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-<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
- <head>
- <meta name="generator" content="HTML-Kit Tools HTML Tidy plugin" />
- <title>
- FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR, COMPLETE
- </title>
- <style type="text/css" xml:space="preserve">
-
- body {background:#faebd7; margin:5%; text-align:justify}
- P { text-indent: 1em;
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- <body>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
-
-The Project Gutenberg EBook of Following the Equator, Complete
-by Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)
-
-This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
-almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
-re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
-with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net
-
-
-Title: Following the Equator, Complete
-
-Author: Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)
-
-Release Date: August 18, 2006 [EBook #2895]
-Last Updated: October 18, 2012
-
-Language: English
-
-Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
-
-*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR, COMPLETE ***
-
-
-
-
-Produced by David Widger
-
-
-
-
-
-</pre>
- <p>
- <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <h1>
- FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR
- </h1>
- <p>
- <br />
- </p>
- <div class="boxnote">
- <i> <a
- href="http://www.gutenberg.org/files/2895/old/orig2895-h/main.htm"> LINK
- TO THE ORIGINAL HTML FILE: This Ebook Has Been Reformatted For Better
- Appearance In Mobile Viewers Such As Kindles And Others. The Original
- Format, Which The Editor Believes Has A More Attractive Appearance For
- Laptops And Other Computers, May Be Viewed By Clicking On This Box.</a>
- </i>
- </div>
- <p>
- <br /><br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <h2>
- A JOURNEY AROUND THE WORLD
- </h2>
- <h2>
- BY
- </h2>
- <h2>
- MARK TWAIN
- </h2>
- <p>
- <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <h3>
- SAMUEL L. CLEMENS
- </h3>
- <h3>
- HARTFORD, CONNECTICUT
- </h3>
- <p>
- <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
- <img alt="bookcover.jpg (131K)" src="images/cover.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
- </div>
- <p>
- <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
- <img alt="bookspine.jpg (70K)" src="images/bookspine.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
- </div>
- <p>
- <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
- <img alt="booktitle.jpg (53K)" src="images/booktitle.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
- </div>
- <p>
- <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
- <img alt="bookfront.jpg (50K)" src="images/bookfront.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
- </div>
- <p>
- <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
- <img alt="bookdedicate.jpg (13K)" src="images/bookdedicate.jpg"
- width="100%" /><br />
- </div>
- <p>
- <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
- <img alt="bookmaxim.jpg (16K)" src="images/bookmaxim.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
- </div>
- <p>
- <br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <h2>
- CONTENTS
- </h2>
- <h3>
- <a href="#ch1">CHAPTER I.</a>
- </h3>
- <p>
- The Party&mdash;Across America to Vancouver&mdash;On Board the Warrimo&mdash;Steamer
- Chairs&mdash;The Captain&mdash;Going Home under a Cloud&mdash;A Gritty
- Purser&mdash;The Brightest Passenger&mdash;Remedy for Bad Habits&mdash;The
- Doctor and the Lumbago&mdash;A Moral Pauper&mdash;Limited Smoking&mdash;Remittance-men.<br />
- <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <h3>
- <a href="#ch2">CHAPTER II.</a>
- </h3>
- <p>
- Change of Costume&mdash;Fish, Snake, and Boomerang Stories&mdash;Tests of
- Memory&mdash;A Brahmin Expert&mdash;General Grant's Memory&mdash;A
- Delicately Improper Tale<br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <h3>
- <a href="#ch3">CHAPTER III.</a>
- </h3>
- <p>
- Honolulu&mdash;Reminiscences of the Sandwich Islands&mdash;King Liholiho
- and His Royal Equipment&mdash;The Tabu&mdash;The Population of the Island&mdash;A
- Kanaka Diver&mdash;Cholera at Honolulu&mdash;Honolulu; Past and Present&mdash;The
- Leper Colony<br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <h3>
- <a href="#ch6">CHAPTER IV.</a>
- </h3>
- <p>
- Leaving Honolulu&mdash;Flying-fish&mdash;Approaching the Equator&mdash;Why
- the Ship Went Slow&mdash;The Front Yard of the Ship&mdash;Crossing the
- Equator&mdash;Horse Billiards or Shovel Board&mdash;The Waterbury Watch&mdash;Washing
- Decks&mdash;Ship Painters&mdash;The Great Meridian&mdash;The Loss of a Day&mdash;A
- Babe without a Birthday<br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <h3>
- <a href="#ch5">CHAPTER V.</a>
- </h3>
- <p>
- A lesson in Pronunciation&mdash;Reverence for Robert Burns&mdash;The
- Southern Cross&mdash;Troublesome Constellations&mdash;Victoria for a Name&mdash;Islands
- on the Map&mdash;Alofa and Fortuna&mdash;Recruiting for the Queensland
- Plantations&mdash;Captain Warren's NoteBook&mdash;Recruiting not
- thoroughly Popular<br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <h3>
- <a href="#ch6">CHAPTER VI.</a>
- </h3>
- <p>
- Missionaries Obstruct Business&mdash;The Sugar Planter and the Kanaka&mdash;The
- Planter's View&mdash;Civilizing the Kanaka&mdash;The Missionary's View&mdash;The
- Result&mdash;Repentant Kanakas&mdash;Wrinkles&mdash;The Death Rate in
- Queensland<br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <h3>
- <a href="#ch7">CHAPTER VII.</a>
- </h3>
- <p>
- The Fiji Islands&mdash;Suva&mdash;The Ship from Duluth&mdash;Going Ashore&mdash;Midwinter
- in Fiji&mdash;Seeing the Governor&mdash;Why Fiji was Ceded to England&mdash;Old
- time Fijians&mdash;Convicts among the Fijians&mdash;A Case Where Marriage
- was a Failure&mdash;Immortality with Limitations<br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <h3>
- <a href="#ch8">CHAPTER VIII.</a>
- </h3>
- <p>
- A Wilderness of Islands&mdash;Two Men without a Country&mdash;A Naturalist
- from New Zealand&mdash;The Fauna of Australasia&mdash;Animals, Insects,
- and Birds&mdash;The Ornithorhynchus&mdash;Poetry and Plagiarism<br /> <br />
- <br />
- </p>
- <h3>
- <a href="#ch9">CHAPTER IX.</a>
- </h3>
- <p>
- Close to Australia&mdash;Porpoises at Night&mdash;Entrance to Sydney
- Harbor&mdash;The Loss of the Duncan Dunbar&mdash;The Harbor&mdash;The City
- of Sydney&mdash;Spring-time in Australia&mdash;The Climate&mdash;Information
- for Travelers&mdash;The Size of Australia&mdash;A Dust-Storm and Hot Wind<br />
- <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <h3>
- <a href="#ch10">CHAPTER X.</a>
- </h3>
- <p>
- The Discovery of Australia&mdash;Transportation of Convicts&mdash;Discipline&mdash;English
- Laws, Ancient and Modern&mdash;Flogging Prisoners to Death&mdash;Arrival
- of Settlers&mdash;New South Wales Corps&mdash;Rum Currency&mdash;Intemperance
- Everywhere&mdash;$100,000 for One Gallon of Rum&mdash;Development of the
- Country&mdash;Immense Resources<br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <h3>
- <a href="#ch11">CHAPTER XI.</a>
- </h3>
- <p>
- Hospitality of English-speaking People&mdash;Writers and their Gratitude&mdash;Mr.
- Gane and the Panegyrics&mdash;Population of Sydney An English City with
- American Trimming&mdash;"Squatters"&mdash;Palaces and Sheep Kingdoms&mdash;Wool
- and Mutton&mdash;Australians and Americans&mdash;Costermonger
- Pronunciation&mdash;England is "Home"&mdash;Table Talk&mdash;English and
- Colonial Audiences<br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <h3>
- <a href="#ch12">CHAPTER XII.</a>
- </h3>
- <p>
- Mr. X., a Missionary&mdash;Why Christianity Makes Slow Progress in India&mdash;A
- Large Dream&mdash;Hindoo Miracles and Legends&mdash;Sampson and Hanuman&mdash;The
- Sandstone Ridge&mdash;Where are the Gates?<br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <h3>
- <a href="#ch13">CHAPTER XIII.</a>
- </h3>
- <p>
- Public Works in Australasia&mdash;Botanical Garden of Sydney&mdash;Four
- Special Socialties&mdash;The Government House&mdash;A Governor and His
- Functions&mdash;The Admiralty House&mdash;The Tour of the Harbor&mdash;Shark
- Fishing&mdash;Cecil Rhodes' Shark and his First Fortune&mdash;Free Board
- for Sharks.<br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <h3>
- <a href="#ch14">CHAPTER XIV.</a>
- </h3>
- <p>
- Bad Health&mdash;To Melbourne by Rail&mdash;Maps Defective&mdash;The
- Colony of Victoria&mdash;A Round-trip Ticket from Sydney&mdash;Change
- Cars, from Wide to Narrow Gauge, a Peculiarity at Albury&mdash;Customs-fences&mdash;"My
- Word"&mdash;The Blue Mountains&mdash;Rabbit Piles&mdash;Government R. R.
- Restaurants&mdash;Duchesses for Waiters&mdash;"Sheep-dip"&mdash;Railroad
- Coffee&mdash;Things Seen and Not Seen<br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <h3>
- <a href="#ch15">CHAPTER XV.</a>
- </h3>
- <p>
- Wagga-Wagga&mdash;The Tichborne Claimant&mdash;A Stock Mystery&mdash;The
- Plan of the Romance&mdash;The Realization&mdash;The Henry Bascom Mystery&mdash;Bascom
- Hall&mdash;The Author's Death and Funeral<br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <h3>
- <a href="#ch16">CHAPTER XVI.</a>
- </h3>
- <p>
- Melbourne and its Attractions&mdash;The Melbourne Cup Races&mdash;Cup Day&mdash;Great
- Crowds&mdash;Clothes Regardless of Cost&mdash;The Australian Larrikin&mdash;Is
- He Dead?&mdash;Australian Hospitality&mdash;Melbourne Wool-brokers&mdash;The
- Museums&mdash;The Palaces&mdash;The Origin of Melbourne<br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <h3>
- <a href="#ch17">CHAPTER XVII.</a>
- </h3>
- <p>
- The British Empire&mdash;Its Exports and Imports&mdash;The Trade of
- Australia&mdash;To Adelaide&mdash;Broken Hill Silver Mine&mdash;A
- Roundabout road&mdash;The Scrub and its Possibilities for the Novelist&mdash;The
- Aboriginal Tracker&mdash;A Test Case&mdash;How Does One Cow-Track Differ
- from Another?<br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <h3>
- <a href="#ch18">CHAPTER XVIII.</a>
- </h3>
- <p>
- The Gum Trees&mdash;Unsociable Trees&mdash;Gorse and Broom&mdash;A
- universal Defect&mdash;An Adventurer&mdash;Wanted L200, got L20,000,000&mdash;A
- Vast Land Scheme&mdash;The Smash-up&mdash;The Corpse Got Up and Danced&mdash;A
- Unique Business by One Man&mdash;Buying the Kangaroo Skin&mdash;The
- Approach to Adelaide&mdash;Everything Comes to Him who Waits&mdash;A
- Healthy Religious sphere&mdash;What is the Matter with the Specter?<br />
- <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <h3>
- <a href="#ch19">CHAPTER XIX.</a>
- </h3>
- <p>
- The Botanical Gardens&mdash;Contributions from all Countries&mdash;The
- Zoological Gardens of Adelaide&mdash;The Laughing Jackass&mdash;The Dingo&mdash;A
- Misnamed Province&mdash;Telegraphing from Melbourne to San Francisco&mdash;A
- Mania for Holidays&mdash;The Temperature&mdash;The Death Rate&mdash;Celebration
- of the Reading of the Proclamation of 1836&mdash;Some old Settlers at the
- Commemoration&mdash;Their Staying Powers&mdash;The Intelligence of the
- Aboriginal&mdash;The Antiquity of the Boomerang<br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <h3>
- <a href="#ch20">CHAPTER XX.</a>
- </h3>
- <p>
- A Caller&mdash;A Talk about Old Times&mdash;The Fox Hunt&mdash;An Accurate
- Judgment of an Idiot&mdash;How We Passed the Custom Officers in Italy<br />
- <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <h3>
- <a href="#ch21">CHAPTER XXI</a>.
- </h3>
- <p>
- The "Weet-Weet"&mdash;Keeping down the Population&mdash;Victoria&mdash;Killing
- the Aboriginals&mdash;Pioneer Days in Queensland&mdash;Material for a
- Drama&mdash;The Bush&mdash;Pudding with Arsenic&mdash;Revenge&mdash;A
- Right Spirit but a Wrong Method&mdash;Death of Donga Billy<br /> <br />
- <br />
- </p>
- <h3>
- <a href="#ch22">CHAPTER XXII.</a>
- </h3>
- <p>
- Continued Description of Aboriginals&mdash;Manly Qualities&mdash;Dodging
- Balls&mdash;Feats of Spring&mdash;Jumping&mdash;Where the Kangaroo Learned
- its Art&mdash;Well Digging&mdash;Endurance&mdash;Surgery&mdash;Artistic
- Abilities&mdash;Fennimore Cooper's Last Chance&mdash;Australian Slang<br />
- <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <h3>
- <a href="#ch23">CHAPTER XXIII.</a>
- </h3>
- <p>
- To Horsham (Colony of Victoria)&mdash;Description of Horsham&mdash;At the
- Hotel&mdash;Pepper Tree-The Agricultural College, Forty Pupils&mdash;High
- Temperature&mdash;Width of Road in Chains, Perches, etc.&mdash;The Bird
- with a Forgettable Name&mdash;The Magpie and the Lady&mdash;Fruit Trees&mdash;Soils&mdash;Sheep
- Shearing&mdash;To Stawell&mdash;Gold Mining Country&mdash;$75,000 per
- Month Income and able to Keep House&mdash;Fine Grapes and Wine&mdash;The
- Dryest Community on Earth&mdash;The Three Sisters&mdash;Gum Trees and
- Water<br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <h3>
- <a href="#ch24">CHAPTER XXIV.</a>
- </h3>
- <p>
- Road to Ballarat&mdash;The City&mdash;Great Gold Strike, 1851&mdash;Rush
- for Australia&mdash;"Great Nuggets"&mdash;Taxation&mdash;Revolt and
- Victory&mdash;Peter Lalor and the Eureka Stockade&mdash;"Pencil Mark"&mdash;Fine
- Statuary at Ballarat&mdash;Population&mdash;Ballarat English<br /> <br />
- <br />
- </p>
- <h3>
- <a href="#ch25">CHAPTER XXV.</a>
- </h3>
- <p>
- Bound for Bendigo&mdash;The Priest at Castlemaine&mdash;Time Saved by
- Walking&mdash;Description of Bendigo&mdash;A Valuable Nugget&mdash;Perseverence
- and Success&mdash;Mr. Blank and His Influence&mdash;Conveyance of an Idea&mdash;I
- Had to Like the Irishman&mdash;Corrigan Castle, and the Mark Twain Club&mdash;My
- Bascom Mystery Solved<br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <h3>
- <a href="#ch26">CHAPTER XXVI.</a>
- </h3>
- <p>
- Where New Zealand Is&mdash;But Few Know&mdash;Things People Think They
- Know&mdash;The Yale Professor and His Visitor from N. Z.<br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <h3>
- <a href="#ch27">CHAPTER XXVII.</a>
- </h3>
- <p>
- The South Pole Swell&mdash;Tasmania&mdash;Extermination of the Natives&mdash;The
- Picture Proclamation&mdash;The Conciliator&mdash;The Formidable Sixteen<br />
- <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <h3>
- <a href="#ch28">CHAPTER XXVIII.</a>
- </h3>
- <p>
- When the Moment Comes the Man Appears&mdash;Why Ed. Jackson called on
- Commodore Vanderbilt&mdash;Their Interview&mdash;Welcome to the Child of
- His Friend&mdash;A Big Time but under Inspection&mdash;Sent on Important
- Business&mdash;A Visit to the Boys on the Boat<br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <h3>
- <a href="#ch29">CHAPTER XXIX.</a>
- </h3>
- <p>
- Tasmania, Early Days&mdash;Description of the Town of Hobart&mdash;An
- Englishman's Love of Home Surroundings&mdash;Neatest City on Earth&mdash;The
- Museum&mdash;A Parrot with an Acquired Taste&mdash;Glass Arrow Beads&mdash;Refuge
- for the Indigent too healthy<br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <h3>
- <a href="#ch30">CHAPTER XXX.</a>
- </h3>
- <p>
- Arrival at Bluff, N. Z.&mdash;Where the Rabbit Plague Began&mdash;The
- Natural Enemy of the Rabbit&mdash;Dunedin&mdash;A Lovely Town&mdash;Visit
- to Dr. Hockin&mdash;His Museum&mdash;A Liquified Caterpillar&mdash;The
- Unperfected Tape Worm&mdash;The Public Museum and Picture Gallery<br />
- <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <h3>
- <a href="#ch31">CHAPTER XXXI.</a>
- </h3>
- <p>
- The Express Train&mdash;"A Hell of a Hotel at Maryborough"&mdash;Clocks
- and Bells&mdash;Railroad Service.<br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <h3>
- <a href="#ch32">CHAPTER XXXII.</a>
- </h3>
- <p>
- Description of the Town of Christ Church&mdash;A Fine Museum&mdash;Jade-stone
- Trinkets&mdash;The Great Moa&mdash;The First Maori in New Zealand&mdash;Women
- Voters&mdash;"Person" in New Zealand Law Includes Woman&mdash;Taming an
- Ornithorhynchus&mdash;A Voyage in the 'Flora' from Lyttelton&mdash;Cattle
- Stalls for Everybody&mdash;A Wonderful Time.<br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <h3>
- <a href="#ch33">CHAPTER XXXIII.</a>
- </h3>
- <p>
- The Town of Nelson&mdash;"The Mongatapu Murders," the Great Event of the
- Town&mdash;Burgess' Confession&mdash;Summit of Mount Eden&mdash;Rotorua
- and the Hot Lakes and Geysers&mdash;Thermal Springs District&mdash;Kauri
- Gum&mdash;Tangariwa Mountains<br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <h3>
- <a href="#ch34">CHAPTER XXXIV.</a>
- </h3>
- <p>
- The Bay of Gisborne&mdash;Taking in Passengers by the Yard Arm&mdash;The
- Green Ballarat Fly&mdash;False Teeth&mdash;From Napier to Hastings by the
- Ballarat Fly Train&mdash;Kauri Trees&mdash;A Case of Mental Telegraphy<br />
- <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <h3>
- <a href="#ch35">CHAPTER XXXV.</a>
- </h3>
- <p>
- Fifty Miles in Four Hours&mdash;Comfortable Cars&mdash;Town of Wauganui&mdash;Plenty
- of Maoris&mdash;On the Increase&mdash;Compliments to the Maoris&mdash;The
- Missionary Ways all Wrong&mdash;The Tabu among the Maoris&mdash;A
- Mysterious Sign&mdash;Curious War-monuments&mdash;Wellington<br /> <br />
- <br />
- </p>
- <h3>
- <a href="#ch36">CHAPTER XXXVI.</a>
- </h3>
- <p>
- The Poems of Mrs. Moore&mdash;The Sad Fate of William Upson&mdash;A Fellow
- Traveler Imitating the Prince of Wales&mdash;A Would-be Dude&mdash;Arrival
- at Sydney&mdash;Curious Town Names with Poem<br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <h3>
- <a href="#ch37">CHAPTER XXXVII.</a>
- </h3>
- <p>
- From Sydney for Ceylon&mdash;A Lascar Crew&mdash;A Fine Ship&mdash;Three
- Cats and a Basket of Kittens&mdash;Dinner Conversations&mdash;Veuve
- Cliquot Wine&mdash;At Anchor in King George's Sound Albany Harbor&mdash;More
- Cats&mdash;A Vulture on Board&mdash;Nearing the Equator again&mdash;Dressing
- for Dinner&mdash;Ceylon, Hotel Bristol&mdash;Servant Brampy&mdash;A
- Feminine Man&mdash;Japanese Jinriksha or Cart&mdash;Scenes in Ceylon&mdash;A
- Missionary School&mdash;Insincerity of Clothes<br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <h3>
- <a href="#ch38">CHAPTER XXXVIII.</a>
- </h3>
- <p>
- Steamer Rosetta to Bombay&mdash;Limes 14 cents a Barrel&mdash;Bombay, a
- Bewitching City&mdash;Descriptions of People and Dress&mdash;Woman as a
- Road Decoration&mdash;India, the Land of Dreams and Romance&mdash;Fourteen
- Porters to Carry Baggage&mdash;Correcting a Servant&mdash;Killing a Slave&mdash;Arranging
- a Bedroom&mdash;Three Hours' Work and a Terrible Racket&mdash;The Bird of
- Birds, the Indian Crow<br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <h3>
- <a href="#ch39">CHAPTER XXXIX.</a>
- </h3>
- <p>
- God Vishnu, 108 Names&mdash;Change of Titles or Hunting for an Heir&mdash;Bombay
