praying by proxy. We do not

whirl him around a stick, as they do, but that is merely a detail. The swarm swung briskly by, hour after hour,

a strange and striking pageant. It was wasted there, and it seemed a pity. It should have been sent streaming

through the cities of Europe or America, to refresh eyes weary of the pale monotonies of the circus pageant.

These people were bound for the bazar, with things to sell. We went down there, later, and saw that novel

congress of the wild peoples, and plowed here and there through it, and concluded that it would be worth

On Monday and Tuesday at sunrise we again had fairtomiddling views of the stupendous mountains; then,

being well cooled off and refreshed, we were ready to chance the weather of the lower world once more.

We traveled up hill by the regular train five miles to the summit, then changed to a little canvascanopied

handcar for the 35mile descent. It was the size of a sleigh, it had six seats and was so low that it seemed to

rest on the ground. It had no engine or other propelling power, and needed none to help it fly down those

steep inclines. It only needed a strong brake, to modify its flight, and it had that. There was a story of a

disastrous trip made down the mountain once in this little car by the LieutenantGovernor of Bengal, when

the car jumped the track and threw its passengers over a precipice. It was not true, but the story had value for

me, for it made me nervous, and nervousness wakes a person up and makes him alive and alert, and heightens

the thrill of a new and doubtful experience. The car could really jump the track, of course; a pebble on the

track, placed there by either accident or malice, at a sharp curve where one might strike it before the eye

could discover it, could derail the car and fling it down into India; and the fact that the lieutenantgovernor

had escaped was no proof that I would have the same luck. And standing there, looking down upon the Indian

Empire from the airy altitude of 7,000 feet, it seemed unpleasantly far, dangerously far, to be flung from a

But after all, there was but small dangerfor me. What there was, was for Mr. Pugh, inspector of a division of

the Indian police, in whose company and protection we had come from Calcutta. He had seen long service as

an artillery officer, was less nervous than I was, and so he was to go ahead of us in a pilot handcar, with a

Ghurka and another native; and the plan was that when we should see his car jump over a precipice we must

put on our (break) and send for another pilot. It was a good arrangement. Also Mr. Barnard, chief engineer of

the mountain division of the road, was to take personal charge of our car, and he had been down the

Everything looked safe. Indeed, there was but one questionable detail left: the regular train was to follow us

as soon as we should start, and it might run over us. Privately, I thought it would.

The road fell sharply down in front of us and went corkscrewing in and out around the crags and precipices,

down, down, forever down, suggesting nothing so exactly or so uncomfortably as a croaked toboggan slide

with no end to it. Mr. Pugh waved his flag and started, like an arrow from a bow, and before I could get out

of the car we were gone too. I had previously had but one sensation like the shock of that departure, and that

was the gaspy shock that took my breath away the first time that I was discharged from the summit of a

toboggan slide. But in both instances the sensation was pleasurableintensely so; it was a sudden and

immense exaltation, a mixed ecstasy of deadly fright and unimaginable joy. I believe that this combination

The pilot car's flight down the mountain suggested the swoop of a swallow that is skimming the ground, so

swiftly and smoothly and gracefully it swept down the long straight reaches and soared in and out of the

bends and around the corners. We raced after it, and seemed to flash by the capes and crags with the speed of

light; and now and then we almost overtook itand had hopes; but it was only playing with us; when we got

near, it released its brake, make a spring around a corner, and the next time it spun into view, a few seconds

later, it looked as small as a wheelbarrow, it was so far away. We played with the train in the same way. We

often got out to gather flowers or sit on a precipice and look at the scenery, then presently we would hear a

dull and growing roar, and the long coils of the train would come into sight behind and above us; but we did

not need to start till the locomotive was close down upon us then we soon left it far behind. It had to stop

at every station, therefore it was not an embarrassment to us. Our brake was a good piece of machinery; it

The scenery was grand and varied and beautiful, and there was no hurry; we could always stop and examine

it. There was abundance of time. We did not need to hamper the train; if it wanted the road, we could switch

off and let it go by, then overtake it and pass it later. We stopped at one place to see the Gladstone Cliff, a

great crag which the ages and the weather have sculptured into a recognizable portrait of the venerable

statesman. Mr. Gladstone is a stockholder in the road, and Nature began this portrait ten thousand years ago,

We saw a banyan tree which sent down supporting stems from branches which were sixty feet above the

ground. That is, I suppose it was a banyan; its bark resembled that of the great banyan in the botanical

gardens at Calcutta, that spiderlegged thing with its wilderness of vegetable columns. And there were

frequent glimpses of a totally leafless tree upon whose innumerable twigs and branches a cloud of crimson

butterflies had lightedapparently. In fact these brilliant red butterflies were flowers, but the illusion was

good. Afterward in South Africa, I saw another splendid effect made by red flowers. This flower was

probably called the torchplantshould have been so named, anyway. It had a slender stem several feet

high, and from its top stood up a single tongue of flame, an intensely red flower of the size and shape of a

small corn cob. The stems stood three or four feet apart all over a great hill slope that was a mile long, and

make one think of what the Place de la Concorde would be if its myriad lights were red instead of white and

A few miles down the mountain we stopped half an hour to see a Thibetan dramatic performance. It was in

the open air on the hillside. The audience was composed of Thibetans, Ghurkas, and other unusual people.

The costumes of the actors were in the last degree outlandish, and the performance was in keeping with the

clothes. To an accompaniment of barbarous noises the actors stepped out one after another and began to spin

around with immense swiftness and vigor and violence, chanting the while, and soon the whole troupe would

be spinning and chanting and raising the dust. They were performing an ancient and celebrated historical

play, and a Chinaman explained it to me in pidjin English as it went along. The play was obscure enough

without the explanation; with the explanation added, it was (opake). As a drama this ancient historical work

of art was defective, I thought, but as a wild and barbarous spectacle the representation was beyond criticism.

Far down the mountain we got out to look at a piece of remarkable loop engineeringa spiral where the

road curves upon itself with such abruptness that when the regular train came down and entered the loop, we

stood over it and saw the locomotive disappear under our bridge, then in a few moments appear again,

chasing its own tail; and we saw it gain on it, overtake it, draw ahead past the rear cars, and run a race with

Halfway down the mountain we stopped about an hour at Mr. Barnard's house for refreshments, and while

we were sitting on the veranda looking at the distant panorama of hills through a gap in the forest, we came

very near seeing a leopard kill a calf. [It killed it the day before.] It is a wild place and lovely. From the

woods all about came the songs of birds,among them the contributions of a couple of birds which I was not

then acquainted with: the brainfever bird and the coppersmith. The song of the brainfever demon starts on

a low but steadily rising key, and is a spiral twist which augments in intensity and severity with each added

spiral, growing sharper and sharper, and more and more painful, more and more agonizing, more and more

maddening, intolerable, unendurable, as it bores deeper and deeper and deeper into the listener's brain, until at

last the brain fever comes as a relief and the man dies. I am bringing some of these birds home to America.

They will be a great curiosity there, and it is believed that in our climate they will multiply like rabbits.

The coppersmith bird's note at a certain distance away has the ring of a sledge on granite; at a certain other

distance the hammering has a more metallic ring, and you might think that the bird was mending a copper

kettle; at another distance it has a more woodeny thump, but it is a thump that is full of energy, and sounds

just like starting a bung. So he is a hard bird to name with a single name; he is a stonebreaker, coppersmith,

and bungstarter, and even then he is not completely named, for when he is close by you find that there is a

soft, deep, melodious quality in his thump, and for that no satisfying name occurs to you. You will not mind

his other notes, but when he camps near enough for you to hear that one, you presently find that his measured

and monotonous repetition of it is beginning to disturb you; next it will weary you, soon it will distress you,

and before long each thump will hurt your head; if this goes on, you will lose your mind with the pain and

misery of it, and go crazy. I am bringing some of these birds home to America. There is nothing like them

there. They will be a great surprise, and it is said that in a climate like ours they will surpass expectation for

I am bringing some nightingales, too, and some cueowls. I got them in Italy. The song of the nightingale is

the deadliest known to ornithology. That demoniacal shriek can kill at thirty yards. The note of the cueowl

is infinitely soft and sweetsoft and sweet as the whisper of a flute. But penetratingoh, beyond belief; it

can bore through boileriron. It is a lingering note, and comes in triplets, on the one unchanging key:

hoooo, hoooo, hoooo; then a silence of fifteen seconds, then the triplet again; and so on, all night. At

first it is divine; then less so; then trying; then distressing; then excruciating; then agonizing, and at the end of

And so, presently we took to the handcar and went flying down the mountain again; flying and stopping,

flying and stopping, till at last we were in the plain once more and stowed for Calcutta in the regular train.

That was the most enjoyable day I have spent in the earth. For rousing, tingling, rapturous pleasure there is no

holiday trip that approaches the birdflight down the Himalayas in a handcar. It has no fault, no blemish, no

lack, except that there are only thirtyfive miles of it instead of five hundred.

So far as I am able to judge, nothing has been left undone, either by man or Nature, to make India the most

extraordinary country that the sun visits on his round. Nothing seems to have been forgotten, nothing over

looked. Always, when you think you have come to the end of her tremendous specialties and have finished

banging tags upon her as the Land of the Thug, the Land of the Plague, the Land of Famine, the Land of

Giant Illusions, the Land of Stupendous Mountains, and so forth, another specialty crops up and another tag

is required. I have been overlooking the fact that India is by an unapproachable supremacythe Land of

Murderous Wild Creatures. Perhaps it will be simplest to throw away the tags and generalize her with one

For many years the British Indian Government has been trying to destroy the murderous wild creatures, and

has spent a great deal of money in the effort. The annual official returns show that the undertaking is a

These returns exhibit a curious annual uniformity in results; the sort of uniformity which you find in the

annual output of suicides in the world's capitals, and the proportions of deaths by this, that, and the other

disease. You can always come close to foretelling how many suicides will occur in Paris, London, and New

York, next year, and also how many deaths will result from cancer, consumption, dogbite, falling out of the

window, getting run over by cabs, etc., if you know the statistics of those matters for the present year. In the

same way, with one year's Indian statistics before you, you can guess closely at how many people were killed

in that Empire by tigers during the previous year, and the year before that, and the year before that, and at

how many were killed in each of those years by bears, how many by wolves, and how many by snakes; and

you can also guess closely at how many people are going to be killed each year for the coming five years by

each of those agencies. You can also guess closely at how many of each agency the government is going to

I have before me statistics covering a period of six consecutive years. By these, I know that in India the tiger

kills something over 800 persons every year, and that the government responds by killing about double as

many tigers every year. In four of the six years referred to, the tiger got 800 odd; in one of the remaining two

years he got only 700, but in the other remaining year he made his average good by scoring 917. He is always

sure of his average. Anyone who bets that the tiger will kill 2,400 people in India in any three consecutive

years has invested his money in a certainty; anyone who bets that he will kill 2,600 in any three consecutive

As strikingly uniform as are the statistics of suicide, they are not any more so than are those of the tiger's

annual output of slaughtered human beings in India. The government's work is quite uniform, too; it about

doubles the tiger's average. In six years the tiger killed 5,000 persons, minus 50; in the same six years 10,000

The wolf kills nearly as many people as the tiger700 a year to the tiger's 800 oddbut while he is doing it,

The leopard kills an average of 230 people per year, but loses 3,300 of his own mess while he is doing it.

The tiger, as the figures show, makes a very handsome fight against man. But it is nothing to the elephant's

fight. The king of beasts, the lord of the jungle, loses four of his mess per year, but he kills fortyfive

But when it comes to killing cattle, the lord of the jungle is not interested. He kills but 100 in six

yearshorses of hunters, no doubt but in the same six the tiger kills more than 84,000, the leopard

100,000, the bear 4,000, the wolf 70,000, the hyena more than 13,000, other wild beasts 27,000, and the

snakes 19,000, a grand total of more than 300,000; an average of 50,000 head per year.

In response, the government kills, in the six years, a total of 3,201,232 wild beasts and snakes. Ten for one.

It will be perceived that the snakes are not much interested in cattle; they kill only 3,000 odd per year. The

snakes are much more interested in man. India swarms with deadly snakes. At the head of the list is the cobra,

the deadliest known to the world, a snake whose bite kills where the rattlesnake's bite merely entertains.

In India, the annual mankillings by snakes are as uniform, as regular, and as forecastable as are the

tigeraverage and the suicideaverage. Anyone who bets that in India, in any three consecutive years the

snakes will kill 49,500 persons, will win his bet; and anyone who bets that in India in any three consecutive

years, the snakes will kill 53,500 persons, will lose his bet. In India the snakes kill 17,000 people a year; they

hardly ever fall short of it; they as seldom exceed it. An insurance actuary could take the Indian census tables

and the government's snake tables and tell you within sixpence how much it would be worth to insure a man

against death by snakebite there. If I had a dollar for every person killed per year in India, I would rather

have it than any other property, as it is the only property in the world not subject to shrinkage.

I should like to have a royalty on the governmentend of the snake business, too, and am in London now

trying to get it; but when I get it it is not going to be as regular an income as the other will be if I get that; I

have applied for it. The snakes transact their end of the business in a more orderly and systematic way than

the government transacts its end of it, because the snakes have had a long experience and know all about the

traffic. You can make sure that the government will never kill fewer than 110,000 snakes in a year, and that it

will newer quite reach 300,000 too much room for oscillation; good speculative stock, to bear or bull, and

buy and sell long and short, and all that kind of thing, but not eligible for investment like the other. The man

that speculates in the government's snake crop wants to go carefully. I would not advise a man to buy a single

crop at allI mean a crop of futures for the possible wobble is something quite extraordinary. If he can buy

six future crops in a bunch, seller to deliver 1,500,000 altogether, that is another matter. I do not know what

snakes are worth now, but I know what they would be worth then, for the statistics show that the seller could

not come within 427,000 of carrying out his contract. However, I think that a person who speculates in snakes

To finish the statistics. In six years the wild beasts kill 20,000 persons, and the snakes kill 103,000. In the

There are narrow escapes in India. In the very jungle where I killed sixteen tigers and all those elephants, a

cobra bit me but it got well; everyone was surprised. This could not happen twice in ten years, perhaps.

We struck out westward or northwestward from Calcutta on an itinerary of a zigzag sort, which would in the

course of time carry us across India to its northwestern corner and the border of Afghanistan. The first part of

the trip carried us through a great region which was an endless gardenmiles and miles of the beautiful

flower from whose juices comes the opium, and at Muzaffurpore we were in the midst of the indigo culture;

thence by a branch road to the Ganges at a point near Dinapore, and by a train which would have missed the

connection by a week but for the thoughtfulness of some British officers who were along, and who knew the

ways of trains that are run by natives without white supervision. This train stopped at every village; for no

purpose connected with business, apparently. We put out nothing, we took nothing aboard. The train bands

stepped ashore and gossiped with friends a quarter of an hour, then pulled out and repeated this at the

succeeding villages. We had thirtyfive miles to go and six hours to do it in, but it was plain that we were not

going to make it. It was then that the English officers said it was now necessary to turn this gravel train into

an express. So they gave the enginedriver a rupee and told him to fly. It was a simple remedy. After that we

made ninety miles an hour. We crossed the Ganges just at dawn, made our connection, and went to Benares,

where we stayed twentyfour hours and inspected that strange and fascinating pietyhive again; then left for

Lucknow, a city which is perhaps the most conspicuous of the many monuments of British fortitude and valor

The heat was pitiless, the flat plains were destitute of grass, and baked dry by the sun they were the color of

pale dust, which was flying in clouds. But it was much hotter than this when the relieving forces marched to

Lucknow in the time of the Mutiny. Those were the days of 138 deg. in the shade.

It seems to be settled, now, that among the many causes from which the Great Mutiny sprang, the main one

was the annexation of the kingdom of Oudh by the East India Companycharacterized by Sir Henry

Lawrence as "the most unrighteous act that was ever committed." In the spring of 1857, a mutinous spirit was

observable in many of the native garrisons, and it grew day by day and spread wider and wider. The younger

military men saw something very serious in it, and would have liked to take hold of it vigorously and stamp it

out promptly; but they were not in authority. Oldmen were in the high places of the armymen who should

have been retired long before, because of their great ageand they regarded the matter as a thing of no

consequence. They loved their native soldiers, and would not believe that anything could move them to

revolt. Everywhere these obstinate veterans listened serenely to the rumbling of the volcanoes under them,

And so the propagators of mutiny had everything their own way. They moved from camp to camp

undisturbed, and painted to the native soldier the wrongs his people were suffering at the hands of the

English, and made his heart burn for revenge. They were able to point to two facts of formidable value as

backers of their persuasions: In Clive's day, native armies were incoherent mobs, and without effective arms;

therefore, they were weak against Clive's organized handful of wellarmed men, but the thing was the other

way, now. The British forces were native; they had been trained by the British, organized by the British,

armed by the British, all the power was in their handsthey were a club made by British hands to beat out

British brains with. There was nothing to oppose their mass, nothing but a few weak battalions of British

soldiers scattered about India, a force not worth speaking of. This argument, taken alone, might not have

succeeded, for the bravest and best Indian troops had a wholesome dread of the white soldier, whether he was

weak or strong; but the agitators backed it with their second and best point prophecya prophecy a hundred

years old. The Indian is open to prophecy at all times; argument may fail to convince him, but not prophecy.

There was a prophecy that a hundred years from the year of that battle of Clive's which founded the British

Indian Empire, the British power would be overthrown and swept away by the natives.

The Mutiny broke out at Meerut on the 10th of May, 1857, and fired a train of tremendous historical

explosions. Nana Sahib's massacre of the surrendered garrison of Cawnpore occurred in June, and the long

siege of Lucknow began. The military history of England is old and great, but I think it must be granted that

the crushing of the Mutiny is the greatest chapter in it. The British were caught asleep and unprepared. They

were a few thousands, swallowed up in an ocean of hostile populations. It would take months to inform

England and get help, but they did not falter or stop to count the odds, but with English resolution and

English devotion they took up their task, and went stubbornly on with it, through good fortune and bad, and

fought the most unpromising fight that one may read of in fiction or out of it, and won it thoroughly.

The Mutiny broke out so suddenly, and spread with such rapidity that there was but little time for occupants

of weak outlying stations to escape to places of safety. Attempts were made, of course, but they were

attended by hardships as bitter as death in the few cases which were successful; for the heat ranged between

120 and 138 in the shade; the way led through hostile peoples, and food and water were hardly to be had. For

ladies and children accustomed to ease and comfort and plenty, such a journey must have been a cruel

"This is what befell Mrs. M, the wife of the surgeon at a certain station on the southern confines of the

insurrection. 'I heard,' she says, 'a number of shots fired, and, looking out, I saw my husband driving furiously

from the messhouse, waving his whip. I ran to him, and, seeing a bearer with my child in his arms, I caught

her up, and got into the buggy. At the messhouse we found all the officers assembled, together with sixty

sepoys, who had remained faithful. We went off in one large party, amidst a general conflagration of our late

homes. We reached the caravanserai at Chattapore the next morning, and thence started for Callinger. At this

point our sepoy escort deserted us. We were fired upon by matchlockmen, and one officer was shot dead.

We heard, likewise, that the people had risen at Callinger, so we returned and walked back ten miles that day.

M and I carried the child alternately. Presently Mrs. Smalley died of sunstroke. We had no food

amongst us. An officer kindly lent us a horse. We were very faint. The Major died, and was buried; also the

Sergeantmajor and some women. The bandsmen left us on the nineteenth of June. We were fired at again by

matchlockmen, and changed direction for Allahabad. Our party consisted of nine gentlemen, two children,

the sergeant and his wife. On the morning of the twentieth, Captain Scott took Lottie on to his horse. I was

riding behind my husband, and she was so crushed between us. She was two years old on the first of the

month. We were both weak through want of food and the effect of the sun. Lottie and I had no head covering.

M had a sepoy's cap I found on the ground. Soon after sunrise we were followed by villagers armed

with clubs and spears. One of them struck Captain Scott's horse on the leg. He galloped off with Lottie, and

my poor husband never saw his child again. We rode on several miles, keeping away from villages, and then

crossed the river. Our thirst was extreme. M had dreadful cramps, so that I had to hold him on the horse.

I was very uneasy about him. The day before I saw the drummer's wife eating chupatties, and asked her to

give a piece to the child, which she did. I now saw water in a ravine. The descent was steep, and our only

drinkingvessel was M's cap. Our horse got water, and I bathed my neck. I had no stockings, and my feet

were torn and blistered. Two peasants came in sight, and we were frightened and rode off. The sergeant held

our horse, and M put me up and mounted. I think he must have got suddenly faint, for I fell and he over

me, on the road, when the horse started off. Some time before he said, and Barber, too, that he could not live

many hours. I felt he was dying before we came to the ravine. He told me his wishes about his children and

myself, and took leave. My brain seemed burnt up. No tears came. As soon as we fell, the sergeant let go the

horse, and it went off; so that escape was cut off. We sat down on the ground waiting for death. Poor fellow!

he was very weak; his thirst was frightful, and I went to get him water. Some villagers came, and took my

rupees and watch. I took off my weddingring, and twisted it in my hair, and replaced the guard. I tore off the

skirt of my dress to bring water in, but was no use, for when I returned my beloved's eyes were fixed, and,

though I called and tried to restore him, and poured water into his mouth, it only rattled in his throat. He

never spoke to me again. I held him in my arms till he sank gradually down. I felt frantic, but could not cry. I

was alone. I bound his head and face in my dress, for there was no earth to buy him. The pain in my hands

and feet was dreadful. I went down to the ravine, and sat in the water on a stone, hoping to get off at night

and look for Lottie. When I came back from the water, I saw that they had not taken her little watch, chain,

and seals, so I tied them under my petticoat. In an hour, about thirty villagers came, they dragged me out of

the ravine, and took off my jacket, and found the little chain. They then dragged me to a village, mocking me

all the way, and disputing as to whom I was to belong to. The whole population came to look at me. I asked

for a bedstead, and lay down outside the door of a hut. They had a dozen of cows, and yet refused me milk.

When night came, and the village was quiet, some old woman brought me a leafful of rice. I was too parched

to eat, and they gave me water. The morning after a neighboring Rajah sent a palanquin and a horseman to

fetch me, who told me that a little child and three Sahibs had come to his master's house. And so the poor

mother found her lost one, 'greatly blistered,' poor little creature. It is not for Europeans in India to pray that

In the first days of June the aged general, Sir Hugh Wheeler commanding the forces at Cawnpore, was

deserted by his native troops; then he moved out of the fort and into an exposed patch of open flat ground and

built a fourfoot mud wall around it. He had with him a few hundred white soldiers and officers, and

apparently more women and children than soldiers. He was short of provisions, short of arms, short of

ammunition, short of military wisdom, short of everything but courage and devotion to duty. The defense of

that open lot through twentyone days and nights of hunger, thirst, Indian heat, and a neverceasing storm of

bullets, bombs, and cannonballsa defense conducted, not by the aged and infirm general, but by a young

officer named Mooreis one of the most heroic episodes in history. When at last the Nana found it

impossible to conquer these starving men and women with powder and ball, he resorted to treachery, and that

succeeded. He agreed to supply them with food and send them to Allahabad in boats. Their mud wall and

their barracks were in ruins, their provisions were at the point of exhaustion, they had done all that the brave

could do, they had conquered an honorable compromise,their forces had been fearfully reduced by

casualties and by disease, they were not able to continue the contest longer. They came forth helpless but

suspecting no treachery, the Nana's host closed around them, and at a signal from a trumpet the massacre

began. About two hundred women and children were sparedfor the presentbut all the men except three

or four were killed. Among the incidents of the massacre quoted by Sir G. O. Trevelyan, is this:

"When, after the lapse of some twenty minutes, the dead began to outnumber the living;when the fire

slackened, as the marks grew few and far between; then the troopers who had been drawn up to the right of

the temple plunged into the river, sabre between teeth, and pistol in hand. Thereupon two halfcaste Christian

women, the wives of musicians in the band of the Fiftysixth, witnessed a scene which should not be related

at secondhand. 'In the boat where I was to have gone,' says Mrs. Bradshaw, confirmed throughout by Mrs.