- as a Kaleidoscope&mdash;The Native's Man Servant&mdash;Servants'
- Recommendations&mdash;How Manuel got his Name and his English&mdash;Satan&mdash;A
- Visit from God<br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <h3>
- <a href="#ch40">CHAPTER XL.</a>
- </h3>
- <p>
- The Government House at Malabar Point&mdash;Mansion of Kumar Shri Samatsin
- Hji Bahadur&mdash;The Indian Princess&mdash;A Difficult Game&mdash;Wardrobe
- and Jewels&mdash;Ceremonials&mdash;Decorations when Leaving&mdash;The
- Towers of Silence&mdash;A Funeral<br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <h3>
- <a href="#ch41">CHAPTER XLI.</a>
- </h3>
- <p>
- A Jain Temple&mdash;Mr. Roychand's Bungalow&mdash;A Decorated Six-Gun
- Prince&mdash;Human Fireworks&mdash;European Dress, Past and Present&mdash;Complexions&mdash;Advantages
- with the Zulu&mdash;Festivities at the Bungalow&mdash;Nautch Dancers&mdash;Entrance
- of the Prince&mdash;Address to the Prince<br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <h3>
- <a href="#ch42">CHAPTER XLII.</a>
- </h3>
- <p>
- A Hindoo Betrothal, midnight, Sleepers on the ground, Home of the Bride of
- Twelve Years Dressed as a Boy&mdash;Illumination&mdash;Nautch Girls&mdash;Imitating
- Snakes&mdash;Later&mdash;Illuminated Porch Filled with Sleepers&mdash;The
- Plague<br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <h3>
- <a href="#ch43">CHAPTER XLIII.</a>
- </h3>
- <p>
- Murder Trial in Bombay&mdash;Confidence Swindlers&mdash;Some Specialities
- of India&mdash;The Plague, Juggernaut, Suttee, etc.&mdash;Everything on
- Gigantic Scale&mdash;India First in Everything&mdash;80 States, more
- Custom Houses than Cats&mdash;Rich Ground for Thug Society<br /> <br />
- <br />
- </p>
- <h3>
- <a href="#ch44">CHAPTER XLIV.</a>
- </h3>
- <p>
- Official Thug Book&mdash;Supplies for Traveling, Bedding, and other
- Freight&mdash;Scene at Railway Station&mdash;Making Way for White Man&mdash;Waiting
- Passengers, High and Low Caste, Touch in the cars&mdash;Our Car&mdash;Beds
- made up&mdash;Dreaming of Thugs&mdash;Baroda&mdash;Meet Friends&mdash;Indian
- Well&mdash;The Old Town&mdash;Narrow Streets&mdash;A Mad Elephant<br />
- <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <h3>
- <a href="#ch45">CHAPTER XLV.</a>
- </h3>
- <p>
- Elephant Riding&mdash;Howdahs&mdash;The New Palace&mdash;The Prince's
- Excursion&mdash;Gold and Silver Artillery&mdash;A Vice-royal Visit&mdash;Remarkable
- Dog&mdash;The Bench Show&mdash;Augustin Daly's Back Door&mdash;Fakeer<br />
- <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <h3>
- <a href="#ch46">CHAPTER XLVI.</a>
- </h3>
- <p>
- The Thugs&mdash;Government Efforts to Exterminate them&mdash;Choking a
- Victim&mdash;A Fakeer Spared&mdash;Thief Strangled<br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <h3>
- <a href="#ch47">CHAPTER XLVII.</a>
- </h3>
- <p>
- Thugs, Continued&mdash;Record of Murders&mdash;A Joy of Hunting and
- Killing Men&mdash;Gordon Cumming&mdash;Killing an Elephant&mdash;Family
- Affection among Thugs&mdash;Burial Places<br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <h3>
- <a href="#ch48">CHAPTER XLVIII.</a>
- </h3>
- <p>
- Starting for Allahabad&mdash;Lower Berths in Sleepers&mdash;Elderly Ladies
- have Preference of Berths&mdash;An American Lady Takes One Anyhow&mdash;How
- Smythe Lost his Berth&mdash;How He Got Even&mdash;The Suttee<br /> <br />
- <br />
- </p>
- <h3>
- <a href="#ch49">CHAPTER XLIX.</a>
- </h3>
- <p>
- Pyjamas&mdash;Day Scene in India&mdash;Clothed in a Turban and a Pocket
- Handkerchief&mdash;Land Parceled Out&mdash;Established Village Servants&mdash;Witches
- in Families&mdash;Hereditary Midwifery&mdash;Destruction of Girl Babies&mdash;Wedding
- Display&mdash;Tiger-Persuader&mdash;Hailstorm Discouragers&mdash;The
- Tyranny of the Sweeper&mdash;Elephant Driver&mdash;Water Carrier&mdash;Curious
- Rivers&mdash;Arrival at Allahabad&mdash;English Quarter&mdash;Lecture Hall
- Like a Snowstorm&mdash;Private Carriages&mdash;A Milliner&mdash;Early
- Morning&mdash;The Squatting Servant&mdash;A Religious Fair<br /> <br />
- <br />
- </p>
- <h3>
- <a href="#ch50">CHAPTER L.</a>
- </h3>
- <p>
- On the Road to Benares&mdash;Dust and Waiting&mdash;The Bejeweled Crowd&mdash;A
- Native Prince and his Guard&mdash;Zenana Lady&mdash;The Extremes of
- Fashion&mdash;The Hotel at Benares&mdash;An Annex a Mile Away&mdash;Doors
- in India&mdash;The Peepul Tree&mdash;Warning against Cold Baths&mdash;A
- Strange Fruit&mdash;Description of Benares&mdash;The Beginning of Creation&mdash;Pilgrims
- to Benares&mdash;A Priest with a Good Business Stand&mdash;Protestant
- Missionary&mdash;The Trinity Brahma, Shiva, and Vishnu&mdash;Religion the
- Business at Benares<br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <h3>
- <a href="#ch51">CHAPTER LI.</a>
- </h3>
- <p>
- Benares a Religious Temple&mdash;A Guide for Pilgrims to Save Time in
- Securing Salvation<br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <h3>
- <a href="#ch52">CHAPTER LII.</a>
- </h3>
- <p>
- A Curious Way to Secure Salvation&mdash;The Banks of the Ganges&mdash;Architecture
- Represents Piety&mdash;A Trip on the River&mdash;Bathers and their
- Costumes&mdash;Drinking the Water&mdash;A Scientific Test of the Nasty
- Purifier&mdash;Hindoo Faith in the Ganges&mdash;A Cremation&mdash;Remembrances
- of the Suttee&mdash;All Life Sacred Except Human Life&mdash;The Goddess
- Bhowanee, and the Sacrificers&mdash;Sacred Monkeys&mdash;Ugly Idols
- Everywhere&mdash;Two White Minarets&mdash;A Great View with a Monkey in it&mdash;A
- Picture on the Water<br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <h3>
- <a href="#ch53">CHAPTER LIII.</a>
- </h3>
- <p>
- Still in Benares&mdash;Another Living God&mdash;Why Things are Wonderful&mdash;Sri
- 108 Utterly Perfect&mdash;How He Came so&mdash;Our Visit to Sri&mdash;A
- Friendly Deity Exchanging Autographs and Books&mdash;Sri's Pupil&mdash;An
- Interesting Man&mdash;Reverence and Irreverence&mdash;Dancing in a
- Sepulchre<br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <h3>
- <a href="#ch54">CHAPTER LIV.</a>
- </h3>
- <p>
- Rail to Calcutta&mdash;Population&mdash;The "City of Palaces"&mdash;A
- Fluted Candle-stick&mdash;Ochterlony&mdash;Newspaper Correspondence&mdash;Average
- Knowledge of Countries&mdash;A Wrong Idea of Chicago&mdash;Calcutta and
- the Black Hole&mdash;Description of the Horrors&mdash;Those Who Lived&mdash;The
- Botanical Gardens&mdash;The Afternoon Turnout&mdash;Grand Review&mdash;Military
- Tournament&mdash;Excursion on the Hoogly&mdash;The Museum&mdash;What
- Winter Means in Calcutta<br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <h3>
- <a href="#ch55">CHAPTER LV.</a>
- </h3>
- <p>
- On the Road Again&mdash;Flannels in Order&mdash;Across Country&mdash;From
- Greenland's Icy Mountain&mdash;Swapping Civilization&mdash;No Field women
- in India&mdash;How it is in Other Countries&mdash;Canvas-covered Cars&mdash;The
- Tiger Country&mdash;My First Hunt&mdash;Some Wild Elephants Get Away&mdash;The
- Plains of India&mdash;The Ghurkas&mdash;Women for Pack-Horses&mdash;A
- Substitute for a Cab&mdash;Darjeeling&mdash;The Hotel&mdash;The Highest
- Thing in the Himalayas&mdash;The Club&mdash;Kinchinjunga and Mt. Everest&mdash;Thibetans&mdash;The
- Prayer Wheel&mdash;People Going to the Bazar<br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <h3>
- <a href="#ch56">CHAPTER LVI.</a>
- </h3>
- <p>
- On the Road Again&mdash;The Hand-Car&mdash;A Thirty-five-mile Slide&mdash;The
- Banyan Tree&mdash;A Dramatic Performance&mdash;The Railroad Loop&mdash;The
- Half-way House&mdash;The Brain Fever Bird&mdash;The Coppersmith Bird&mdash;Nightingales
- and Cue Owls<br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <h3>
- <a href="#ch57">CHAPTER LVII.</a>
- </h3>
- <p>
- India the Most Extraordinary Country on Earth&mdash;Nothing Forgotten&mdash;The
- Land of Wonders&mdash;Annual Statistics Everywhere about Violence&mdash;Tiger
- vs. Man&mdash;A Handsome Fight&mdash;Annual Man Killing and Tiger Killing&mdash;Other
- Animals&mdash;Snakes&mdash;Insurance and Snake Tables&mdash;The Cobra Bite&mdash;Muzaffurpore&mdash;Dinapore&mdash;A
- Train that Stopped for Gossip&mdash;Six Hours for Thirty-five Miles&mdash;A
- Rupee to the Engineer&mdash;Ninety Miles an Hour&mdash;Again to Benares,
- the Piety Hive&mdash;To Lucknow<br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <h3>
- <a href="#ch58">CHAPTER LVIII.</a>
- </h3>
- <p>
- The Great Mutiny&mdash;The Massacre in Cawnpore&mdash;Terrible Scenes in
- Lucknow&mdash;The Residency&mdash;The Siege<br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <h3>
- <a href="#ch59">CHAPTER LIX.</a>
- </h3>
- <p>
- A Visit to the Residency&mdash;Cawnpore&mdash;The Adjutant Bird and the
- Hindoo Corpse&mdash;The Taj Mahal&mdash;The True Conception&mdash;The Ice
- Storm&mdash;True Gems&mdash;Syrian Fountains&mdash;An Exaggerated Niagara<br />
- <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <h3>
- <a href="#ch60">CHAPTER LX.</a>
- </h3>
- <p>
- To Lahore&mdash;The Governor's Elephant&mdash;Taking a Ride&mdash;No
- Danger from Collision&mdash;Rawal Pindi&mdash;Back to Delhi&mdash;An
- Orientalized Englishman&mdash;Monkeys and the Paint-pot&mdash;Monkey
- Crying over my Note-book&mdash;Arrival at Jeypore&mdash;In Rajputana&mdash;Watching
- Servants&mdash;The Jeypore Hotel&mdash;Our Old and New Satan&mdash;Satan
- as a Liar&mdash;The Museum&mdash;A Street Show&mdash;Blocks of Houses&mdash;A
- Religious Procession<br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <h3>
- <a href="#ch61">CHAPTER LXI.</a>
- </h3>
- <p>
- Methods in American Deaf and Dumb Asylums&mdash;Methods in the Public
- Schools&mdash;A Letter from a Youth in Punjab&mdash;Highly Educated
- Service&mdash;A Damage to the Country&mdash;A Little Book from Calcutta&mdash;Writing
- Poor English&mdash;Embarrassed by a Beggar Girl&mdash;A Specimen Letter&mdash;An
- Application for Employment&mdash;A Calcutta School Examination&mdash;Two
- Samples of Literature<br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <h3>
- <a href="#ch62">CHAPTER LXII.</a>
- </h3>
- <p>
- Sail from Calcutta to Madras&mdash;Thence to Ceylon&mdash;Thence for
- Mauritius&mdash;The Indian Ocean&mdash;Our Captain's Peculiarity&mdash;The
- Scot Has one too&mdash;The Flying-fish that Went Hunting in the Field&mdash;Fined
- for Smuggling&mdash;Lots of Pets on Board&mdash;The Color of the Sea&mdash;The
- Most Important Member of Nature's Family&mdash;The Captain's Story of Cold
- Weather&mdash;Omissions in the Ship's Library&mdash;Washing Decks&mdash;Pyjamas
- on Deck&mdash;The Cat's Toilet&mdash;No Interest in the Bulletin&mdash;Perfect
- Rest&mdash;The Milky Way and the Magellan Clouds&mdash;Mauritius&mdash;Port
- Louis&mdash;A Hot Country&mdash;Under French Control&mdash;A Variety of
- People and Complexions&mdash;Train to Curepipe&mdash;A Wonderful
- Office-holder&mdash;The Wooden Peg Ornament&mdash;The Prominent Historical
- Event of Mauritius&mdash;"Paul and Virginia"&mdash;One of Virginia's
- Wedding Gifts&mdash;Heaven Copied after Mauritius&mdash;Early History of
- Mauritius&mdash;Quarantines&mdash;Population of all Kinds&mdash;What the
- World Consists of&mdash;Where Russia and Germany are&mdash;A Picture of
- Milan Cathedral&mdash;Newspapers&mdash;The Language&mdash;Best Sugar in
- the World&mdash;Literature of Mauritius<br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <h3>
- <a href="#ch63">CHAPTER LXIII.</a>
- </h3>
- <p>
- Port Louis&mdash;Matches no Good&mdash;Good Roads&mdash;Death Notices&mdash;Why
- European Nations Rob Each Other&mdash;What Immigrants to Mauritius Do&mdash;Population&mdash;Labor
- Wages&mdash;The Camaron&mdash;The Palmiste and other Eatables&mdash;Monkeys&mdash;The
- Cyclone of 1892&mdash;Mauritius a Sunday Landscape<br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <h3>
- <a href="#ch64">CHAPTER LXIV.</a>
- </h3>
- <p>
- The Steamer "Arundel Castle"&mdash;Poor Beds in Ships&mdash;The Beds in
- Noah's Ark&mdash;Getting a Rest in Europe&mdash;Ship in Sight&mdash;Mozambique
- Channel&mdash;The Engineer and the Band&mdash;Thackeray's "Madagascar"&mdash;Africanders
- Going Home&mdash;Singing on the After Deck&mdash;An Out-of-Place Story&mdash;Dynamite
- Explosion in Johannesburg&mdash;Entering Delagoa Bay&mdash;Ashore&mdash;A
- Hot Winter&mdash;Small Town&mdash;No Sights&mdash;No Carriages&mdash;Working
- Women&mdash;Barnum's Purchase of Shakespeare's Birthplace, Jumbo, and the
- Nelson Monument&mdash;Arrival at Durban<br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <h3>
- <a href="#ch65">CHAPTER LXV.</a>
- </h3>
- <p>
- Royal Hotel Durban&mdash;Bells that Did not Ring&mdash;Early Inquiries for
- Comforts&mdash;Change of Temperature after Sunset&mdash;Rickhaws&mdash;The
- Hotel Chameleon&mdash;Natives not out after the Bell&mdash;Preponderance
- of Blacks in Natal&mdash;Hair Fashions in Natal&mdash;Zulus for Police&mdash;A
- Drive round the Berea&mdash;The Cactus and other Trees&mdash;Religion a
- Vital Matter&mdash;Peculiar Views about Babies&mdash;Zulu Kings&mdash;A
- Trappist Monastery&mdash;Transvaal Politics&mdash;Reasons why the Trouble
- came About<br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <h3>
- <a href="#ch66">CHAPTER LXVI.</a>
- </h3>
- <p>
- Jameson over the Border&mdash;His Defeat and Capture&mdash;Sent to England
- for Trial&mdash;Arrest of Citizens by the Boers&mdash;Commuted Sentences&mdash;Final
- Release of all but Two&mdash;Interesting Days for a Stranger&mdash;Hard to
- Understand Either Side&mdash;What the Reformers Expected to Accomplish&mdash;How
- They Proposed to Do it&mdash;Testimonies a Year Later&mdash;A "Woman's
- Part"&mdash;The Truth of the South African Situation&mdash;"Jameson's
- Ride"&mdash;A Poem<br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <h3>
- <a href="#ch67">CHAPTER LXVII.</a>
- </h3>
- <p>
- Jameson's Raid&mdash;The Reform Committee's Difficult Task&mdash;Possible
- Plans&mdash;Advice that Jameson Ought to Have&mdash;The War of 1881 and
- its Lessons&mdash;Statistics of Losses of the Combatants&mdash;Jameson's
- Battles&mdash;Losses on Both Sides&mdash;The Military Errors&mdash;How the
- Warfare Should Have Been Carried on to Be Successful<br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <h3>
- <a href="#ch68">CHAPTER LXVIII.</a>
- </h3>
- <p>
- Judicious Mr. Rhodes&mdash;What South Africa Consists of&mdash;Johannesburg&mdash;The
- Gold Mines&mdash;The Heaven of American Engineers&mdash;What the Author
- Knows about Mining&mdash;Description of the Boer&mdash;What Should be
- Expected of Him&mdash;What Was A Dizzy Jump for Rhodes&mdash;Taxes&mdash;Rhodesian
- Method of Reducing Native Population&mdash;Journeying in Cape Colony&mdash;The
- Cars&mdash;The Country&mdash;The Weather&mdash;Tamed Blacks&mdash;Familiar
- Figures in King William's Town&mdash;Boer Dress&mdash;Boer Country Life&mdash;Sleeping
- Accommodations&mdash;The Reformers in Boer Prison&mdash;Torturing a Black
- Prisoner<br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <h3>
- <a href="#ch69">CHAPTER LXIX.</a>
- </h3>
- <p>
- An Absorbing Novelty&mdash;The Kimberley Diamond Mines&mdash;Discovery of
- Diamonds&mdash;The Wronged Stranger&mdash;Where the Gems Are&mdash;A
- Judicious Change of Boundary&mdash;Modern Machinery and Appliances&mdash;Thrilling
- Excitement in Finding a Diamond&mdash;Testing a Diamond&mdash;Fences&mdash;Deep
- Mining by Natives in the Compound&mdash;Stealing&mdash;Reward for the
- Biggest Diamond&mdash;A Fortune in Wine&mdash;The Great Diamond&mdash;Office
- of the De Beer Co.&mdash;Sorting the Gems&mdash;Cape Town&mdash;The Most
- Imposing Man in British Provinces&mdash;Various Reasons for his Supremacy&mdash;How
- He Makes Friends<br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <h3>
- <a href="#CONCLUSION">CONCLUSION.</a>
- </h3>
- <p>
- Table Rock&mdash;Table Bay&mdash;The Castle&mdash;Government and
- Parliament&mdash;The Club&mdash;Dutch Mansions and their Hospitality&mdash;Dr.
- John Barry and his Doings&mdash;On the Ship Norman&mdash;Madeira&mdash;Arrived
- in Southampton<br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <h1>
- FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR
- </h1>
- <p>
- <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
- <img alt="p025.jpg (19K)" src="images/p025.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- <a name="ch1" id="ch1"></a><br /> <br /> CHAPTER I.
- </h2>
- <p>
- <i>A man may have no bad habits and have worse.</i>
- </p>
- <p>
- &mdash;Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar. <br />
- </p>
- <p>
- The starting point of this lecturing-trip around the world was Paris,
- where we had been living a year or two.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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
- out of place in a dictionary.
- </p>
- <p>
- We started westward from New York in midsummer, with Major Pond to manage
- the platform-business 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 British Columbia the forest fires were raging. We had an added week of
- smoke at the seaboard, where we were obliged to wait awhile for our ship.
- She had been getting herself ashore in the smoke, and she had to be docked
- and repaired.
- </p>
- <p>
- We sailed at last; and so ended a snail-paced march across the continent,
- which had lasted forty days.
- </p>
- <p>
- We moved westward about mid-afternoon over a rippled and sparkling summer
- sea; an enticing sea, a clean and cool sea, and apparently a welcome sea
- to all on board; it certainly was to me, after the distressful dustings
- and smokings and swelterings of the past weeks. The voyage would furnish a
- three-weeks 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 smoke-cloud, and getting ready to vanish and now we closed the
- field-glasses 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
- furniture-dealing 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 deck-chair on board
- or go without, just as in the old forgotten Atlantic times&mdash;those
- Dark Ages of sea travel.<br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
- <img alt="p026.jpg (62K)" src="images/p026.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
- </div>
- <p>
- <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <p>
- Ours was a reasonably comfortable ship, with the customary sea-going fare&mdash;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 over-supply of cockroaches, but this
- is also the rule with ships doing business in the summer seas&mdash;at
- 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 finest effects. He was a man of the best intentions and
- was polite and courteous even to courtliness. There was a soft and grace
- 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.
- After 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 smoking-room 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 smoking-room,
- and the smell of tobacco smoke made him sick. I did not see how our smoke
- could reach him, for the smoking-room 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 convey damage.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 ill-luck 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 Sydney&mdash;the 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 voyage as captain.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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
- twenty-four hours fighting for his life with these sharp agonies, and yet
- was as full of life and cheer and activity the next day as if nothing had
- happened.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 man&mdash;for 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 will&mdash;and
- a great deal of it, both as to bulk and staying capacity&mdash;the other
- merely requires watchfulness&mdash;and 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 time&mdash;otherwise 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
- pledges&mdash;and 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- Once I tried my scheme in a large medical way. I had been confined to my
- bed several days with lumbago. My case refused to improve. Finally the
- doctor said,&mdash;
- </p>
- <p>
- "My remedies have no fair chance. Consider what they have to fight,
- besides the lumbago. You smoke extravagantly, don't you?"
- </p>
- <p>
- "Yes."
- </p>
- <p>
- "You take coffee immoderately?"
- </p>
- <p>
- "Yes."
- </p>
- <p>
- "And some tea?"
- </p>
- <p>
- "Yes."
- </p>
- <p>
- "You eat all kinds of things that are dissatisfied with each other's
- company?"
- </p>
- <p>
- "Yes."
- </p>
- <p>
- "You drink two hot Scotches every night?"
- </p>
- <p>
- "Yes."
- </p>
- <p>
- "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 some
- days."
- </p>
- <p>
- "I can't, doctor."
- </p>
- <p>
- "Why can't you."
- </p>
- <p>
- "I lack the will-power. I can cut them off entirely, but I can't merely
- moderate them."
- </p>
- <p>
- He said that that would answer, and said he would come around in
- twenty-four 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 forty-eight hours the lumbago was
- discouraged and left me. I was a well man; so I gave thanks and took to
- those delicacies again.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 overbpard and lighten ship
- withal. Why, even one or two little bad habits could 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 nothing
- effectual to fight them with.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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
- habit&mdash;the 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 me&mdash;on
- 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 one-cigar limit was no real protection
- to a person, so I knocked my pledge on the head and resumed my liberty.<br />
- <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
- <img alt="p032.jpg (67K)" src="images/p032.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
- </div>
- <p>
- <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <p>
- 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'er-do-wells 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'er-do-well was sent abroad to get him out of the way. He was shipped
- off with just enough money in his pocket&mdash;no, in the purser's pocket&mdash;for
- the needs of the voyage&mdash;and 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 remittance-man's custom to pay his month's board
- and lodging straightway&mdash;a duty which his landlord did not allow him
- to forget&mdash;then spree away the rest of his money in a single night,
- then brood and mope and grieve in idleness till the next remittance came.
- It is a pathetic life.
- </p>
- <p>
- We had other remittance-men 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.<br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
- <img alt="p034.jpg (11K)" src="images/p034.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
- </div>
- <p>
- <br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <h2>
- <a name="ch2" id="ch2"></a><br /> <br /> CHAPTER II.
- </h2>
- <p>
- <i>When in doubt, tell the truth.</i>
- </p>
- <p>
- &mdash;Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 cheerful
- and picnicky aspect.
- </p>
- <p>
- From my diary:
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 trees&mdash;and 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 way.
- </p>
- <p>
- The talk passed from the boomerang to dreams&mdash;usually a fruitful
- subject, afloat or ashore&mdash;but this time the output was poor. Then it
- passed to instances of extraordinary memory&mdash;with 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 note-book, 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 them or invented them.
- </p>
- <p>
- The Viceroy was making a progress, and among the shows offered by the
- Maharajah of Mysore for his entertainment was a memory-exhibition. The
- Viceroy and thirty gentlemen of his suite sat in a row, and the
- memory-expert, a high-caste 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&mdash;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 sentences&mdash;and all in disorder, of course, not in their
- proper rotation. This had occupied two hours.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 them
- all.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 sufficiently
- severe strain without adding that burden to it.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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
- of&mdash;the 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 eyes&mdash;mine lost
- confidence and fell. I had never confronted a great man before, and was in
- a miserable state of funk and inefficiency. The Senator said:&mdash;
- </p>
- <p>
- "Mr. President, may I have the privilege of introducing Mr. Clemens?"
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 timidly:&mdash;
- </p>
- <p>
- "Mr. President, I&mdash;I am embarrassed. Are you?"<br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
- <img alt="p039.jpg (44K)" src="images/p039.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
- </div>
- <p>
- <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <p>
- His face broke&mdash;just a little&mdash;a wee glimmer, the momentary
- flicker of a summer-lightning smile, seven years ahead of time&mdash;and I
- was out and gone as soon as it was.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 Chicago&mdash;by 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 drawing-rooms, 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 house-tops 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- And now General Grant, arm-in-arm 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 before&mdash;all 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 remark,
- General Grant said&mdash;
- </p>
- <p>
- "Mr. Clemens, I am not embarrassed. Are you?"&mdash;and that little
- seven-year smile twinkled across his face again.
- </p>
- <p>
- Seventeen years have gone by since then, and to-day, 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 resting-place 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- We had one game in the ship which was a good time-passer&mdash;at least it
- was at night in the smoking-room 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 ending&mdash;then
- 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 new-made 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 twenty-five 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 was as follows:
- </p>
- <p>
- John Brown, aged thirty-one, good, gentle, bashful, timid, lived in a
- quiet village in Missouri. He was superintendent of the Presbyterian
- Sunday-school. 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 bashfulness both when it was needed and when it wasn't.
- </p>
- <p>
- Mary Taylor, twenty-three, 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. One of the sisters was crazy, and sometimes
- a little violent, but not often.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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
- opposition annulled, the rest of the conquest would be sure and prompt.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 hand-worked border that could not be rivaled in that region for
- beauty and elaboration.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 do.
- He must have the hat, that was manifest; but how was he to get it?
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 had the hat. When he got to the top of
- the bank the horse was gone!
- </p>
- <p>
- 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
- for&mdash;but he was too late; he sat suddenly down and pulled up the
- lap-robe, for he saw some one coming out of the gate&mdash;a woman; he
- thought. He wheeled the horse to the left, and struck briskly up the
- cross-road. 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 walk, and reached for his tr&mdash;&mdash; too late again.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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, impressively:
- </p>
- <p>
- "It looks like an accident, his coming at such a time; but let no one
- profane it with such a name; he was sent&mdash;sent from on high."
- </p>
- <p>
- They were all moved, and Mrs. Glossop said in an awed voice:
- </p>
- <p>
- "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 angel&mdash;an
- angel as truly as ever angel was&mdash;an 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 special Providences; for if
- this isn't one, let them account for it that can."
- </p>
- <p>
- "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?&mdash;didn't you feel that you were sent? I could kiss the hem of
- your laprobe."
- </p>
- <p>
- He was not able to speak; he was helpless with shame and fright. Mrs.
- Taylor went on:
- </p>
- <p>
- "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, Julia Glossop?"
- </p>
- <p>
- "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."
- </p>
- <p>
- "Pale? I was that pale that if&mdash;why, you just compare it with this
- laprobe. Then the next thing I said was, 'Mary Taylor, tell the hired man
- to rig up the team-we'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."
- </p>
- <p>
- "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 said&mdash;now what did I say? Didn't I say, 'Providence will
- provide'?"
- </p>
- <p>
- "Why sure as you live, so you did! I had forgotten it."
- </p>
- <p>
- "So had I," said Mrs. Glossop and Mrs. Taylor; "but you certainly said it.
- Now wasn't that remarkable?"
- </p>
- <p>
- "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 mile&mdash;and
- Providence has provided. You see it yourselves."
- </p>
- <p>
- They gazed at each other awe-struck, and lifted their hands and said in
- unison:
- </p>
- <p>
- "It's per-fectly wonderful."
- </p>
- <p>
- "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?"
- </p>
- <p>
- Brown gasped.
- </p>
- <p>
- "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 can't load them into the buggy by himself, and they so helpless."
- </p>
- <p>
- "That is so," said Mrs. Taylor. "It doesn't look-oh, how would this do?&mdash;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 lift one of
- the Old People into the buggy; then drive her to my house and&mdash;&mdash;
- </p>
- <p>
- "But who will take care of the other one?" said Mrs. Enderby. "We musn't
- leave her there in the woods alone, you know&mdash;especially the crazy
- one. There and back is eight miles, you see."
- </p>
- <p>
- 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
- brightened and said:
- </p>
- <p>
- "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
- here&mdash;nine 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. Brown&mdash;there's no getting around 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 drive back and
- get the other one and drive her to Nancy's, and Mr. Brown walk."
- </p>
- <p>
- "Splendid!" they all cried. "Oh, that will do&mdash;that 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 buggy-step and
- was about to climb in, when Brown found a remnant of his voice and gasped
- out&mdash;
- </p>
- <p>
- "Please Mrs. Enderby, call them back&mdash;I am very weak; I can't walk, I
- can't, indeed."
- </p>
- <p>
- "Why, dear Mr. Brown! You do look pale; I am ashamed of myself that I
- didn't notice it sooner. Come back-all of you! Mr. Brown is not well. Is
- there anything I can do for you, Mr. Brown?&mdash;I'm real sorry. Are you
- in pain?"
- </p>
- <p>
- "No, madam, only weak; I am not sick, but only just weak&mdash;lately; not
- long, but just lately."
- </p>
- <p>
- The others came back, and poured out their sympathies and commiserations,
- and were full of self-reproaches for not having noticed how pale he was.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 People, and leave one of themselves
- with the other one, and&mdash;&mdash;
- </p>
- <p>
- 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&mdash;
- </p>
- <p>
- "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."
- </p>
- <p>
- They all exclaimed, "Why, sure-ly, that is so!" and they were, all
- perplexed again.
- </p>
- <p>
- "Dear, dear, what can we do?" said Mrs. Glossop; "it is the most mixed-up
- thing that ever was. The fox and the goose and the corn and things&mdash;oh,
- dear, they are nothing to it."
- </p>
- <p>
- They sat wearily down once more, to further torture their tormented heads
- for a plan that would work. Presently Mary offered a plan; it was her
- first effort. She said:
- </p>
- <p>
- "I am young and strong, and am refreshed, now. Take Mr. Brown to our
- house, and give him help&mdash;you 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 do&mdash;wait 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 up&mdash;the crazy one doesn't need it."
- </p>
- <p>
- This plan was discussed and accepted; it seemed the best that could be
- done, in the circumstances, and the Old People must be getting discouraged
- by this time.
- </p>
- <p>
- Brown felt relieved, and was deeply thankful. Let him once get to the main
- road and he would find a way to escape.
- </p>
- <p>
- Then Mrs. Taylor said:
- </p>
- <p>
- "The evening chill will be coming on, pretty soon, and those poor old
- burnt-out things will need some kind of covering. Take the lap-robe with
- you, dear."
- </p>
- <p>
- "Very well, Mother, I will."
- </p>
- <p>
- She stepped to the buggy and put out her hand to take it&mdash;&mdash;
- </p>
- <p>
- That was the end of the tale. The passenger who told it said that when he
- read the story twenty-five years ago in a train he was interrupted at that
- point&mdash;the train jumped off a bridge.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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
- character&mdash;great 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 secure&mdash;just
- 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 willing-by 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 waiting-their fate and Brown's happiness to be determined by
- what Brown should do within the next two seconds. Mary was reaching for
- the lap-robe; Brown must decide-there was no time to be lost.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 in him, his praises on all
- their tongues.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 lap-robe. 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 three in the morning.
- </p>
- <p>
- Meantime Mary was still reaching for the lap-robe. We gave it up, and
- decided to let her continue to reach. It is the reader's privilege to
- determine for himself how the thing came out.<br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <table summary="STORY">
- <tr>
- <td>
- <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
- <img alt="p043.jpg (11K)" src="images/p043.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
- </div>
- &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
- </td>
- <td>
- <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
- <img alt="p047.jpg (10K)" src="images/p047.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
- </div>
- </td>
- </tr>
- </table>
- <p>
- <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <h2>
- <a name="ch3" id="ch3"></a><br /> <br /> CHAPTER III.
- </h2>
- <p>
- <i>It is more trouble to make a maxim than it is to do right.</i>
- </p>
- <p>
- &mdash;Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar. <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
- <img alt="p049.jpg (41K)" src="images/p049.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
- </div>
- <p>
- <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 twenty-nine
- years. So we were nearing Honolulu, the capital city of the Sandwich
- Islands&mdash;those 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
- world could have stirred me as the sight of that great rock did.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 mountain-range
- 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&mdash;we
- young people&mdash;and 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 neighbor&mdash;for 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 discrimination in making his selections from the
- samples placed on view.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 tabu&mdash;an
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 woman-folk 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 left&mdash;if anything was left&mdash;and
- 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 without finding out.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 and
- taro and dog for a diet when the other things were so expensive.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.<br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
- <img alt="p053.jpg (14K)" src="images/p053.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
- </div>
- <p>
- <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- He destroyed his Established Church, and his kingdom is a republic today,
- in consequence of that act.
- </p>
- <p>
- When he destroyed the Church and burned the idols he did a mighty thing
- for civilization and for his people's weal&mdash;but 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. Forty-seven years later, when I was in the islands,
- Kamehameha 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 Establishment; all the people were
- Dissenters.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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
- something exactly like it.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 to-day, 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 myself, but my intelligence is out of
- repair, now, from over-work.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 seven&mdash;attractive 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 he 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 twenty-one, 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 berth-saloon
- 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.<br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
- <img alt="p056.jpg (80K)" src="images/p056.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
- </div>
- <p>
- <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <p>
- 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
- doctor-books 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 pictures&mdash;pictures
- pictures&mdash;an enchanting procession of them! I was impatient for the
- morning to come.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 twenty-nine years go to ruin.
- Messages came from friends, but the friends themselves I was not to have
- any sight of. My lecture-hall was ready, but I was not to see that,
- either.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 quarantine-term 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, recreation-seekers 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 westward-bound indulgence&mdash;they had made up
- their minds to that&mdash;but 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 twenty-four thousand. However, they were used to
- extensions by this time, and did not mind this new one much.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 homeward-bound 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 green-green 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 it long before, with nothing
- of its beauty lost, nothing of its charm wanting.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 trademark&mdash;that 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
- been a monarchy without subjects of the king's race.
- </p>
- <p>
- We had a sunset of a very fine sort. The vast plain of the sea was marked
- off in bands of sharply-contrasted 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 pink&mdash;dissolved 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 delight to look upon it.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 to-day is, as compared with the Honolulu of my time. In my
- time it was a beautiful little town, made up of snow-white 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 prosperity&mdash;a general prosperity&mdash;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 whale-oil lamp furnished it for
- the parlor. Native matting served as carpeting. In the parlor one would
- find two or three lithographs on the walls&mdash;portraits 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 what-not with
- semi-globular glass paperweights, enclosing miniature pictures of ships,
- New England rural snowstorms, and the like; sea-shells with Bible texts
- carved on them in cameo style; native curios; whale's tooth with
- full-rigged 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, nobody
- traveled.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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:
- </p>
- <blockquote>
- <p>
- "Almost every house is surrounded by extensive lawns and gardens
- enclosed by walls of volcanic stone or by thick hedges of the brilliant
- hibiscus.
- </p>
- <p>
- "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-a-brac,
- pictures, books, and curios from all parts of the world, for these
- island dwellers are indefatigable travelers.
- </p>
- <p>
- "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 drawing-room. 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 sides&mdash;the
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- "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,&mdash;the
- universal mode adopted by Europeans and Americans, as well as by the
- natives.
- </p>
- <p>
- "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
- magical moonlight of the tropics."
- </p>
- </blockquote>
- <p>
- There: rugs, ices, pictures, lanais, worldly books, sinful bric-a-brac
- 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 man-of-war 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 ice-machine
- 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 walruses.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 horse&mdash;too late to
- get much benefit from it. The riding-horse is retiring from business
- everywhere in the world. In Honolulu a few years from now he will be only
- a tradition.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 slow-consuming misery,
- for death to come 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 self-sacrifice, it appears. I asked after "Billy"
- Ragsdale, interpreter to the Parliament in my time&mdash;a half-white. 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
- half-caste 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
- good-bye, and sailed in the leper ship to Molokai. There he died the
- loathsome and lingering death that all lepers die.
- </p>
- <p>
- In this place let me insert a paragraph or two from "The Paradise of the
- Pacific" (Rev. H. H. Gowen)&mdash;
- </p>
- <blockquote>
- <p>
- "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 heart-breaking scenes which that
- enforcement has brought about?
- </p>
- <p>
- "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 her leper husband.
- </p>
- <p>
- "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.
- </p>
- <p>
- "Imagine it! The case of the babies is hard, but its bitterness is a
- trifle&mdash;less than a trifle&mdash;less than nothing&mdash;compared
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- "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 the spirit should be freed from its burden.
- </p>
- <p>
- "I myself have known hard cases enough:&mdash;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."
- </p>
- </blockquote>
- <p>
- 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!
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 freed soul with a burst of glad music!<br />
- <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <h2>
- <a name="ch4" id="ch4"></a><br /> <br /> CHAPTER IV.
- </h2>
- <p>
- <i>A dozen direct censures are easier to bear than one morganatic
- compliment.</i>
- </p>
- <p>
- &mdash;Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.
- </p>
- <p>
- Sailed from Honolulu.&mdash;From diary:
- </p>
- <p>
- Sept. 2. Flocks of flying fish-slim, shapely, graceful, and intensely
- white. With the sun on them they look like a flight of silver
- fruit-knives. They are able to fly a hundred yards.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 night&mdash;variable winds,
- bursts of rain, intervals of calm, with chopping seas and a wobbly and
- drunken motion to the ship&mdash;a condition of things findable in other
- regions sometimes, but present in the doldrums always. The globe-girdling
- belt called the doldrums is 20 degrees wide, and the thread called the
- equator lies along the middle of it.
- </p>
- <p>
- Sept. 4. Total eclipse of the moon last night. At 7.30 it began to go off.
- At total&mdash;or about that&mdash;it was like a rich rosy cloud with a
- tumbled surface framed in the circle and projecting from it&mdash;a bulge
- of strawberry-ice, so to speak. At half-eclipse the moon was like a gilded
- acorn in its cup.<br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
- <img alt="p066.jpg (9K)" src="images/p066.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
- </div>
- <p>
- <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 down-hill, we should fly. When she asked
- him the other day what the fore-yard 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 stored up, and the girl is likely to get it all.<br /> <br /> <br />
- <br />
- </p>
- <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
- <img alt="p067.jpg (64K)" src="images/p067.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
- </div>
- <p>
- <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 yard-arm 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 old-time grotesque performances gotten up on shipboard to
- celebrate the passage of the line could ever be funny on shore&mdash;they
- would seem dreary and witless 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
- horse-play 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 down to this sorrowful level.
- </p>
- <p>
- The short-voyage passenger gets his chief physical exercise out of
- "horse-billiards"&mdash;shovel-board. It is a good game. We play it in
- this ship. A quartermaster chalks off a diagram like this-on the deck.
- </p>
- <p>
- The player uses a cue that is like a broom-handle with a quarter-moon of
- wood fastened to the end of it. With this he shoves wooden disks the size
- of a saucer&mdash;he 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 place&mdash;particularly 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 up&mdash;lands
- 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 skill; this makes it a chancy game, and the
- element of luck comes largely in.<br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
- <img alt="p068.jpg (37K)" src="images/p068.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
- </div>
- <p>
- <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 exercise&mdash;for
- horse-billiards is a physically violent game.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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
- previous games of the series, some of them by fine majorities:
- </p>
- <table summary="">
- <tr>
- <td>
- Chase,
- </td>
- <td>
- 102&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
- </td>
- <td>
- Mrs. D.,&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
- </td>
- <td>
- 57&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
- </td>
- <td>
- Mortimer,&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
- </td>
- <td>
- 105&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
- </td>
- <td>
- The Surgeon,&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
- </td>
- <td>
- 92
- </td>
- </tr>
- <tr>
- <td>
- Miss C.,
- </td>
- <td>
- 105
- </td>
- <td>
- Mrs. T.,
- </td>
- <td>
- 9
- </td>
- <td>
- Clemens,
- </td>
- <td>
- 101
- </td>
- <td>
- Taylor,
- </td>
- <td>
- 92
- </td>
- </tr>
- <tr>
- <td>
- Taylor,
- </td>
- <td>
- 109
- </td>
- <td>
- Davies,&nbsp;&nbsp;
- </td>
- <td>
- 95
- </td>
- <td>
- Miss C.,
- </td>
- <td>
- 108
- </td>
- <td>
- Mortimer,
- </td>
- <td>
- 55
- </td>
- </tr>
- <tr>
- <td>
- Thomas,
- </td>
- <td>
- 102
- </td>
- <td>
- Roper,
- </td>
- <td>
- 76
- </td>
- <td>
- Clemens,
- </td>
- <td>
- 111
- </td>
- <td>
- Miss C.,
- </td>
- <td>
- 89
- </td>
- </tr>
- <tr>
- <td>
- Coomber,&nbsp;&nbsp;
- </td>
- <td>
- 106
- </td>
- <td>
- Chase,
- </td>
- <td>
- 98
- </td>
- </tr>
- </table>
- <p>
- 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&mdash;within
- 3 of out. The luck changed then. He picked up a 10-off or so, and couldn't
- recover. I beat him.