Betts, 'was the schoolmistress and twentytwo misses. General Wheeler came last in a palkee. They carried

him into the water near the boat. I stood close by. He said, 'Carry me a little further towards the boat.' But a

trooper said, 'No, get out here.' As the General got out of the palkee, headforemost, the trooper gave him a

cut with his sword into the neck, and he fell into the water. My son was killed near him. I saw it; alas! alas!

Some were stabbed with bayonets; others cut down. Little infants were torn in pieces. We saw it; we did; and

tell you only what we saw. Other children were stabbed and thrown into the river. The schoolgirls were burnt

to death. I saw their clothes and hair catch fire. In the water, a few paces off, by the next boat, we saw the

youngest daughter of Colonel Williams. A sepoy was going to kill her with his bayonet. She said, 'My father

was always kind to sepoys.' He turned away, and just then a villager struck her on the head with a club, and

she fell into the water. These people likewise saw good Mr. Moncrieff, the clergyman, take a book from his

pocket that he never had leisure to open, and heard him commence a prayer for mercy which he was not

permitted to conclude. Another deponent observed an European making for a drain like a scared waterrat,

when some boatmen, armed with cudgels, cut off his retreat, and beat him down dead into the mud."

The women and children who had been reserved from the massacre were imprisoned during a fortnight in a

small building, one story higha cramped place, a slightly modified Black Hole of Calcutta. They were

waiting in suspense; there was none who could foretaste their fate. Meantime the news of the massacre had

traveled far and an army of rescuers with Havelock at its head was on its wayat least an army which hoped

to be rescuers. It was crossing the country by forced marches, and strewing its way with its own dead men

struck down by cholera, and by a heat which reached 135 deg. It was in a vengeful fury, and it stopped for

nothing neither heat, nor fatigue, nor disease, nor human opposition. It tore its impetuous way through hostile

forces, winning victory after victory, but still striding on and on, not halting to count results. And at last, after

this extraordinary march, it arrived before the walls of Cawnpore, met the Nana's massed strength, delivered

But too lateonly a few hours too late. For at the last moment the Nana had decided upon the massacre of

the captive women and children, and had commissioned three Mohammedans and two Hindoos to do the

"Thereupon the five men entered. It was the short gloaming of Hindostanthe hour when ladies take their

evening drive. She who had accosted the officer was standing in the doorway. With her were the native

doctor and two Hindoo menials. That much of the business might be seen from the veranda, but all else was

concealed amidst the interior gloom. Shrieks and scuffing acquainted those without that the journeymen were

earning their hire. Survur Khan soon emerged with his sword broken off at the hilt. He procured another from

the Nana's house, and a few minutes after appeared again on the same errand. The third blade was of better

temper; or perhaps the thick of the work was already over. By the time darkness had closed in, the men came

forth and locked up the house for the night. Then the screams ceased, but the groans lasted till morning.

"The sun rose as usual. When he had been up nearly three hours the five repaired to the scene of their labors

over night. They were attended by a few sweepers, who proceeded to transfer the contents of the house to a

dry well situated behind some trees which grew hard by. ' The bodies,' says one who was present throughout,

' were dragged out, most of them by the hair of the head. Those who had clothing worth taking were stripped.

Some of the women were alive. I cannot say how many; but three could speak. They prayed for the sake of

God that an end might be put to their sufferings. I remarked one very stout woman, a halfcaste, who was

severely wounded in both arms, who entreated to be killed. She and two or three others were placed against

the bank of the cut by which bullocks go down in drawing water. The dead were first thrown in. Yes: there

was a great crowd looking on; they were standing along the walls of the compound. They were principally

city people and villagers. Yes: there were also sepoys. Three boys were alive. They were fair children. The

eldest, I think, must have been six or seven, and the youngest five years. They were running around the well

(where else could they go to?), and there was none to save them. No one said a word or tried to save them.'

"At length the smallest of them made an infantile attempt to get away. The little thing had been frightened

past bearing by the murder of one of the surviving ladies. He thus attracted the observation of a native who

The soldiers had made a march of eighteen days, almost without rest, to save the women and the children,

and now they were too lateall were dead and the assassin had flown. What happened then, Trevelyan

"But there was a spectacle to witness which might excuse much. Those who, straight from the contested field,

wandered sobbing through the rooms of the ladies' house, saw what it were well could the outraged earth

have straightway hidden. The inner apartment was ankledeep in blood. The plaster was scored with

swordcuts; not high up as where men have fought, but low down, and about the corners, as if a creature had

crouched to avoid the blow. Strips of dresses, vainly tied around the handles of the doors, signified the

contrivance to which feminine despair had resorted as a means of keeping out the murderers. Broken combs

were there, and the frills of children's trousers, and torn cuffs and pinafores, and little round hats, and one or

two shoes with burst latchets, and one or two daguerreotype cases with cracked glasses. An officer picked up

a few curls, preserved in a bit of cardboard, and marked 'Ned's hair, with love'; but around were strewn locks,

some near a yard in length, dissevered, not as a keepsake, by quite other scissors."

The battle of Waterloo was fought on the 18th of June, 1815. I do not state this fact as a reminder to the

reader, but as news to him. For a forgotten fact is news when it comes again. Writers of books have the

fashion of whizzing by vast and renowned historical events with the remark, "The details of this tremendous

episode are too familiar to the reader to need repeating here." They know that that is not true. It is a low kind

of flattery. They know that the reader has forgotten every detail of it, and that nothing of the tremendous

event is left in his mind but a vague and formless luminous smudge. Aside from the desire to flatter the

reader, they have another reason for making the remarktwo reasons, indeed. They do not remember the

details themselves, and do not want the trouble of hunting them up and copying them out; also, they are

afraid that if they search them out and print them they will be scoffed at by the bookreviewers for retelling

those worn old things which are familiar to everybody. They should not mind the reviewer's jeer; he doesn't

remember any of the worn old things until the book which he is reviewing has retold them to him.

I have made the quoted remark myself, at one time and another, but I was not doing it to flatter the reader; I

was merely doing it to save work. If I had known the details without brushing up, I would have put them in;

but I didn't, and I did not want the labor of posting myself; so I said, "The details of this tremendous episode

are too familiar to the reader to need repeating here." I do not like that kind of a lie; still, it does save work.

I am not trying to get out of repeating the details of the Siege of Lucknow in fear of the reviewer; I am not

leaving them out in fear that they would not interest the reader; I am leaving them out partly to save work;

mainly for lack of room. It is a pity, too; for there is not a dull place anywhere in the great story.

Ten days before the outbreak (May 10th) of the Mutiny, all was serene at Lucknow, the huge capital of Oudh,

the kingdom which had recently been seized by the India Company. There was a great garrison, composed of

about 7,000 native troops and between 700 and 800 whites. These white soldiers and their families were

probably the only people of their race there; at their elbow was that swarming population of warlike natives, a

race of born soldiers, brave, daring, and fond of fighting. On high ground just outside the city stood the

palace of that great personage, the Resident, the representative of British power and authority. It stood in the

midst of spacious grounds, with its due complement of outbuildings, and the grounds were enclosed by a

walla wall not for defense, but for privacy. The mutinous spirit was in the air, but the whites were not

Then came the outbreak at Meerut, then the capture of Delhi by the mutineers; in June came the threeweeks

leaguer of Sir Hugh Wheeler in his open lot at Cawnpore40 miles distant from Lucknowthen the

treacherous massacre of that gallant little garrison; and now the great revolt was in full flower, and the

There was an outbreak there, and Sir Henry Lawrence marched out of the Residency on the 30th of June to

put it down, but was defeated with heavy loss, and had difficulty in getting back again. That night the

memorable siege of the Residencycalled the siege of Lucknowbegan. Sir Henry was killed three days

Outside of the Residency fence was an immense host of hostile and confident native besiegers; inside it were

In those days the English garrisons always managed to hamper themselves sufficiently with women and

The natives established themselves in houses close at hand and began to rain bullets and cannonballs into

the Residency; and this they kept up, night and day, during four months and a half, the little garrison

industriously replying all the time. The women and children soon became so used to the roar of the guns that

it ceased to disturb their sleep. The children imitated siege and defense in their play. The womenwith any

pretext, or with nonewould sally out into the stormswept grounds. The defense was kept up week after

week, with stubborn fortitude, in the midst of death, which came in many formsby bullet, smallpox,

cholera, and by various diseases induced by unpalatable and insufficient food, by the long hours of wearying

and exhausting overwork in the daily and nightly battle in the oppressive Indian heat, and by the broken rest

Six weeks after the beginning of the siege more than onehalf of the original force of white soldiers was

But the fighting went on just the same. The enemy mined, the English countermined, and, turn about, they

blew up each other's posts. The Residency grounds were honeycombed with the enemy's tunnels. Deadly

courtesies were constantly exchangedsorties by the English in the night; rushes by the enemy in the

nightrushes whose purpose was to breach the walls or scale them; rushes which cost heavily, and always

The ladies got used to all the horrors of warthe shrieks of mutilated men, the sight of blood and death.

"Mrs. Bruere's nurse was carried past our door today, wounded in the eye. To extract the bullet it was found

necessary to take out the eyea fearful operation. Her mistress held her while it was performed."

The first relieving force failed to relieve. It was under Havelock and Outram; and arrived when the siege had

been going on for three months. It fought its desperate way to Lucknow, then fought its way through the city

against odds of a hundred to one, and entered the Residency; but there was not enough left of it, then, to do

any good. It lost more men in its last fight than it found in the Residency when it got in. It became captive

The fighting and starving and dying by bullets and disease went steadily on. Both sides fought with energy

and industry. Captain Birch puts this striking incident in evidence. He is speaking of the third month of the

"As an instance of the heavy firing brought to bear on our position this month may be mentioned the cutting

down of the upper story of a brick building simply by musketry firring. This building was in a most exposed

position. All the shots which just missed the top of the rampart cut into the dead wall pretty much in a straight

line, and at length cut right through and brought the upper story tumbling down. The upper structure on the

top of the brigademess also fell in. The Residency house was a wreck. Captain Anderson's post had long ago

been knocked down, and Innes' post also fell in. These two were riddled with round shot. As many as 200

The exhausted garrison fought doggedly on all through the next month October. Then, November 2d, news

came Sir Colin Campbell's relieving force would soon be on its way from Cawnpore.

On the 13th the sounds came nearerhe was slowly, but steadily, cutting his way through, storming one

On the 14th he captured the Martiniere College, and ran up the British flag there. It was seen from the

On the 17th he took the former messhouse of the 32d regimenta fortified building, and very strong. "A

most exciting, anxious day," writes Lady Inglis in her diary. "About 4 P.M., two strange officers walked

through our yard, leading their horses"and by that sign she knew that communication was established

between the forces, that the relief was real, this time, and that the long siege of Lucknow was ended.

The last eight or ten miles of Sir Colin Campbell's march was through seas of, blood. The weapon mainly

used was the bayonet, the fighting was desperate. The way was milestoned with detached strong buildings

of stone, fortified, and heavily garrisoned, and these had to be taken by assault. Neither side asked for quarter,

and neither gave it. At the Secundrabagh, where nearly two thousand of the enemy occupied a great stone

house in a garden, the work of slaughter was continued until every man was killed. That is a sample of the

There were but few trees in the plain at that time, and from the Residency the progress of the march, step by

step, victory by victory, could be noted; the ascending clouds of battlesmoke marked the way to the eye, and

Sir Colin Campbell had not come to Lucknow to hold it, but to save the occupants of the Residency, and

bring them away. Four or five days after his arrival the secret evacuation by the troops took place, in the

middle of a dark night, by the principal gate, (the Bailie Guard). The two hundred women and two hundred

"And now commenced a movement of the most perfect arrangement and successful generalshipthe

withdrawal of the whole of the various forces, a combined movement requiring the greatest care and skill.

First, the garrison in immediate contact with the enemy at the furthest extremity of the Residency position

was marched out. Every other garrison in turn fell in behind it, and so passed out through the Bailie Guard

gate, till the whole of our position was evacuated. Then Havelock's force was similarly withdrawn, post by

post, marching in rear of our garrison. After them in turn came the forces of the CommanderinChief,

which joined on in the rear of Havelock's force. Regiment by regiment was withdrawn withthe utmost

order and regularity. The whole operation resembled the movement of a telescope. Stern silence was kept,

Lady Inglis, referring to her husband and to General Sir James Outram, sets down the closing detail of this

impressive midnight retreat, in darkness and by stealth, of this shadowy host through the gate which it had

"At twelve precisely they marched out, John and Sir James Outram remaining till all had passed, and then

they took off their hats to the Bailie Guard, the scene of as noble a defense as I think history will ever have to

We were driven over Sir Colin Campbell's route by a British officer, and when I arrived at the Residency I

was so familiar with the road that I could have led a retreat over it myself; but the compass in my head has

been out of order from my birth, and so, as soon as I was within the battered Bailie Guard and turned about to

review the march and imagine the relieving forces storming their way along it, everything was upside down

and wrong end first in a moment, and I was never able to get straightened out again. And now, when I look at

the battleplan, the confusion remains. In me the east was born west, the battleplans which have the east on

The Residency ruins are draped with flowering vines, and are impressive and beautiful. They and the grounds

are sacred now, and will suffer no neglect nor be profaned by any sordid or commercial use while the British

remain masters of India. Within the grounds are buried the dead who gave up their lives there in the long

After a fashion, I was able to imagine the fiery storm that raged night and day over the place during so many

months, and after a fashion I could imagine the men moving through it, but I could not satisfactorily place the

200 women, and I could do nothing at all with the 250 children. I knew by Lady Inglis' diary that the children

carried on their small affairs very much as if blood and carnage and the crash and thunder of a siege were

natural and proper features of nursery life, and I tried to realize it; but when her little Johnny came rushing,

all excitement, through the din and smoke, shouting, "Oh, mamma, the white hen has laid an egg!" I saw that

I could not do it. Johnny's place was under the bed. I could imagine him there, because I could imagine

myself there; and I think I should not have been interested in a hen that was laying an egg; my interest would

have been with the parties that were laying the bombshells. I sat at dinner with one of those children in the

Club's Indian palace, and I knew that all through the siege he was perfecting his teething and learning to talk;

and while to me he was the most impressive object in Lucknow after the Residency ruins, I was not able to

imagine what his life had been during that tempestuous infancy of his, nor what sort of a curious surprise it

must have been to him to be marched suddenly out into a strange dumb world where there wasn't any noise,

and nothing going on. He was only fortyone when I saw him, a strangely youthful link to connect the

By and by we saw Cawnpore, and the open lot which was the scene of Moore's memorable defense, and the

spot on the shore of the Ganges where the massacre of the betrayed garrison occurred, and the small Indian

temple whence the buglesignal notified the assassins to fall on. This latter was a lonely spot, and silent. The

sluggish river drifted by, almost currentless. It was dead low water, narrow channels with vast sandbars

between, all the way across the wide bed; and the only living thing in sight was that grotesque and solemn

baldheaded bird, the Adjutant, standing on his sixfoot stilts, solitary on a distant bar, with his head sunk

between his shoulders, thinking; thinking of his prize, I supposethe dead Hindoo that lay awash at his feet,

and whether to eat him alone or invite friends. He and his prey were a proper accent to that mournful place.

And we saw the scene of the slaughter of the helpless women and children, and also the costly memorial that

is built over the well which contains their remains. The Black Hole of Calcutta is gone, but a more reverent

age is come, and whatever remembrancer still exists of the moving and heroic sufferings and achievements of

In Agra and its neighborhood, and afterwards at Delhi, we saw forts, mosques, and tombs, which were built

in the great days of the Mohammedan emperors, and which are marvels of cost, magnitude, and richness of

materials and ornamentation, creations of surpassing grandeur, wonders which do indeed make the like things

in the rest of the world seem tame and inconsequential by comparison. I am not purposing to describe them.

By good fortune I had not read too much about them, and therefore was able to get a natural and rational

focus upon them, with the result that they thrilled, blessed, and exalted me. But if I had previously overheated

my imagination by drinking too much pestilential literary hot Scotch, I should have suffered disappointment

I mean to speak of only one of these many worldrenowned buildings, the Taj Mahal, the most celebrated

construction in the earth. I had read a great deal too much about it. I saw it in the daytime, I saw it in the

moonlight, I saw it near at hand, I saw it from a distance; and I knew all the time, that of its kind it was the

wonder of the world, with no competitor now and no possible future competitor; and yet, it was not my Taj.

My Taj had been built by excitable literary people; it was solidly lodged in my head, and I could not blast it

I wish to place before the reader some of the usual descriptions of the Taj, and ask him to take note of the

impressions left in his mind. These descriptions do really state the truthas nearly as the limitations of

language will allow. But language is a treacherous thing, a most unsure vehicle, and it can seldom arrange

descriptive words in such a way that they will not inflate the factsby help of the reader's imagination,

which is always ready to take a hand, and work for nothing, and do the bulk of it at that.

I will begin with a few sentences from the excellent little local guide book of Mr. Satya Chandra Mukerji. I

"The inlaid work of the Taj and the flowers and petals that are to be found on all sides on the surface of the

"The inlaid work, the marble, the flowers, the buds, the leaves, the petals, and the lotus stems are almost

"The work of inlaying with stones and gems is found in the highest perfection in the Taj."

Gems, inlaid flowers, buds, and leaves to be found on all sides. What do you see before you? Is the fairy

"The whole of the Taj produces a wonderful effect that is equally sublime and beautiful."

"The Taj Mahal with its beautiful domes, 'a dream of marble,' rises on the river bank."

"The complexity of its design and the delicate intricacy of the workmanship baffle description."

"The mausoleum stands on a raised marble platform at each of whose corners rises a tall and slender minaret

of graceful proportions and of exquisite beauty. Beyond the platform stretch the two wings, one of which is

itself a mosque of great architectural merit. In the center of the whole design the mausoleum occupies a

square of 186 feet, with the angles deeply truncated so also form an unequal octagon. The main feature in this

central pile is the great dome, which swells upward to nearly twothirds of a sphere and tapers at its

extremity into a pointed spire crowned by a crescent. Beneath it an enclosure of marble trelliswork

surrounds the tomb of the princess and of her husband, the Emperor. Each corner of the mausoleum is

covered by a similar though much smaller dome erected on a pediment pierced with graceful Saracenic

arches. Light is admitted into the interior through a double screen of pierced marble, which tempers the glare

of an Indian sky while its whiteness prevents the mellow effect from degenerating into gloom. The internal

decorations consist of inlaid work in precious stones, such as agate, jasper, etc., with which every squandril

or salient point in the architecture is richly fretted. Brown and violet marble is also freely employed in

wreaths, scrolls, and lintels to relieve the monotony of white wall. In regard to color and design, the interior

of the Taj may rank first in the world for purely decorative workmanship; while the perfect symmetry of its

exterior, once seen can never be forgotten, nor the aerial grace of its domes, rising like marble bubbles into

the clear sky. The Taj represents the most highly elaborated stage of ornamentation reached by the Indo

Mohammedan builders, the stage in which the architect ends and the jeweler begins. In its magnificent

gateway the diagonal ornamentation at the corners, which satisfied the designers of the gateways of

Itimaduddoulah and Sikandra mausoleums is superseded by fine marble cables, in bold twists, strong and

handsome. The triangular insertions of white marble and large flowers have in like manner given place to fine

inlaid work. Firm perpendicular lines in black marble with well proportioned panels of the same material are

effectively used in the interior of the gateway. On its top the Hindu brackets and monolithic architraves of

Sikandra are replaced by Moorish carped arches, usually single blocks of red sandstone, in the Kiosks and

pavilions which adorn the roof. From the pillared pavilions a magnificent view is obtained of the Taj gardens

below, with the noble Jumna river at their farther end, and the city and fort of Agra in the distance. From this

beautiful and splendid gateway one passes up a straight alley shaded by evergreen trees cooled by a broad

shallow piece of water running along the middle of the path to the Taj itself. The Taj is entirely of marble and

gems. The red sandstone of the other Mohammedan buildings has entirely disappeared, or rather the red

sandstone which used to form the thickness of the walls, is in the Taj itself overlaid completely with white

marble, and the white marble is itself inlaid with precious stones arranged in lovely patterns of flowers. A

feeling of purity impresses itself on the eye and the mind from the absence of the coarser material which

forms so invariable a material in Agra architecture. The lower wall and panels are covered with tulips,

oleanders, and fullblown lilies, in flat carving on the white marble; and although the inlaid work of flowers

done in gems is very brilliant when looked at closely, there is on the whole but little color, and the

allprevailing sentiment is one of whiteness, silence, and calm. The whiteness is broken only by the fine

color of the inlaid gems, by lines in black marble, and by delicately written inscriptions, also in black, from

the Koran. Under the dome of the vast mausoleum a high and beautiful screen of open tracery in white

marble rises around the two tombs, or rather cenotaphs of the emperor and his princess; and in this marvel of

marble the carving has advanced from the old geometrical patterns to a trelliswork of flowers and foliage,

handled with great freedom and spirit. The two cenotaphs in the center of the exquisite enclosure have no

carving except the plain Kalamdan or oblong penbox on the tomb of Emperor Shah Jehan. But both

cenotaphs are inlaid with flowers made of costly gems, and with the ever graceful oleander scroll."

"On both sides the palm, the banyan, and the feathery bamboo mingle their foliage; the song of birds meets

your ears, and the odor of roses and lemon flowers sweetens the air. Down such a vista and over such a

foreground rises the Taj. There is no mystery, no sense of partial failure about the Taj. A thing of perfect

beauty and of absolute finish in every detail, it might pass for the work of genii who knew naught of the

All of these details are true. But, taken together, they state a falsehoodto you. You cannot add them up

correctly. Those writers know the values of their words and phrases, but to you the words and phrases convey

other and uncertain values. To those writers their phrases have values which I think I am now acquainted

with; and for the help of the reader I will here repeat certain of those words and phrases, and follow them

with numerals which shall represent those valuesthen we shall see the difference between a writer's

The inlaid work of flowers done in gems is very brilliant (followed by a most important modification which

Those details are correct; the figures which I have placed after them , represent quite fairly their individual,

values. Then why, as a whole, do they convey a false impression to the reader? It is because the

readerbeguiled by, his heated imaginationmasses them in the wrong way. The writer would mass the

The writer would add all of his twelve numerals together, and then the sum would express the whole truth

But the readeralways helped by his imaginationwould put the figures in a row one after the other, and

The reader will always be sure to put the figures together in that wrong way, and then as surely before him

I had to visit Niagara fifteen times before I succeeded in getting my imaginary Falls gauged to the actuality

and could begin to sanely and wholesomely wonder at them for what they were, not what I had expected

them to be. When I first approached them it was with my face lifted toward the sky, for I thought I was going

to see an Atlantic ocean pouring down thence over cloudvexed Himalayan heights, a seagreen wall of

water sixty miles front and six miles high, and so, when the toy reality came suddenly into viewthat

beruiled little wet apron hanging out to drythe shock was too much for me, and I fell with a dull thud.

Yet slowly, surely, steadily, in the course of my fifteen visits, the proportions adjusted themselves to the

facts, and I came at last to realize that a waterfall a hundred and sixtyfive feet high and a quarter of a mile

wide was an impressive thing. It was not a dipperful to my vanished great vision, but it would answer.

I know that I ought to do with the Taj as I was obliged to do with Niagarasee it fifteen times, and let my

mind gradually get rid of the Taj built in it by its describers, by help of my imagination, and substitute for it

the Taj of fact. It would be noble and fine, then, and a marvel; not the marvel which it replaced, but still a

marvel, and fine enough. I am a careless reader, I supposean impressionist reader; an impressionist reader

of what is not an impressionist picture; a reader who overlooks the informing details or masses their sum

improperly, and gets only a large splashy, general effectan effect which is not correct, and which is not

warranted by the particulars placed before me particulars which I did not examine, and whose meanings I did

not cautiously and carefully estimate. It is an effect which is some thirty five or forty times finer than the

reality, and is therefore a great deal better and more valuable than the reality; and so, I ought never to hunt up

the reality, but stay miles away from it, and thus preserve undamaged my own private mighty Niagara

tumbling out of the vault of heaven, and my own ineffable Taj, built of tinted mists upon jeweled arches of

rainbows supported by colonnades of moonlight. It is a mistake for a person with an unregulated imagination

I suppose that many, many years ago I gathered the idea that the Taj's place in the achievements of man was

exactly the place of the icestorm in the achievements of Nature; that the Taj represented man's supremest

possibility in the creation of grace and beauty and exquisiteness and splendor, just as the icestorm represents

Nature's supremest possibility in the combination of those same qualities. I do not know how long ago that

idea was bred in me, but I know that I cannot remember back to a time when the thought of either of these

symbols of gracious and unapproachable perfection did not at once suggest the other. If I thought of the

icestorm, the Taj rose before me divinely beautiful; if I thought of the Taj, with its encrustings and inlayings

of jewels, the vision of the icestorm rose. And so, to me, all these years, the Taj has had no rival among the

temples and palaces of men, none that even remotely approached it it was man's architectural icestorm.

Here in London the other night I was talking with some Scotch and English friends, and I mentioned the

icestorm, using it as a figurea figure which failed, for none of them had heard of the icestorm. One

gentleman, who was very familiar with American literature, said he had never seen it mentioned in any book.

That is strange. And I, myself, was not able to say that I had seen it mentioned in a book; and yet the autumn

foliage, with all other American scenery, has received full and competent attention.

The oversight is strange, for in America the icestorm is an event. And it is not an event which one is

careless about. When it comes, the news flies from room to room in the house, there are bangings on the

doors, and shoutings, "The icestorm! the icestorm!" and even the laziest sleepers throw off the covers and

join the rush for the windows. The icestorm occurs in midwinter, and usually its enchantments are wrought

in the silence and the darkness of the night. A fine drizzling rain falls hour after hour upon the naked twigs

and branches of the trees, and as it falls it freezes. In time the trunk and every branch and twig are incased in

hard pure ice; so that the tree looks like a skeleton tree made all of glassglass that is crystalclear. All

along the underside of every branch and twig is a comb of little iciclesthe frozen drip. Sometimes these

The weather clears, toward dawn, and leaves a brisk pure atmosphere and a sky without a shred of cloud in

itand everything is still, there is not a breath of wind. The dawn breaks and spreads, the news of the storm

goes about the house, and the little and the big, in wraps and blankets, flock to the window and press together

there, and gaze intently out upon the great white ghost in the grounds, and nobody says a word, nobody stirs.

All are waiting; they know what is coming, and they are waiting waiting for the miracle. The minutes drift on

and on and on, with not a sound but the ticking of the clock; at last the sun fires a sudden sheaf of rays into

the ghostly tree and turns it into a white splendor of glittering diamonds. Everybody catches his breath, and

feels a swelling in his throat and a moisture in his eyesbut waits again; for he knows what is coming; there

is more yet. The sun climbs higher, and still higher, flooding the tree from its loftiest spread of branches to its

lowest, turning it to a glory of white fire; then in a moment, without warning, comes the great miracle, the

supreme miracle, the miracle without its fellow in the earth; a gust of wind sets every branch and twig to

swaying, and in an instant turns the whole white tree into a spouting and spraying explosion of flashing gems

of every conceivable color; and there it stands and sways this way and that, flash! flash! flash! a dancing and

glancing world of rubies, emeralds, diamonds, sapphires, the most radiant spectacle, the most blinding

spectacle, the divinest, the most exquisite, the most intoxicating vision of fire and color and intolerable and

unimaginable splendor that ever any eye has rested upon in this world, or will ever rest upon outside of the

By, all my senses, all my faculties, I know that the icestorm is Nature's supremest achievement in the domain

of the superb and the beautiful; and by my reason, at least, I know that the Taj is man's icestorm.

In the icestorm every one of the myriad icebeads pendant from twig and branch is an individual gem, and

changes color with every motion caused by the wind; each tree carries a million, and a forestfront exhibits

It occurs to me now that I have never seen the icestorm put upon canvas, and have not heard that any painter

has tried to do it. I wonder why that is. Is it that paint cannot counterfeit the intense blaze of a sun flooded

jewel? There should be, and must be, a reason, and a good one, why the most enchanting sight that Nature

Often, the surest way to convey misinformation is to tell the strict truth. The describers of the Taj have used

the word gem in its strictest senseits scientific sense. In that sense it is a mild word, and promises but little

to the eyenothing bright, nothing brilliant, nothing sparkling, nothing splendid in the way of color. It

accurately describes the sober and unobtrusive gemwork of the Taj; that is, to the very highlyeducated one

person in a thousand; but it most falsely describes it to the 999. But the 999 are the people who ought to be

especially taken care of, and to them it does not mean quietcolored designs wrought in carnelians, or agates,

or such things; they know the word in its wide and ordinary sense only, and so to them it means diamonds

and rubies and opals and their kindred, and the moment their eyes fall upon it in print they see a vision of

These describers are writing for the "general," and so, in order to make sure of being understood, they ought

to use words in their ordinary sense, or else explain. The word fountain means one thing in Syria, where there

is but a handful of people; it means quite another thing in North America, where there are 75,000,000. If I

were describing some Syrian scenery, and should exclaim, "Within the narrow space of a quarter of a mile

square I saw, in the glory of the flooding moonlight, two hundred noble fountainsimagine the spectacle!"

the North American would have a vision of clustering columns of water soaring aloft, bending over in

graceful arches, bursting in beaded spray and raining white fire in the moonlightand he would be deceived.

But the Syrian would not be deceived; he would merely see two hundred freshwater springstwo hundred

drowsing puddles, as level and unpretentious and unexcited as so many doormats, and even with the help of

the moonlight he would not lose his grip in the presence of the exhibition. My word "fountain" would be

correct; it would speak the strict truth; and it would convey the strict truth to the handful of Syrians, and the

strictest misinformation to the North American millions. With their gemsand gemsand more gemsand

gems againand still other gemsthe describers of the Taj are within their legal but not their moral rights;

they are dealing in the strictest scientific truth; and in doing it they succeed to admiration in telling "what ain't

We wandered contentedly around here and there in India; to Lahore, among other places, where the

LieutenantGovernor lent me an elephant. This hospitality stands out in my experiences in a stately isolation.

It was a fine elephant, affable, gentlemanly, educated, and I was not afraid of it. I even rode it with

confidence through the crowded lanes of the native city, where it scared all the horses out of their senses, and

where children were always just escaping its feet. It took the middle of the road in a fine independent way,

and left it to the world to get out of the way or take the consequences. I am used to being afraid of collisions

when I ride or drive, but when one is on top of an elephant that feeling is absent. I could have ridden in

comfort through a regiment of runaway teams. I could easily learn to prefer an elephant to any other vehicle,

partly because of that immunity from collisions, and partly because of the fine view one has from up there,

and partly because of the dignity one feels in that high place, and partly because one can look in at the

windows and see what is going on privately among the family. The Lahore horses were used to elephants, but

they were rapturously afraid of them just the same. It seemed curious. Perhaps the better they know the

elephant the more they respect him in that peculiar way. In our own casewe are not afraid of dynamite till

We drifted as far as Rawal Pindi, away up on the Afghan frontierI think it was the Afghan frontier, but it

may have been Hertzegovinait was around there somewhereand down again to Delhi, to see the ancient

architectural wonders there and in Old Delhi and not describe them, and also to see the scene of the illustrious

assault, in the Mutiny days, when the British carried Delhi by storm, one of the marvels of history for

We had a refreshing rest, there in Delhi, in a great old mansion which possessed historical interest. It was

built by a rich Englishman who had become orientalizedso much so that he had a zenana. But he was a

broadminded man, and remained so. To please his harem he built a mosque; to please himself he built an

English church. That kind of a man will arrive, somewhere. In the Mutiny days the mansion was the British

general's headquarters. It stands in a great gardenoriental fashion and about it are many noble trees. The

trees harbor monkeys; and they are monkeys of a watchful and enterprising sort, and not much troubled with

fear. They invade the house whenever they get a chance, and carry off everything they don't want. One

morning the master of the house was in his bath, and the window was open. Near it stood a pot of yellow

paint and a brush. Some monkeys appeared in the window; to scare them away, the gentleman threw his

sponge at them. They did not scare at all; they jumped into the room and threw yellow paint all over him

from the brush, and drove him out; then they painted the walls and the floor and the tank and the windows

and the furniture yellow, and were in the dressingroom painting that when help arrived and routed them.

Two of these creatures came into my room in the early morning, through a window whose shutters I had left

open, and when I woke one of them was before the glass brushing his hair, and the other one had my

notebook, and was reading a page of humorous notes and crying. I did not mind the one with the hairbrush,

but the conduct of the other one hurt me; it hurts me yet. I threw something at him, and that was wrong, for

my host had told me that the monkeys were best left alone. They threw everything at me that they could lift,

and then went into the bathroom to get some more things, and I shut the door on them.

At Jeypore, in Rajputana, we made a considerable stay. We were not in the native city, but several miles from

it, in the small European official suburb. There were but few Europeansonly fourteen but they were all

kind and hospitable, and it amounted to being at home. In Jeypore we found again what we had found all

about Indiathat while the Indian servant is in his way a very real treasure, he will sometimes bear

watching, and the Englishman watches him. If he sends him on an errand, he wants more than the man's word

for it that he did the errand. When fruit and vegetables were sent to us, a "chit" came with thema receipt

for us to sign; otherwise the things might not arrive. If a gentleman sent up his carriage, the chit stated "from"

suchandsuch an hour "to" suchandsuch an hourwhich made it unhandy for the coachman and his two

or three subordinates to put us off with a part of the allotted time and devote the rest of it to a lark of their

We were pleasantly situated in a small twostoried inn, in an empty large compound which was surrounded

by a mud wall as high as a man's head. The inn was kept by nine Hindoo brothers, its owners. They lived,

with their families, in a onestoried building within the compound, but off to one side, and there was always

a long pile of their little comely brown children loosely stacked in its veranda, and a detachment of the

parents wedged among them, smoking the hookah or the howdah, or whatever they call it. By the veranda

stood a palm, and a monkey lived in it, and led a lonesome life, and always looked sad and weary, and the

The inn cow poked about the compound and emphasized the secluded and country air of the place, and there

was a dog of no particular breed, who was always present in the compound, and always asleep, always

stretched out baking in the sun and adding to the deep tranquility and reposefulness of the place, when the

crows were away on business. White draperied servants were coming and going all the time, but they

seemed only spirits, for their feet were bare and made no sound. Down the lane a piece lived an elephant in

the shade of a noble tree, and rocked and rocked, and reached about with his trunk, begging of his brown

mistress or fumbling the children playing at his feet. And there were camels about, but they go on velvet feet,

The Satan mentioned at the head of this chapter was not our Satan, but the other one. Our Satan was lost to

us. In these later days he had passed out of our lifelamented by me, and sincerely. I was missing him; I am

missing him yet, after all these months. He was an astonishing creature to fly around and do things. He didn't

always do them quite right, but he did them, and did them suddenly. There was no time wasted. You would

Then there would be a brief sound of thrashing and slashing and humming and buzzing, and a spectacle as of

a whirlwind spinning gowns and jackets and coats and boots and things through the air, and then with bow

It was wonderful. It made one dizzy. He crumpled dresses a good deal, and he had no particular plan about

the workat firstexcept to put each article into the trunk it didn't belong in. But he soon reformed, in this

matter. Not entirely; for, to the last, he would cram into the satchel sacred to literature any odds and ends of

rubbish that he couldn't find a handy place for elsewhere. When threatened with death for this, it did not

trouble him; he only looked pleasant, saluted with soldierly grace, said "Wair good," and did it again next

He was always busy; kept the rooms tidied up, the boots polished, the clothes brushed, the washbasin full of

clean water, my dress clothes laid out and ready for the lecturehall an hour ahead of time; and he dressed me

from head to heel in spite of my determination to do it myself, according to my lifelong custom.

He was a born boss, and loved to command, and to jaw and dispute with inferiors and harry them and

bullyrag them. He was fine at the railway stationyes, he was at his finest there. He would shoulder and

plunge and paw his violent way through the packed multitude of natives with nineteen coolies at his tail, each

bearing a trifle of luggageone a trunk, another a parasol, another a shawl, another a fan, and so on; one

article to each, and the longer the procession, the better he was suited and he was sure to make for some

engaged sleeper and begin to hurl the owner's things out of it, swearing that it was ours and that there had

been a mistake. Arrived at our own sleeper, he would undo the bedding bundles and make the beds and put

everything to rights and shipshape in two minutes; then put his head out at, a window and have a restful good

time abusing his gang of coolies and disputing their bill until we arrived and made him pay them and stop his

Speaking of noise, he certainly was the noisest little devil in India and that is saying much, very much,

indeed. I loved him for his noise, but the family detested him for it. They could not abide it; they could not

get reconciled to it. It humiliated them. As a rule, when we got within six hundred yards of one of those big

railway stations, a mighty racket of screaming and shrieking and shouting and storming would break upon us,

And, sure enough, there in the whirling midst of fifteen hundred wondering people we would find that little

scrap of a creature gesticulating like a spider with the colic, his black eyes snapping, his feztassel dancing,

his jaws pouring out floods of billingsgate upon his gang of beseeching and astonished coolies.

I loved him; I couldn't help it; but the familywhy, they could hardly speak of him with patience. To this

day I regret his loss, and wish I had him back; but theyit is different with them. He was a native, and came

from Surat. Twenty degrees of latitude lay between his birthplace and Manuel's, and fifteen hundred between

their ways and characters and dispositions. I only liked Manuel, but I loved Satan. This latter's real name was

intensely Indian. I could not quite get the hang of it, but it sounded like Bunder Rao Ram Chunder Clam

When he had been with us two or three weeks, he began to make mistakes which I had difficulty in patching

up for him. Approaching Benares one day, he got out of the train to see if he could get up a misunderstanding

with somebody, for it had been a weary, long journey and he wanted to freshen up. He found what he was

after, but kept up his powwow a shade too long and got left. So there we were in a strange city and no

chambermaid. It was awkward for us, and we told him he must not do so any more. He saluted and said in his

dear, pleasant way, "Wair good." Then at Lucknow he got drunk. I said it was a fever, and got the family's

compassion, and solicitude aroused; so they gave him a teaspoonful of liquid quinine and it set his vitals on

fire. He made several grimaces which gave me a better idea of the Lisbon earthquake than any I have ever got

of it from paintings and descriptions. His drunk was still portentously solid next morning, but I could have

pulled him through with the family if he would only have taken another spoonful of that remedy; but no,

although he was stupefied, his memory still had flickerings of life; so he smiled a divinely dull smile and

Then some instinct revealed to them that he was drunk. They gave him prompt notice that next time this

happened he must go. He got out a maudlin and most gentle "Wair good," and saluted indefinitely.

Only one short week later he fell again. And oh, sorrow! not in a hotel this time, but in an English

gentleman's private house. And in Agra, of all places. So he had to go. When I told him, he said patiently,

"Wair good," and made his parting salute, and went out from us to return no more forever. Dear me! I would

rather have lost a hundred angels than that one poor lovely devil. What style he used to put on, in a swell

hotel or in a private housesnowwhite muslin from his chin to his bare feet, a crimson sash embroidered

with gold thread around his waist, and on his head a great seagreen turban like to the turban of the Grand

He was not a liar; but he will become one if he keeps on. He told me once that he used to crack cocoanuts

with his teeth when he was a boy; and when I asked how he got them into his mouth, he said he was upward

of six feet high at that time, and had an unusual mouth. And when I followed him up and asked him what had

become of that other foot, he said a house fell on him and he was never able to get his stature back again.

Swervings like these from the strict line of fact often beguile a truthful man on and on until he eventually

His successor was a Mohammedan, Sahadat Mohammed Khan; very dark, very tall, very grave. He went

always in flowing masses of white, from the top of his big turban down to his bare feet. His voice was low.

He glided about in a noiseless way, and looked like a ghost. He was competent and satisfactory. But where he

Jeypore is intensely Indian, but it has two or three features which indicate the presence of European science

and European interest in the weal of the common public, such as the liberal watersupply furnished by great

works built at the State's expense; good sanitation, resulting in a degree of healthfulness unusually high for

India; a noble pleasure garden, with privileged days for women; schools for the instruction of native youth in

advanced art, both ornamental and utilitarian; and a new and beautiful palace stocked with a museum of

extraordinary interest and value. Without the Maharaja's sympathy and purse these beneficences could not

have been created; but he is a man of wide views and large generosities, and all such matters find hospitality

We drove often to the city from the hotel KaiseriHind, a journey which was always full of interest, both

night and day, for that country road was never quiet, never empty, but was always India in motion, always a

streaming flood of brown people clothed in smouchings from the rainbow, a tossing and moiling flood,

happy, noisy, a charming and satisfying confusion of strange human and strange animal life and equally

And the city itself is a curiosity. Any Indian city is that, but this one is not like any other that we saw. It is

shut up in a lofty turreted wall; the main body of it is divided into six parts by perfectly straight streets that

are more than a hundred feet wide; the blocks of houses exhibit a long frontage of the most taking

architectural quaintnesses, the straight lines being broken everywhere by pretty little balconies, pillared and

highly ornamented, and other cunning and cozy and inviting perches and projections, and many of the fronts

are curiously pictured by the brush, and the whole of them have the soft rich tint of strawberry icecream.

One cannot look down the far stretch of the chief street and persuade himself that these are real houses, and

that it is all out of doorsthe impression that it is an unreality, a picture, a scene in a theater, is the only one

Then there came a great day when this illusion was more pronounced than ever. A rich Hindoo had been

spending a fortune upon the manufacture of a crowd of idols and accompanying paraphernalia whose purpose

was to illustrate scenes in the life of his especial god or saint, and this fine show 'vas to be brought through

the town in processional state at ten in the morning. As we passed through the great public pleasure garden on

our way to the city we found it crowded with natives. That was one sight. Then there was another. In the

midst of the spacious lawns stands the palace which contains the museuma beautiful construction of stone

which shows arched colonnades, one above another, and receding, terracefashion, toward the sky. Every

one of these terraces, all the way to the top one, was packed and jammed with natives. One must try to

imagine those solid masses of splendid color, one above another, up and up, against the blue sky, and the

Later, when we reached the city, and glanced down the chief avenue, smouldering in its crushedstrawberry

tint, those splendid effects were repeated; for every balcony, and every fanciful birdcage of a snuggery

countersunk in the housefronts, and all the long lines of roofs were crowded with people, and each crowd

Then the wide street itself, away down and down and down into the distance, was alive with

gorgeouslyclothed people not still, but moving, swaying, drifting, eddying, a delirious display of all colors

and all shades of color, delicate, lovely, pale, soft, strong, stunning, vivid, brilliant, a sort of storm of

sweetpea blossoms passing on the wings of a hurricane; and presently, through this storm of color, came

swaying and swinging the majestic elephants, clothed in their Sunday best of gaudinesses, and the long

procession of fanciful trucks freighted with their groups of curious and costly images, and then the long

For color, and picturesqueness, and novelty, and outlandishness, and sustained interest and fascination, it was

the most satisfying show I had ever seen, and I suppose I shall not have the privilege of looking upon its like

Suppose we applied no more ingenuity to the instruction of deaf and dumb and blind children than we

sometimes apply in our American public schools to the instruction of children who are in possession of all

their faculties? The result would be that the deaf and dumb and blind would acquire nothing. They would live

and die as ignorant as bricks and stones. The methods used in the asylums are rational. The teacher exactly

measures the child's capacity, to begin with; and from thence onwards the tasks imposed are nicely gauged to

the gradual development of that capacity, the tasks keep pace with the steps of the child's progress, they don't

jump miles and leagues ahead of it by irrational caprice and land in vacancyaccording to the average

publicschool plan. In the public school, apparently, they teach the child to spell cat, then ask it to calculate

an eclipse; when it can read words of two syllables, they require it to explain the circulation of the blood;

when it reaches the head of the infant class they bully it with conundrums that cover the domain of universal

knowledge. This sounds extravagantand is; yet it goes no great way beyond the facts.

I received a curious letter one day, from the Punjab (you must pronounce it Punjawb). The handwriting was

excellent, and the wording was English English, and yet not exactly English. The style was easy and

smooth and flowing, yet there was something subtly foreign about itA something tropically ornate and

sentimental and rhetorical. It turned out to be the work of a Hindoo youth, the holder of a humble clerical

billet in a railway office. He had been educated in one of the numerous colleges of India. Upon inquiry I was

told that the country was full of young fellows of his like. They had been educated away up to the

snowsummits of learningand the market for all this elaborate cultivation was minutely out of proportion

to the vastness of the product. This market consisted of some thousands of small clerical posts under the

government the supply of material for it was multitudinous. If this youth with the flowing style and the

blossoming English was occupying a small railway clerkship, it meant that there were hundreds and hundreds

as capable as he, or he would be in a high place; and it certainly meant that there were thousands whose

education and capacity had fallen a little short, and that they would have to go without places. Apparently,

then, the colleges of India were doing what our high schools have long been doing richly oversupplying

the market for highlyeducated service; and thereby doing a damage to the scholar, and through him to the

At home I once made a speech deploring the injuries inflicted by the high school in making handicrafts

distasteful to boys who would have been willing to make a living at trades and agriculture if they had but had

the good luck to stop with the common school. But I made no converts. Not one, in a community overrun

with educated idlers who were above following their fathers' mechanical trades, yet could find no market for

their bookknowledge. The same rail that brought me the letter from the Punjab, brought also a little book

published by Messrs. Thacker, Spink Co., of Calcutta, which interested me, for both its preface and its

contents treated of this matter of overeducation. In the preface occurs this paragraph from the Calcutta

Review. For "Government office" read "drygoods clerkship" and it will fit more than one region of America:

"The education that we give makes the boys a little less clownish in their manners, and more intelligent when

spoken to by strangers. On the other hand, it has made them less contented with their lot in life, and less

willing to work with their hands. The form which discontent takes in this country is not of a healthy kind; for,

the Natives of India consider that the only occupation worthy of an educated man is that of a writership in

some office, and especially in a Government office. The village schoolboy goes back to the plow with the

greatest reluctance; and the town schoolboy carries the same discontent and inefficiency into his father's

workshop. Sometimes these exstudents positively refuse at first to work; and more than once parents have

openly expressed their regret that they ever allowed their sons to be inveigled to school."