- </p>
- <p>
- The next game would end tournament No. 1.
- </p>
- <p>
- Mr. Thomas and I were the contestants. He won the lead and went to the bat&mdash;so
- 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 left-hand end of the 10. (Applause). The umpire
- proclaimed "a good 10," and the game-keeper set it down. I played: my disk
- grazed the edge of Mr. Thomas's disk, and went out of the diagram. (No
- applause.)
- </p>
- <p>
- Mr. Thomas played again&mdash;and landed his second disk alongside of the
- first, and almost touching its right-hand side. "Good 10." (Great
- applause.)
- </p>
- <p>
- I played, and missed both of them. (No applause.)
- </p>
- <p>
- Mr. Thomas delivered his third shot and landed his disk just at the right
- of the other two. " Good 10." (Immense applause.)
- </p>
- <p>
- There they lay, side by side, the three in a row. It did not seem possible
- that anybody could miss them. Still I did it. (Immense silence.)
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 them-a
- straight solid row of 4 disks. (Tumultuous and long-continued applause.)
- </p>
- <p>
- Then I played my last disk. Again it did not seem possible that anybody
- could miss that row&mdash;a 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- I think it unlikely that that innings has ever had its parallel in the
- history of horse-billiards. 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 now
- that I reflect upon it I see that it was rather fine and difficult.
- </p>
- <p>
- Mr. Thomas kept his luck, and won the game, and later the championship.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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&mdash;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 half-hour 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 looked&mdash;the Waterbury was marking
- half-past 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
- against the bedstead. I was sorry next day, when I found out.<br /> <br />
- <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
- <img alt="p072.jpg (22K)" src="images/p072.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
- </div>
- <p>
- <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <p>
- To return to the ship.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 wash-water and brings it in, too&mdash;and in flooding
- abundance. Mrs. I., an invalid, had to sleep on the locker&mdash;sofa
- under her port, and every time she over-slept and thus failed to take care
- of herself, the deck-washers drowned her out.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 white gown all over with little greasy yellow spots.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- Sept. 8.&mdash;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. To-morrow
- we shall be close to the center of the globe&mdash;the 180th degree of
- west longitude and 180th degree of east longitude.
- </p>
- <p>
- And then we must drop out a day&mdash;lose 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
- to-day, it's tomorrow." We shall be in a state of confusion all the time
- and shall never know what true happiness is.<br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
- <img alt="p074.jpg (21K)" src="images/p074.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
- </div>
- <p>
- <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <p>
- Next Day. Sure enough, it has happened. Yesterday it was September 8,
- Sunday; to-day, per the bulletin-board 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 10th&mdash;and
- 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 shrunk-up little things by comparison. The difference in
- temperature between the two days was very marked, their day being hotter
- than mine because it was closer to the equator.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 all&mdash;in 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- If the ships all moved in the one direction&mdash;westward, I mean&mdash;the
- world would suffer a prodigious loss&mdash;in 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.<br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <h2>
- <a name="ch5" id="ch5"></a><br /> <br /> CHAPTER V.
- </h2>
- <p>
- <i>Noise proves nothing. Often a hen who has merely laid an egg cackles as
- if she had laid an asteroid.</i>
- </p>
- <p>
- &mdash;Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 evening-present, a mixture of Scotch, English, American,
- Canadian, and Australasian folk&mdash;a discussion broke out about the
- pronunciation of certain Scottish words. This was private ground, and the
- non-Scotch 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't&mdash;that 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
- me&mdash;a 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 thought&mdash;at least a thought that offered a
- chance. While the storm was still raging, I made up a Scotch couplet, and
- then spoke up and said:
- </p>
- <p>
- "Very well, don't say any more. I confess defeat. I thought I knew, but I
- see my mistake. I was deceived by one of your Scotch poets."
- </p>
- <p>
- "A Scotch poet! O come! Name him."
- </p>
- <p>
- "Robert Burns."
- </p>
- <p>
- It is wonderful the power of that name. These men looked doubtful&mdash;but
- paralyzed, all the same. They were quite silent for a moment; then one of
- them said&mdash;with the reverence in his voice which is always present in
- a Scotchman's tone when he utters the name.
- </p>
- <p>
- "Does Robbie Burns say&mdash;what does he say?"
- </p>
- <p>
- "This is what he says:
- </p>
- <table summary="">
- <tr>
- <td>
- 'There were nae bairns but only three&mdash;<br /> Ane at the breast,
- twa at the knee.'"<br />
- </td>
- </tr>
- </table>
- <p>
- 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 this
- time of my sore need.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 the appearance of it is worth six of it.
- </p>
- <p>
- We are moving steadily southward-getting 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 it&mdash;somebody saw it&mdash;and
- 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&mdash;and
- naturally couldn't have anything against it, since it is a citizen of our
- own sky, and the property of the United States&mdash;but 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 supposed it would need a
- sky all to itself.
- </p>
- <p>
- But that was a mistake. We saw the Cross to-night, 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&mdash;a cross that is out of repair&mdash;or out of drawing; not
- correctly shaped. It is long, with a short cross-bar, and the cross-bar is
- canted out of the straight line.<br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
- <img alt="p079.jpg (15K)" src="images/p079.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
- </div>
- <p>
- <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 cross-bar. If you do not draw an
- imaginary line from star to star it does not suggest a cross&mdash;nor
- anything in particular.
- </p>
- <p>
- One must ignore the little star, and leave it out of the combination&mdash;it
- confuses everything. If you leave it out, then you can make out of the
- four stars a sort of cross&mdash;out of true; or a sort of kite&mdash;out
- of true; or a sort of coffin-out of true.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 common-sense one, a manifestly descriptive one. The Great Bear
- remained the Great Bear&mdash;and unrecognizable as such&mdash;for
- 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, now&mdash;I cannot
- tell exactly how long it will be&mdash;the globe will belong to the
- English-speaking race; and of course the skies also. Then the
- constellations will be re-organized, and polished up, and re-named&mdash;the
- 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 Majesty already.<br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
- <img alt="p080.jpg (11K)" src="images/p080.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
- </div>
- <p>
- <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 Horne-Alofa and Fortuna. On the larger one are two rival
- native kings&mdash;and they have a time together. They are Catholics; so
- are their people. The missionaries there are French priests.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 old-time slavers came here and carried off
- the natives to serve as laborers in the great Australian province. In the
- beginning it was plain, simple man-stealing, 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 obeyed&mdash;which 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 three-years 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 hands for this
- purpose before the recruit was delivered to him.
- </p>
- <p>
- Captain Wawn was a recruiting ship-master 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 it&mdash;like this, for instance:
- </p>
- <p>
- "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 three-quarters of a mile from the shore. The boats were in sight at
- some distance. The recruiter-boat 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 about 400
- yards to the westward.
- </p>
- <p>
- "Suddenly we heard the sound of firing, followed by yells from the natives
- on shore, and then we saw the recruiter-boat 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 which&mdash;apiece
- of bone seven or eight inches long&mdash;was still in the limb, protruding
- from both sides, when the boats returned. The recruiter himself would have
- got off scot-free had not an arrow pinned one of his fingers to the loom
- of the steering-oar just as they were getting off. The fight had been
- short but sharp. The enemy lost two men, both shot dead."
- </p>
- <p>
- The truth is, Captain Wawn furnishes such a crowd of instances of fatal
- encounters between natives and French and English recruiting-crews (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 recruiters.<br />
- <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <h2>
- <a name="ch6" id="ch6"></a><br /> <br /> CHAPTER VI.
- </h2>
- <p>
- <i>He was as shy as a newspaper is when referring to its own merits.</i>
- </p>
- <p>
- &mdash;Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.
- </p>
- <p>
- Captain Wawn is crystal-clear on one point: He does not approve of
- missionaries. They obstruct his business. They make "Recruiting," as he
- calls it ("Slave-Catching," 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 itself&mdash;and 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 date&mdash;hot from
- the press, in fact&mdash;by Rev. Wm. Gray, a missionary; and the book and
- the pamphlet taken together make exceedingly interesting reading, to my
- mind.
- </p>
- <p>
- Interesting, and easy to understand&mdash;except 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 to the recruit 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 canefields&mdash;in a much hotter climate
- than he is used to&mdash;and get less than four shillings a week for it.<br />
- <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
- <img alt="p084.jpg (20K)" src="images/p084.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
- </div>
- <p>
- <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <p>
- 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:
- </p>
- <p>
- "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&mdash;["Box" is English for
- trunk.]&mdash;well filled with clothing, a musical instrument or two, and
- perfumery and other articles of luxury he has learned to appreciate."
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 can show
- off.<br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
- <img alt="p085.jpg (22K)" src="images/p085.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
- </div>
- <p>
- <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <p>
- It all looks plausible&mdash;for a moment. Then the missionary takes hold
- of this explanation and pulls it to pieces, and dances on it, and damages
- it beyond recognition.
- </p>
- <blockquote>
- <p>
- "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 tobacco&mdash;a 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."
- </p>
- </blockquote>
- <p>
- A hat, an umbrella, a belt, a neckerchief. Otherwise stark naked. All in a
- day the hard-earned "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 to swear. This is art, and art is long, as
- the poet says.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 recruiting-ship, 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 ashore&mdash;per boat, because of the prevalence of
- sharks. Testimony from Rev. Mr. Gray:
- </p>
- <blockquote>
- <p>
- "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 distant at the time!"
- </p>
- </blockquote>
- <p>
- The law and the missionaries feel for the repentant recruit&mdash;and
- properly, one may be permitted to think, for he is only a youth and
- ignorant and persuadable to his hurt&mdash;but sympathy for him is not
- kept in stock by the recruiter. Rev. Mr. Gray says:
- </p>
- <blockquote>
- <p>
- "A captain many years in the traffic explained to me how a penitent
- could be taken. '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."
- </p>
- </blockquote>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- Captain Wawn of the free spirit chafes under the annoyance of "cast-iron
- regulations." They and the missionaries have poisoned his life. He grieves
- for the good old days, vanished to come no more. See him weep; hear him
- cuss between the lines!
- </p>
- <blockquote>
- <p>
- "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."
- </p>
- </blockquote>
- <p>
- Rev. Mr. Gray calls this same restrictive cast-iron 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 inadequate&mdash;unjust
- and inadequate they must ever be." He furnishes his reasons for his
- position, but they are too long for reproduction here.
- </p>
- <p>
- However, if the most a Kanaka advantages himself by a three-years 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 squarely abolished.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 people&mdash;death-rate 12 in 1,000 of the
- population&mdash;but the Kanaka death-rate 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 death-rate among the new men
- has reached as high as 180 in the 1,000. In the Kanaka's native home his
- death-rate is 12 in time of peace, and 15 in time of war. Thus exile to
- Queensland&mdash;with the opportunity to acquire civilization, an
- umbrella, and a pretty poor quality of profanity&mdash;is 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- Concerning these Pacific isles and their peoples an eloquent prophet spoke
- long years ago&mdash;five 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 prophet was the Right Rev. M. Russell, LL.D., D.C.L., of Edinburgh:
- </p>
- <blockquote>
- <p>
- "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 Anglo-Saxon race is given the scepter of the globe, but
- there is not given either the lash of the slave-driver 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.
- </p>
- </blockquote>
- <p>
- And he closes his vision with an invocation from Thomson:
- </p>
- <blockquote>
- <p>
- "Come, bright Improvement! on the car of Time, And rule the spacious
- world from clime to clime."
- </p>
- </blockquote>
- <p>
- Very well, Bright Improvement has arrived, you see, with her civilization,
- and her Waterbury, and her umbrella, and her third-quality profanity, and
- her humanizing-not-destroying machinery, and her hundred-and-eighty
- death-rate, and everything is going along just as handsome!
- </p>
- <p>
- But the prophet that speaks last has an advantage over the pioneer in the
- business. Rev. Mr. Gray says:
- </p>
- <blockquote>
- <p>
- "What I am concerned about is that we as a Christian nation should wipe
- out these races to enrich ourselves."
- </p>
- </blockquote>
- <p>
- And he closes his pamphlet with a grim Indictment which is as eloquent in
- its flowerless straightforward English as is the hand-painted rhapsody of
- the early prophet:
- </p>
- <blockquote>
- <p>
- "My indictment of the Queensland-Kanaka Labor Traffic is this
- </p>
- <p>
- "1. It generally demoralizes and always impoverishes the Kanaka,
- deprives him of his citizenship, and depopulates the islands fitted to
- his home.
- </p>
- <p>
- "2. It is felt to lower the dignity of the white agricultural laborer in
- Queensland, and beyond a doubt it lowers his wages there.
- </p>
- <p>
- "3. The whole system is fraught with danger to Australia and the islands
- on the score of health.
- </p>
- <p>
- "4. On social and political grounds the continuance of the Queensland
- Kanaka Labor Traffic must be a barrier to the true federation of the
- Australian colonies.
- </p>
- <p>
- "5. The Regulations under which the Traffic exists in Queensland are
- inadequate to prevent abuses, and in the nature of things they must
- remain so.
- </p>
- <p>
- "6. The whole system is contrary to the spirit and doctrine of the
- Gospel of Jesus Christ. The Gospel requires us to help the weak, but the
- Kanaka is fleeced and trodden down.
- </p>
- <p>
- "7. The bed-rock 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 'slave-hunting' will certainly remain to the end not unlike
- its origin."
- </p>
- </blockquote>
- <p>
- <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
- <img alt="p090.jpg (11K)" src="images/p090.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
- </div>
- <p>
- <br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <h2>
- <a name="ch7" id="ch7"></a><br /> <br /> CHAPTER VII.
- </h2>
- <p>
- <i>Truth is the most valuable thing we have. Let us economize it.</i>
- </p>
- <p>
- &mdash;Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.
- </p>
- <p>
- From Diary:&mdash;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 fly-specked all over with them.
- Their number would seem to be uncountable. We are moving among the Fijis
- now&mdash;224 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 flavor of
- the joke one must take a glance at the map.
- </p>
- <p>
- Wednesday, September 11.&mdash;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 the picture
- artistically perfect.<br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
- <img alt="p092.jpg (16K)" src="images/p092.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
- </div>
- <p>
- <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <p>
- In the afternoon we sighted Suva, the capital of the group, and threaded
- our way into the secluded little harbor&mdash;a placid basin of brilliant
- blue and green water tucked snugly in among the sheltering hills. A few
- ships rode at anchor in it&mdash;one 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 sea-front, 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 Duluth, American Queen of the Alien Seas!
- </p>
- <p>
- Row-boats 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, clean-limbed, and with faces full of character and intelligence.
- It would be hard to find their superiors anywhere among the dark races, I
- should think.<br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
- <img alt="p093.jpg (17K)" src="images/p093.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
- </div>
- <p>
- <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <p>
- Everybody went ashore to look around, and spy out the land, and have that
- luxury of luxuries to sea-voyagers&mdash;a land-dinner. And there we saw
- more natives: Wrinkled old women, with their flat mammals flung over their
- shoulders, or hanging down in front like the cold-weather drip from the
- molasses-faucet; 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&mdash;athletes for
- build and muscle&mdash;clothed in a loose arrangement of dazzling white,
- with bronze breast and bronze legs naked, and the head a cannon-swab of
- solid hair combed straight out from the skull and dyed a rich brick-red.
- Only sixty years ago they were sunk in darkness; now they have the
- bicycle.<br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
- <img alt="p094.jpg (82K)" src="images/p094.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
- </div>
- <p>
- <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 torrid weather; but he was surprised, and said:
- </p>
- <p>
- "This? This is not hot. You ought to be here in the summer time once."
- </p>
- <p>
- "We supposed that this was summer; it has the ear-marks of it. You could
- take it to almost any country and deceive people with it. But if it isn't
- summer, what does it lack?"
- </p>
- <p>
- "It lacks half a year. This is mid-winter."<br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
- <img alt="p095.jpg (19K)" src="images/p095.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
- </div>
- <p>
- <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 mid-summer, now it is midwinter; about a week hence we
- shall arrive in Australia in the spring.
- </p>
- <p>
- After dinner I found in the billiard-room 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 high-placed house, and
- its immediate surroundings lie drowsing in that dreamy repose and serenity
- which are the charm of life in the Pacific Islands.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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
- with everybody that wears them.
- </p>
- <p>
- It was said that the old-time 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 high-class 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 king&mdash;the king with the
- difficult name whose memory is preserved by a notable monument of
- cut-stone which one sees in the enclosure in the middle of the town.
- Thakombau&mdash;I remember, now; that is the name. It is easier to
- preserve it on a granite block than in your head.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 session&mdash;a 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 hermit-crab formality, you know." "Yes," said poor Thakombau, "but
- with this difference&mdash;the crab moves into an unoccupied shell, but
- mine isn't."
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 debt&mdash;a 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
- ultimate payment of the American debt.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 twenty-seven 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
- twenty-seven 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 honor&mdash;in 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 forty.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 religion&mdash;with
- 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 with the gravity and
- attention which so serious a thing deserved.
- </p>
- <p>
- The missionary taught these exacting savages many valuable things, and got
- from them one&mdash;a 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 beauty!<br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <h2>
- <a name="ch8" id="ch8"></a><br /> <br /> CHAPTER VIII.
- </h2>
- <p>
- <i>It could probably be shown by facts and figures that there is no
- distinctly native American criminal class except Congress.</i>
- </p>
- <p>
- &mdash;Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 ever
- have to their lost homes."&mdash;[Forbes's "Two Years in Fiji."]
- </p>
- <p>
- 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, wandering
- Children of Nowhere.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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
- money-getting, mixed with plenty of loose matrimony by purchase, divorce
- without trial or expense, and limitless spreeing thrown in to make life
- ideally perfect.
- </p>
- <p>
- We sailed again, refreshed.
- </p>
- <p>
- The most cultivated person in the ship was a young Englishman 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
- subject&mdash;layman's knowledge&mdash;to begin with, but it was his
- teachings which crystalized it into scientific form and clarity&mdash;in a
- word, gave it value.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 trenches through them to get
- from town to town.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 game-bird in Australia was the wombat, and the only song-bird 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 sheep-shearing season, pretending to look for work; but he always
- times himself to arrive at a sheep-run 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 biggest the now extinct Great Moa.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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
- week-time, twenty miles an hour. The company exterminated the moa to get
- the mails.<br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
- <img alt="p103.jpg (46K)" src="images/p103.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
- </div>
- <p>
- <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 Ornithorhynchus&mdash;grotesquest of
- animals, king of the animalculae of the world for versatility of character
- and make-up. Said he:
- </p>
- <blockquote>
- <p>
- "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
- refined ones, it has all the habits there are except good ones.
- </p>
- <p>
- "It is a survival&mdash;a 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 flood-tides 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 ever-increasing 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- "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
- tree-trunk; 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- "When at last, after thirteen months of travel and research in all the
- Zones it went aground on a mountain-summit, 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!
- </p>
- <p>
- "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 Post-Pleosaurian. 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 make-up 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 speaking&mdash;that
- creature which was everything in general and nothing in particular&mdash;the
- opulently endowed 'e pluribus unum' of the animal world.
- </p>
- <p>
- "Such is the history of the most hoary, the most ancient, the most
- venerable creature that exists in the earth today&mdash;Ornithorhynchus
- Platypus Extraordinariensis&mdash;whom God preserve!"
- </p>
- </blockquote>
- <p>
- <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
- <img alt="p105.jpg (38K)" src="images/p105.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
- </div>
- <p>
- <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <p>
- 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&mdash;
- </p>
- <h3>
- INVOCATION.