The little book which I am quoting from is called "IndoAnglian Literature," and is well stocked with

"baboo" Englishclerkly English, hooky English, acquired in the schools. Some of it is very funny,

almost as funny, perhaps, as what you and I produce when we try to write in a language not our own; but

much of it is surprisingly correct and free. If I were going to quote good Englishbut I am not. India is well

stocked with natives who speak it and write it as well as the best of us. I merely wish to show some of the

quaint imperfect attempts at the use of our tongue. There are many letters in the book; poverty imploring

helpbread, money, kindness, office generally an office, a clerkship, some way to get food and a rag out of

the applicant's unmarketable education; and food not for himself alone, but sometimes for a dozen helpless

relations in addition to his own family; for those people are astonishingly unselfish, and admirably faithful to

their ties of kinship. Among us I think there is nothing approaching it. Strange as some of these wailing and

supplicating letters are, humble and even groveling as some of them are, and quaintly funny and confused as

a goodly number of them are, there is still a pathos about them, as a rule, that checks the rising laugh and

reproaches it. In the following letter "father" is not to be read literally. In Ceylon a little native beggar girl

embarrassed me by calling me father, although I knew she was mistaken. I was so new that I did not know

"I pray please to give me some action (work) for I am very poor boy I have no one to help me even so father

for it so it seemed in thy good sight, you give the Telegraph Office, and another work what is your wish I am

very poor boy, this understand what is your wish you my father I am your son this understand what is your

Through ages of debasing oppression suffered by these people at the hands of their native rulers, they come

legitimately by the attitude and language of fawning and flattery, and one must remember this in mitigation

when passing judgment upon the native character. It is common in these letters to find the petitioner furtively

trying to get at the white man's soft religious side; even this poor boy baits his hook with a macerated

"My Dear Sir or Gentleman, that your Petitioner has much qualification in the Language of English to

instruct the young boys; I was given to understand that your of suitable children has to acquire the knowledge

As a sample of the flowery Eastern style, I will take a sentence or two from along letter written by a young

"I hope your honor will condescend to hear the tale of this poor creature. I shall overflow with gratitude at

this mark of your royal condescension. The birdlike happiness has flown away from my nestlike heart and

has not hitherto returned from the period whence the rose of my father's life suffered the autumnal breath of

death, in plain English he passed through the gates of Grave, and from that hour the phantom of delight has

It is all schoolEnglish, bookEnglish, you see; and good enough, too, all things considered. If the native boy

had but that one study he would shine, he would dazzle, no doubt. But that is not the case. He is situated as

are our publicschool childrenloaded down with an over freightage of other studies; and frequently they

are as far beyond the actual point of progress reached by him and suited to the stage of development attained,

as could be imagined by the insanest fancy. Apparentlylike our publicschool boyhe must work, work,

work, in school and out, and play but little. Apparentlylike our publicschool boyhis "education"

consists in learning things, not the meaning of them; he is fed upon the husks, not the corn. From several

essays written by native schoolboys in answer to the question of how they spend their day, I select onethe

"66. At the break of day I rises from my own bed and finish my daily duty, then I employ myself till 8

o'clock, after which I employ myself to bathe, then take for my body some sweet meat, and just at 9 1/2 I

came to school to attend my class duty, then at 2 1/2 P. M. I return from school and engage myself to do my

natural duty, then, I engage for a quarter to take my tithn, then I study till 5 P. M., after which I began to play

anything which comes in my head. After 8 1/2, half pass to eight we are began to sleep, before sleeping I told

a constable just 11 o' he came and rose us from half pass eleven we began to read still morning."

It is not perfectly clear, now that I come to cipher upon it. He gets up at about 5 in the morning, or along there

somewhere, and goes to bed about fifteen or sixteen hours afterwardthat much of it seems straight; but

why he should rise again three hours later and resume his studies till morning is puzzling.

I think it is because he is studying history. History requires a world of time and bitter hard work when your

"education" is no further advanced than the cat's; when you are merely stuffing yourself with a mixedup

mess of empty names and random incidents and elusive dates, which no one teaches you how to interpret, and

which, uninterpreted, pay you not a farthing's value for your waste of time. Yes, I think he had to get up at

halfpast 11 P.M. in order to be sure to be perfect with his history lesson by noon. With results as

"Q. Who was Cardinal Wolsey? "Cardinal Wolsey was an Editor of a paper named North Briton. No. 45 of

his publication he charged the King of uttering a lie from the throne. He was arrested and cast into prison; and

"3. As Bishop of York but died in disentry in a church on his way to be blockheaded.

"8. Cardinal Wolsey was the son of Edward IV, after his father's death he himself ascended the throne at the

age of (10) ten only, but when he surpassed or when he was fallen in his twenty years of age at that time he

wished to make a journey in his countries under him, but he was opposed by his mother to do journey, and

according to his mother's example he remained in the home, and then became King. After many times

"10. An honor conferred on the first or eldest sons of English Sovereigns. It is nothing more than some

"11. Ich Dien was the word which was written on the feathers of the blind King who came to fight, being

"13. Ich Dien is a title given to Henry VII by the Pope of Rome, when he forwarded the Reformation of

Cardinal Wolsy to Rome, and for this reason he was called Commander of the faith."

A dozen or so of this kind of insane answers are quoted in the book from that examination. Each answer is

sweeping proof, all by itself, that the person uttering it was pushed ahead of where he belonged when he was

put into history; proof that he had been put to the task of acquiring history before he had had a single lesson

in the art of acquiring it, which is the equivalent of dumping a pupil into geometry before he has learned the

progressive steps which lead up to it and make its acquirement possible. Those Calcutta novices had no

business with history. There was no excuse for examining them in it, no excuse for exposing them and their

Helen Keller has been dumb, stone deaf, and stone blind, ever since she was a little baby a yearandahalf

old; and now at sixteen years of age this miraculous creature, this wonder of all the ages, passes the Harvard

University examination in Latin, German, French history, belles lettres, and such things, and does it

brilliantly, too, not in a commonplace fashion. She doesn't know merely things, she is splendidly familiar

with the meanings of them. When she writes an essay on a Shakespearean character, her English is fine and

strong, her grasp of the subject is the grasp of one who knows, and her page is electric with light. Has Miss

Sullivan taught her by the methods of India and the American public school? No, oh, no; for then she would

be deafer and dumber and blinder than she was before. It is a pity that we can't educate all the children in the

"25. Sheriff is a post opened in the time of John. The duty of Sheriff here in Calcutta, to look out and catch

those carriages which is rashly driven out by the coachman; but it is a high post in England.

"28. SheriffLatin term for 'shrub,' we called broom, worn by the first earl of Enjue, as an emblem of

humility when they went to the pilgrimage, and from this their hairs took their crest and surname.

"30. Sheriff; a tittle given on those persons who were respective and pious in England."

The students were examined in the following bulky matters: Geometry, the Solar Spectrum, the Habeas

Corpus Act, the British Parliament, and in Metaphysics they were asked to trace the progress of skepticism

from Descartes to Hume. It is within bounds to say that some of the results were astonishing. Without doubt,

there were students present who justified their teacher's wisdom in introducing them to these studies; but the

fact is also evident that others had been pushed into these studies to waste their time over them when they

could have been profitably employed in hunting smaller game. Under the head of Geometry, one of the

To me this is cloudy, but I was never well up in geometry. That was the only effort made among the five

students who appeared for examination in geometry; the other four wailed and surrendered without a fight.

They are piteous wails, too, wails of despair; and one of them is an eloquent reproach; it comes from a poor

fellow who has been laden beyond his strength by a stupid teacher, and is eloquent in spite of the poverty of

its English. The poor chap finds himself required to explain riddles which even Sir Isaac Newton was not able

"50. Oh my dear father examiner you my father and you kindly give a number of pass you my great father.

"51. I am a poor boy and have no means to support my mother and two brothers who are suffering much for

want of food. I get four rupees monthly from charity fund of this place, from which I send two rupees for

their support, and keep two for my own support. Father, if I relate the unlucky circumstance under which we

"52. Sir which Sir Isaac Newton and other experienced mathematicians cannot understand I being third of

Entrance Class can understand these which is too impossible to imagine. And my examiner also has put very

We must remember that these pupils had to do their thinking in one language, and express themselves in

another and alien one. It was a heavy handicap. I have by me "English as She is Taught"a collection of

American examinations made in the public schools of Brooklyn by one of the teachers, Miss Caroline B. Le

Row. An extract or two from its pages will show that when the American pupil is using but one language, and

"Christopher Columbus was called the father of his Country. Queen Isabella of Spain sold her watch and

"The Indians pursued their warfare by hiding in the bushes and then scalping them.

"Captain John Smith has been styled the father of his country. His life was saved by his daughter

"The Stamp Act was to make everybody stamp all materials so they should be null and void.

"Washington died in Spain almost brokenhearted. His remains were taken to the cathedral in Havana.

In Brooklyn, as in India, they examine a pupil, and when they find out he doesn't know anything, they put

him into literature, or geometry, or astronomy, or government, or something like that, so that he can properly

"In the 'Canterbury Tale' it gives account of King Alfred on his way to the shrine of Thomas Bucket.

We will finish with a couple of samples of "literature," one from America, the other from India. The first is a

Brooklyn publicschool boy's attempt to turn a few verses of the "Lady of the Lake" into prose. You will

"The man who rode on the horse performed the whip and an instrument made of steel alone with strong ardor

not diminishing, for, being tired from the time passed with hard labor overworked with anger and ignorant

with weariness, while every breath for labor lie drew with cries full of sorrow, the young deer made imperfect

The following paragraph is from a little book which is famous in India the biography of a distinguished

Hindoo judge, Onoocool Chunder Mookerjee; it was written by his nephew, and is unintentionally funnyin

fact, exceedingly so. I offer here the closing scene. If you would like to sample the rest of the book, it can be

"And having said these words he hermetically sealed his lips not to open them again. All the wellknown

doctors of Calcutta that could be procured for a man of his position and wealth were brought, Doctors

Payne, Fayrer, and Nilmadhub Mookerjee and others; they did what they could do, with their puissance and

knack of medical knowledge, but it proved after all as if to milk the ram! His wife and children had not the

mournful consolation to hear his last words; he remained sotto voce for a few hours, and then was taken from

We sailed from Calcutta toward the end of March; stopped a day at Madras; two or three days in Ceylon; then

April 7. We are far abroad upon the smooth waters of the Indian Ocean, now; it is shady and pleasant and

The difference between a river and the sea is, that the river looks fluid, the sea solidusually looks as if you

The captain has this peculiarityhe cannot tell the truth in a plausible way. In this he is the very opposite of

the austere Scot who sits midway of the table; he cannot tell a lie in an unplausible way. When the captain

finishes a statement the passengers glance at each other privately, as who should say, "Do you believe that?"

When the Scot finishes one, the look says, "How strange and interesting." The whole secret is in the manner

and method of the two men. The captain is a little shy and diffident, and he states the simplest fact as if he

were a little afraid of it, while the Scot delivers himself of the most abandoned lie with such an air of stern

veracity that one is forced to believe it although one knows it isn't so. For instance, the Scot told about a pet

flyingfish he once owned, that lived in a little fountain in his conservatory, and supported itself by catching

birds and frogs and rats in the neighboring fields. It was plain that no one at the table doubted this statement.

By and by, in the course of some talk about customhouse annoyances, the captain brought out the following

simple everyday incident, but through his infirmity of style managed to tell it in such a way that it got no

"I went ashore at Naples one voyage when I was in that trade, and stood around helping my passengers, for I

could speak a little Italian. Two or three times, at intervals, the officer asked me if I had anything dutiable

about me, and seemed more and more put out and disappointed every time I told him no. Finally a passenger

whom I had helped through asked me to come out and take something. I thanked him, but excused myself,

"It was a fatal admission. The officer at once made me pay sixpence importduty on the whiskyjust from

ship to shore, you see; and he fined me L5 for not declaring the goods, another L5 for falsely denying that I

had anything dutiable about me, also L5 for concealing the goods, and L50 for smuggling, which is the

maximum penalty for unlawfully bringing in goods under the value of sevenpence ha'penny. Altogether,

The Scot is always believed, yet he never tells anything but lies; whereas the captain is never believed,

although he never tells a lie, so far as I can judge. If he should say his uncle was a male person, he would

probably say it in such a way that nobody would believe it; at the same time the Scot could claim that he had

a female uncle and not stir a doubt in anybody's mind. My own luck has been curious all my literary life; I

never could tell a lie that anybody would doubt, nor a truth that anybody would believe.

Lots of pets on boardbirds and things. In these far countries the white people do seem to run remarkably to

pets. Our host in Cawnpore had a fine collection of birdsthe finest we saw in a private house in India. And

in Colombo, Dr. Murray's great compound and commodious bungalow were well populated with

domesticated company from the woods: frisky little squirrels; a Ceylon mina walking sociably about the

house; a small green parrot that whistled a single urgent note of call without motion of its beak; also

chuckled; a monkey in a cage on the back veranda, and some more out in the trees; also a number of beautiful

macaws in the trees; and various and sundry birds and animals of breeds not known to me. But no cat. Yet a

April 9. Teaplanting is the great business in Ceylon, now. A passenger says it often pays 40 per cent. on the

April 10. The sea is a Mediterranean blue; and I believe that that is about the divinest color known to nature.

It is strange and fineNature's lavish generosities to her creatures. At least to all of them except man. For

those that fly she has provided a home that is nobly spaciousa home which is forty miles deep and

envelops the whole globe, and has not an obstruction in it. For those that swim she has provided a more than

imperial domaina domain which is miles deep and covers fourfifths of the globe. But as for man, she has

cut him off with the mere odds and ends of the creation. She has given him the thin skin, the meagre skin

which is stretched over the remaining onefifththe naked bones stick up through it in most places. On the

onehalf of this domain he can raise snow, ice, sand, rocks, and nothing else. So the valuable part of his

inheritance really consists of but a single fifth of the family estate; and out of it he has to grub hard to get

enough to keep him alive and provide kings and soldiers and powder to extend the blessings of civilization

with. Yet man, in his simplicity and complacency and inability to cipher, thinks Nature regards him as the

important member of the familyin fact, her favorite. Surely, it must occur to even his dull head, sometimes,

Afternoon. The captain has been telling how, in one of his Arctic voyages, it was so cold that the mate's

shadow froze fast to the deck and had to be ripped loose by main strength. And even then he got only about

twothirds of it back. Nobody said anything, and the captain went away. I think he is becoming disheartened

. . . . Also, to be fair, there is another word of praise due to this ship's library: it contains no copy of the Vicar

of Wakefield, that strange menagerie of complacent hypocrites and idiots, of theatrical cheapjohn heroes

and heroines, who are always showing off, of bad people who are not interesting, and good people who are

fatiguing. A singular book. Not a sincere line in it, and not a character that invites respect; a book which is

one long waste pipe discharge of goodygoody puerilities and dreary moralities; a book which is full of

pathos which revolts, and humor which grieves the heart. There are few things in literature that are more

piteous, more pathetic, than the celebrated "humorous" incident of Moses and the spectacles. Jane Austen's

books, too, are absent from this library. Just that one omission alone would make a fairly good library out of

Customs in tropic seas. At 5 in the morning they pipe to wash down the decks, and at once the ladies who are

sleeping there turn out and they and their beds go below. Then one after another the men come up from the

bath in their pyjamas, and walk the decks an hour or two with bare legs and bare feet. Coffee and fruit served.

The ship cat and her kitten now appear and get about their toilets; next the barber comes and flays us on the

breezy deck. Breakfast at 9.30, and the day begins. I do not know how a day could be more reposeful: no

motion; a level blue sea; nothing in sight from horizon to horizon; the speed of the ship furnishes a cooling

breeze; there is no mail to read and answer; no newspapers to excite you; no telegrams to fret you or fright

youthe world is far, far away; it has ceased to exist for youseemed a fading dream, along in the first

days; has dissolved to an unreality now; it is gone from your mind with all its businesses and ambitions, its

prosperities and disasters, its exultations and despairs, its joys and griefs and cares and worries. They are no

concern of yours any more; they have gone out of your life; they are a storm which has passed and left a deep

calm behind. The people group themselves about the decks in their snowy white linen, and read, smoke, sew,

play cards, talk, nap, and so on. In other ships the passengers are always ciphering about when they are going

to arrive; out in these seas it is rare, very rare, to hear that subject broached. In other ships there is always an

eager rush to the bulletin board at noon to find out what the "run" has been; in these seas the bulletin seems to

attract no interest; I have seen no one visit it; in thirteen days I have visited it only once. Then I happened to

notice the figures of the day's run. On that day there happened to be talk, at dinner, about the speed of modern

ships. I was the only passenger present who knew this ship's gait. Necessarily, the Atlantic custom of betting

I myself am wholly indifferent as to when we are going to "get in"; if any one else feels interested in the

matter he has not indicated it in my hearing. If I had my way we should never get in at all. This sort of sea life

is charged with an indestructible charm. There is no weariness, no fatigue, no worry, no responsibility, no

work, no depression of spirits. There is nothing like this serenity, this comfort, this peace, this deep

contentment, to be found anywhere on land. If I had my way I would sail on for ever and never go to live on

One of Kipling's ballads has delivered the aspect and sentiment of this bewitching sea correctly:

"The Injian Ocean sets an' smiles So sof', so bright, so bloomin' blue; There aren't a wave for miles an' miles

April 14. It turns out that the astronomical apprentice worked off a section of the Milky Way on me for the

Magellan Clouds. A man of more experience in the business showed one of them to me last night. It was

small and faint and delicate, and looked like the ghost of a bunch of white smoke left floating in the sky by an

Wednesday, April 15. Mauritius. Arrived and anchored off Port Louis 2 A. M. Rugged clusters of crags and

peaks, green to their summits; from their bases to the sea a green plain with just tilt enough to it to make the

water drain off. I believe it is in 56 E. and 22 S.a hot tropical country. The green plain has an inviting look;

has scattering dwellings nestling among the greenery. Scene of the sentimental adventure of Paul and

Island under French controlwhich means a community which depends upon quarantines, not sanitation, for

Thursday, April 16. Went ashore in the forenoon at Port Louis, a little town, but with the largest variety of

nationalities and complexions we have encountered yet. French, English, Chinese, Arabs, Africans with wool,

blacks with straight hair, East Indians, halfwhites, quadroons and great varieties in costumes and colors.

Took the train for Curepipe at 1.30two hours' run, gradually uphill. What a contrast, this frantic luxuriance

of vegetation, with the arid plains of India; these architecturally picturesque crags and knobs and miniature

A native pointed out a handsome swarthy man of grave and dignified bearing, and said in an awed tone,

"That is soandso; has held office of one sort or another under this government for 37 yearshe is known

all over this whole island and in the other countries of the world perhaps who knows? One thing is certain;

you can speak his name anywhere in this whole island, and you will find not one grown person that has not

heard it. It is a wonderful thing to be so celebrated; yet look at him; it makes no change in him; he does not

Curepipe (means Pincushion or Pegtown, probably). Sixteen miles (two hours) by rail from Port Louis. At

each end of every roof and on the apex of every dormer window a wooden peg two feet high stands up; in

some cases its top is blunt, in others the peg is sharp and looks like a toothpick. The passion for this humble

Apparently, there has been only one prominent event in the history of Mauritius, and that one didn't happen. I

refer to the romantic sojourn of Paul and Virginia here. It was that story that made Mauritius known to the

world, made the name familiar to everybody, the geographical position of it to nobody.

A clergyman was asked to guess what was in a box on a table. It was a vellum fan painted with the

April 18. This is the only country in the world where the stranger is not asked "How do you like this place?"

This is indeed a large distinction. Here the citizen does the talking about the country himself; the stranger is

not asked to help. You get all sorts of information. From one citizen you gather the idea that Mauritius was

made first, and then heaven; and that heaven was copied after Mauritius. Another one tells you that this is an

exaggeration; that the two chief villages, Port Louis and Curepipe, fall short of heavenly perfection; that

nobody lives in Port Louis except upon compulsion, and that Curepipe is the wettest and rainiest place in the

"In the early part of this century Mauritius was used by the French as a basis from which to operate against

England's Indian merchantmen; so England captured the island and also the neighbor, Bourbon, to stop that

annoyance. England gave Bourbon back; the government in London did not want any more possessions in the

West Indies. If the government had had a better quality of geography in stock it would not have wasted

Bourbon in that foolish way. A big war will temporarily shut up the Suez Canal some day and the English

ships will have to go to India around the Cape of Good Hope again; then England will have to have Bourbon

"Mauritius was a crown colony until 20 years ago, with a governor appointed by the Crown and assisted by a

Council appointed by himself; but Pope Hennessey came out as Governor then, and he worked hard to get a

part of the council made elective, and succeeded. So now the whole council is French, and in all ordinary

matters of legislation they vote together and in the French interest, not the English. The English population is

very slender; it has not votes enough to elect a legislator. Half a dozen rich French families elect the

legislature. Pope Hennessey was an Irishman, a Catholic, a Home Ruler, M.P., a hater of England and the

English, a very troublesome person and a serious incumbrance at Westminster; so it was decided to send him

out to govern unhealthy countries, in hope that something would happen to him. But nothing did. The first

experiment was not merely a failure, it was more than a failure. He proved to be more of a disease himself

than any he was sent to encounter. The next experiment was here. The dark scheme failed again. It was an

offseason and there was nothing but measles here at the time. Pope Hennessey's health was not affected. He

worked with the French and for the French and against the English, and he made the English very tired and

the French very happy, and lived to have the joy of seeing the flag he served publicly hissed. His memory is

"It is a land of extraordinary quarantines. They quarantine a ship for anything or for nothing; quarantine her

for 20 and even 30 days. They once quarantined a ship because her captain had had the smallpox when he

"The population is very small; small to insignificance. The majority is East Indian; then mongrels; then

negroes (descendants of the slaves of the French times); then French; then English. There was an American,

but he is dead or mislaid. The mongrels are the result of all kinds of mixtures; black and white, mulatto and

white, quadroon and white, octoroon and white. And so there is every shade of complexion; ebony, old

mahogany, horsechestnut, sorrel, molasses candy, clouded amber, clear amber, oldivory white, newivory

white, fishbelly whitethis latter the leprous complexion frequent with the AngloSaxon long resident in

"You wouldn't expect a person to be proud of being a Mauritian, now would you? But it is so. The most of

them have never been out of the island, and haven't read much or studied much, and they think the world

consists of three principal countriesJudaea, France, and Mauritius; so they are very proud of belonging to

one of the three grand divisions of the globe. They think that Russia and Germany are in England, and that

England does not amount to much. They have heard vaguely about the United States and the equator, but they

think both of them are monarchies. They think Mount Peter Botte is the highest mountain in the world, and if

you show one of them a picture of Milan Cathedral he will swell up with satisfaction and say that the idea of

that jungle of spires was stolen from the forest of pegtops and toothpicks that makes the roofs of Curepipe

"There is not much trade in books. The newspapers educate and entertain the people. Mainly the latter. They

have two pages of largeprint readingmatterone of them English, the other French. The English page is a

translation of the French one. The typography is superextra primitivein this quality it has not its equal

"Where do they get matter to fill up a page in this little island lost in the wastes of the Indian Ocean? Oh,

Madagascar. They discuss Madagascar and France. That is the bulk. Then they chock up the rest with advice

to the Government. Also, slurs upon the English administration. The papers are all owned and edited by

"The language of the country is French. Everybody speaks it has to. You have to know French particularly

mongrel French, the patois spoken by Tom, Dick, and Harry of the multiform complexionsor you can't get

"This was a flourishing country in former days, for it made then and still makes the best sugar in the world;

but first the Suez Canal severed it from the world and left it out in the cold and next the beetroot sugar helped

by bounties, captured the European markets. Sugar is the life of Mauritius, and it is losing its grip. Its

downward course was checked by the depreciation of the rupeefor the planter pays wages in rupees but

sells his crop for goldand the insurrection in Cuba and paralyzation of the sugar industry there have given

our prices here a lifesaving lift; but the outlook has nothing permanently favorable about it. It takes a year to

mature the caneson the high ground three and six months longer and there is always a chance that the

annual cyclone will rip the profit out of the crop. In recent times a cyclone took the whole crop, as you may

say; and the island never saw a finer one. Some of the noblest sugar estates in the island are in deep

difficulties. A dozen of them are investments of English capital; and the companies that own them are at work

now, trying to settle up and get out with a saving of half the money they put in. You know, in these days,

when a country begins to introduce the tea culture, it means that its own specialty has gone back on it. Look

at Bengal; look at Ceylon. Well, they've begun to introduce the tea culture, here.

"Many copies of Paul and Virginia are sold every year in Mauritius. No other book is so popular here except

the Bible. By many it is supposed to be a part of the Bible. All the missionaries work up their French on it

when they come here to pervert the Catholic mongrel. It is the greatest story that was ever written about

April 20. The cyclone of 1892 killed and crippled hundreds of people; it was accompanied by a deluge of

rain, which drowned Port Louis and produced a water famine. Quite true; for it burst the reservoir and the

waterpipes; and for a time after the flood had disappeared there was much distress from want of water.

This is the only place in the world where no breed of matches can stand the damp. Only one match in 16 will

The roads are hard and smooth; some of the compounds are spacious, some of the bungalows commodious,

and the roadways are walled by tall bamboo hedges, trim and green and beautiful; and there are azalea

As to healthiness: I translate from today's (April 20) Merchants' and Planters' Gazette, from the article of a

regular contributor, "Carminge," concerning the death of the nephew of a prominent citizen:

"Sad and lugubrious existence, this which we lead in Mauritius; I believe there is no other country in the

world where one dies more easily than among us. The least indisposition becomes a mortal malady; a simple

headache develops into meningitis; a cold into pneumonia, and presently, when we are least expecting it,

This daily paper has a meteorological report which tells you what the weather was day before yesterday.

One is clever pestered by a beggar or a peddler in this town, so far as I can see. This is pleasantly different

April 22. To such as believe that the quaint product called French civilization would be an improvement upon

the civilization of New Guinea and the like, the snatching of Madagascar and the laying on of French

civilization there will be fully justified. But why did the English allow the French to have Madagascar? Did

she respect a theft of a couple of centuries ago? Dear me, robbery by European nations of each other's

territories has never been a sin, is not a sin today. To the several cabinets the several political establishments

of the world are clotheslines; and a large part of the official duty of these cabinets is to keep an eye on each

other's wash and grab what they can of it as opportunity offers. All the territorial possessions of all the

political establishments in the earthincluding America, of courseconsist of pilferings from other people's

wash. No tribe, howsoever insignificant, and no nation, howsoever mighty, occupies a foot of land that was

not stolen. When the English, the French, and the Spaniards reached America, the Indian tribes had been

raiding each other's territorial clotheslines for ages, and every acre of ground in the continent had been

stolen and restolen 500 times. The English, the French, and the Spaniards went to work and stole it all over

again; and when that was satisfactorily accomplished they went diligently to work and stole it from each

other. In Europe and Asia and Africa every acre of ground has been stolen several millions of times. A crime

persevered in a thousand centuries ceases to be a crime, and becomes a virtue. This is the law of custom, and

custom supersedes all other forms of law. Christian governments are as frank today, as open and

aboveboard, in discussing projects for raiding each other's clotheslines as ever they were before the Golden

Rule came smiling into this inhospitable world and couldn't get a night's lodging anywhere. In 150 years

England has beneficently retired garment after garment from the Indian lines, until there is hardly a rag of the

original wash left dangling anywhere. In 800 years an obscure tribe of Muscovite savages has risen to the

dazzling position of LandRobberin Chief; she found a quarter of the world hanging out to dry on a

hundred parallels of latitude, and she scooped in the whole wash. She keeps a sharp eye on a multitude of

little lines that stretch along the northern boundaries of India, and every now and then she snatches a hiprag

or a pair of pyjamas. It is England's prospective property, and Russia knows it; but Russia cares nothing for

that. In fact, in our day landrobbery, claimjumping, is become a European governmental frenzy. Some

have been hard at it in the borders of China, in Burma, in Siam, and the islands of the sea; and all have been

at it in Africa. Africa has been as coolly divided up and portioned out among the gang as if they had bought it

and paid for it. And now straightway they are beginning the old game again to steal each other's grabbings.

Germany found a vast slice of Central Africa with the English flag and the English missionary and the

English trader scattered all over it, but with certain formalities neglectedno signs up, " Keep off the grass,"

"Trespassersforbidden," etc.and she stepped in with a cold calm smile and put up the signs herself, and

There is a tremendous point there. It can be put into the form of a maxim: Get your formalities rightnever

It was an impudent thing; but England had to put up with it. Now, in the case of Madagascar, the formalities

had originally been observed, but by neglect they had fallen into desuetude ages ago. England should have

snatched Madagascar from the French clothesline. Without an effort she could have saved those harmless

natives from the calamity of French civilization, and she did not do it. Now it is too late.

The signs of the times show plainly enough what is going to happen. All the savage lands in the world are

going to be brought under subjection to the Christian governments of Europe. I am not sorry, but glad. This

coming fate might have been a calamity to those savage peoples two hundred years ago; but now it will in

some cases be a benefaction. The sooner the seizure is consummated, the better for the savages.

The dreary and dragging ages of bloodshed and disorder and oppression will give place to peace and order

and the reign of law. When one considers what India was under her Hindoo and Mohammedan rulers, and

what she is now; when he remembers the miseries of her millions then and the protections and humanities

which they enjoy now, he must concede that the most fortunate thing that has ever befallen that empire was

the establishment of British supremacy there. The savage lands of the world are to pass to alien possession,

their peoples to the mercies of alien rulers. Let us hope and believe that they will all benefit by the change.

April 23. "The first year they gather shells; the second year they gather shells and drink; the third year they

Population 1851, 185,000. The increase is due mainly to the introduction of Indian coolies. They now

apparently form the great majority of the population. They are admirable breeders; their homes are always

hazy with children. Great savers of money. A British officer told me that in India he paid his servant 10

rupees a month, and he had 11 cousins, uncles, parents, etc., dependent upon him, and he supported them on

his wages. These thrifty coolies are said to be acquiring land a trifle at a time, and cultivating it; and may own

The Indian women do very hard labor [for wages of (1/2 rupee)for twelve hours' work.] They carry mats of

sugar on their heads (70 pounds) all day lading ships, for half a rupee, and work at gardening all day for less.

The camaron is a fresh water creature like a crayfish. It is regarded here as the world's chiefest

delicacyand certainly it is good. Guards patrol the streams to prevent poaching it. A fine of Rs. 200 or 300

(they say) for poaching. Bait is thrown in the water; the camaron goes for it; the fisher drops his loop in and

works it around and about the camaron he has selected, till he gets it over its tail; then there's a jerk or

something to certify the camaron that it is his turn now; he suddenly backs away, which moves the loop still

Another dish, called palmiste, is like raw turnipshavings and tastes like green almonds; is very delicate and

Another dishlooks like greens or a tangle of fine seaweedis a preparation of the deadly nightshade.

The monkeys live in the dense forests on the flanks of the toy mountains, and they flock down nights and raid

the sugarfields. Also on other estates they come down and destroy a sort of beancropjust for fun,

The cyclone of 1892 tore down two great blocks of stone buildings in the center of Port Louisthe chief

architectural featureand left the uncomely and apparently frail blocks standing. Everywhere in its track it

annihilated houses, tore off roofs, destroyed trees and crops. The men were in the towns, the women and

children at home in the country getting crippled, killed, frightened to insanity; and the rain deluging them, the

wind howling, the thunder crashing, the lightning glaring. This for an hour or so. Then a lull and sunshine;

many ventured out of safe shelter; then suddenly here it came again from the opposite point and renewed and

completed the devastation. It is said the Chinese fed the sufferers for days on free rice.

Whole streets in Port Louis were laid flatwrecked. During a minute and a half the wind blew 123 miles an

hour; no official record made after that, when it may have reached 150. It cut down an obelisk. It carried an

American ship into the woods after breaking the chains of two anchors. They now use fourtwo forward, two

astern. Common report says it killed 1,200 in Port Louis alone, in half an hour. Then came the lull of the

central calmpeople did not know the barometer was still going down then suddenly all perdition broke

loose again while people were rushing around seeking friends and rescuing the wounded. The noise was

comparable to nothing; there is nothing resembling it but thunder and cannon, and these are feeble in

What there is of Mauritius is beautiful. You have undulating wide expanses of sugarcanea fine, fresh

green and very pleasant to the eye; and everywhere else you have a ragged luxuriance of tropic vegetation of

vivid greens of varying shades, a wild tangle of underbrush, with graceful tall palms lifting their crippled

plumes high above it; and you have stretches of shady dense forest with limpid streams frolicking through

them, continually glimpsed and lost and glimpsed again in the pleasantest hideandseek fashion; and you

have some tiny mountains, some quaint and picturesque groups of toy peaks, and a dainty little vest pocket

Matterhorn; and here and there and now and then a strip of sea with a white ruffle of surf breaks into the

That is Mauritius; and pretty enough. The details are few, the massed result is charming, but not imposing;

not riotous, not exciting; it is a Sunday landscape. Perspective, and the enchantments wrought by distance,

are wanting. There are no distances; there is no perspective, so to speak. Fifteen miles as the crow flies is the

usual limit of vision. Mauritius is a garden and a park combined. It affects one's emotions as parks and

gardens affect them. The surfaces of one's spiritual deeps are pleasantly played upon, the deeps themselves

are not reached, not stirred. Spaciousness, remote altitudes, the sense of mystery which haunts apparently

inaccessible mountain domes and summits reposing in the skythese are the things which exalt the spirit

The Sandwich Islands remain my ideal of the perfect thing in the matter of tropical islands. I would add

another story to Mauna Loa's 16,000 feet if I could, and make it particularly bold and steep and craggy and

forbidding and snowy; and I would make the volcano spout its lavafloods out of its summit instead of its

sides; but aside from these non essentials I have no corrections to suggest. I hope these will be attended to; I

The Arundel Castle is the finest boat I have seen in these seas. She is thoroughly modern, and that statement

covers a great deal of ground. She has the usual defect, the common defect, the universal defect, the defect

that has never been missing from any ship that ever sailedshe has imperfect beds. Many ships have good

beds, but no ship has very good ones. In the matter of beds all ships have been badly edited, ignorantly

edited, from the beginning. The selection of the beds is given to some hearty, strongbacked, selfmade man,

when it ought to be given to a frail woman accustomed from girlhood to backaches and insomnia. Nothing is

so rare, on either side of the ocean, as a perfect bed; nothing is so difficult to make. Some of the hotels on

both sides provide it, but no ship ever does or ever did. In Noah's Ark the beds were simply scandalous. Noah

set the fashion, and it will endure in one degree of modification or another till the next flood.

8 A.M. Passing Isle de Bourbon. Brokenup skyline of volcanic mountains in the middle. Surely it would

not cost much to repair them, and it seems inexcusable neglect to leave them as they are.

It seems stupid to send tired men to Europe to rest. It is no proper rest for the mind to clatter from town to

town in the dust and cinders, and examine galleries and architecture, and be always meeting people and

lunching and teaing and dining, and receiving worrying cables and letters. And a sea voyage on the Atlantic

is of no usevoyage too short, sea too rough. The peaceful Indian and Pacific Oceans and the long stretches

May 2, AM. A fair, great ship in sight, almost the first we have seen in these weeks of lonely voyaging. We

are now in the Mozambique Channel, between Madagascar and South Africa, sailing straight west for

Last night, the burly chief engineer, middleaged, was standing telling a spirited seafaring tale, and had

reached the most exciting place, where a man overboard was washing swiftly astern on the great seas, and

uplifting despairing cries, everybody racing aft in a frenzy of excitement and fading hope, when the band,

which had been silent a moment, began impressively its closing piece, the English national anthem. As

simply as if he was unconscious of what he was doing, he stopped his story, uncovered, laid his laced cap

against his breast, and slightly bent his grizzled head. The few bars finished, he put on his cap and took up his

tale again, as naturally as if that interjection of music had been a part of it. There was something touching and

fine about it, and it was moving to reflect that he was one of a myriad, scattered over every part of the globe,

who by turn was doing as he was doing every hour of the twenty fourthose awake doing it while the

others sleptthose impressive bars forever floating up out of the various climes, never silent and never

All that I remember about Madagascar is that Thackeray's little Billie went up to the top of the mast and there

May 3. Sunday. Fifteen or twenty Africanders who will end their voyage today and strike for their several

homes from Delagoa Bay tomorrow, sat up singing on the afterdeck in the moonlight till 3 A.M. Good fun

and wholesome. And the songs were clean songs, and some of them were hallowed by tender associations.

Finally, in a pause, a man asked, "Have you heard about the fellow that kept a diary crossing the Atlantic?" It

was a discord, a wet blanket. The men were not in the mood for humorous dirt. The songs had carried them to

their homes, and in spirit they sat by those far hearthstones, and saw faces and heard voices other than those

that were about them. And so this disposition to drag in an old indecent anecdote got no welcome; nobody

answered. The poor man hadn't wit enough to see that he had blundered, but asked his question again. Again

there was no response. It was embarrassing for him. In his confusion he chose the wrong course, did the

wrong thingbegan the anecdote. Began it in a deep and hostile stillness, where had been such life and stir

and warm comradeship before. He delivered himself of the brief details of the diary's first day, and did it with

some confidence and a fair degree of eagerness. It fell flat. There was an awkward pause. The two rows of

men sat like statues. There was no movement, no sound. He had to go on; there was no other way, at least

none that an animal of his calibre could think of. At the close of each day's diary, the same dismal silence

followed. When at last he finished his tale and sprung the indelicate surprise which is wont to fetch a crash of

laughter, not a ripple of sound resulted. It was as if the tale had been told to dead men. After what seemed a

long, long time, somebody sighed, somebody else stirred in his seat; presently, the men dropped into a low

murmur of confidential talk, each with his neighbor, and the incident was closed. There were indications that

that man was fond of his anecdote; that it was his pet, his standby, his shot that never missed, his

reputationmaker. But he will never tell it again. No doubt he will think of it sometimes, for that cannot well

be helped; and then he will see a picture, and always the same picturethe double rank of dead men; the

vacant deck stretching away in dimming perspective beyond them, the wide desert of smooth sea all abroad;

the rim of the moon spying from behind a rag of black cloud; the remote top of the mizzenmast shearing a

zigzag path through the fields of stars in the deeps of space; and this soft picture will remind him of the time

that he sat in the midst of it and told his poor little tale and felt so lonesome when he got through.

Fifty Indians and Chinamen asleep in a big tent in the waist of the ship forward; they lie side by side with no

space between; the former wrapped up, head and all, as in the Indian streets, the Chinamen uncovered; the

A passenger said it was ten 2ton truck loads of dynamite that lately exploded at Johannesburg. Hundreds

killed; he doesn't know how many; limbs picked up for miles around. Glass shattered, and roofs swept away

It occurred at 3 p.m.; at 6, L65,000 had been subscribed. When this passenger left, L35,000 had been voted

by city and state governments and L100,000 by citizens and business corporations. When news of the disaster

was telephoned to the Exchange L35,000 were subscribed in the first five minutes. Subscribing was still

going on when he left; the papers had ceased the names, only the amountstoo many names; not enough

room. L100,000 subscribed by companies and citizens; if this is true, it must be what they call in Australia "a

record"the biggest instance of a spontaneous outpour for charity in history, considering the size of the

population it was drawn from, $8 or $10 for each white resident, babies at the breast included.

Monday, May 4. Steaming slowly in the stupendous Delagoa Bay, its dim arms stretching far away and

disappearing on both sides. It could furnish plenty of room for all the ships in the world, but it is shoal. The

lead has given us 3 1/2 fathoms several times and we are drawing that, lacking 6 inches.

A bold headlandprecipitous wall, 150 feet high, very strong, red color, stretching a mile or so. A man said

it was Portuguese bloodbattle fought here with the natives last year. I think this doubtful. Pretty cluster of

houses on the tableland above the redand rolling stretches of grass and groups of trees, like England.

The Portuguese have the railroad (one passenger train a day) to the border70 milesthen the Netherlands

Company have it. Thousands of tons of freight on the shoreno cover. This is Portuguese allover

Winter. The South African winter is just beginning now, but nobody but an expert can tell it from summer.

However, I am tired of summer; we have had it unbroken for eleven months. We spent the afternoon on

shore, Delagoa Bay. A small townno sights. No carriages. Three 'rickshas, but we couldn't get

themapparently private. These Portuguese are a rich brown, like some of the Indians. Some of the blacks

have the long horse beads and very long chins of the negroes of the picture books; but most of them are

exactly like the negroes of our Southern States round faces, flat noses, goodnatured, and easy laughers.

Flocks of black women passed along, carrying outrageously heavy bags of freight on their heads. The quiver

of their leg as the foot was planted and the strain exhibited by their bodies showed what a tax upon their

strength the load was. They were stevedores and doing full stevedores work. They were very erect when

unladdenfrom carrying heavy loads on their headsjust like the Indian women. It gives them a proud fine

Sometimes one saw a woman carrying on her head a laden and topheavy basket the shape of an inverted

pyramidits top the size of a soupplate, its base the diameter of a teacup. It required nice balancingand

The Second Class Passenger came over as usual at "lights out" (11) and we lounged along the spacious vague

solitudes of the deck and smoked the peaceful pipe and talked. He told me an incident in Mr. Barnum's life

This was Barnum's purchase of Shakespeare's birthplace, a quarter of a century ago. The Second Class

Passenger was in Jamrach's employ at the time and knew Barnum well. He said the thing began in this way.

One morning Barnum and Jamrach were in Jamrach's little private snuggery back of the wilderness of caged

monkeys and snakes and other commonplaces of Jamrach's stock in trade, refreshing themselves after an

arduous stroke of business, Jamrach with something orthodox, Barnum with something heterodoxfor

Barnum was a teetotaler. The stroke of business was in the elephant line. Jamrach had contracted to deliver to

Barnum in New York 18 elephants for $360,000 in time for the next season's opening. Then it occurred to

Mr. Barnum that he needed a "card" He suggested Jumbo. Jamrach said he would have to think of something

elseJumbo couldn't be had; the Zoo wouldn't part with that elephant. Barnum said he was willing to pay a

fortune for Jumbo if he could get him. Jamrach said it was no use to think about it; that Jumbo was as popular

as the Prince of Wales and the Zoo wouldn't dare to sell him; all England would be outraged at the idea;

Jumbo was an English institution; he was part of the national glory; one might as well think of buying the

Jamrach was speechless for a second. Then he said, like one ashamed "You caught me. I was napping. For a

"I was in earnest. I know they won't sell it, but no matter, I will not throw away a good idea for all that. All I

want is a big advertisement. I will keep the thing in mind, and if nothing better turns up I will offer to buy it.

That will answer every purpose. It will furnish me a couple of columns of gratis advertising in every English

and American paper for a couple of months, and give my show the biggest boom a show ever had in this

Jamrach started to deliver a burst of admiration, but was interrupted by Barnum, who said:

His eye had fallen upon something in the newspaper. He read it through to himself, then read it aloud. It said

that the house that Shakespeare was born in at StratfordonAvon was falling gradually to ruin through

neglect; that the room where the poet first saw the light was now serving as a butcher's shop; that all appeals

to England to contribute money (the requisite sum stated) to buy and repair the house and place it in the care

"There's my chance. Let Jumbo and the Monument alone for the present they'll keep. I'll buy Shakespeare's

house. I'll set it up in my Museum in New York and put a glass case around it and make a sacred thing of it;

and you'll see all America flock there to worship; yes, and pilgrims from the whole earth; and I'll make them

take their hats off, too. In America we know how to value anything that Shakespeare's touch has made holy.

"That is the way the thing came about. Barnum did buy Shakespeare's house. He paid the price asked, and

received the properly attested documents of sale. Then there was an explosion, I can tell you. England rose!

That, the birthplace of the mastergenius of all the ages and all the climesthat priceless possession of

Britainto be carted out of the country like so much old lumber and set up for sixpenny desecration in a

Yankee showshopthe idea was not to be tolerated for a moment. England rose in her indignation; and

Barnum was glad to relinquish his prize and offer apologies. However, he stood out for a compromise; he

claimed a concessionEngland must let him have Jumbo. And England consented, but not cheerfully."

It shows how, by help of time, a story can groweven after Barnum has had the first innings in the telling of

it. Mr. Barnum told me the story himself, years ago. He said that the permission to buy Jumbo was not a

concession; the purchase was made and the animal delivered before the public knew anything about it. Also,

that the securing of Jumbo was all the advertisement he needed. It produced many columns of newspaper

talk, free of cost, and he was satisfied. He said that if he had failed to get Jumbo he would have caused his

notion of buying the Nelson Monument to be treacherously smuggled into print by some trusty friend, and

after he had gotten a few hundred pages of gratuitous advertising out of it, he would have come out with a

blundering, obtuse, but warmhearted letter of apology, and in a postscript to it would have naively proposed

It was his opinion that such a letter, written with wellsimulated asinine innocence and gush would have

gotten his ignorance and stupidity an amount of newspaper abuse worth six fortunes to him, and not

I knew Mr. Barnum well, and I placed every confidence in the account which he gave me of the Shakespeare

birthplace episode. He said he found the house neglected and goingto decay, and he inquired into the matter

and was told that many times earnest efforts had been made to raise money for its proper repair and

preservation, but without success. He then proposed to buy it. The proposition was entertained, and a price

named $50,000, I think; but whatever it was, Barnum paid the money down, without remark, and the

papers were drawn up and executed. He said that it had been his purpose to set up the house in his Museum,

keep it in repair, protect it from namescribblers and other desecrators, and leave it by bequest to the safe and

But as soon as it was found that Shakespeare's house had passed into foreign hands and was going to be

carried across the ocean, England was stirred as no appeal from the custodians of the relic had ever stirred

England before, and protests came flowing inand money, too, to stop the outrage. Offers of repurchase

were madeoffers of double the money that Mr. Barnum had paid for the house. He handed the house back,

but took only the sum which it had cost himbut on the condition that an endowment sufficient for the

future safeguarding and maintenance of the sacred relic should be raised. This condition was fulfilled.

That was Barnum's account of the episode; and to the end of his days he claimed with pride and satisfaction

that not England, but America represented by himsaved the birthplace of Shakespeare from destruction.