- </h3>
- <table summary="">
- <tr>
- <td>
- <br /> "Come forth from thy oozy couch,<br /> O Ornithorhynchus dear!<br />
- And greet with a cordial claw<br /> The stranger that longs to hear<br />
- <br /> "From thy own own lips the tale<br /> Of thy origin all unknown:<br />
- Thy misplaced bone where flesh should be<br /> And flesh where should
- be bone;<br /> <br /> "And fishy fin where should be paw,<br /> And
- beaver-trowel tail,<br /> And snout of beast equip'd with teeth<br />
- Where gills ought to prevail.<br /> <br /> "Come, Kangaroo, the good and
- true<br /> Foreshortened as to legs,<br /> And body tapered like a
- churn,<br /> And sack marsupial, i' fegs,<br /> <br /> "And tells us why
- you linger here,<br /> Thou relic of a vanished time,<br /> When all
- your friends as fossils sleep,<br /> Immortalized in lime!"<br /> <br />
- </td>
- </tr>
- </table>
- <p>
- 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"&mdash;particularly
- stanzas first and seventeenth&mdash;and I think the reader will feel
- convinced that he who wrote the one had read the other:
- </p>
- <table summary="">
- <tr>
- <td>
- I.<br /> <br /> "Frank Dutton was as fine a lad<br /> As ever you wish to
- see,<br /> And he was drowned in Pine Island Lake<br /> On earth no more
- will he be,<br /> His age was near fifteen years,<br /> And he was a
- motherless boy,<br /> He was living with his grandmother<br /> When he
- was drowned, poor boy."<br /> <br /> <br /> XVII.<br /> <br /> "He was
- drowned on Tuesday afternoon,<br /> On Sunday he was found,<br /> And
- the tidings of that drowned boy<br /> Was heard for miles around.<br />
- His form was laid by his mother's side,<br /> Beneath the cold, cold
- ground,<br /> His friends for him will drop a tear<br /> When they view
- his little mound."<br /> <br /> <i>The Sentimental Song Book.<br /> By
- Mrs. Julia Moore, p. 36.</i>
- </td>
- </tr>
- </table>
- <h2>
- <a name="ch9" id="ch9"></a><br /> <br /> CHAPTER IX.
- </h2>
- <p>
- <i>It is your human environment that makes climate.</i>
- </p>
- <p>
- &mdash;Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.
- </p>
- <p>
- Sept. 15&mdash;Night. Close to Australia now. Sydney 50 miles distant.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 water&mdash;a 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 sea-serpent, 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 sea-serpents 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 equal the most of those people will not
- see again until after they are dead.
- </p>
- <p>
- It was porpoises&mdash;porpoises 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&mdash;eight
- or ten feet&mdash;but 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 sun
- and pierced the firmament of darkness with a far-reaching sword of light.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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
- heart-stirring welcome; for she was bringing back a great company of
- mothers and daughters, the long-missed 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 dread is over.
- </p>
- <p>
- On board the Duncan Dunbar, flying toward Sydney Heads in the waning
- afternoon, the happy home-comers 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 sea-going 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
- heart-break that is in it can never perish out of it.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- We entered and cast anchor, and in the morning went oh-ing and ah-ing in
- admiration up through the crooks and turns of the spacious and beautiful
- harbor&mdash;a 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 beautiful&mdash;superbly
- beautiful. Then by a natural impulse I gave God the praise. The citizen
- did not seem altogether satisfied. He said:<br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
- <img alt="p113.jpg (13K)" src="images/p113.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
- </div>
- <p>
- <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <p>
- "It is beautiful, of course it's beautiful&mdash;the 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 supremacy-bell. God made the
- Harbor, and that's all right; but Satan made Sydney."
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 oak-leaf&mdash;a roomy sheet of lovely blue
- water, with narrow off-shoots 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
- picturesqueness to the general effect.
- </p>
- <p>
- The narrow inlets which I have mentioned go wandering out into the land
- everywhere and hiding themselves in it, and pleasure-launches 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&mdash;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, now&mdash;a 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 the home market.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 of
- it&mdash;thirty-four 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 mid-winter 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 mid-summer, 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 winters
- and have enough left for Arkansas and the poor.
- </p>
- <p>
- The whole narrow, hilly belt of the Pacific side of New South Wales has
- the climate of its capital&mdash;a 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 Nice&mdash;60 deg.&mdash;yet Nice is further from the equator
- by 460 miles than is the former.
- </p>
- <p>
- But Nature is always stingy of perfect climates; stingier in the case of
- Australia than usual. Apparently this vast continent has a really good
- climate nowhere but around the edges.
- </p>
- <p>
- If we look at a map of the world we are surprised to see how big Australia
- is. It is about two-thirds as large as the United States was before we
- added Alaska.<br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
- <img alt="p116.jpg (15K)" src="images/p116.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
- </div>
- <p>
- <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 border-belt 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 sea-board 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 half-way 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 Pacific-coast strip,
- your map will look like the latest map of Australia.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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
- westward-lying 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
- India. Captain Sturt, the great explorer, gives us a sample of the heat.
- </p>
- <blockquote>
- <p>
- "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 gum-tree, 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 the-top 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."
- </p>
- </blockquote>
- <p>
- That hot wind sweeps over Sydney sometimes, and brings with it what is
- called a "dust-storm." It is said that most Australian towns are
- acquainted with the dust-storm. 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 thing, after all.
- </p>
- <blockquote>
- <p>
- "As we proceeded the altitude became less, and the heat proportionately
- greater until we reached Dubbo, which is only 600 feet above sea-level.
- 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 drawing-room, the window of which has been carelessly left
- open during a dust-storm, 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."
- </p>
- </blockquote>
- <p>
- 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 particulars&mdash;a detail here, a detail there&mdash;we
- 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
- dust-storm; 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, population, and good climate around it.<br /> <br /> <br />
- <br />
- </p>
- <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
- <img alt="p118.jpg (19K)" src="images/p118.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
- </div>
- <p>
- <br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <h2>
- <a name="ch10" id="ch10"></a><br /> <br /> CHAPTER X.
- </h2>
- <p>
- <i>Everything human is pathetic. The secret source of Humor itself is not
- joy but sorrow. There is no humor in heaven.</i>
- </p>
- <p>
- &mdash;Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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
- ill-fed 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.&mdash;[The
- Story of Australasia. J. S. Laurie.]
- </p>
- <p>
- English law was hard-hearted 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 the penal colonies for seven years for
- stealing a rabbit!
- </p>
- <p>
- When I was in London twenty-three years ago there was a new penalty in
- force for diminishing garroting and wife-beating&mdash;25 lashes on the
- bare back with the cat-o'-nine-tails. 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 wife-beaters; 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 achievement of sentimental "humanity."
- </p>
- <p>
- Twenty-five 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 lashes&mdash;for 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&mdash;for
- he was under watch&mdash;and yet not do his friend any good: the friend
- would be attended to by another hand and suffer no lack in the matter of
- full punishment.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 group&mdash;this
- murder to secure death to the perpetrator and to the witnesses of it by
- the hand of the hangman!
- </p>
- <p>
- The incidents quoted above are mere hints, mere suggestions of what
- convict life was like&mdash;they 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 from their bases on every
- hand.
- </p>
- <p>
- Some of the convicts&mdash;indeed, a good many of them&mdash;were 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 twenty-six 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 higher grade
- of civilization.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 disturbed&mdash;not
- as yet being in the way&mdash;it was estimated that in New South Wales
- there was but one native to 45,000 acres of territory.
- </p>
- <p>
- People had to be protected. Officers of the regular army did not want this
- service&mdash;away off there where neither honor nor distinction was to be
- gained. So England recruited and officered a kind of militia force of
- 1,000 uniformed civilians called the "New South Wales Corps" and shipped
- it.
- </p>
- <p>
- This was the worst blow of all. The colony fairly staggered under it. The
- Corps was an object-lesson of the moral condition of England outside of
- the jails. The colonists trembled. It was feared that next there would be
- an importation of the nobility.
- </p>
- <p>
- In those early days the colony was non-supporting. All the necessaries of
- life&mdash;food, clothing, and all&mdash;were sent out from England, and
- kept in great government store-houses, and given to the convicts and sold
- to the settlers&mdash;sold 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 themselves&mdash;and 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 country&mdash;for
- there was little or no money&mdash;and they maintained their devastating
- hold and kept the colony under their heel for eighteen or twenty years
- before they were finally conquered and routed by the government.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 wool-culture. 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 commonwealth of New South Wales.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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, and a race-track
- over the way.<br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
- <img alt="p123.jpg (23K)" src="images/p123.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
- </div>
- <p>
- <br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <h2>
- <a name="ch11" id="ch11"></a><br /> <br /> CHAPTER XI.
- </h2>
- <p>
- <i>We should be careful to get out of an experience only the wisdom that
- is in it&mdash;and stop there; lest we be like the cat that sits down on a
- hot stove-lid. She will never sit down on a hot stove-lid again&mdash;and
- that is well; but also she will never sit down on a cold one any more.</i>
- </p>
- <p>
- &mdash;Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.
- </p>
- <p>
- All English-speaking colonies are made up of lavishly hospitable people,
- and New South Wales and its capital are like the rest in this. The
- English-speaking 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 they run
- across difficulties and do some ungraceful stumbling.
- </p>
- <p>
- Mr. Gape ("New South Wales and Victoria in 1885 "), tried to distribute
- his gratitude, and was not lucky:
- </p>
- <blockquote>
- <p>
- "The inhabitants of Sydney are renowned for their hospitality. The
- treatment which we experienced at the hands of this generous-hearted
- 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 have portrayed home so faithfully
- as Sydney."
- </p>
- </blockquote>
- <p>
- Nobody could say it finer than that. If he had put in his cork then, and
- stayed away from Dubbo&mdash;&mdash;but no; heedless man, he pulled it
- again. Pulled it when he was away along in his book, and his memory of
- what he had said about Sydney had grown dim:<br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
- <img alt="p125.jpg (7K)" src="images/p125.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
- </div>
- <p>
- <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <blockquote>
- <p>
- "We cannot quit the promising town of Dubbo without testifying, in warm
- praise, to the kind-hearted 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."
- </p>
- </blockquote>
- <p>
- 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 way&mdash;any
- 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 dust-storm
- and a pleasing degree of respectful familiarity. No, these are old, old
- symptoms; and when they appear we know that the man has got the
- panegyrics.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 around.<br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
- <img alt="p127.jpg (27K)" src="images/p127.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
- </div>
- <p>
- <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- He will live in a palace in Melbourne or Sydney or some other of the large
- cities, and make occasional trips to his sheep-kingdom 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 squatter-owned towns in Australia.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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&mdash;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
- self-consciousness left out.
- </p>
- <p>
- Now and then&mdash;but this is rare&mdash;one 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"&mdash;as the native reverently and lovingly
- calls England&mdash;know 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:
- </p>
- <p>
- "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."
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 as a young girl stroking mother England's
- old gray head.
- </p>
- <p>
- In the Australasian home the table-talk 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, and
- reserves and restraints are things that are bred by differences of rank.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 abeyance&mdash;and to such a degree indeed, that
- he will bravely applaud all by himself if he wants to&mdash;an exhibition
- of daring which is unusual elsewhere in the world.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 false
- reputation of being without humor and without the appreciation of humor.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 suppers&mdash;one of them by an
- Englishman, the other by an Australian.<br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
- <img alt="p131.jpg (9K)" src="images/p131.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
- </div>
- <p>
- <br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <h2>
- <a name="ch12" id="ch12"></a><br /> <br /> CHAPTER XII.
- </h2>
- <p>
- <i>There are those who scoff at the schoolboy, calling him frivolous and
- shallow: Yet it was the schoolboy who said "Faith is believing what you
- know ain't so."</i>
- </p>
- <p>
- &mdash;Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 life
- the corpuscles.
- </p>
- <p>
- Mr. X., the missionary, considered the dream awhile, then said:
- </p>
- <blockquote>
- <p>
- "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 unaccountable&mdash;the
- 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."
- </p>
- </blockquote>
- <p>
- 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 to the missionary in his work. Then he said something like this:
- </p>
- <blockquote>
- <p>
- "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 and the miracles.
- </p>
- <p>
- "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 home&mdash;that to prepare my
- childlike wonder-lovers 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 performed by Samson, the strongest man
- that had ever lived&mdash;for so I called him.
- </p>
- <p>
- "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 make any impression upon it.
- </p>
- <p>
- "A good old Hindoo gentleman told me where my trouble lay. He said 'We
- Hindoos recognize a god by the work of his hands&mdash;we 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 gods&mdash;he 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 new&mdash;new,
- 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 amazed&mdash;and 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
- them&mdash;as 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.
- </p>
- </blockquote>
- <p>
- <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
- <img alt="p135.jpg (54K)" src="images/p135.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
- </div>
- <p>
- <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <blockquote>
- <p>
- 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, and while it
- remains we cannot doubt, and shall not. Have you the gates?'"
- </p>
- </blockquote>
- <p>
- <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <h2>
- <a name="ch13" id="ch13"></a><br /> <br /> CHAPTER XIII.
- </h2>
- <p>
- <i>The timid man yearns for full value and asks a tenth. The bold man
- strikes for double value and compromises on par.</i>
- </p>
- <p>
- &mdash;Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.
- </p>
- <p>
- One is sure to be struck by the liberal way in which Australasia spends
- money upon public works&mdash;such 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 well-equipped, 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 gas&mdash;gas 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- The botanical garden of Sydney covers thirty-eight 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 House&mdash;fifty-six
- acres; and at hand also, is a recreation ground containing eighty-two
- acres. In addition, there are the zoological gardens, the race-course, and
- the great cricket-grounds 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 Lieutenant-Governor has to do all the work. I
- was in Australasia three months and a half, and saw only one Governor. The
- others were at home.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 reserve-energies,
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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
- countenance makes the horse-race thrive.
- </p>
- <p>
- He is usually a lord, and this is well; for his position compels him to
- lead an expensive life, and an English lord is generally well equipped for
- that.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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
- flag-ship, 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 dignity of
- his office.<br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
- <img alt="p140.jpg (52K)" src="images/p140.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
- </div>
- <p>
- <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <p>
- Third in the list of special pleasures is the tour of the harbor in a fine
- steam pleasure-launch. 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
- short.
- </p>
- <p>
- And finally comes the shark-fishing. Sydney Harbor is populous with the
- finest breeds of man-eating 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 gad-about, 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 up and said&mdash;&mdash;
- </p>
- <p>
- "Say, young fellow, take my line a spell, and change my luck for me."
- </p>
- <p>
- "How do you know I won't make it worse?"
- </p>
- <p>
- "Because you can't. It has been at its worst all night. If you can't
- change it, no harm's done; if you do change it, it's for the better, of
- course. Come."
- </p>
- <p>
- "All right, what will you give?"
- </p>
- <p>
- "I'll give you the shark, if you catch one."
- </p>
- <p>
- "And I will eat it, bones and all. Give me the line."
- </p>
- <p>
- "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 if&mdash;&mdash;there,
- pull in, pull in, man, you've got a bite! I knew how it would be. Why, I
- knew you for a born son of luck the minute I saw you. All right&mdash;he's
- landed."
- </p>
- <p>
- It was an unusually large shark&mdash;"a full nineteen-footer," the
- fisherman said, as he laid the creature open with his knife.
- </p>
- <p>
- "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 own."
- </p>
- <p>
- "Oh, it wouldn't matter; don't worry about that. Get your bait. I'll rob
- him."
- </p>
- <p>
- When the fisherman got back the young man had just finished washing his
- hands in the bay, and was starting away.
- </p>
- <p>
- "What, you are not going?"
- </p>
- <p>
- "Yes. Good-bye."
- </p>
- <p>
- "But what about your shark?"
- </p>
- <p>
- "The shark? Why, what use is he to me?"
- </p>
- <p>
- "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?"
- </p>
- <p>
- "Oh, well, you can collect it."
- </p>
- <p>
- "And keep it? Is that what you mean?"
- </p>
- <p>
- "Yes."
- </p>
- <p>
- "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 must be rich."
- </p>
- <p>
- "I am."
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 "stand-up." 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- At half-past nine the richest wool-broker in Sydney was sitting in his
- morning-room at home, settling his breakfast with the morning paper. A
- servant put his head in and said:
- </p>
- <p>
- "There's a sundowner at the door wants to see you, sir."
- </p>
- <p>
- "What do you bring that kind of a message here for? Send him about his
- business."
- </p>
- <p>
- "He won't go, sir. I've tried."
- </p>
- <p>
- "He won't go? That's&mdash;why, that's unusual. He's one of two things,
- then: he's a remarkable person, or he's crazy. Is he crazy?"
- </p>
- <p>
- "No, sir. He don't look it."
- </p>
- <p>
- "Then he's remarkable. What does he say he wants?"
- </p>
- <p>
- "He won't tell, sir; only says it's very important."
- </p>
- <p>
- "And won't go. Does he say he won't go?"
- </p>
- <p>
- "Says he'll stand there till he sees you, sir, if it's all day."
- </p>
- <p>
- "And yet isn't crazy. Show him up."
- </p>
- <p>
- The sundowner was shown in. The broker said to himself, "No, he's not
- crazy; that is easy to see; so he must be the other thing."
- </p>
- <p>
- Then aloud, "Well, my good fellow, be quick about it; don't waste any
- words; what is it you want?"
- </p>
- <p>
- "I want to borrow a hundred thousand pounds."
- </p>
- <p>
- "Scott! (It's a mistake; he is crazy . . . . No&mdash;he can't be&mdash;not
- with that eye.) Why, you take my breath away. Come, who are you?"
- </p>
- <p>
- "Nobody that you know."
- </p>
- <p>
- "What is your name?"
- </p>
- <p>
- "Cecil Rhodes."
- </p>
- <p>
- "No, I don't remember hearing the name before. Now then&mdash;just for
- curiosity's sake&mdash;what has sent you to me on this extraordinary
- errand?"
- </p>
- <p>
- "The intention to make a hundred thousand pounds for you and as much for
- myself within the next sixty days."
- </p>
- <p>
- "Well, well, well. It is the most extraordinary idea that&mdash;sit down&mdash;you
- interest me. And somehow you&mdash;well, you fascinate me; I think that
- that is about the word. And it isn't your proposition&mdash;no, 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 to bor&mdash;&mdash;"
- </p>
- <p>
- "I said intention."
- </p>
- <p>
- "Pardon, so you did. I thought it was an unheedful use of the word&mdash;an
- unheedful valuing of its strength, you know."
- </p>
- <p>
- "I knew its strength."
- </p>
- <p>
- "Well, I must say&mdash;but 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&mdash;well,
- really he amounts to that, and something over.) Now then, I believe I am
- beyond the reach of further astonishment. Strike, and spare not. What is
- your scheme?"
- </p>
- <p>
- "To buy the wool crop&mdash;deliverable in sixty days."
- </p>
- <p>
- "What, the whole of it?"
- </p>
- <p>
- "The whole of it."
- </p>
- <p>
- "No, I was not quite out of the reach of surprises, after all. Why, how
- you talk! Do you know what our crop is going to foot up?"
- </p>
- <p>
- "Two and a half million sterling&mdash;maybe a little more."
- </p>
- <p>
- "Well, you've got your statistics right, any way. Now, then, do you know
- what the margins would foot up, to buy it at sixty days?"
- </p>
- <p>
- "The hundred thousand pounds I came here to get."
- </p>
- <p>
- "Right, once more. Well, dear me, just to see what would happen, I wish
- you had the money. And if you had it, what would you do with it?"
- </p>
- <p>
- "I shall make two hundred thousand pounds out of it in sixty days."
- </p>
- <p>
- "You mean, of course, that you might make it if&mdash;&mdash;"
- </p>
- <p>
- "I said 'shall'."
- </p>
- <p>
- "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 out&mdash;I am prepared&mdash;acclimatized, 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 makes you think you&mdash;&mdash;"
- </p>
- <p>
- "I don't think&mdash;I know."
- </p>
- <p>
- "Definite again. How do you know?"
- </p>
- <p>
- "Because France has declared war against Germany, and wool has gone up
- fourteen per cent. in London and is still rising."
- </p>
- <p>
- "Oh, in-deed? 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 low-spiritedest 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&mdash;&mdash;"
- </p>
- <p>
- "Because I have later news."
- </p>
- <p>
- "Later news? Oh, come&mdash;later news than fifty days, brought steaming
- hot from London by the&mdash;&mdash;"
- </p>
- <p>
- "My news is only ten days old."
- </p>
- <p>
- "Oh, Mun-chausen, hear the maniac talk! Where did you get it?"
- </p>
- <p>
- "Got it out of a shark."<br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
- <img alt="p147.jpg (38K)" src="images/p147.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
- </div>
- <p>
- <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <p>
- "Oh, oh, oh, this is too much! Front! call the police bring the gun&mdash;raise
- the town! All the asylums in Christendom have broken loose in the single
- person of&mdash;&mdash;"
- </p>
- <p>
- "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
- hospitality to damaging fancies about me and my sanity."
- </p>
- <p>
- "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&mdash;&mdash;"
- </p>
- <p>
- "What does your middle initial stand for, sir?"
- </p>
- <p>
- "Andrew. What are you writing?"
- </p>
- <p>
- "Wait a moment. Proof about the shark&mdash;and another matter. Only ten
- lines. There&mdash;now it is done. Sign it."
- </p>
- <p>
- "Many thanks&mdash;many. Let me see; it says&mdash;it says oh, come, this
- is interesting! Why&mdash;why&mdash;look 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, now&mdash;I've signed; make
- your promise good if you can. Show me a copy of the London Times only ten
- days old."
- </p>
- <p>
- "Here it is&mdash;and 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'&mdash;&mdash;,
- 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
- to-day, to fight. And he did leave, too, but the shark had him before the
- day was done, poor fellow."
- </p>
- <p>
- "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 tailor. What did you say
- your name is?"
- </p>
- <p>
- "Cecil Rhodes."
- </p>
- <p>
- "It is hard to remember. However, I think you will make it easier by and
- by, if you live. There are three kinds of people&mdash;Commonplace Men,
- Remarkable Men, and Lunatics. I'll classify you with the Remarkables, and
- take the chances."
- </p>
- <p>
- The deal went through, and secured to the young stranger the first fortune
- he ever pocketed.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 fun&mdash;such as it is with
- sharks visibly waiting around for just such an occurrence. The young
- fellows scramble aboard whole&mdash;sometimes&mdash;not 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 swift work with the lives of both.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.<br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <h2>
- <a name="ch14" id="ch14"></a><br /> <br /> CHAPTER XIV.
- </h2>
- <p>
- <i>We can secure other people's approval, if we do right and try hard; but
- our own is worth a hundred of it, and no way has been found out of
- securing that.</i>
- </p>
- <p>
- &mdash;Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- So we moved south with a westward slant, 17 hours by rail to the capital
- of the colony of Victoria, Melbourne&mdash;that 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 map&mdash;looks
- like a county, in fact&mdash;yet 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 Rhode Island, and one-third as large as
- the State of Texas.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 industries&mdash;among others,
- wheat-growing and the making of wine.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 new&mdash;nothing 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 be
- described as continental.
- </p>
- <p>
- The tickets were round-trip ones&mdash;to 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 thing than
- he needs.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 lantern-light in the morning in the
- biting-cold 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 shoulders.<br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
- <img alt="p152.jpg (24K)" src="images/p152.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
- </div>
- <p>
- <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <p>
- It is a narrow-gage 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
- colonies&mdash;the 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 effort to explain the inexplicable.
- </p>
- <p>
- All passengers fret at the double-gauge; 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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
- custom-fences 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 blue&mdash;a softly luminous blue, a smouldering blue,
- as if vaguely lit by fires within. It extinguished the blue of the sky&mdash;made
- it pallid and unwholesome, whitey and washed-out. A wonderful color&mdash;just
- divine.
- </p>
- <p>
- A resident told me that those were not mountains; he said they were
- rabbit-piles. And explained that long exposure and the over-ripe 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 rabbit-plague 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 ladies&mdash;generally
- 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 afford it, perhaps, but they would not know how.
- </p>
- <p>
- All the pleasant morning we slid smoothly along over the plains, through
- thin&mdash;not thick&mdash;forests of great melancholy gum trees, with
- trunks rugged with curled sheets of flaking bark&mdash;erysipelas
- convalescents, so to speak, shedding their dead skins. And all along were
- tiny cabins, built sometimes of wood, sometimes of gray-blue corrugated
- iron; and the doorsteps and fences were clogged with children&mdash;rugged
- little simply-clad chaps that looked as if they had been imported from the
- banks of the Mississippi without breaking bulk.<br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
- <img alt="p155.jpg (85K)" src="images/p155.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
- </div>
- <p>
- <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <p>
- And there were little villages, with neat stations well placarded with
- showy advertisements&mdash;mainly of almost too self-righteous brands of
- "sheepdip." If that is the name&mdash;and 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 sheep-dip makes it wake up and
- get down to business. I wonder where they get railroad coffee?
- </p>
- <p>
- 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
- Australian-born whites only. I should have said that we saw no Aboriginals&mdash;no
- "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.<br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <h2>
- <a name="ch15" id="ch15"></a><br /> <br /> CHAPTER XV.
- </h2>
- <p>
- <i>Truth is stranger than fiction&mdash;to some people, but I am
- measurably familiar with it.</i>
- </p>
- <p>
- &mdash;Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.
- </p>
- <p>
- <i>Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to
- stick to possibilities; Truth isn't.</i>
- </p>
- <p>
- Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 ago&mdash;Wagga-Wagga. This was
- because the Tichborne Claimant had kept a butcher-shop 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
- curiosity&mdash;curiosity as to which of the two long-missing 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 real-life 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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
- fiction-artist could achieve no success with the materials of this
- splendid Tichborne romance.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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
- happen. And yet the chief characters did exist, and the incidents did
- happen.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- He always claimed to be Sir Roger Tichborne until death called for him.
- This was but a few months ago&mdash;not very much short of a generation
- since he left Wagga-Wagga to go and possess himself of his estates. On his
- death-bed he yielded up his secret, and confessed in writing that he was
- only Arthur Orton of Wapping, able seaman and butcher&mdash;that 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 well-wishers. He was in evening dress, and
- I thought him a rather fine and stately creature. There were about
- twenty-five 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 if it tasted good.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 end-edges 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 country-place 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 for
- the end of the visit.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 later-train
- specified. And there were these words: "Speak to Tom Hughes."
- </p>
- <p>
- I showed the note to the author of "Tom Brown at Rugby," and he said:
- "Accept, and be thankful."
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 see&mdash;like Knowle; that Mr. B. was of a social
- disposition; liked the company of agreeable people, and always had samples
- of the sort coming and going.
- </p>
- <p>
- We paid the visit. We paid others, in later years&mdash;the last one in
- 1879. Soon after that Mr. Bascom started on a voyage around the world in a
- steam yacht&mdash;a long and leisurely trip, for he was making
- collections, in all lands, of birds, butterflies, and such things.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 post-mark on it. It was for my
- wife, but I recognized Mr. Bascom's handwriting on the envelope, and
- opened it. It was the usual note&mdash;as to paucity of lines&mdash;and
- 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 lecture-tour 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 acting as one of the pall-bearers. Signed, "Henry Bascom."
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 sorrowing
- governments, and sold the remains and sent me the money.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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? None&mdash;and so I did not disturb it. I had a curiosity to know
- about that man's lecture-tour 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 faded away.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 firm&mdash;they had never
- heard of him, and didn't believe in him.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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
- matter. But no&mdash;it turned out that they had never heard of it.
- </p>
- <p>
- So my mystery was a mystery still. It was a great disappointment. I
- believed it would never be cleared up&mdash;in this life&mdash;so I
- dropped it out of my mind.
- </p>
- <p>
- But at last! just when I was least expecting it&mdash;&mdash;
- </p>
- <p>
- However, this is not the place for the rest of it; I shall come to the
- matter again, in a far-distant chapter.<br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <h2>
- <a name="ch16" id="ch16"></a><br /> <br /> CHAPTER XVI.
- </h2>
- <p>
- <i>There is a Moral sense, and there is an Immoral Sense. History shows us
- that the Moral Sense enables us to perceive morality and how to avoid it,
- and that the Immoral Sense enables us to perceive immorality and how to
- enjoy it.</i>
- </p>
- <p>
- &mdash;Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 cable-car 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
- Horse-Racing Cult. Its race-ground is the Mecca of Australasia. On the
- great annual day of sacrifice&mdash;the 5th of November, Guy Fawkes's Day&mdash;business
- 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 a spectacle such as is
- never to be seen in Australasia elsewhere.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- And so the grand-stands 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 Cup-clothes, and then
- lie down and sleep two weeks, and get up sorry to reflect that a whole
- year must be put in somehow or other before they can be wholly happy
- again.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 universal&mdash;and spontaneous, not perfunctory. Cup
- Day is supreme&mdash;it has no rival. I can call to mind no specialized
- annual day, in any country, which can be named by that large name&mdash;Supreme.
- 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 one does it.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 gone&mdash;if still alive. The
- approach of Christmas brings harassment and dread to many excellent
- people. They have to buy a cart-load 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 Day&mdash;as a function&mdash;has become general of late
- years. The Thankfulness is not so general. This is natural. Two-thirds of
- the nation have always had hard luck and a hard time during the year, and
- this has a calming effect upon their enthusiasm.
- </p>
- <p>
- We have a supreme day&mdash;a 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 it cannot
- count as a rival of the Melbourne Cup.
- </p>
- <p>
- In Great Britain and Ireland they have two great days&mdash;Christmas and
- the Queen's birthday. But they are equally popular; there is no supremacy.
- </p>
- <p>
- I think it must be conceded that the position of the Australasian Day is
- unique, solitary, unfellowed; and likely to hold that high place a long
- time.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 lecture-theater, 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 always gave me this pleasant
- salutation:
- </p>
- <p>
- "Hello, Mark!"
- </p>
- <p>
- "Here's to you, old chap!<br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
- <img alt="p166.jpg (78K)" src="images/p166.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
- </div>
- <p>
- <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <p>
- "Say&mdash;Mark!&mdash;is he dead?"&mdash;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 here&mdash;if it is not an indecorum&mdash;that
- 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 war-cloud 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 prominently lacking in some countries, in the circumstances.
- </p>
- <p>
- And speaking of the war-flurry, it seemed to me to bring to light the
- unexpected, in a detail or two. It seemed to relegate the war-talk 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 English-speaking 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 differences so much better and also so much
- more definitely.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 unison&mdash;no stranger can tell what&mdash;and the president
- calmly says "Sold to Smith &amp; Co., threpence farthing&mdash;next!"&mdash;when
- probably nothing of the kind happened; for how should he know?
- </p>
- <p>
- 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
- grounds&mdash;domains&mdash;about them which rival in charm and magnitude
- those which surround the country mansion of an English lord; but I was not
- out in the country; I had my hands full in town.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.<br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
- <img alt="p169.jpg (11K)" src="images/p169.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
- </div>
- <p>
- <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <h2>
- <a name="ch17" id="ch17"></a><br /> <br /> CHAPTER XVII.
- </h2>
- <p>
- <i>The English are mentioned in the Bible: Blessed are the meek, for they
- shall inherit the earth.</i>
- </p>
- <p>
- &mdash;Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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&mdash;Russia&mdash;is
- 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 same&mdash;400,000,000
- each. No other Power approaches these figures. Even Russia is left far
- behind.<br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
- <img alt="p171.jpg (23K)" src="images/p171.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
- </div>
- <p>
- <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <p>
- The population of Australasia&mdash;4,000,000&mdash;sinks 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,&mdash;[New South Wales Blue Book.]&mdash;and
- it is claimed that more than one-tenth 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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:
- </p>
- <table summary="">
- <tr>
- <td>
- Indian production (300,000,000 population),
- </td>
- <td>
- $500,000,000.
- </td>
- </tr>
- <tr>
- <td>
- &nbsp;
- </td>
- </tr>
- <tr>
- <td>
- Australasian production (4,000,000 population),&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
- </td>
- <td>
- $300,000,000.
- </td>
- </tr>
- </table>
- <p>
- That is to say, the product of the individual Indian, annually (for export
- some whither), is worth $1.75; 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 sends away $375 worth.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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
- family-aggregate. 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- We left Melbourne by rail for Adelaide, the capital of the vast Province
- of South Australia&mdash;a seventeen-hour 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 more&mdash;to
- 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 border&mdash;to Buffalo, New York.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 month 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 the 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 trade-profit of Broken Hill
- fell into Adelaide's hands, irrevocably. New South Wales law furnishes for
- Broken Hill and sends her Judges 2,000 miles&mdash;mainly through alien
- countries&mdash;to administer it, but Adelaide takes the dividends and
- makes no moan.
- </p>
- <p>
- We started at 4.20 in the afternoon, and moved across level plains until
- night. In the morning we had a stretch of "scrub" country&mdash;the 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 bush-tops without a break or a crack in it&mdash;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 which had to all
- appearance been washed clear of footprints.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 detective-work 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 to-day or yesterday.<br />
- <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
- <img alt="p175.jpg (64K)" src="images/p175.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
- </div>
- <p>
- <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <p>
- And there is the case, on record 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 cow-tracks 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
- cow-track 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 gradations of human intelligence.<br /> <br /> <br />
- <br />
- </p>
- <h2>
- <a name="ch18" id="ch18"></a><br /> <br /> CHAPTER XVIII.
- </h2>
- <p>
- <i>It is easier to stay out than get out.</i>
- </p>
- <p>
- &mdash;Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 pine-spines, the lower half of each bunch a rich
- brown or old-gold 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 ink-black blot of its shadow on the shining
- green carpet at its feet.
- </p>
- <p>
- On some part of this railway journey we saw gorse and broom&mdash;importations
- from England&mdash;and a gentleman who came into our compartment on a
- visit tried to tell me which&mdash;was 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 fragrance, a quality usually
- wanting in Australian blossoms.
- </p>
- <p>
- The gentleman who enriched me with the poverty of his information 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 thirty-six
- shillings in his pocket&mdash;an adventurer without trade, profession, or
- friends, but with a clearly-defined purpose in his head: he would stay
- until he was worth L200, then go back home. He would allow himself five
- years for the accumulation of this fortune.
- </p>
- <p>
- "That was more than fifty years ago," said he. "And here I am, yet."
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 was something very pathetic about
- this half century of exile, and that I wished the L200 scheme had
- succeeded.<br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
- <img alt="p178.jpg (67K)" src="images/p178.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
- </div>
- <p>
- <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <p>
- "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 Burra-Burra copper mines. They turned out L700,000 in
- the first three years. Up to now they have yielded L20,000,000. 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&mdash;Australia's specialty. In 1829 South
- Australia hadn't a white man in it. In 1836 the British Parliament erected
- it&mdash;still a solitude&mdash;into 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 sorts 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; richly-dressed ladies played on costly pianos, London swells in
- evening dress and patent-leather 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 values&mdash;on the
- boom's moonshine, in fact. This went on handsomely during four or five
- years. Then all of a sudden came a smash. Bills for a huge amount drawn by
- 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 gripsacks 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- Adelaide was indeed almost empty; its population had fallen to 3,000.
- During two years or more the death-trance 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, and the corpse got up and danced.
- </p>
- <p>
- The wool production began to grow; grain-raising followed&mdash;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 hard prices for them&mdash;once $50 a barrel for flour&mdash;had
- become an exporter of grain.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 well-deserving,
- conferred upon it that treasury of inconceivable riches, Broken Hill; and
- South Australia went over the border and took it, giving thanks.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 kangaroo-skin 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 name&mdash;which I have forgotten&mdash;I
- 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 epithet&mdash;unique. 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 to a "permit."
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 prospect&mdash;mountains, crags,
- country homes, gardens, forests&mdash;color, 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- We descended and entered. There was nothing to remind one of the humble
- capital, of huts and sheds of the long-vanished day of the land-boom. 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 nobly grouped and architecturally beautiful.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 Australia&mdash;and exhibit loving interest in its welfare
- which should certify to all nations the recognition of that colony's
- conspicuous righteousness and distinguished well-deserving, 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 comes to him who is patient and good, and waits.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 320,000-odd, 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 published census:
- </p>
- <table summary="">
- <tr>
- <td></td>
- </tr>
- <tr>
- <td>
- Church of England,
- </td>
- <td>
- 89,271
- </td>
- </tr>
- <tr>
- <td>
- Roman Catholic,
- </td>
- <td>
- 47,179
- </td>
- </tr>
- <tr>
- <td>
- Wesleyan,
- </td>
- <td>
- 49,159
- </td>
- </tr>
- <tr>
- <td>
- Lutheran,
- </td>
- <td>
- 23,328
- </td>
- </tr>
- <tr>
- <td>
- Presbyterian,
- </td>
- <td>
- 18,206
- </td>
- </tr>
- <tr>
- <td>
- Congregationalist,
- </td>
- <td>
- 11,882
- </td>
- </tr>
- <tr>
- <td>
- Bible Christian,
- </td>
- <td>
- 15,762
- </td>
- </tr>
- <tr>
- <td>
- Primitive Methodist,
- </td>
- <td>
- 11,654
- </td>
- </tr>
- <tr>
- <td>
- Baptist,
- </td>
- <td>
- 17,547
- </td>
- </tr>
- <tr>
- <td>
- Christian Brethren,
- </td>
- <td>
- 465
- </td>
- </tr>
- <tr>
- <td>
- Methodist New Connexion,&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
- </td>
- <td>
- 39
- </td>
- </tr>
- <tr>
- <td>
- Unitarian,
- </td>
- <td>
- 688
- </td>
- </tr>
- <tr>
- <td>
- Church of Christ,
- </td>
- <td>
- 3,367
- </td>
- </tr>
- <tr>
- <td>
- Society of Friends,
- </td>
- <td>
- 100
- </td>
- </tr>
- <tr>
- <td>
- Salvation Army,
- </td>
- <td>
- 4,356
- </td>
- </tr>
- <tr>
- <td>
- New Jerusalem Church,
- </td>
- <td>
- 168
- </td>
- </tr>
- <tr>
- <td>
- Jews,
- </td>
- <td>
- 840
- </td>
- </tr>
- <tr>
- <td>
- Protestants (undefined),&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
- </td>
- <td>
- 5,532
- </td>
- </tr>
- <tr>
- <td>
- Mohammedans,
- </td>
- <td>
- 299
- </td>
- </tr>
- <tr>
- <td>
- Confucians, etc,
- </td>
- <td>
- 3,884
- </td>
- </tr>
- <tr>
- <td>
- Other religions,
- </td>
- <td>
- 1,719
- </td>
- </tr>
- <tr>
- <td>
- Object,
- </td>
- <td>
- 6,940
- </td>
- </tr>
- <tr>
- <td>
- Not stated,
- </td>
- <td>
- 8,046
- </td>
- </tr>
- <tr>
- <td>
- &nbsp;
- </td>
- </tr>
- <tr>
- <td>
- Total,
- </td>
- <td>
- 320,431
- </td>
- </tr>
- </table>
- <p>
- The item in the above list "Other religions" includes the following as
- returned:
- </p>
- <table summary="">
- <tr>
- <td>
- 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, Seventh-day Adventists, Shaker,
- Shintoists, Spiritualists, Theosophists, Town (City) Mission, Welsh
- Church, Huguenot, Hussite, Zoroastrians, Zwinglian,
- </td>
- </tr>
- </table>
- <p>
- 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.<br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
- <img alt="p183.jpg (24K)" src="images/p183.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
- </div>
- <p>
- <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <h2>
- <a name="ch19" id="ch19"></a><br /> <br /> CHAPTER XIX.
- </h2>
- <p>
- <i>Pity is for the living, Envy is for the dead.</i>
- </p>
- <p>
- &mdash;Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.
- </p>
- <p>
- The successor of the sheet-iron 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 heat&mdash;these 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.&mdash;[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.]
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 origin&mdash;India, Africa, Japan,
- China, England, America, Java, Sumatra, New Guinea, Polynesia, and so on.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 odd-looking 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 because he kills snakes. If L. J. will take my advice he
- will not kill all of them.<br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
- <img alt="p185.jpg (47K)" src="images/p185.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
- </div>
- <p>
- <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <p>
- In that garden I also saw the wild Australian dog&mdash;the dingo. He was
- a beautiful creature&mdash;shapely, 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 sheep-runs 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 man&mdash;the
- white man.<br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
- <img alt="p187.jpg (66K)" src="images/p187.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
- </div>
- <p>
- <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <p>
- South Australia is confusingly named. All of the colonies have a southern
- exposure except one&mdash;Queensland. Properly speaking, South Australia
- is middle Australia. It extends straight up through the center of the
- continent like the middle board in a center-table. 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 nine-tenths of its population;
- the other one or two-tenths are elsewhere&mdash;as 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
- room.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 1871-2 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 wool-growers of Australia
- was instant and enormous.
- </p>
- <p>
- A telegram from Melbourne to San Francisco covers approximately 20,000
- miles&mdash;the equivalent of five-sixths 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.&mdash;[From "Round the Empire." (George R. Parkin), all but the
- last two.]
- </p>
- <table summary="">
- <tr>
- <td>
- &nbsp;
- </td>
- <td>
- Miles.