At 3 P.M., May 6th, the ship slowed down, off the land, and thoughtfully and cautiously picked her way into

Royal Hotel. Comfortable, good table, good service of natives and Madrasis. Curious jumble of modern and

ancient city and village, primitiveness and the other thing. Electric bells, but they don't ring. Asked why they

didn't, the watchman in the office said he thought they must be out of order; he thought so because some of

them rang, but most of them didn't. Wouldn't it be a good idea to put them in order? He hesitatedlike one

May 7. A bang on the door at 6. Did I want my boots cleaned? Fifteen minutes later another bang. Did we

want coffee? Fifteen later, bang again, my wife's bath ready; 15 later, my bath ready. Two other bangs; I

forget what they were about. Then lots of shouting back and forth, among the servants just as in an Indian

Evening. At 4 P.M. it was unpleasantly warm. Halfhour after sunset one needed a spring overcoat; by 8 a

Durban is a neat and clean town. One notices that without having his attention called to it.

Rickshaws drawn by splendidly built black Zulus, so overflowing with strength, seemingly, that it is a

pleasure, not a pain, to see them snatch a rickshaw along. They smile and laugh and show their teetha

goodnatured lot. Not allowed to drink; 2s per hour for one person; 3s for two; 3d for a courseone person.

The chameleon in the hotel court. He is fat and indolent and contemplative; but is businesslike and capable

when a fly comes about reaches out a tongue like a teaspoon and takes him in. He gums his tongue first. He

is always pious, in his looks. And pious and thankful both, when Providence or one of us sends him a fly. He

has a froggy head, and a back like a new gravefor shape; and hands like a bird's toes that have been

frostbitten. But his eyes are his exhibition feature. A couple of skinny cones project from the sides of his

head, with a wee shiny bead of an eye set in the apex of each; and these cones turn bodily like pivotguns

and point everywhichway, and they are independent of each other; each has its own exclusive machinery.

When I am behind him and C. in front of him, he whirls one eye rearwards and the other forwardswhich

gives him a most Congressional expression (one eye on the constituency and one on the swag); and then if

something happens above and below him he shoots out one eye upward like a telescope and the other

Natives must not be out after the curfew bell without a pass. In Natal there are ten blacks to one white.

Sturdy plump creatures are the women. They comb their wool up to a peak and keep it in position by

stiffening it with brownred clayhalf of this tower colored, denotes engagement; the whole of it colored

May 9. A drive yesterday with friends over the Berea. Very fine roads and lofty, overlooking the whole town,

the harbor, and the seabeautiful views. Residences all along, set in the midst of green lawns with shrubs and

generally one or two intensely red outbursts of poinsettiathe flaming splotch of blinding red a stunning

contrast with the world of surrounding green. The cactus treecandelabrumlike; and one twisted like gray

writhing serpents. The "flatcrown" (should be flatroof) half a dozen naked branches full of elbows, slant

upward like artificial supports, and fling a roof of delicate foliage out in a horizontal platform as flat as a

floor; and you look up through this thin floor as through a green cobweb or veil. The branches are japanesich.

All about you is a bewildering variety of unfamiliar and beautiful trees; one sort wonderfully dense foliage

and very dark greenso dark that you notice it at once, notwithstanding there are so many orange trees. The

"flamboyant"not in flower, now, but when in flower lives up to its name, we are told. Another tree with a

lovely upright tassel scattered among its rich greenery, red and glowing as a firecoal. Here and there a

gumtree; half a dozen lofty Norfolk Island pines lifting their fronded arms skyward. Groups of tall bamboo.

Saw one bird. Not many birds here, and they have no musicand the flowers not much smell, they grow so

Everything neat and trim and clean like the town. The loveliest trees and the greatest variety I have ever seen

anywhere, except approaching Darjeeling. Have not heard anyone call Natal the garden of South Africa, but

It was when Bishop of Natal that Colenso raised such a storm in the religious world. The concerns of religion

are a vital matter here yet. A vigilant eye is kept upon Sunday. Museums and other dangerous resorts are not

allowed to be open. You may sail on the Bay, but it is wicked to play cricket. For a while a Sunday concert

was tolerated, upon condition that it must be admission free and the money taken by collection. But the

collection was alarmingly large and that stopped the matter. They are particular about babies. A clergyman

would not bury a child according to the sacred rites because it had not been baptized. The Hindoo is more

liberal. He burns no child under three, holding that it does not need purifying.

The King of the Zulus, a fine fellow of 30, was banished six years ago for a term of seven years. He is

occupying Napoleon's old standSt. Helena. The people are a little nervous about having him come back,

and they may well be, for Zulu kings have been terrible people sometimes like Tchaka, Dingaan, and

There is a large Trappist monastery two hours from Durban, over the country roads, and in company with Mr.

Milligan and Mr. Hunter, general manager of the Natal government railways, who knew the heads of it, we

There it all was, just as one reads about it in books and cannot believe that it is soI mean the rough, hard

work, the impossible hours, the scanty food, the coarse raiment, the Maryborough beds, the tabu of human

speech, of social intercourse, of relaxation, of amusement, of entertainment, of the presence of woman in the

men's establishment. There it all was. It was not a dream, it was not a lie. And yet with the fact before one's

face it was still incredible. It is such a sweeping suppression of human instincts, such an extinction of the

La Trappe must have known the human race well. The scheme which he invented hunts out everything that a

man wants and valuesand withholds it from him. Apparently there is no detail that can help make life

worth living that has not been carefully ascertained and placed out of the Trappist's reach. La Trappe must

have known that there were men who would enjoy this kind of misery, but how did he find it out?

If he had consulted you or me he would have been told that his scheme lacked too many attractions; that it

was impossible; that it could never be floated. But there in the monastery was proof that he knew the human

race better than it knew itself. He set his foot upon every desire that a man hasyet he floated his project,

and it has prospered for two hundred years, and will go on prospering forever, no doubt.

Man likes personal distinctionthere in the monastery it is obliterated. He likes delicious foodthere he

gets beans and bread and tea, and not enough of it. He likes to lie softlythere he lies on a sand mattress,

and has a pillow and a blanket, but no sheet. When he is dining, in a great company of friends, he likes to

laugh and chatthere a monk reads a holy book aloud during meals, and nobody speaks or laughs. When a

man has a hundred friends about him, evenings, be likes to have a good time and run latethere he and the

rest go silently to bed at 8; and in the dark, too; there is but a loose brown robe to discard, there are no

nightclothes to put on, a light is not needed. Man likes to lie abed late there he gets up once or twice in the

night to perform some religious office, and gets up finally for the day at two in the morning. Man likes light

work or none at allthere he labors all day in the field, or in the blacksmith shop or the other shops devoted

to the mechanical trades, such as shoemaking, saddlery, carpentry, and so on. Man likes the society of girls

and womenthere he never has it. He likes to have his children about him, and pet them and play with

them there he has none. He likes billiardsthere is no table there. He likes outdoor sports and indoor

dramatic and musical and social entertainmentsthere are none there. He likes to bet on thingsI was told

that betting is forbidden there. When a man's temper is up he likes to pour it out upon somebody there this is

not allowed. A man likes animalspets; there are none there. He likes to smokethere he cannot do it. He

likes to read the newsno papers or magazines come there. A man likes to know how his parents and

brothers and sisters are getting along when he is away, and if they miss himthere he cannot know. A man

likes a pretty house, and pretty furniture, and pretty things, and pretty colorsthere he has nothing but naked

aridity and sombre colors. A man likesname it yourself: whatever it is, it is absent from that place.

From what I could learn, all that a man gets for this is merely the saving of his soul.

It all seems strange, incredible, impossible. But La Trappe knew the race. He knew the powerful attraction of

unattractiveness; he knew that no life could be imagined, howsoever comfortless and forbidding, but

This parent establishment of Germans began its work fifteen years ago, strangers, poor, and unencouraged; it

owns 15,000 acres of land now, and raises grain and fruit, and makes wines, and manufactures all manner of

things, and has native apprentices in its shops, and sends them forth able to read and write, and also well

equipped to earn their living by their trades. And this young establishment has set up eleven branches in

South Africa, and in them they are christianizing and educating and teaching wageyielding mechanical

trades to 1,200 boys and girls. Protestant Missionary work is coldly regarded by the commercial white

colonist all over the heathen world, as a rule, and its product is nicknamed "riceChristians" (occupationless

incapables who join the church for revenue only), but I think it would be difficult to pick a flaw in the work

of these Catholic monks, and I believe that the disposition to attempt it has not shown itself.

Tuesday, May 12. Transvaal politics in a confused condition. First the sentencing of the Johannesburg

Reformers startled England by its severity; on the top of this came Kruger's exposure of the cipher

correspondence, which showed that the invasion of the Transvaal, with the design of seizing that country and

adding it to the British Empire, was planned by Cecil Rhodes and Beitwhich made a revulsion in English

feeling, and brought out a storm against Rhodes and the Chartered Company for degrading British honor. For

a good while I couldn't seem to get at a clear comprehension of it, it was so tangled. But at last by patient

study I have managed it, I believe. As I understand it, the Uitlanders and other Dutchmen were dissatisfied

because the English would not allow them to take any part in the government except to pay taxes. Next, as I

understand it, Dr. Kruger and Dr. Jameson, not having been able to make the medical business pay, made a

raid into Matabeleland with the intention of capturing the capital, Johannesburg, and holding the women and

children to ransom until the Uitlanders and the other Boers should grant to them and the Chartered Company

the political rights which had been withheld from them. They would have succeeded in this great scheme, as I

understand it, but for the interference of Cecil Rhodes and Mr. Beit, and other Chiefs of the Matabele, who

persuaded their countrymen to revolt and throw off their allegiance to Germany. This, in turn, as I understand

it, provoked the King of Abyssinia to destroy the Italian army and fall back upon Johannesburg; this at the

When I scribbled in my notebook a year ago the paragraph which ends the preceding chapter, it was meant

to indicate, in an extravagant form, two things: the conflicting nature of the information conveyed by the

citizen to the stranger concerning South African politics, and the resulting confusion created in the stranger's

But it does not seem so very extravagant now. Nothing could in that disturbed and excited time make South

African politics clear or quite rational to the citizen of the country because his personal interest and his

political prejudices were in his way; and nothing could make those politics clear or rational to the stranger,

I was in South Africa some little time. When I arrived there the political pot was boiling fiercely. Four

months previously, Jameson had plunged over the Transvaal border with about 600 armed horsemen at his

back, to go to the "relief of the women and children" of Johannesburg; on the fourth day of his march the

Boers had defeated him in battle, and carried him and his men to Pretoria, the capital, as prisoners; the Boer

government had turned Jameson and his officers over to the British government for trial, and shipped them to

England; next, it had arrested 64 important citizens of Johannesburg as raidconspirators, condemned their

four leaders to death, then commuted the sentences, and now the 64 were waiting, in jail, for further results.

Before midsummer they were all out excepting two, who refused to sign the petitions for release; 58 had been

fined $10,000 each and enlarged, and the four leaders had gotten off with fines of $125,000 each with

Those were wonderfully interesting days for a stranger, and I was glad. to be in the thick of the excitement.

Everybody was talking, and I expected to understand the whole of one side of it in a very little while.

I was disappointed. There were singularities, perplexities, unaccountabilities about it which I was not able to

master. I had no personal access to Boerstheir side was a secret to me, aside from what I was able to gather

of it from published statements. My sympathies were soon with the Reformers in the Pretoria jail, with their

friends, and with their cause. By diligent inquiry in Johannesburg I found out apparentlyall the details

of their side of the quarrel except onewhat they expected to accomplish by an armed rising.

The reason why the Reformers were discontented and wanted some changes made, seemed quite clear. In

Johannesburg it was claimed that the Uitlanders (strangers, foreigners) paid thirteenfifteenths of the

Transvaal taxes, yet got little or nothing for it. Their city had no charter; it had no municipal government; it

could levy no taxes for drainage, watersupply, paving, cleaning, sanitation, policing. There was a police

force, but it was composed of Boers, it was furnished by the State Government, and the city had no control

over it. Mining was very costly; the government enormously increased the cost by putting burdensome taxes

upon the mines, the output, the machinery, the buildings; by burdensome imposts upon incoming materials;

by burdensome railwayfreightcharges. Hardest of all to bear, the government reserved to itself a monopoly

in that essential thing, dynamite, and burdened it with an extravagant price. The detested Hollander from over

the water held all the public offices. The government was rank with corruption. The Uitlander had no vote,

and must live in the State ten or twelve years before he could get one. He was not represented in the Raad

(legislature) that oppressed him and fleeced him. Religion was not free. There were no schools where the

teaching was in English, yet the great majority of the white population of the State knew no tongue but that.

The State would not pass a liquor law; but allowed a great trade in cheap vile brandy among the blacks, with

the result that 25 per cent. of the 50,000 blacks employed in the mines were usually drunk and incapable of

Thereit was plain enough that the reasons for wanting some changes made were abundant and reasonable,

What they proposed to do was to secure these reforms by, prayer, petition, and persuasion.

They did petition. Also, they issued a Manifesto, whose very first note is a bugleblast of loyalty: "We want

Could anything be clearer than the Uitlander's statement of the grievances and oppressions under which they

were suffering? Could anything be more legal and citizenlike and lawrespecting than their attitude as

expressed by their Manifesto? No. Those things were perfectly clear, perfectly comprehensible.

But at this point the puzzles and riddles and confusions begin to flock in. You have arrived at a place which

For you find that as a preparation for this loyal, lawful, and in every way unexceptionable attempt to persuade

the government to right their grievances, the Uitlanders had smuggled a Maxim gun or two and 1,500

muskets into the town, concealed in oil tanks and coal cars, and had begun to form and drill military

What was their idea? Did they suppose that the Boers would attack them for petitioning, for redress? That

Did they suppose that the Boers would attack them even for issuing a Manifesto demanding relief under the

Yes, they apparently believed so, because the air was full of talk of forcing the government to grant redress if

The Reformers were men of high intelligence. If they were in earnest, they were taking extraordinary risks.

They had enormously valuable properties to defend; their town was full of women and children; their mines

and compounds were packed with thousands upon thousands of sturdy blacks. If the Boers attacked, the

mines would close, the blacks would swarm out and get drunk; riot and conflagration and the Boers together

might lose the Reformers more in a day, in money, blood, and suffering, than the desired political relief could

It is May, 1897, now; a year has gone by, and the confusions of that day have been to a considerable degree

cleared away. Mr. Cecil Rhodes, Dr. Jameson, and others responsible for the Raid, have testified before the

Parliamentary Committee of Inquiry in London, and so have Mr. Lionel Phillips and other Johannesburg

Reformers, monthlynurses of the Revolution which was born dead. These testimonies have thrown light.

"South Africa As It Is," by Mr. Statham, an able writer partial to the Boers; "The Story of an African Crisis,"

by Mr. Garrett, a brilliant writer partial to Rhodes; and "A Woman's Part in a Revolution," by Mrs. John Hays

Hammond, a vigorous and vivid diarist, partial to the Reformers. By liquifying the evidence of the prejudiced

books and of the prejudiced parliamentary witnesses and stirring the whole together and pouring it into my

own (prejudiced) moulds, I have got at the truth of that puzzling South African situation, which is this:

1. The capitalists and other chief men of Johannesburg were fretting under various political and financial

burdens imposed by the State (the South African Republic, sometimes called "the Transvaal") and desired to

2. Mr. Cecil Rhodes, Premier of the British Cape Colony, millionaire, creator and managing director of the

territoriallyimmense and financially unproductive South Africa Company; projector of vast schemes for the

unification and consolidation of all the South African States, one imposing commonwealth or empire under

the shadow and general protection of the British flag, thought he saw an opportunity to make profitable use of

the Uitlander discontent above mentionedmake the Johannesburg cat help pull out one of his consolidation

chestnuts for him. With this view he set himself the task of warming the lawful and legitimate petitions and

supplications of the Uitlanders into seditious talk, and their frettings into threateningsthe final outcome to

be revolt and armed rebellion. If he could bring about a bloody collision between those people and the Boer

government, Great Britain would have to interfere; her interference would be resisted by the Boers; she

would chastise them and add the Transvaal to her South African possessions. It was not a foolish idea, but a

After a couple of years of judicious plotting, Mr. Rhodes had his reward; the revolutionary kettle was briskly

boiling in Johannesburg, and the Uitlander leaders were backing their appeals to the governmentnow

hardened into demandsby threats of force and bloodshed. By the middle of December, 1895, the explosion

seemed imminent. Mr. Rhodes was diligently helping, from his distant post in Cape Town. He was helping to

procure arms for Johannesburg; he was also arranging to have Jameson break over the border and come to

Johannesburg with 600 mounted men at his back. Jamesonas per instructions from Rhodes,

perhapswanted a letter from the Reformers requesting him to come to their aid. It was a good idea. It

would throw a considerable share of the responsibility of his invasion upon the Reformers. He got the

letterthat famous one urging him to fly to the rescue of the women and children. He got it two months

before he flew. The Reformers seem to have thought it over and concluded that they had not done wisely; for

the next day after giving Jameson the implicating document they wanted to withdraw it and leave the women

and children in danger; but they were told that it was too late. The original had gone to Mr. Rhodes at the

From that time until the 29th of December, a good deal of the Reformers' time was taken up with energetic

efforts to keep Jameson from coming to their assistance. Jameson's invasion had been set for the 26th. The

Reformers were not ready. The town was not united. Some wanted a fight, some wanted peace; some wanted

a new government, some wanted the existing one reformed; apparently very few wanted the revolution to

take place in the interest and under the ultimate shelter of the Imperial flag British; yet a report began to

spread that Mr. Rhodes's embarrassing assistance had for its end this latter object.

Jameson was away up on the frontier tugging at his leash, fretting to burst over the border. By hard work the

Reformers got his startingdate postponed a little, and wanted to get it postponed eleven days. Apparently,

Rhodes's agents were seconding their effortsin fact wearing out the telegraph wires trying to hold him

back. Rhodes was himself the only man who could have effectively postponed Jameson, but that would have

been a disadvantage to his scheme; indeed, it could spoil his whole two years' work.

Jameson endured postponement three days, then resolved to wait no longer. Without any ordersexcepting

Mr. Rhodes's significant silencehe cut the telegraph wires on the 29th, and made his plunge that night, to

go to the rescue of the women and children, by urgent request of a letter now nine days oldas per date,a

couple of months old, in fact. He read the letter to his men, and it affected them. It did not affect all of them

alike. Some saw in it a piece of piracy of doubtful wisdom, and were sorry to find that they had been

assembled to violate friendly territory instead of to raid native kraals, as they had supposed.

Jameson would have to ride 150 miles. He knew that there were suspicions abroad in the Transvaal

concerning him, but he expected to get through to Johannesburg before they should become general and

obstructive. But a telegraph wire had been overlooked and not cut. It spread the news of his invasion far and

wide, and a few hours after his start the Boer farmers were riding hard from every direction to intercept him.

As soon as it was known in Johannesburg that he was on his way to rescue the women and children, the

grateful people put the women and children in a train and rushed them for Australia. In fact, the approach of

Johannesburg's saviour created panic and consternation; there, and a multitude of males of peaceable

disposition swept to the trains like a sandstorm. The early ones fared best; they secured seatsby sitting in

Mr. Rhodes lost no time. He cabled the renowned Johannesburg letter of invitation to the London pressthe

The new poet laureate lost no time. He came out with a rousing poem lauding Jameson's prompt and splendid

heroism in flying to the rescue of the women and children; for the poet could not know that he did not fly

until two months after the invitation. He was deceived by the false date of the letter, which was December

Jameson was intercepted by the Boers on New Year's Day, and on the next day he surrendered. He had

carried his copy of the letter along, and if his instructions required himin case of emergencyto see that it

fell into the hands of the Boers, he loyally carried them out. Mrs. Hammond gives him a sharp rap for his

supposed carelessness, and emphasizes her feeling about it with burning italics: "It was picked up on the

battle field in a leathern pouch, supposed to be Dr. Jameson's saddlebag. Why, in the name of all that is

She requires too much. He was not in the service of the Reformers excepting ostensibly; he was in the

service of Mr. Rhodes. It was the only plain English document, undarkened by ciphers and mysteries, and

responsibly signed and authenticated, which squarely implicated the Reformers in the raid, and it was not to

Mr. Rhodes's interest that it should be eaten. Besides, that letter was not the original, it was only a copy. Mr.

Rhodes had the originaland didn't eat it. He cabled it to the London press. It had already been read in

England and America and all over Europe before, Jameson dropped it on the battlefield. If the subordinate's

That letter is a juicily dramatic incident and is entitled to all its celebrity, because of the odd and variegated

effects which it produced. All within the space of a single week it had made Jameson an illustrious hero in

England, a pirate in Pretoria, and an ass without discretion or honor in Johannesburg; also it had produced a

poetlaureatic explosion of colored fireworks which filled the world's sky with giddy splendors, and, the

knowledge that Jameson was coming with it to rescue the women and children emptied Johannesburg of that

detail of the population. For an old letter, this was much. For a letter two months old, it did marvels; if it had

Those latter days were days of bitter worry and trouble for the harassed Reformers.

From Mrs. Hammond we learn that on the 31st (the day after Johannesburg heard of the invasion), "The

It also earnestly desires that the inhabitants shall refrain from overt acts against the Boer government.

It also "distributes arms" at the Court House, and furnishes horses "to the newlyenrolled volunteers."

It also brings a Transvaal flag into the committeeroom, and the entire body swear allegiance to it "with

Also, in a speech, Reformer Lionel Phillips informs the public that the Reform Committee Delegation has

"been received with courtesy by the Government Commission," and "been assured that their proposals shall

be earnestly considered." That "while the Reform Committee regretted Jameson's precipitate action, they

Also the populace are in a state of "wild enthusiasm," and 46 can scarcely be restrained; they want to go out

Also the British High Commissioner has issued a damnifying proclamation against Jameson and all British

It is a difficult position for the Reformers, and full of hindrances and perplexities. Their duty is hard, but

2. They have to swear allegiance to the Boer government, and distribute cavalry horses to the rebels.

3. They have to forbid overt acts against the Boer government, and distribute arms to its enemies.

4. They have to avoid collision with the British government, but still stand by Jameson and their new oath of

They did such of these things as they could; they tried to do them all; in fact, did do them all, but only in turn,

not simultaneously. In the nature of things they could not be made to simultane.

In preparing for armed revolution and in talking revolution, were the Reformers "bluffing," or were they in

earnest? If they were in earnest, they were taking great risksas has been already pointed out. A gentleman

of high position told me in Johannesburg that he had in his possession a printed document proclaiming a new

government and naming its presidentone of the Reform leaders. He said that this proclamation had been

ready for issue, but was suppressed when the raid collapsed. Perhaps I misunderstood him. Indeed, I must

have misunderstood him, for I have not seen mention of this large incident in print anywhere.

Besides, I hope I am mistaken; for, if I am, then there is argument that the Reformers were privately not

serious, but were only trying to scare the Boer government into granting the desired reforms.

The Boer government was scared, and it had a right to be. For if Mr. Rhodes's plan was to provoke a collision

that would compel the interference of England, that was a serious matter. If it could be shown that that was

also the Reformers' plan and purpose, it would prove that they had marked out a feasible project, at any rate,

although it was one which could hardly fail to cost them ruinously before England should arrive. But it seems

clear that they had no such plan nor desire. If, when the worst should come to the worst, they meant to

overthrow the government, they also meant to inherit the assets themselves, no doubt.

This scheme could hardly have succeeded. With an army of Boers at their gates and 50,000 riotous blacks in

their midst, the odds against success would have been too heavyeven if the whole town had been armed.

To me, the military problems of the situation are of more interest than the political ones, because by

disposition I have always been especially fond of war. No, I mean fond of discussing war; and fond of giving

military advice. If I had been with Jameson the morning after he started, I should have advised him to turn

back. That was Monday; it was then that he received his first warning from a Boer source not to violate the

friendly soil of the Transvaal. It showed that his invasion was known. If I had been with him on Tuesday

morning and afternoon, when he received further warnings, I should have repeated my advice. If I had been

with him the next morningNew Year'swhen he received notice that "a few hundred" Boers were waiting

for him a few miles ahead, I should not have advised, but commanded him to go back. And if I had been with

him two or three hours latera thing not conceivable to meI should have retired him by force; for at that

time he learned that the few hundred had now grown to 800; and that meant that the growing would go on

For,by authority of Mr. Garrett, one knows that Jameson's 600 were only 530 at most, when you count out

his native drivers, etc.; and that the 530 consisted largely of "green" youths, "raw young fellows," not trained

and warworn British soldiers; and I would have told. Jameson that those lads would not be able to shoot

effectively from horseback in the scamper and racket of battle, and that there would not be anything for them

to shoot at, anyway, but rocks; for the Boers would be behind the rocks, not out in the open. I would have

told him that 300 Boer sharpshooters behind rocks would be an overmatch for his 500 raw young fellows on

If pluck were the only thing essential to battlewinning, the English would lose no battles. But discretion, as

well as pluck, is required when one fights Boers and Red Indians. In South Africa the Briton has always

insisted upon standing bravely up, unsheltered, before the hidden Boer, and taking the results: Jameson's men

would follow the custom. Jameson would not have listened to mehe would have been intent upon

repeating history, according to precedent. Americans are not acquainted with the BritishBoer war of 1881;

but its history is interesting, and could have been instructive to Jameson if he had been receptive. I will cull

some details of it from trustworthy sources mainly from "Russell's Natal." Mr. Russell is not a Boer, but a

Briton. He is inspector of schools, and his history is a textbook whose purpose is the instruction of the Natal

After the seizure of the Transvaal and the suppression of the Boer government by England in 1877, the Boers

fretted for three years, and made several appeals to England for a restoration of their liberties, but without

result. Then they gathered themselves together in a great mass meeting at Krugersdorp, talked their troubles

over, and resolved to fight for their deliverance from the British yoke. (Krugersdorpthe place where the

Boers interrupted the Jameson raid.) The little handful of farmers rose against the strongest empire in the

world. They proclaimed martial law and the reestablishment of their Republic. They organized their forces

and sent them forward to intercept the British battalions. This, although Sir Garnet Wolseley had but lately

made proclamation that "so long as the sun shone in the heavens," the Transvaal would be and remain

English territory. And also in spite of the fact that the commander of the 94th regimentalready on the

march to suppress this rebellionhad been heard to say that "the Boers would turn tail at the first beat of the

big drum." ["South Africa As It Is," by F. Reginald Statham, page 82. London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1897.]

Four days after the flagraising, the Boer force which had been sent forward to forbid the invasion of the

English troops met them at Bronkhorst Spruit246 men of the 94th regiment, in command of a colonel, the

big drum beating, the band playingand the first battle was fought. It lasted ten minutes. Result:

British loss, more than 150 officers and men, out of the 246. Surrender of the remnant.

They are fine marksmen, the Boers. From the cradle up, they live on horseback and hunt wild animals with

the rifle. They have a passion for liberty and the Bible, and care for nothing else.

"General Sir George Colley, LieutenantGovernor and CommanderinChief in Natal, felt it his duty to

proceed at once to the relief of the loyalists and soldiers beleaguered in the different towns of the Transvaal."

He moved out with 1,000 men and some artillery. He found the Boers encamped in a strong and sheltered

position on high ground at Laing's Nekevery Boer behind a rock. Early in the morning of the 28th January,

1881, he moved to the attack "with the 58th regiment, commanded by Colonel Deane, a mounted squadron of

70 men, the 60th Rifles, the Naval Brigade with three rocket tubes, and the Artillery with six guns." He

shelled the Boers for twenty minutes, then the assault was delivered, the 58th marching up the slope in solid

Colonel Deane was killed, and apparently every officer above the grade of lieutenant was killed or wounded,

for the 58th retreated to its camp in command of a lieutenant. ("Africa as It Is.")

On the 7th of February General Colley discovered that the Boers were flanking his position. The next

morning he left his camp at Mount Pleasant and marched out and crossed the Ingogo river with 270 men,

started up the Ingogo heights, and there fought a battle which lasted from noon till nightfall. He then

retreated, leaving his wounded with his military chaplain, and in recrossing the now swollen river lost some

of his men by drowning. That was the third Boer victory. Result, according to Mr. Russell

There was a season of quiet, now, but at the end of about three weeks Sir George Colley conceived the idea

of climbing, with an infantry and artillery force, the steep and rugged mountain of Amajuba in the nighta

bitter hard task, but he accomplished it. On the way he left about 200 men to guard a strategic point, and took

about 400 up the mountain with him. When the sun rose in the morning, there was an unpleasant surprise for

the Boers; yonder were the English troops visible on top of the mountain two or three miles away, and now

their own position was at the mercy of the English artillery. The Boer chief resolved to retreatup that

The storming party crossed the swale and began to creep up the steeps, "and from behind rocks and bushes

they shot at the soldiers on the skyline as if they were stalking deer," says Mr. Russell. There was

"continuous musketry fire, steady and fatal on the one side, wild and ineffectual on the other." The Boers

reached the top, and began to put in their ruinous work. Presently the British "broke and fled for their lives

down the rugged steep." The Boers had won the battle. Result in killed and wounded, including among the

That ended the war. England listened to reason, and recognized the Boer Republica government which has

never been in any really awful danger since, until Jameson started after it with his 500 "raw young fellows."

The Boer farmers and British soldiers fought 4 battles, and the Boers won them all. Result of the 4, in killed

It is interesting, now, to note how loyally Jameson and his several trained British military officers tried to

make their battles conform to precedent. Mr. Garrett's account of the Raid is much the best one I have met

When Jameson learned that near Krugersdorp he would find 800 Boers waiting to dispute his passage, he was

not in the least disturbed. He was feeling as he had felt two or three days before, when he had opened his

campaign with a historic remark to the same purport as the one with which the commander of the 94th had

opened the BoerBritish war of fourteen years before. That Commander's remark was, that the Boers "would

turn tail at the first beat of the big drum." Jameson's was, that with his "raw young fellows" he could kick the

(persons) of the Boers "all round the Transvaal." He was keeping close to historic precedent.

Jameson arrived in the presence of the Boers. Theyaccording to precedentwere not visible. It was a

country of ridges, depressions, rocks, ditches, moraines of miningtailingsnot even as favorable for

cavalry work as Laing's Nek had been in the former disastrous days. Jameson shot at the ridges and rocks

with his artillery, just as General Colley had done at the Nek; and did them no damage and persuaded no Boer

to show himself. Then about a hundred of his men formed up to charge the ridgeaccording to the 58th's

precedent at the Nek; but as they dashed forward they opened out in a long line, which was a considerable

improvement on the 58th's tactics; when they had gotten to within 200 yards of the ridge the concealed Boers

opened out on them and emptied 20 saddles. The unwounded dismounted and fired at the rocks over the

backs of their horses; but the returnfire was too hot, and they mounted again, "and galloped back or crawled

away into a clump of reeds for cover, where they were shortly afterward taken prisoners as they lay among

the reeds. Some thirty prisoners were so taken, and during the night which followed the Boers carried away

another thirty killed and woundedthe wounded to Krugersdorp hospital. "Sixty per cent. of the assaulted

It was according to Amajuba precedent, where the British loss was 226 out of about 400 engaged.

Also, in Jameson's camp, that night, "there lay about 30 wounded or otherwise disabled" men. Also during

the night "some 30 or 40 young fellows got separated from the command and straggled through into

Johannesburg." Altogether a possible 150 men gone, out of his 530. His lads had fought valorously, but had

At dawn the next morning the column of something short of 400 whites resumed its march. Jameson's grit

was stubbornly good; indeed, it was always that. He still had hopes. There was a long and tedious zigzagging

march through broken ground, with constant harassment from the Boers; and at last the column "walked into

a sort of trap," and the Boers "closed in upon it." "Men and horses dropped on all sides. In the column the

feeling grew that unless it could burst through the Boer lines at this point it was done for. The Maxims were

fired until they grew too hot, and, water failing for the cool jacket, five of them jammed and went out of

action. The 7pounder was fired until only half an hour's ammunition was left to fire with. One last rush was

made, and failed, and then the Staats Artillery came up on the left flank, and the game was up."

There is a story, which may not be true, about an ignorant Boer farmer there who thought that this white flag

was the national flag of England. He had been at Bronkhorst, and Laing's Nek, and Ingogo and Amajuba, and

supposed that the English did not run up their flag excepting at the end of a fight.

The following is (as I understand it) Mr. Garrett's estimate of Jameson's total loss in killed and wounded for

"When they gave in they were minus some 20 per cent. of combatants. There were 76 casualties. There were

30 men hurt or sick in the wagons. There were 27 killed on the spot or mortally wounded."

Total, 133, out of the original 530. It is just 25 per cent. [However, I judge that the total was really 150; for

the number of wounded carried to Krugersdorp hospital was 53; not 30, as Mr. Garrett reports it. The lady

whose guest I was in Krugerdorp gave me the figures. She was head nurse from the beginning of hostilities

(Jan. 1) until the professional nurses arrived, Jan. 8th. Of the 53, "Three or four were Boers"; I quote her

words.] This is a large improvement upon the precedents established at Bronkhorst, Laing's Nek, Ingogo,

and Amajuba, and seems to indicate that Boer marksmanship is not so good now as it was in those days. But

there is one detail in which the Raidepisode exactly repeats history. By surrender at Bronkhorst, the whole

British force disappeared from the theater of war; this was the case with Jameson's force.

In the Boer loss, also, historical precedent is followed with sufficient fidelity. In the 4 battles named above,

the Boer loss, so far as known, was an average of 6 men per battle, to the British average loss of 175. In

Jameson's battles, as per Boer official report, the Boer loss in killed was 4. Two of these were killed by the

Boers themselves, by accident, the other by Jameson's armyone of them intentionally, the other by a

pathetic mischance. "A young Boer named Jacobz was moving forward to give a drink to one of the wounded

troopers (Jameson's) after the first charge, when another wounded man, mistaking his intention; shot him."

There were three or four wounded Boers in the Krugersdorp hospital, and apparently no others have been

reported. Mr. Garrett, "on a balance of probabilities, fully accepts the official version, and thanks Heaven the

As a military man, I wish to point out what seems to me to be military errors in the conduct of the campaign

which we have just been considering. I have seen active service in the field, and it was in the actualities of

war that I acquired my training and my right to speak. I served two weeks in the beginning of our Civil War,

and during all that tune commanded a battery of infantry composed of twelve men. General Grant knew the

history of my campaign, for I told it him. I also told him the principle upon which I had conducted it; which

was, to tire the enemy. I tired out and disqualified many battalions, yet never had a casualty myself nor lost a

man. General Grant was not given to paying compliments, yet he said frankly that if I had conducted the

whole war much bloodshed would have been spared, and that what the army might have lost through the

inspiriting results of collision in the field would have been amply made up by the liberalizing influences of

Let us now examine history, and see what it teaches. In the 4 battles fought in 1881 and the two fought by

Jameson, the British loss in killed, wounded, and prisoners, was substantially 1,300 men; the Boer loss, as far

as is ascertainable, eras about 30 men. These figures show that there was a defect somewhere. It was not in

the absence of courage. I think it lay in the absence of discretion. The Briton should have done one thing or

the other: discarded British methods and fought the Boer with Boer methods, or augmented his own force

untilusing British methodsit should be large enough to equalize results with the Boer.

To retain the British method requires certain things, determinable by arithmetic. If, for argument's sake, we

allow that the aggregate of 1,716 British soldiers engaged in the 4 early battles was opposed by the same

aggregate of Boers, we have this result: the British loss of 700 and the Boer loss of 23 argues that in order to

equalize results in future battles you must make the British force thirty times as strong as the Boer force. Mr.

Garrett shows that the Boer force immediately opposed to Jameson was 2,000, and that there were 6,000

more on hand by the evening of the second day. Arithmetic shows that in order to make himself the equal of

the 8,000 Boers, Jameson should have had 240,000 men, whereas he merely had 530 boys. From a military

point of view, backed by the facts of history, I conceive that Jameson's military judgment was at fault.

Another thing. Jameson was encumbered by artillery, ammunition, and rifles. The facts of the battle show

that he should have had none of those things along. They were heavy, they were in his way, they impeded his

march. There was nothing to shoot at but rockshe knew quite well that there would be nothing to shoot at

but rocksand he knew that artillery and rifles have no effect upon rocks. He was badly overloaded with

unessentials. He had 8 Maximsa Maxim is a kind of Gatling, I believe, and shoots about 500 bullets per

minute; he had one 12 1/2 pounder cannon and two 7pounders; also, 145,000 rounds of ammunition. He

worked the Maxims so hard upon the rocks that five of them became disabledfive of the Maxims, not the

rocks. It is believed that upwards of 100,000 rounds of ammunition of the various kinds were fired during the

21 hours that the battles lasted. One man killed. He must have been much mutilated. It was a pity to bring

those futile Maxims along. Jameson should have furnished himself with a battery of Pudd'nhead Wilson

maxims instead, They are much more deadly than those others, and they are easily carried, because they have

Mr. Garrettnot very carefully concealing a smileexcuses the presence of the Maxims by saying that they

were of very substantial use because their sputtering disordered the aim of the Boers, and in that way saved

Three cannon, eight Maxims, and five hundred rifles yielded a result which emphasized a fact which had

already been establishedthat the British system of standing out in the open to fight Boers who are behind

rocks is not wise, not excusable, and ought to be abandoned for something more efficacious. For the purpose

If I could get the management of one of those campaigns, I would know what to do, for I have studied the

Boer. He values the Bible above every other thing. The most delicious edible in South Africa is "biltong."

You will have seen it mentioned in Olive Schreiner's books. It is what our plainsmen call "jerked beef." It is

If I had the command of the campaign I would go with rifles only, no cumbersome Maxims and cannon to

spoil good rocks with. I would move surreptitiously by night to a point about a quarter of a mile from the

Boer camp, and there I would build up a pyramid of biltong and Bibles fifty feet high, and then conceal my

men all about. In the morning the Boers would send out spies, and then the rest would come with a rush. I

would surround them, and they would have to fight my men on equal terms, in the open. There wouldn't be

[Just as I am finishing this book an unfortunate dispute has sprung up between Dr. Jameson and his

officers, on the one hand, and Colonel Rhodes on the other, concerning the wording of a note which Colonel

Rhodes sent from Johannesburg by a cyclist to Jameson just before hostilities began on the memorable New

Year's Day. Some of the fragments of this note were found on the battlefield after the fight, and these have

been pieced together; the dispute is as to what words the lacking fragments contained. Jameson says the note

promised him a reinforcement of 300 men from Johannesburg. Colonel Rhodes denies this, and says he

It seems a pity that these friends should fall out over so little a thing. If the 300 had been sent, what good

would it have done? In 21 hours of industrious fighting, Jameson's 530 men, with 8 Maxims, 3 cannon, and

145,000 rounds of ammunition, killed an aggregate of 1. Boer. These statistics show that a reinforcement of

300 Johannesburgers, armed merely with muskets, would have killed, at the outside, only a little over a half

of another Boer. This would not have saved the day. It would not even have seriously affected the general

result. The figures show clearly, and with mathematical violence, that the only way to save Jameson, or even

give him a fair and equal chance with the enemy, was for Johannesburg to send him 240 Maxims, 90 cannon,

600 carloads of ammunition, and 240,000 men. Johannesburg was not in a position to do this. Johannesburg

has been called very hard names for not reinforcing Jameson. But in every instance this has been done by two

classes of personspeople who do not read history, and people, like Jameson, who do not understand what it

The Duke of Fife has borne testimony that Mr. Rhodes deceived him. That is also what Mr. Rhodes did with

the Reformers. He got them into trouble, and then stayed out himself. A judicious man. He has always been

that. As to this there was a moment of doubt, once. It was when he was out on his last pirating expedition in

the Matabele country. The cable shouted out that he had gone unarmed, to visit a party of hostile chiefs. It

was true, too; and this daredevil thing came near fetching another indiscretion out of the poet laureate. It

would have been too bad, for when the facts were all in, it turned out that there was a lady along, too, and she

In the opinion of many people Mr. Rhodes is South Africa; others think he is only a large part of it. These

latter consider that South Africa consists of Table Mountain, the diamond mines, the Johannesburg gold

fields, and Cecil Rhodes. The gold fields are wonderful in every way. In seven or eight years they built up, in

a desert, a city of a hundred thousand inhabitants, counting white and black together; and not the ordinary

mining city of wooden shanties, but a city made out of lasting material. Nowhere in the world is there such a

concentration of rich mines as at Johannesburg. Mr. Bonamici, my manager there, gave me a small gold brick

with some statistics engraved upon it which record the output of gold from the early days to July, 1895, and

exhibit the strides which have been made in the development of the industry; in 1888 the output was

$4,162,440; the output of the next five and a half years was (total' $17,585,894; for the single year ending

The capital which has developed the mines came from England, the mining engineers from America. This is

the case with the diamond mines also. South Africa seems to be the heaven of the American scientific mining

engineer. He gets the choicest places, and keeps them. His salary is not based upon what he would get in

The successful mines pay great dividends, yet the rock is not rich, from a Californian point of view. Rock

which yields ten or twelve dollars a ton is considered plenty rich enough. It is troubled with base metals to

such a degree that twenty years ago it would have been only about half as valuable as it is now; for at that

time there was no paying way of getting anything out of such rock but the coarsergrained "free"gold; but the

new cyanide process has changed all that, and the gold fields of the world now deliver up fifty million dollars'

worth of gold per year which would have gone into the tailingpile under the former conditions.

The cyanide process was new to me, and full of interest; and among the costly and elaborate mining

machinery there were fine things which were new to me, but I was already familiar with the rest of the details

of the goldmining industry. I had been a gold miner myself, in my day, and knew substantially everything

that those people knew about it, except how to make money at it. But I learned a good deal about the Boers

there, and that was a fresh subject. What I heard there was afterwards repeated to me in other parts of South

He is deeply religious, profoundly ignorant, dull, obstinate, bigoted, uncleanly in his habits, hospitable,

honest in his dealings with the whites, a hard master to his black servant, lazy, a good shot, good horseman,

addicted to the chase, a lover of political independence, a good husband and father, not fond of herding

together in towns, but liking the seclusion and remoteness and solitude and empty vastness and silence of the

veldt; a man of a mighty appetite, and not delicate about what he appeases it withwellsatisfied with pork

and Indian corn and biltong, requiring only that the quantity shall not be stinted; willing to ride a long journey

to take a hand in a rude allnight dance interspersed with vigorous feeding and boisterous jollity, but ready to

ride twice as far for a prayermeeting; proud of his Dutch and Huguenot origin and its religious and military

history; proud of his race's achievements in South Africa, its bold plunges into hostile and uncharted deserts

in search of free solitudes unvexed by the pestering and detested English, also its victories over the natives

and the British; proudest of all, of the direct and effusive personal interest which the Deity has always taken

in its affairs. He cannot read, he cannot write; he has one or two newspapers, but he is, apparently, not aware

of it; until latterly he had no schools, and taught his children nothing, news is a term which has no meaning to

him, and the thing itself he cares nothing about. He hates to be taxed and resents it. He has stood stock still in

South Africa for two centuries and a half, and would like to stand still till the end of time, for he has no

sympathy with Uitlander notions of progress. He is hungry to be rich, for he is human; but his preference has

been for riches in cattle, not in fine clothes and fine houses and gold and diamonds. The gold and the

diamonds have brought the godless stranger within his gates, also contamination and broken repose, and he

I think that the bulk of those details can be found in Olive Schreiner's books, and she would not be accused of

Now what would you expect from that unpromising material? What ought you to expect from it? Laws

inimical to religious liberty? Yes. Laws denying, representation and suffrage to the intruder? Yes. Laws

unfriendly to educational institutions? Yes. Laws obstructive of gold production? Yes. Discouragement of

railway expansion? Yes. Laws heavily taxing the intruder and overlooking the Boer? Yes.

The Uitlander seems to have expected something very different from all that. I do not know why. Nothing

different from it was rationally to be expected. A round man cannot be expected to fit a square hole right

away. He must have time to modify his shape. The modification had begun in a detail or two, before the Raid,

and was making some progress. It has made further progress since. There are wise men in the Boer

government, and that accounts for the modification; the modification of the Boer mass has probably not

begun yet. If the heads of the Boer government had not been wise men they would have hanged Jameson, and

thus turned a very commonplace pirate into a holy martyr. But even their wisdom has its limits, and they will

hang Mr. Rhodes if they ever catch him. That will round him and complete him and make him a saint. He has

already been called by all other titles that symbolize human grandeur, and he ought to rise to this one, the

grandest of all. It will be a dizzy jump from where he is now, but that is nothing, it will land him in good

Some of the things demanded by the Johannesburgers' Manifesto have been conceded since the days of the

Raid, and the others will follow in time, no doubt. It was most fortunate for the miners of Johannesburg that

the taxes which distressed them so much were levied by the Boer government, instead of by their friend

Rhodes and his Chartered Company of highwaymen, for these latter take half of whatever their mining

victims find, they do not stop at a mere percentage. If the Johannesburg miners were under their jurisdiction

I have been under the impression all along that I had an unpleasant paragraph about the Boers somewhere in

my notebook, and also a pleasant one. I have found them now. The unpleasant one is dated at an interior

"Mr. Z. called. He is an English Afrikander; is an old resident, and has a Boer wife. He speaks the language,

and his professional business is with the Boers exclusively. He told me that the ancient Boer families in the

great region of which this village is the commercial center are falling victims to their inherited indolence and

dullness in the materialistic latterday race and struggle, and are dropping one by one into the grip of the

usurergetting hopelessly in debtand are losing their high place and retiring to second and lower. The

Boer's farm does not go to another Boer when he loses it, but to a foreigner. Some have fallen so low that

Under date of another South African town I find the note which is creditable to the Boers:

"Dr. X. told me that in the Kafir war 1,500 Kafirs took refuge in a great cave in the mountains about 90 miles

north of Johannesburg, and the Boers blocked up the entrance and smoked them to death. Dr. X. has been in

there and seen the great array of bleached skeletonsone a woman with the skeleton of a child hugged to her

The great bulk of the savages must go. The white man wants their lands, and all must go excepting such

percentage of them as he will need to do his work for him upon terms to be determined by himself. Since

history has removed the element of guesswork from this matter and made it certainty, the humanest way of

diminishing the black population should be adopted, not the old cruel ways of the past. Mr. Rhodes and his

gang have been following the old ways. They are chartered to rob and slay, and they lawfully do it, but not

in a compassionate and Christian spirit. They rob the Mashonas and the Matabeles of a portion of their

territories in the hallowed old style of "purchase!" for a song, and then they force a quarrel and take the rest

by the strong hand. They rob the natives of their cattle under the pretext that all the cattle in the country

belonged to the king whom they have tricked and assassinated. They issue "regulations" requiring the

incensed and harassed natives to work for the white settlers, and neglect their own affairs to do it. This is

slavery, and is several times worse than was the American slavery which used to pain England so much; for

when this Rhodesian slave is sick, super annuated, or otherwise disabled, he must support himself or

The reduction of the population by Rhodesian methods to the desired limit is a return to the oldtime

slowmisery and lingeringdeath system of a discredited time and a crude "civilization." We humanely

reduce an overplus of dogs by swift chloroform; the Boer humanely reduced an overplus of blacks by swift

suffocation; the nameless but righthearted Australian pioneer humanely reduced his overplus of aboriginal

neighbors by a sweetened swift death concealed in a poisoned pudding. All these are admirable, and worthy

of praise; you and I would rather suffer either of these deaths thirty times over in thirty successive days than

linger out one of the Rhodesian twentyyear deaths, with its daily burden of insult, humiliation, and forced

labor for a man whose entire race the victim hates. Rhodesia is a happy name for that land of piracy and

Several long journeysgave us experience of the Cape Colony railways; easyriding, fine cars; all the

conveniences; thorough cleanliness; comfortable beds furnished for the night trains. It was in the first days of

June, and winter; the daytime was pleasant, the nighttime nice and cold. Spinning along all day in the cars it

was ecstasy to breathe the bracing air and gaze out over the vast brown solitudes of the velvet plains, soft and

lovely near by, still softer and lovelier further away, softest and loveliest of all in the remote distances, where

dim island hills seemed afloat, as in a seaa sea made of dreamstuff and flushed with colors faint and

rich; and dear me, the depth of the sky, and the beauty of the strange new cloudforms, and the glory of the

sunshine, the lavishness, the wastefulness of it! The vigor and freshness and inspiration of the air and the

To me the veldt, in its sober winter garb, was surpassingly beautiful. There were unlevel stretches where it

was rolling and swelling, and rising and subsiding, and sweeping superbly on and on, and still on and on like

an ocean, toward the faraway horizon, its pale brown deepening by delicately graduated shades to rich

orange, and finally to purple and crimson where it washed against the wooded hills and naked red crags at the

Everywhere, from Cape Town to Kimberley and from Kimberley to Port Elizabeth and East London, the

towns were well populated with tamed blacks; tamed and Christianized too, I suppose, for they wore the

dowdy clothes of our Christian civilization. But for that, many of them would have been remarkably

handsome. These fiendish clothes, together with the proper lounging gait, goodnatured face, happy air, and

easy laugh, made them precise counterparts of our American blacks; often where all the other aspects were

strikingly and harmoniously and thrillingly African, a flock of these natives would intrude, looking wholly

out of place, and spoil it all, making the thing a grating discord, half African and half American.