- </td>
- </tr>
- <tr>
- <td>
- &nbsp;
- </td>
- </tr>
- <tr>
- <td>
- Melbourne-Mount Gambier,&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
- </td>
- <td>
- 300
- </td>
- </tr>
- <tr>
- <td>
- Mount Gambier-Adelaide,
- </td>
- <td>
- 270
- </td>
- </tr>
- <tr>
- <td>
- Adelaide-Port Augusta,
- </td>
- <td>
- 200
- </td>
- </tr>
- <tr>
- <td>
- Port Augusta-Alice Springs,
- </td>
- <td>
- 1,036
- </td>
- </tr>
- <tr>
- <td>
- Alice Springs-Port Darwin,
- </td>
- <td>
- 898
- </td>
- </tr>
- <tr>
- <td>
- Port Darwin-Banjoewangie,
- </td>
- <td>
- 1,150
- </td>
- </tr>
- <tr>
- <td>
- Banjoewangie-Batavia,
- </td>
- <td>
- 480
- </td>
- </tr>
- <tr>
- <td>
- Batavia-Singapore,
- </td>
- <td>
- 553
- </td>
- </tr>
- <tr>
- <td>
- Singapore-Penang,
- </td>
- <td>
- 399
- </td>
- </tr>
- <tr>
- <td>
- Penang-Madras,
- </td>
- <td>
- 1,280
- </td>
- </tr>
- <tr>
- <td>
- Madras-Bombay,
- </td>
- <td>
- 650
- </td>
- </tr>
- <tr>
- <td>
- Bombay-Aden,
- </td>
- <td>
- 1,662
- </td>
- </tr>
- <tr>
- <td>
- Aden-Suez,
- </td>
- <td>
- 1,346
- </td>
- </tr>
- <tr>
- <td>
- Suez-Alexandria,
- </td>
- <td>
- 224
- </td>
- </tr>
- <tr>
- <td>
- Alexandria-Malta,
- </td>
- <td>
- 828
- </td>
- </tr>
- <tr>
- <td>
- Malta-Gibraltar,
- </td>
- <td>
- 1,008
- </td>
- </tr>
- <tr>
- <td>
- Gibraltar-Falmouth,
- </td>
- <td>
- 1,061
- </td>
- </tr>
- <tr>
- <td>
- Falmouth-London,
- </td>
- <td>
- 350
- </td>
- </tr>
- <tr>
- <td>
- London-New York,
- </td>
- <td>
- 2,500
- </td>
- </tr>
- <tr>
- <td>
- New York-San Francisco,
- </td>
- <td>
- 3,500
- </td>
- </tr>
- </table>
- <p>
- 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
- Proclamation&mdash;in 1836&mdash;which 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 pre-eminent
- holiday; and that is saying much, in a country where they seem to have a
- most un-English mania for holidays. Mainly they are workingmen's holidays;
- for in South Australia the workingman is sovereign; his vote is the desire
- of the politician&mdash;indeed, 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 the system, but was not able to do
- it.
- </p>
- <p>
- You have seen that the Province is tolerant, religious-wise. It is so
- politically, also. One of the speakers at the Commemoration banquet&mdash;the
- Minister of Public Works-was 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. Sixty-four religions and a Yankee cabinet minister. No
- amount of horse-racing can damn this community.
- </p>
- <p>
- The mean temperature of the Province is 62 deg. The death-rate is 13 in
- the 1,000&mdash;about half what it is in the city of New York, I should
- think, and New York is a healthy city. Thirteen is the death-rate for the
- average citizen of the Province, but there seems to be no death-rate 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 1836. 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 old-time hardships
- they are describing, and the other three think the laughter is caused by
- the jokes they have been uncorking&mdash;jokes of the vintage of 1836&mdash;and
- 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 tired&mdash;I 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, impressively and with solemnity&mdash;
- </p>
- <blockquote>
- <p>
- "When we, now great and prosperous and powerful, bow our heads in
- reverent wonder in the contemplation of those sublimities of energy, of
- wisdom, of forethought, of&mdash;&mdash;"
- </p>
- </blockquote>
- <p>
- 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 and the hearing.<br />
- <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
- <img alt="p190.jpg (52K)" src="images/p190.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
- </div>
- <p>
- <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 time-worn veterans, and 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 their honorable
- work.
- </p>
- <p>
- One of these old gentlemen told me some things of interest afterward;
- things about the aboriginals, mainly. He thought them intelligent&mdash;remarkably
- so in some directions&mdash;and 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 "weet-weet" 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 things&mdash;some almost
- incredible things&mdash;which he had seen the blacks do with the boomerang
- and the weet-weet. They have been confirmed to me since by other early
- settlers and by trustworthy books.<br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
- <img alt="p194.jpg (37K)" src="images/p194.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
- </div>
- <p>
- <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <p>
- It is contended&mdash;and may be said to be conceded&mdash;that 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 that it was known to the ancient Egyptians.
- </p>
- <p>
- One of two things, either some one with 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.<br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <h2>
- <a name="ch20" id="ch20"></a><br /> <br /> CHAPTER XX.
- </h2>
- <p>
- <i>It is by the goodness of God that in our country we have those three
- unspeakably precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and
- the prudence never to practice either of them.</i>
- </p>
- <p>
- &mdash;Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.
- </p>
- <p>
- From diary:
- </p>
- <p>
- Mr. G. called. I had not seen him since Nauheim, Germany&mdash;several
- 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:
- </p>
- <p>
- "Do you remember my introducing you to an earl&mdash;the Earl of C.?"
- </p>
- <p>
- "Yes. That was the last time I saw you. You and he were in a carriage,
- just starting&mdash;belated&mdash;for the train. I remember it."
- </p>
- <p>
- "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 introduced you, you said, 'I am glad to meet
- your lordship again.' The '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&mdash;&mdash;' 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
- fox-hounds or horses, for he is a good judge of those&mdash;no 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 he knew
- you had never met him before. And of course you hadn't had you?"
- </p>
- <p>
- "Yes, I had."
- </p>
- <p>
- "Is that so? Where?"
- </p>
- <p>
- "At a fox-hunt, in England."
- </p>
- <p>
- "How curious that is. Why, he hadn't the least recollection of it. Had you
- any conversation with him?"
- </p>
- <p>
- "Some&mdash;yes."
- </p>
- <p>
- "Well, it left not the least impression upon him. What did you talk
- about?"
- </p>
- <p>
- "About the fox. I think that was all."
- </p>
- <p>
- "Why, that would interest him; that ought to have left an impression. What
- did he talk about?"
- </p>
- <p>
- "The fox."
- </p>
- <p>
- "It's very curious. I don't understand it. Did what he said leave an
- impression upon you?"
- </p>
- <p>
- "Yes. It showed me that he was a quick judge of&mdash;however, 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
- dog-cart and we would drive to a place she knew of, and there we should
- have a good glimpse of the hunt as it went by.
- </p>
- <p>
- "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 dog-cart 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 fox-hunt. 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 bugle-note 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 left-hand forest and went
- flaming across the field like a prairie-fire, 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 toe-nails, and shouted like a demon:
- </p>
- <p>
- "'Which way'd the fox go?'
- </p>
- <p>
- "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 softly, and without acrimony:
- </p>
- <p>
- "'Which fox?'<br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
- <img alt="p198.jpg (51K)" src="images/p198.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
- </div>
- <p>
- <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <p>
- "It seemed to anger him. I don't know why; and he thundered out:
- </p>
- <p>
- "'WHICH fox? Why, THE fox? Which way did the FOX go?'
- </p>
- <p>
- "I said, with great gentleness&mdash;even argumentatively:
- </p>
- <p>
- "'If you could be a little more definite&mdash;a little less vague&mdash;because
- 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, and&mdash;&mdash;'
- </p>
- <p>
- "'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.
- </p>
- <p>
- "I went back to Mrs. Blank, and she was excited, too&mdash;oh, all alive.
- She said:
- </p>
- <p>
- "'He spoke to you!&mdash;didn't he?'
- </p>
- <p>
- "'Yes, it is what happened.'
- </p>
- <p>
- "'I knew it! I couldn't hear what he said, but I knew he spoke to you! Do
- you know who it was? It was Lord C., and he is Master of the Buckhounds!
- Tell me&mdash;what do you think of him?'
- </p>
- <p>
- "'Him? Well, for sizing-up a stranger, he's got the most sudden and
- accurate judgment of any man I ever saw.'
- </p>
- <p>
- "It pleased her. I thought it would."
- </p>
- <p>
- G. got away from Nauheim just in time to escape being shut in by the
- quarantine-bars 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 custom-house,
- and we should have fared likewise but for the thoughtfulness of our
- consul-general in Frankfort. He introduced me to the Italian
- consul-general, 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
- stuff&mdash;household 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 custom-house 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&mdash;the most incapable one
- they ever employed.
- </p>
- <p>
- We arrived, and pressed with the crowd into the immense custom-house, 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-master&mdash;and 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 to me, and said in English:
- </p>
- <p>
- "Which is your baggage? Please show it to me."
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 failed&mdash;except
- in the case of one of the trunks containing the dutiable goods. It was
- just being opened. My officer said:
- </p>
- <p>
- "There, let that alone! Lock it. Now chalk it. Chalk all of the lot. Now
- please come and show me the hand-baggage."
- </p>
- <p>
- He plowed through the waiting crowd, I following, to the counter, and he
- gave orders again, in his emphatic military way:
- </p>
- <p>
- "Chalk these. Chalk all of them."
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 conscious of a pervading atmosphere of envy
- which gave me deep satisfaction.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 again&mdash;he 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 lately envied me. But at heart I was cruelly
- humbled.<br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
- <img alt="p203.jpg (54K)" src="images/p203.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
- </div>
- <p>
- <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <p>
- When I had been marched two-thirds of the long distance and the misery of
- it was at the worst, the stately station-master 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 he was betraying to
- him the whole shabby business. The station-master 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 and said:
- </p>
- <p>
- "Oh, it is you! I beg a thousands pardons! This idiot here&mdash;-" He
- turned to the exulting soldier and burst out with a flood of white-hot
- Italian lava, and the next moment he was bowing, and the soldier and I
- were moving in procession again&mdash;he 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.<br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
- <img alt="p205.jpg (17K)" src="images/p205.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
- </div>
- <p>
- <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <h2>
- <a name="ch21" id="ch21"></a><br /> <br /> CHAPTER XXI.
- </h2>
- <p>
- <i>Man will do many things to get himself loved, he will do all things to
- get himself envied.</i>
- </p>
- <p>
- &mdash;Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.
- </p>
- <p>
- Before I saw Australia I had never heard of the "weet-weet" at all. I met
- but few men who had seen it thrown&mdash;at least I met but few who
- mentioned having seen it thrown. Roughly described, it is a fat wooden
- cigar with its butt-end fastened to a flexible twig. The whole thing is
- only a couple of feet long, and weighs less than two ounces. This feather&mdash;so
- to call it&mdash;is 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 seventy-five yards; but the
- weet-weet 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 toy&mdash;a 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- What is the secret of the feat? No one explains. It cannot be physical
- strength, for that could not drive such a feather-weight 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 bumping along the ground. Rev.
- J. G. Woods says:
- </p>
- <p>
- "The distance to which the weet-weet or kangaroo-rat 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 Kennington Oval not stated.) "It darts through the air with the sharp
- and menacing hiss of a rifle-ball, 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 kangaroo-rat fleeing in
- alarm, with its long tail trailing behind it."
- </p>
- <p>
- The Old Settler said that he had seen distances made by the weet-weet, in
- the early days, which almost convinced him that it was as extraordinary an
- instrument as the boomerang.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 weet-weeters. It must have been
- race-aversion that put upon them a good deal of the low-rate intellectual
- reputation which they bear and have borne this long time in the world's
- estimate of them.
- </p>
- <p>
- They were lazy&mdash;always 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 wild fruits, and were just plain
- savages, for all their smartness.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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
- infanticide&mdash;largely; 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.<br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
- <img alt="p208.jpg (42K)" src="images/p208.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
- </div>
- <p>
- <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <p>
- For example, there is the case of the country now called Victoria&mdash;a
- 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, thirty-seven 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 aboriginals continue
- in some force in the huge territory called Queensland.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 responsible&mdash;each individual of it&mdash;and 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- Speaking of pioneer days in the mighty wilderness of Queensland, Mrs.
- Praed says:
- </p>
- <blockquote>
- <p>
- "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 and murder was no unusual event.
- </p>
- <p>
- "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 trod&mdash;interminable 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 long-bladed grass
- grows rankly; level untimbered plains alternating with undulating tracts
- of pasture, here and there broken by a stony ridge, steep gully, or
- dried-up 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, glossy, and
- impenetrable as Indian jungle.
- </p>
- <p>
- "The solitude seems intensified by the strange sounds of reptiles,
- birds, and insects, and by the absence of larger creatures; of which in
- the day-time, 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 jack-ass, 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 tree-frogs, might well shake the
- nerves of the solitary watcher."
- </p>
- </blockquote>
- <p>
- 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 apart&mdash;at each station half a
- dozen persons. There was a plenty of cattle, the black natives were always
- ill-nourished 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:
- </p>
- <blockquote>
- <p>
- "At Nie Nie station, one dark night, the unsuspecting hut-keeper,
- having, as he believed, secured himself against assault, was lying
- wrapped in his blankets sleeping profoundly. The Blacks crept stealthily
- down the chimney and battered in his skull while he slept."
- </p>
- </blockquote>
- <p>
- One could guess the whole drama from that little text. The curtain was up.
- It would not fall until the mastership of one party or the other was
- determined&mdash;and permanently:
- </p>
- <blockquote>
- <p>
- "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 justice.
- </p>
- <p>
- "They were regarded as little above the level of brutes, and in some
- cases were destroyed like vermin.
- </p>
- <p>
- "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 house-door. He told them it was
- Christmas-time&mdash;a time at which all men, black or white, feasted;
- that there were flour, sugar-plums, good things in plenty in the store,
- and that he would make for them such a pudding as they had never dreamed
- of&mdash;a 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 arsenic!"
- </p>
- </blockquote>
- <p>
- <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
- <img alt="p211.jpg (85K)" src="images/p211.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
- </div>
- <p>
- <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 loving
- kindness 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 loving
- kindness 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 loving kindness to it. In the
- Matabeleland today&mdash;why, there we are confining ourselves to
- sanctified custom, we Rhodes-Beit 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 notice&mdash;inviting 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."
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 bad&mdash;that 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 handed
- down to posterity with homage and reverence.
- </p>
- <p>
- This paragraph is from a London journal:
- </p>
- <blockquote>
- <p>
- "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 bread-fruit trees, the
- raising of which had cost the wretched natives years of toil whilst the
- latter had a few five-franc pieces to spend in the liquor stores of
- Noumea."
- </p>
- </blockquote>
- <p>
- 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 pudding.
- </p>
- <p>
- There are many humorous things in the world; among them the white man's
- notion that he is less savage than the other savages.&mdash;[See Chapter
- on Tasmania, post.]<br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <h2>
- <a name="ch22" id="ch22"></a><br /> <br /> CHAPTER XXII.
- </h2>
- <p>
- <i>Nothing is so ignorant as a man's left hand, except a lady's watch.</i>
- </p>
- <p>
- &mdash;Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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, Raolph Boldrewood, Gordon, Kendall, and the
- others, have built out of them a brilliant and vigorous literature, and
- one which must endure. Materials&mdash;there 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 varieties&mdash;varieties 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
- everything&mdash;everything that a human creature can be. He covers the
- entire ground. He is a coward&mdash;there are a thousand fact to prove it.
- He is brave&mdash;there are a thousand facts to prove it. He is
- treacherous&mdash;oh, beyond imagination! he is faithful, loyal, true&mdash;the
- 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, to-day, the lost stranger who
- fired on him only yesterday&mdash;there is proof of it. He takes his
- reluctant bride by force, he courts her with a club, then loves her
- faithfully through a long life&mdash;it 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 harm&mdash;it 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 over-ripe 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 mother-in-law 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
- symbol-writing 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 model&mdash;if 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 prize-curiosity of all the
- races. To all intents and purposes he is dead&mdash;in the body; but he
- has features that will live in literature.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 cricket-balls 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
- self-possession, on the quickness of his eye and his agility."
- </p>
- <p>
- The shield was the customary war-shield 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
- cricket-ball that has been thrown with a scientific "twist" is, that it
- suddenly changes its 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 balls for
- half-an-hour, or less.
- </p>
- <p>
- Mr. Chauncy once saw "a little native man" throw a cricket-ball 119 yards.
- This is said to beat the English professional record by thirteen yards.
- </p>
- <p>
- We have all seen the circus-man bound into the air from a spring-board 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 sometimes
- done it over fourteen. But what is that to this:
- </p>
- <blockquote>
- <p>
- "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
- horseback&mdash;both 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."
- </p>
- </blockquote>
- <p>
- 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 one-half 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- One can see now where the kangaroo learned its art.
- </p>
- <p>
- Sir George Grey and Mr. Eyre testify that the natives dug wells fourteen
- or fifteen feet deep and two feet in diameter at the bore&mdash;dug them
- in the sand&mdash;wells that were "quite circular, carried straight down,
- and the work beautifully executed."
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 sand-pipe from caving in on
- them? I do not know. Still, they did manage those seeming impossibilities.
- Swallowed the sand, may be.
- </p>
- <p>
- Mr. Chauncy speaks highly of the patience and skill and alert intelligence
- of the native huntsman when he is stalking the emu, the kangaroo, and
- other game:
- </p>
- <blockquote>
- <p>
- "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 or not."
- </p>
- </blockquote>
- <p>
- <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
- <img alt="p218.jpg (48K)" src="images/p218.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
- </div>
- <p>
- <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <p>
- Fennimore Cooper lost his chance. He would have known how to value these
- people. He wouldn't have traded the dullest of them for the brightest
- Mohawk he ever invented.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 his equal among savage people.
- </p>
- <p>
- His place in art&mdash;as to drawing, not color-work&mdash;is 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, but&mdash;my word!
- </p>
- <p>
- The aboriginal can make a fire by friction. I have tried that.
- </p>
- <p>
- All savages are able to stand a good deal of physical pain. The Australian
- aboriginal has this quality in a well-developed 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 clergyman:
- </p>
- <blockquote>
- <p>
- 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 water-hole
- 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 long-drawn 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 carpenter-make
- 'em' ('I am mending my foot'), and then showed me his charred great toe,
- the nail of which had been torn off by a tea-tree 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 opportunity of
- cauterizing the wound in the primitive manner above described."
- </p>
- </blockquote>
- <p>
- And he proceeded on the journey the next day, "as if nothing had happened"&mdash;and
- walked thirty miles. It was a strange idea, to keep a surgeon and then do
- his own surgery.
- </p>
- <blockquote>
- <p>
- 2. "A native about twenty-five 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 blade-bone. 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 matter did not materially annoy him.
- He was perfectly well in a few days."
- </p>
- </blockquote>
- <p>
- But No. 3 is my favorite. Whenever I read it I seem to enjoy all that the
- patient enjoyed&mdash;whatever it was:
- </p>
- <blockquote>
- <p>
- 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 ninety-six 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
- black-fellows 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 stick,
- although he was more than a week on the road."
- </p>
- </blockquote>
- <p>
- <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
- <img alt="p220.jpg (64K)" src="images/p220.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
- </div>
- <p>
- <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 people&mdash;but I didn't. I would walk thirty miles to
- see a stuffed one.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 "Never-never Country." Also
- this felicitous form: "She lives in the Never-never Country"&mdash;that
- is, she is an old maid. And this one is not without merit:
- "heifer-paddock"&mdash;young ladies' seminary. "Bail up" and "stick up"
- equivalent of our highwayman-term to "hold up" a stage-coach or a train.
- "New-chum" is the equivalent of our "tenderfoot"&mdash;new arrival.
- </p>
- <p>
- And then there is the immortal "My word!" We must import it. "M-y word!"
- In cold print it is the equivalent of our "Ger-rreat 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 drawing-room or the heifer-paddock; but "M-y 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 there&mdash;the tones were lacking&mdash;the
- informing spirit&mdash;the deep feeling&mdash;the eloquence. But the first
- time I heard an Australian say it, it was positively thrilling.<br /> <br />
- <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
- <img alt="p222.jpg (13K)" src="images/p222.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
- </div>
- <p>
- <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <h2>
- <a name="ch23" id="ch23"></a><br /> <br /> CHAPTER XXIII.
- </h2>
- <p>
- <i>Be careless in your dress if you must, but keep a tidy soul.</i>
- </p>
- <p>
- &mdash;Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 floor&mdash;one 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- "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
- on-rushing 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 opal&mdash;a most beautiful tree, and a striking
- contrast to the cottonwood. Every leaf of the cottonwood is distinctly
- defined&mdash;it 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."
- </p>
- <p>
- It turned out, upon inquiry, to be a pepper tree&mdash;an importation from
- China. It has a silky sheen, soft and rich. I saw some that had long red
- bunches of currant-like berries ambushed among the foliage. At a distance,
- in certain lights, they give the tree a pinkish tint and a new charm.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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&mdash;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 deg. in New York.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 perches&mdash;and 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.<br /> <br />
- <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
- <img alt="p224.jpg (9K)" src="images/p224.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
- </div>
- <p>
- <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <p>
- They said that the wide space dates from the earliest sheep and
- cattle-raising days. People had to drive their stock long distances&mdash;immense
- journeys&mdash;from worn-out 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 in the transit.
- </p>
- <p>
- On the way we saw the usual birds&mdash;the beautiful little green
- parrots, the magpie, and some others; and also the slender native bird of
- modest plumage and the eternally-forgettable name&mdash;the 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 pet&mdash;never 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 and
- take a walk.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 apples&mdash;in
- fact, all manner of fruits, and in abundance. The trees did not seem to
- miss the water; they were in vigorous and flourishing condition.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 scheme which will make his farm
- productive and profitable.
- </p>
- <p>
- There were forty pupils there&mdash;a few of them farmers, relearning
- their trade, the rest young men mainly from the cities&mdash;novices. It
- seemed a strange thing that an agricultural college should have an
- attraction for city-bred 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 long descent.