One Sunday in King William's Town a score of colored women came mincing across the great barren square

dressedoh, in the last perfection of fashion, and newness, and expensiveness, and showy mixture of

unrelated colors,all just as I had seen it so often at home; and in their faces and their gait was that

languishing, aristocratic, divine delight in their finery which was so familiar to me, and had always been such

a satisfaction to my eye and my heart. I seemed among old, old friends; friends of fifty years, and I stopped

and cordially greeted them. They broke into a goodfellowship laugh, flashing their white teeth upon me, and

all answered at once. I did not understand a word they said. I was astonished; I was not dreaming that they

The voices, too, of the African women, were familiar to me sweet and musical, just like those of the slave

women of my early days. I followed a couple of them all over the Orange Free Stateno, over its capital

Bloemfontein, to hear their liquid voices and the happy ripple of their laughter. Their language was a large

improvement upon American. Also upon the Zulu. It had no Zulu clicks in it; and it seemed to have no angles

or corners, no roughness, no vile s's or other hissing sounds, but was very, very mellow and rounded and

In moving about the country in the trains, I had opportunity to see a good many Boers of the veldt. One day at

Their clothes were very interesting. For ugliness of shapes, and for miracles of ugly colors inharmoniously

associated, they were a record. The effect was nearly as exciting and interesting as that produced by the

brilliant and beautiful clothes and perfect taste always on view at the Indian railway stations. One man had

corduroy trousers of a faded chewing gum tint. And they were newshowing that this tint did not come by

calamity, but was intentional; the very ugliest color I have ever seen. A gaunt, shackly country lout six feet

high, in battered gray slouched hat with wide brim, and old resincolored breeches, had on a hideous

brandnew woolen coat which was imitation tiger skin wavy broad stripes of dazzling yellow and deep

brown. I thought he ought to be hanged, and asked the stationmaster if it could be arranged. He said no; and

not only that, but said it rudely; said it with a quite unnecessary show of feeling. Then he muttered something

about my being a jackass, and walked away and pointed me out to people, and did everything he could to turn

In the train that day a passenger told me some more about Boer life out in the lonely veldt. He said the Boer

gets up early and sets his "niggers" at their tasks (pasturing the cattle, and watching them); eats, smokes,

drowses, sleeps; toward evening superintends the milking, etc.; eats, smokes, drowses; goes to bed at early

candlelight in the fragrant clothes he (and she) have worn all day and every weekday for years. I remember

that last detail, in Olive Schreiner's "Story of an African Farm." And the passenger told me that the Boers

were justly noted for their hospitality. He told me a story about it. He said that his grace the Bishop of a

certain See was once making a businessprogress through the tavernless veldt, and one night he stopped with

a Boer; after supper was shown to bed; he undressed, weary and worn out, and was soon sound asleep; in the

night he woke up feeling crowded and suffocated, and found the old Boer and his fat wife in bed with him,

one on each side, with all their clothes on, and snoring. He had to stay there and stand itawake and

sufferinguntil toward dawn, when sleep again fell upon him for an hour. Then he woke again. The Boer

Those Reformers detested that Boer prison; they were not used to cramped quarters and tedious hours, and

weary idleness, and early to bed, and limited movement, and arbitrary and irritating rules, and the absence of

the luxuries which wealth comforts the day and the night with. The confinement told upon their bodies and

their spirits; still, they were superior men, and they made the best that was to be made of the circumstances.

Their wives smuggled delicacies to them, which helped to smooth the way down for the prison fare.

In the train Mr. B. told me that the Boer jailguards treated the black prisonerseven political

onesmercilessly. An African chief and his following had been kept there nine months without trial, and

during all that time they had been without shelter from rain and sun. He said that one day the guards put a big

black in the stocks for dashing his soup on the ground; they stretched his legs painfully wide apart, and set

him with his back down hill; he could not endure it, and put back his hands upon the slope for a support. The

guard ordered him to withdraw the support and kicked him in the back. "Then," said Mr. B., "'the powerful

black wrenched the stocks asunder and went for the guard; a Reform prisoner pulled him off, and thrashed the

There isn't a Parallel of Latitude but thinks it would have been the Equator if it had had its rights.

Next to Mr. Rhodes, to me the most interesting convulsion of nature in South Africa was the diamondcrater.

The Rand gold fields are a stupendous marvel, and they make all other gold fields small, but I was not a

stranger to goldmining; the veldt was a noble thing to see, but it was only another and lovelier variety of our

Great Plains; the natives were very far from being uninteresting, but they were not new; and as for the towns,

I could find my way without a guide through the most of them because I had learned the streets, under other

names, in towns just like them in other lands; but the diamond mine was a wholly fresh thing, a splendid and

absorbing novelty. Very few people in the world have seen the diamond in its home. It has but three or four

homes in the world, whereas gold has a million. It is worth while to journey around the globe to see anything

which can truthfully be called a novelty, and the diamond mine is the greatest and most select and restricted

The Kimberley diamond deposits were discovered about 1869, I think. When everything is taken into

consideration, the wonder is that they were not discovered five thousand years ago and made familiar to the

African world for the rest of time. For this reason the first diamonds were found on the surface of the ground.

They were smooth and limpid, and in the sunlight they vomited fire. They were the very things which an

African savage of any era would value above every other thing in the world excepting a glass bead. For two

or three centuries we have been buying his lands, his cattle, his neighbor, and any other thing he had for sale,

for glass beads and so it is strange that he was indifferent to the diamondsfor he must have pickets them up

many and many a time. It would not occur to him to try to sell them to whites, of course, since the whites

already had plenty of glass beads, and more fashionably shaped, too, than these; but one would think that the

poorer sort of black, who could not afford real glass, would have been humbly content to decorate himself

with the imitation, and that presently the white trader would notice the things, and dimly suspect, and carry

some of them home, and find out what they were, and at once empty a multitude of fortune hunters into

Africa. There are many strange things in human history; one of the strangest is that the sparkling diamonds

The revelation came at last by accident. In a Boer's hut out in the wide solitude of the plains, a traveling

stranger noticed a child playing with a bright object, and was told it was a piece of glass which had been

found in the veldt. The stranger bought it for a trifle and carried it away; and being without honor, made

another stranger believe it was a diamond, and so got $125 out of him for it, and was as pleased with himself

as if he had done a righteous thing. In Paris the wronged stranger sold it to a pawnshop for $10,000, who sold

it to a countess for $90,000, who sold it to a brewer for $800;000, who traded it to a king for a dukedom and a

pedigree, and the king "put it up the spout." [handwritten note: "From the Greek meaning 'pawned it.'

The news flew around, and the South African diamondboom began. The original travelerthe dishonest

onenow remembered that he had once seen a Boer teamster chocking his wagonwheel on a steep grade

with a diamond as large as a football, and he laid aside his occupations and started out to hunt for it, but not

with the intention of cheating anybody out of $125 with it, for he had reformed.

We now come to matters more didactic. Diamonds are not imbedded in rock ledges fifty miles long, like the

Johannesburg gold, but are distributed through the rubbish of a filledup well, so to speak. The well is rich,

its walls are sharply defined; outside of the walls are no diamonds. The well is a crater, and a large one.

Before it had been meddled with, its surface was even with the level plain, and there was no sign to suggest

that it was there. The pasturage covering the surface of the Kimberley crater was sufficient for the support of

a cow, and the pasturage underneath was sufficient for the support of a kingdom; but the cow did not know it,

The Kimberley crater is roomy enough to admit the Roman Coliseum; the bottom of the crater has not been

reached, and no one can tell how far down in the bowels of the earth it goes. Originally, it was a

perpendicular hole packed solidly full of blue rock or cement, and scattered through that blue mass, like

raisins in a pudding, were the diamonds. As deep down in the earth as the blue stuff extends, so deep will the

There are three or four other celebrated craters near by a circle three miles in diameter would enclose them

all. They are owned by the De Beers Company, a consolidation of diamond properties arranged by Mr.

Rhodes twelve or fourteen years ago. The De Beers owns other craters; they are under the grass, but the De

Beers knows where they are, and will open them some day, if the market should require it.

Originally, the diamond deposits were the property of the Orange Free State; but a judicious "rectification" of

the boundary line shifted them over into the British territory of Cape Colony. A high official of the Free State

told me that the sum of $4,00,000 was handed to his commonwealth as a compromise, or indemnity, or

something of the sort, and that he thought his commonwealth did wisely to take the money and keep out of a

dispute, since the power was all on the one side and the weakness all on the other. The De Beers Company

dig out $400,000 worth of diamonds per week, now. The Cape got the territory, but no profit; for Mr. Rhodes

and the Rothschilds and the other De Beers people own the mines, and they pay no taxes.

In our day the mines are worked upon scientific principles, under the guidance of the ablest

miningengineering talent procurable in America. There are elaborate works for reducing the blue rock and

passing it through one process after another until every diamond it contains has been hunted down and

secured. I watched the "concentrators" at work big tanks containing mud and water and invisible

diamondsand was told that each could stir and churn and properly treat 300 carloads of mud per day

1,600 pounds to the carloadand reduce it to 3 carloads of slush. I saw the 3 carloads of slush taken to the

"pulsators" and there reduced to quarter of a load of nice clean darkcolored sand. Then I followed it to the

sorting tables and saw the men deftly and swiftly spread it out and brush it about and seize the diamonds as

they showed up. I assisted, and once I found a diamond half as large as an almond. It is an exciting kind of

fishing, and you feel a fine thrill of pleasure every time you detect the glow of one of those limpid pebbles

through the veil of dark sand. I would like to spend my Saturday holidays in that charming sport every now

and then. Of course there are disappointments. Sometimes you find a diamond which is not a diamond; it is

only a quartz crystal or some such worthless thing. The expert can generally distinguish it from the precious

stone which it is counterfeiting; but if he is in doubt he lays it on a flatiron and hits it with a sledgehammer. If

it is a diamond it holds its own; if it is anything else, it is reduced to powder. I liked that experiment very

much, and did not tire of repetitions of it. It was full of enjoyable apprehensions, unmarred by any personal

sense of risk. The De Beers concern treats 8;000 carloads about 6,000 tonsof blue rock per day, and the

result is three pounds of diamonds. Value, uncut, $50,000 to $70,000. After cutting, they will weigh

considerably less than a pound, but will be worth four or five times as much as they were before.

All the plain around that region is spread over, a foot deep, with blue rock, placed there by the Company, and

looks like a plowed field. Exposure for a length of time make the rock easier to work than it is when it comes

out of the mine. If mining should cease now, the supply of rock spread over those fields would furnish the

usual 8,000 carloads per day to the separating works during three years. The fields are fenced and watched;

and at night they are under the constant inspection of lofty electric searchlight. They contain fifty or sixty

million dollars' worth' of diamonds, and there is an abundance of enterprising thieves around.

In the dirt of the Kimberley streets there is much hidden wealth. Some time ago the people were granted the

privilege of a free washup. There was a general rush, the work was done with thoroughness, and a good

The deep mining is done by natives. There are many hundreds of them. They live in quarters built around the

inside of a great compound. They are a jolly and goodnatured lot, and accommodating. They performed a

wardance for us, which was the wildest exhibition I have ever seen. They are not allowed outside of the

compound during their term of service three months, I think it, is, as a rule. They go down the shaft, stand

their watch, come up again, are searched, and go to bed or to their amusements in the compound; and this

It is thought that they do not now steal many diamonds successfully. They used to swallow them, and find

other ways of concealing them, but the white man found ways of beating their various games. One man cut

his leg and shoved a diamond into the wound, but even that project did not succeed. When they find a fine

large diamond they are more likely to report it than to steal it, for in the former case they get a reward, and in

the latter they are quite apt to merely get into trouble. Some years ago, in a mine not owned by the De Beers,

a black found what has been claimed to be the largest diamond known to the world's history; and, as a reward

he was released from service and given a blanket, a horse, and five hundred dollars. It made him a Vanderbilt.

He could buy four wives, and have money left. Four wives are an ample support for a native. With four wives

That great diamond weighs 97l carats. Some say it is as big as a piece of alum, others say it is as large as a

bite of rock candy, but the best authorities agree that it is almost exactly the size of a chunk of ice. But those

details are not important; and in my opinion not trustworthy. It has a flaw in it, otherwise it would be of

incredible value. As it is, it is held to be worth $2,000,000. After cutting it ought to be worth from $5,000,000

to $8,000,000, therefore persons desiring to save money should buy it now. It is owned by a syndicate, and

apparently there is no satisfactory market for it. It is earning nothing; it is eating its head off. Up to this time

He found it in a mine which was being worked by contract. That is to say, a company had bought the

privilege of taking from the mine 5,000,000 carloads of bluerock, for a sum down and a royalty. Their

speculation had not paid; but on the very day that their privilege ran out that native found the

$2,000,000diamond and handed it over to them. Even the diamond culture is not without its romantic

The KohiNoor is a large diamond, and valuable; but it cannot compete in these matters with three

whichaccording to legendare among the crown trinkets of Portugal and Russia. One of these is held to

be worth $20,000,000; another, $25,000,000, and the third something over $28,000,000.

Those are truly wonderful diamonds, whether they exist or not; and yet they are of but little importance by

comparison with the one wherewith the Boer wagoner chocked his wheel on that steep grade as heretofore

referred to. In Kimberley I had some conversation with the man who saw the Boer do thatan incident

which had occurred twentyseven or twenty eight years before I had my talk with him. He assured me that

that diamond's value could have been over a billion dollars, but not under it. I believed him, because he had

A fitting and interesting finish to an examination of the tedious and laborious and costly processes whereby

the diamonds are gotten out of the deeps of the earth and freed from the base stuffs which imprison them is

the visit to the De Beers offices in the town of Kimberley, where the result of each day's mining is brought

every day, and, weighed, assorted, valued, and deposited in safes against shippingday. An unknown and

unaccredited person cannot, get into that place; and it seemed apparent from the generous supply of warning

and protective and prohibitory signs that were posted all about, that not even the known and accredited can

We saw the day's outputshining little nests of diamonds, distributed a foot apart, along a counter, each nest

reposing upon a sheet of white paper. That day's catch was about $70,000 worth. In the course of a year half a

ton of diamonds pass under the scales there and sleep on that counter; the resulting money is $18,000,000 or

Young girls were doing the sortinga nice, clean, dainty, and probably distressing employment. Every day

ducal incomes sift and sparkle through the fingers of those young girls; yet they go to bed at night as poor as

they were when they got up in the morning. The same thing next day, and all the days.

They are beautiful things, those diamonds, in their native state. They are of various shapes; they have flat

surfaces, rounded borders, and never a sharp edge. They are of all colors and shades of color, from dewdrop

white to actual black; and their smooth and rounded surfaces and contours, variety of color, and transparent

limpidity make them look like piles of assorted candies. A very light straw color is their commonest tint. It

seemed to me that these uncut gems must be more beautiful than any cut ones could be; but when a collection

of cut ones was brought out, I saw my mistake. Nothing is so beautiful as a rose diamond with the light

playing through it, except that uncostly thing which is just like itwavy seawater with the sunlight playing

Before the middle of July we reached Cape Town, and the end of our African journeyings. And well satisfied;

for, towering above us was Table Mountaina reminder that we had now seen each and all of the great

features of South Africa except Mr. Cecil Rhodes. I realize that that is a large exception. I know quite well

that whether Mr. Rhodes is the lofty and worshipful patriot and statesman that multitudes believe him to be,

or Satan come again, as the rest of the world account him, he is still the most imposing figure in the British

empire outside of England. When he stands on the Cape of Good Hope, his shadow falls to the Zambesi. He

is the only colonial in the British dominions whose goings and comings are chronicled and discussed under

all the globe's meridians, and whose speeches, unclipped, are cabled from the ends of the earth; and he is the

only unroyal outsider whose arrival in London can compete for attention with an eclipse.

That he is an extraordinary man, and not an accident of fortune, not even his dearest South African enemies

were willing to deny, so far as I heard them testify. The whole South African world seemed to stand in a kind

of shuddering awe of him, friend and enemy alike. It was as if he were deputyGod on the one side,

deputySatan on the other, proprietor of the people, able to make them or ruin them by his breath, worshiped

by many, hated by many, but blasphemed by none among the judicious, and even by the indiscreet in guarded

What is the secret of his formidable supremacy? One says it is his prodigious wealtha wealth whose

drippings in salaries and in other ways support multitudes and make them his interested and loyal vassals;

another says it is his personal magnetism and his persuasive tongue, and that these hypnotize and make happy

slaves of all that drift within the circle of their influence; another says it is his majestic ideas, his vast

schemes for the territorial aggrandizement of England, his patriotic and unselfish ambition to spread her

beneficent protection and her just rule over the pagan wastes of Africa and make luminous the African

darkness with the glory of her name; and another says he wants the earth and wants it for his own, and that

the belief that he will get it and let his friends in on the ground floor is the secret that rivets so many eyes

One may take his choice. They are all the same price. One fact is sure: he keeps his prominence and a vast

following, no matter what he does. He "deceives" the Duke of Fifeit is the Duke's wordbut that does not

destroy the Duke's loyalty to him. He tricks the Reformers into immense trouble with his Raid, but the most

of them believe he meant well. He weeps over the harshlytaxed Johannesburgers and makes them his

friends; at the same time he taxes his Chartersettlers 50 per cent., and so wins their affection and their

confidence that they are squelched with despair at every rumor that the Charter is to be annulled. He raids and

robs and slays and enslaves the Matabele and gets worlds of CharterChristian applause for it. He has

beguiled England into buying Charter waste paper for Bank of England notes, ton for ton, and the ravished

still burn incense to him as the Eventual God of Plenty. He has done everything he could think of to pull

himself down to the ground; he has done more than enough to pull sixteen commonrun great men down; yet

there he stands, to this day, upon his dizzy summit under the dome of the sky, an apparent permanency, the

marvel of the time, the mystery of the age, an Archangel with wings to half the world, Satan with a tail to the

I admire him, I frankly confess it; and when his time comes I shall buy a piece of the rope for a keepsake.

I saw Table Rock, anywaya majestic pile. It is 3,000 feet high. It is also 17,000 feet high. These figures

may be relied upon. I got them in Cape Town from the two bestinformed citizens, men who had made Table

Rock the study of their lives. And I saw Table Bay, so named for its levelness. I saw the Castlebuilt by the

Dutch East India Company three hundred years agowhere the Commanding General lives; I saw St.

Simon's Bay, where the Admiral lives. I saw the Government, also the Parliament, where they quarreled in

two languages when I was there, and agreed in none. I saw the club. I saw and explored the beautiful seagirt

drives that wind about the mountains and through the paradise where the villas are: Also I saw some of the

fine old Dutch mansions, pleasant homes of the early times, pleasant homes today, and enjoyed the privilege

And just before I sailed I saw in one of them a quaint old picture which was a link in a curious romancea

picture of a pale, intellectual young man in a pink coat with a high black collar. It was a portrait of Dr. James

Barry, a military surgeon who came out to the Cape fifty years ago with his regiment. He was a wild young

fellow, and was guilty of various kinds of misbehavior. He was several times reported to headquarters in

England, and it was in each case expected that orders would come out to deal with him promptly and

severely, but for some mysterious reason no orders of any kind ever came backnothing came but just an

Next, he was promotedaway up. He was made Medical Superintendent General, and transferred to India.

Presently he was back at the Cape again and at his escapades once more. There were plenty of pretty girls,

but none of them caught him, none of them could get hold of his heart; evidently he was not a marrying man.

And that was another marvel, another puzzle, and made no end of perplexed talk. Once he was called in the

night, an obstetric service, to do what he could for a woman who was believed to be dying. He was prompt

and scientific, and saved both mother and child. There are other instances of record which testify to his

mastership of his profession; and many which testify to his love of it and his devotion to it. Among other

adventures of his was a duel of a desperate sort, fought with swords, at the Castle. He killed his man.

The child heretofore mentioned as having been saved by Dr. Barry so long ago, was named for him, and still

lives in Cape Town. He had Dr. Barry's portrait painted, and gave it to the gentleman in whose old Dutch

The story seems to be arriving nowhere. But that is because I have not finished. Dr. Barry died in Cape Town

The legend goes that enquiriessoon silenceddeveloped the fact that she was a daughter of a great

English house, and that that was why her Cape wildnesses brought no punishment and got no notice when

reported to the government at home. Her name was an alias. She had disgraced herself with her people; so she

We sailed on the 15th of July in the Norman, a beautiful ship, perfectly appointed. The voyage to England

occupied a short fortnight, without a stop except at Madeira. A good and restful voyage for tired people, and

there were several of us. I seemed to have been lecturing a thousand years, though it was only a twelvemonth,

and a considerable number of the others were Reformers who were fagged out with their five months of

Our trip around the earth ended at the Southampton pier, where we embarked thirteen months before. It

seemed a fine and large thing to have accomplishedthe circumnavigation of this great globe in that little

time, and I was privately proud of it. For a moment. Then came one of those vanitysnubbing astronomical

reports from the Observatory people, whereby it appeared that another great body of light had lately flamed

up in the remotenesses of space which was traveling at a gait which would enable it to do all that I had done

in a minute and a half. Human pride is not worth while; there is always something lying in wait to take the