- </p>
- <p>
- The students work all day in the fields, the nurseries, and the
- shearing-sheds, learning and doing all the practical work of the business&mdash;three
- days in a week. On the other three they study and hear lectures. They are
- taught the beginnings of such sciences as bear upon agriculture&mdash;like
- chemistry, for instance. We saw the sophomore class in sheep-shearing
- 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 sheep-dip on the place and go right ahead.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 comes
- from him all in one piece and has the spread of a blanket.
- </p>
- <p>
- The college was flying the Australian flag&mdash;the 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- From Horsham we went to Stawell. By rail. Still in the colony of Victoria.
- Stawell is in the gold-mining country. In the bank-safe was half a peck of
- surface-gold&mdash;gold 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
- two-thirds of it; she has an income of $75,000 a month from it, and is
- able to keep house.
- </p>
- <p>
- The Stawell region is not productive of gold only; it has great vineyards,
- and produces exceptionally fine wines. One of these vineyards&mdash;the
- Great Western, owned by Mr. Irving&mdash;is 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 three-year 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 changed, and the man is robbed by his own
- government.
- </p>
- <p>
- On the way back to Stawell we had a chance to see a group of boulders
- called the Three Sisters&mdash;a 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.<br />
- <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
- <img alt="p228.jpg (23K)" src="images/p228.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
- </div>
- <p>
- <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <p>
- The road led through a forest of great gum-trees, lean and scraggy and
- sorrowful. The road was cream-white&mdash;a 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 it&mdash;ravenously 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 root-fibres to prospect it. They will find it; and will
- also get at it even through a cement wall six inches thick. Once a cement
- water-pipe 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
- root-fibres, delicate and hair-like. 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 tapped the pipe and was drinking the water.<br /> <br />
- <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <h2>
- <a name="ch24" id="ch24"></a><br /> <br /> CHAPTER XXIV.
- </h2>
- <p>
- <i>There is no such thing as "the Queen's English." The property has gone
- into the hands of a joint stock company and we own the bulk of the shares!</i>
- </p>
- <p>
- &mdash;Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.
- </p>
- <p>
- Frequently, in Australia, one has cloud-effects 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 ragged-edged
- flakes of painfully white cloud-stuff, 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 snow-flakes drifting across the
- skies. By and by these flakes fused themselves together in interminable
- lines, with shady faint hollows between the lines, the long satin-surfaced
- 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
- colonnade&mdash;a mirage without a doubt flung from the far Gates of the
- Hereafter.
- </p>
- <p>
- The approaches to Ballarat were beautiful. The features, great green
- expanses of rolling pasture-land, bisected by eye-contenting hedges of
- commingled new-gold and old-gold gorse&mdash;and 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. Ninety-two in the shade again, but balmy and
- comfortable, fresh and bracing. A perfect climate.
- </p>
- <p>
- Forty-five 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 gold-strike made in
- Australia was made here. The wandering prospectors who made it scraped up
- two pounds and a half of gold the first day-worth $600. A few days later
- the place was a hive&mdash;a town. The news of the strike spread
- everywhere in a sort of instantaneous way&mdash;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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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, Sunday-like, paralyzed, everything
- at a stand-still, the ships lying idle at anchor, all signs of life
- departed, all sounds stilled save the rasping of the cloud-shadows as they
- scraped across the vacant streets.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 surface-mining to snatch the graces and
- beauties and benignities out of a paradise, and make an odious and
- repulsive spectacle of it.
- </p>
- <p>
- What fortunes were made! Immigrants got rich while the ship unloaded and
- reloaded&mdash;and 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,
- forty-five years later&mdash;what 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
- talk of the Past. They live in it. Their life is a dream, a retrospection.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 out&mdash;if he could find it. It was a license-tax&mdash;license
- to work his claim&mdash;and it had to be paid before he could begin
- digging.
- </p>
- <p>
- Consider the situation. No business is so uncertain as surface-mining.
- 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
- cost-paying 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 instead&mdash;why, such a thing was never dreamed of in America.
- There, neither the claim itself nor its products, howsoever rich or poor,
- were taxed.
- </p>
- <p>
- The Ballarat miners protested, petitioned, complained&mdash;it 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
- free people. The rumblings of a coming storm began to be audible.
- </p>
- <p>
- By and by there was a result; and I think it may be called the finest
- thing in Australasian history. It was a revolution&mdash;small 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 Ship-Money; it was Concord and
- Lexington; small beginnings, all of them, but all of them great in
- political results, all of them epoch-making. 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 Eureka Stockade, and Peter Lalor has his monument.
- </p>
- <p>
- The surface-soil 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 brooks&mdash;and 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 river-channel 180 feet under ground.
- </p>
- <p>
- Finally the quartz lodes were attacked. That is not poor-man's mining.
- Quartz-mining and milling require capital, and staying-power, 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 mines&mdash;taking the three kinds
- of mining together&mdash;have 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 one-fourth
- as much gold in forty-four years as all California has yielded in
- forty-seven. The Californian aggregate, from 1848 to 1895, inclusive, as
- reported by the Statistician of the United States Mint, is $1,265,217,217.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 south&mdash;of course&mdash;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 nature&mdash;a streak in the slate; a streak no
- thicker than a pencil&mdash;and 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 streak&mdash;a 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 little steam yachts.<br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
- <img alt="p236.jpg (55K)" src="images/p236.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
- </div>
- <p>
- <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 man&mdash;and 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:
- </p>
- <blockquote>
- <p>
- "The language of our citizens, in this as in other parts of Australasia,
- is mostly healthy Anglo-Saxon, 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."
- </p>
- </blockquote>
- <p>
- The closing clause has the seeming of a rather frosty compliment, but that
- is apparent only, not real. November is summer-time there.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 English&mdash;that 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:
- </p>
- <p>
- "Q."
- </p>
- <p>
- Presently, when we were lighting our cigars, he held a match to mine and I
- said:
- </p>
- <p>
- "Thank you," and he said:
- </p>
- <p>
- "Km."
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 rustling of the forest leaves.<br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <h2>
- <a name="ch25" id="ch25"></a><br /> <br /> CHAPTER XXV.
- </h2>
- <p>
- <i>"Classic." A book which people praise and don't read.</i>
- </p>
- <p>
- &mdash;Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.
- </p>
- <p>
- On the rail again&mdash;bound for Bendigo. From diary:
- </p>
- <p>
- October 23. Got up at 6, left at 7.30; soon reached Castlemaine, one of
- the rich gold-fields 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 it&mdash;a 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. However, there was no hurry.<br /> <br /> <br />
- <br />
- </p>
- <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
- <img alt="p240.jpg (52K)" src="images/p240.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
- </div>
- <p>
- <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <p>
- Bendigo was another of the rich strikes of the early days. It does a great
- quartz-mining business, now&mdash;that 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 chimney-stacks, and hoisting-works, and looks
- like a petroleum-city. 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&mdash;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 had not heard its history.
- </p>
- <p>
- "It is gold. Examine it&mdash;take the glass. Now how much should you say
- it is worth?"
- </p>
- <p>
- I said:
- </p>
- <p>
- "I should say about two cents; or in your English dialect, four
- farthings."
- </p>
- <p>
- "Well, it cost L11,000."
- </p>
- <p>
- "Oh, come!"
- </p>
- <p>
- "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 L9,000 a piece; this one a couple of thousand
- more. It is small, and not much to look at, but it is entitled to (its)
- name&mdash;Adam. It is the Adam-nugget of this mine, and its children run
- up into the millions."
- </p>
- <p>
- 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
- instances, the outlay was all back in a year or two, with compound
- interest.
- </p>
- <p>
- Bendigo has turned out even more gold than Ballarat. The two together have
- produced $650,000,000 worth&mdash;which is half as much as California
- produced.
- </p>
- <p>
- It was through Mr. Blank&mdash;not to go into particulars about his name&mdash;it
- 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
- town-hall to hear complimentary speeches and respond to them; that it was
- through his influence that I had been taken on a long pleasure-drive
- 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 forty-six 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
- forest-clad 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 through his influence that
- it had been done.<br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
- <img alt="p243.jpg (20K)" src="images/p243.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
- </div>
- <p>
- <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <p>
- But I am not representing him quite correctly. He did not say it was
- through his influence that all these things had happened&mdash;for that
- would have been coarse; he 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 ostentation&mdash;but
- conveyed it, nevertheless.
- </p>
- <p>
- He was an Irishman; an educated gentleman; grave, and kindly, and
- courteous; a bachelor, and about forty-five 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 grave&mdash;tenderly, pensively grave;
- but he made me laugh, all along; and this was very trying&mdash;and very
- pleasant at the same time&mdash;for it was at quotations from my own
- books.
- </p>
- <p>
- When he was going, he turned and said:
- </p>
- <p>
- "You don't remember me?"
- </p>
- <p>
- "I? Why, no. Have we met before?"
- </p>
- <p>
- "No, it was a matter of correspondence."
- </p>
- <p>
- "Correspondence?"
- </p>
- <p>
- "Yes, many years ago. Twelve or fifteen. Oh, longer than that. But of
- course you&mdash;&mdash;" A musing pause. Then he said:
- </p>
- <p>
- "Do you remember Corrigan Castle?"
- </p>
- <p>
- "N-no, I believe I don't. I don't seem to recall the name."
- </p>
- <p>
- He waited a moment, pondering, with the door-knob 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- We drove from the lecture-hall together about half-past 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 everywhere-largely mine; which made me proud. The light was
- brilliant, the easy chairs were deep-cushioned, the arrangements for
- brewing and smoking were all there. We brewed and lit up; then he passed a
- sheet of note-paper to me and said&mdash;
- </p>
- <p>
- "Do you remember that?"
- </p>
- <p>
- "Oh, yes, indeed!"
- </p>
- <p>
- 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
- capitals was this&mdash;printed in blue:
- </p>
- <p>
- THE MARK TWAIN CLUB CORRIGAN CASTLE ............187..
- </p>
- <p>
- "My!" said I, "how did you come by this?"
- </p>
- <p>
- "I was President of it."
- </p>
- <p>
- "No!&mdash;you don't mean it."
- </p>
- <p>
- "It is true. I was its first President. I was re-elected annually as long
- as its meetings were held in my castle&mdash;Corrigan&mdash;which was five
- years."
- </p>
- <p>
- Then he showed me an album with twenty-three 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- "You sent us the first five; the rest were bought."
- </p>
- <p>
- This was paradise! We ran late, and talked, talked, talked&mdash;subject,
- the Mark Twain Club of Corrigan Castle, Ireland.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 note-paper 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- I answered, with thanks; and did what I could to keep my gratification
- from over-exposure.
- </p>
- <p>
- It was then that the long correspondence began. A letter came back, by
- order of the President, furnishing me the names of the members-thirty-two
- in number. With it came a copy of the Constitution and By-Laws, in
- pamphlet form, and artistically printed. The initiation fee and dues were
- in their proper place; also, schedule of meetings&mdash;monthly&mdash;for
- essays upon works of mine, followed by discussions; quarterly for business
- and a supper, without essays, but with after-supper speeches; also there
- was a list of the officers: President, Vice-President, 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&mdash;a special one.
- I went down and sat for it and sent it&mdash;with a letter, of course.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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
- grass-sprays 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 grass-blades and
- rush-stems wove themselves into a monogram&mdash;mine! 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.<br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
- <img alt="p247.jpg (6K)" src="images/p247.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
- </div>
- <p>
- <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <p>
- By this time the Club was well under way; and from that time forth its
- secretary kept my off-hours 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 short-handed 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 effective&mdash;Palmer
- 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,&mdash;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 orators as well as I knew the style of any speaker in my own club at
- home.
- </p>
- <p>
- These reports came every month. They were written on foolscap, 600 words
- to the page, and usually about twenty-five pages in a report&mdash;a good
- 15,000 words, I should say,&mdash;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
- suggestions for the good of the Club, if any occurred to me.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 letter-writing, and whenever these things
- came I had to put everything by and sit down&mdash;for my own peace of
- mind&mdash;and 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 Mark
- Twain Club, and the only member it had ever had!
- </p>
- <p>
- 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;&mdash;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 without.
- </p>
- <p>
- He invented the thirty-two 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
- alive. It was a bitter blow to him when the Club died.
- </p>
- <p>
- Finally, there wasn't any Corrigan Castle. He had invented that, too.
- </p>
- <p>
- It was wonderful&mdash;the 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 hear him tell about it; yet I have been
- a hater of practical jokes from as long back as I can remember. Finally he
- said&mdash;
- </p>
- <p>
- "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?&mdash;a note from Henry Bascomb, of Bascomb Hall, Upper
- Holywell, Hants."
- </p>
- <p>
- "Yes."
- </p>
- <p>
- "I wrote it."
- </p>
- <p>
- "M-y-word!"
- </p>
- <p>
- "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, and
- wrote the letter."
- </p>
- <p>
- So the mystery was cleared up, after so many, many years.<br /> <br /> <br />
- <br />
- </p>
- <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
- <img alt="p251.jpg (21K)" src="images/p251.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
- </div>
- <p>
- <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <h2>
- <a name="ch26" id="ch26"></a><br /> <br /> CHAPTER XXVI.
- </h2>
- <p>
- <i>There are people who can do all fine and heroic things but one! keep
- from telling their happinesses to the unhappy.</i>
- </p>
- <p>
- &mdash;Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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
- any of the four questions.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 talk&mdash;fluently, 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 myself, he knows everything; in the
- domain of human knowledge he is king.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 interesting mystery, and I was frank with him,
- and asked him to explain it.
- </p>
- <p>
- He tried to avoid it at first; but then laughed and said that after all,
- the matter was not worth concealment, so he would let me into the secret.
- In substance, this is his story:
- </p>
- <blockquote>
- <p>
- "Last autumn I was at work one morning at home, when a card came up&mdash;the
- 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 troubled&mdash;troubled, I mean, by the
- shortness of the notice. College etiquette required that he be at once
- invited to dinner by some member of the Faculty&mdash;invited to dine on
- that day&mdash;not, 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 dinner-talk 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 of it made my face burn.
- </p>
- <p>
- "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.
- </p>
- </blockquote>
- <p>
- <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
- <img alt="p253.jpg (34K)" src="images/p253.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
- </div>
- <p>
- <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <blockquote>
- <p>
- 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
- turned out that he did not know any useful thing.
- </p>
- <p>
- "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 Faculty&mdash;some 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 Australia, or Asia, or somewhere, and you went over to it on&mdash;&mdash;
- </p>
- <p>
- "We shut him off and called up the professor of biology, and he said
- that all he knew was that it was close to Aus&mdash;&mdash;.
- </p>
- </blockquote>
- <table summary="">
- <tr>
- <td>
- <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
- <img alt="p254a.jpg (6K)" src="images/p254a.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
- </div>
- &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
- &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
- </td>
- <td>
- <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
- <img alt="p254b.jpg (5K)" src="images/p254b.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
- </div>
- </td>
- </tr>
- </table>
- <blockquote>
- <p>
- "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, and&mdash;well,
- 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 entirely.
- </p>
- <p>
- "It is in the official log-book of Yale, to be read and wondered at by
- future generations&mdash;the account of the Great Blank Day&mdash;the
- memorable Blank Day&mdash;the day wherein the wheels of culture were
- stopped, a Sunday silence prevailed all about, and the whole University
- stood still while the Faculty read-up and qualified itself to sit at
- meat, without shame, in the presence of the Professor of Theological
- Engineering from New Zealand:
- </p>
- <p>
- "When we assembled at the dinner we were miserably tired and worn&mdash;but
- 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 subject-and oh, the grace and
- fluency of it!
- </p>
- <p>
- "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 he 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 also&mdash;silent from shame&mdash;silent
- 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 vague-unscientific, in a
- word&mdash;and it would have been insanity to expose it here to the
- searching glare of your amazingly accurate and all-comprehensive
- knowledge of those matters, gentlemen. I beg you to let me sit silent&mdash;as
- 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!'"
- </p>
- </blockquote>
- <p>
- <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
- <img alt="p255.jpg (18K)" src="images/p255.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
- </div>
- <p>
- <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <h2>
- <a name="ch27" id="ch27"></a><br /> <br /> CHAPTER XXVII.
- </h2>
- <p>
- <i>Man is the Only Animal that Blushes. Or needs to.</i>
- </p>
- <p>
- &mdash;Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.
- </p>
- <p>
- <i>The universal brotherhood of man is our most precious possession, what
- there is of it.</i>
- </p>
- <p>
- &mdash;Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.
- </p>
- <p>
- FROM DIARY:
- </p>
- <p>
- November 1&mdash;noon. A fine day, a brilliant sun. Warm in the sun, cold
- in the shade&mdash;an 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 explorers&mdash;Cook? or
- Tasman?&mdash;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 changed his course and went
- searching elsewhere.
- </p>
- <p>
- Afternoon. Passing between Tasmania (formerly Van Diemen's Land) and
- neighboring islands&mdash;islands 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 much slaughter upon the Whites.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 good&mdash;L5 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 caught&mdash;and
- that was not what the Government desired.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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
- murders and arsons.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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
- picture-proclamation was issued. It was painted up on boards, and these
- were nailed to trees in the forest.<br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
- <img alt="p258.jpg (53K)" src="images/p258.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
- </div>
- <p>
- <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <p>
- Herewith is a photographic reproduction of this fashion-plate.
- Substantially it means:
- </p>
- <p>
- 1. The Governor wishes the Whites and the Blacks to love each other;
- </p>
- <p>
- 2. He loves his black subjects;
- </p>
- <p>
- 3. Blacks who kill Whites will be hanged;
- </p>
- <p>
- 4. Whites who kill Blacks will be hanged.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 for it.
- </p>
- <p>
- He set himself this incredible task: to go out into the wilderness, the
- jungle, and the mountain-retreats 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- In the beginning, his moral-suasion 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- At the end of five-and-twenty 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 turn, nor what to do.
- </p>
- <p>
- Then the Bricklayer&mdash;that wonderful man&mdash;proposed 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 right&mdash;from
- their standpoint&mdash;for they believed the natives to be mere wild
- beasts; and Robinson was right, from his standpoint&mdash;for 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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
- success&mdash;not a half-chance. 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 him&mdash;a 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 and over again.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 offered&mdash;scattered 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 seen&mdash;the convicts set apart
- to people the "Hell of Macquarrie Harbor Station"&mdash;were never able,
- but once, to survive the horrors of a march through them, but starving and
- struggling, and fainting and failing, ate each other, and died:
- </p>
- <blockquote>
- <p>
- "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
- country forsaken even by birds, we can realize their hardships.
- </p>
- <p>
- "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, ill-fed, diseased, and way-worn men and women were
- sustained by the cheerful voice of their unconquerable friend, and
- responded most nobly to his call."
- </p>
- </blockquote>
- <p>
- Mr. Bonwick says that Robinson's friendly capture of the Big River tribe
- remember, it was a whole tribe&mdash;"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 it&mdash;the 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."
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 death-hour had struck.
- </p>
- <p>
- The redoubtable chief stood in menacing attitude, with his eighteen-foot
- spear poised; his warriors stood massed at his back, armed for battle,
- their faces eloquent with their long-cherished loathing for white men.
- "They rattled their spears and shouted their war-cry." 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- "I think we shall soon be in the resurrection," whispered a member of
- Robinson's little party.
- </p>
- <p>
- "I think we shall," answered Robinson; then plucked up heart and began his
- persuasions&mdash;in the tribe's own dialect, which surprised and pleased
- the chief. Presently there was an interruption by the chief:
- </p>
- <p>
- "Who are you?"
- </p>
- <p>
- "We are gentlemen."
- </p>
- <p>
- "Where are your guns?"
- </p>
- <p>
- "We have none."
- </p>
- <p>
- The warrior was astonished.
- </p>
- <p>
- "Where your little guns?" (pistols).
- </p>
- <p>
- "We have none."
- </p>
- <p>
- A few minutes passed&mdash;in by-play&mdash;suspense&mdash;discussion
- among the tribesmen&mdash;Robinson'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 women&mdash;the real arbiters of savage war."
- Mr. Bonwick continues:
- </p>
- <blockquote>
- <p>
- "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 ranks a loved one of
- the past.
- </p>
- <p>
- "It was a jubilee of joy. A festival followed. And, while tears flowed
- at the recital of woe, a corrobory of pleasant laughter closed the
- eventful day."
- </p>
- </blockquote>
- <p>
- 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 use
- them, had prosecuted without result since 1804.
- </p>
- <p>
- Marsyas charming the wild beasts with his music&mdash;that is fable; but
- the miracle wrought by Robinson is fact. It is history&mdash;and
- authentic; and surely, there is nothing greater, nothing more
- reverence-compelling in the history of any country, ancient or modern.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 in&mdash;no, it is to another man, I forget his name.
- </p>
- <p>
- However, Robertson's own generation honored him, and in manifesting it
- honored themselves. The Government gave him a money-reward and a thousand
- acres of land; and the people held mass-meetings and praised him and
- emphasized their praise with a large subscription of money.
- </p>
- <p>
- A good dramatic situation; but the curtain fell on another:
- </p>
- <blockquote>
- <p>
- "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, than the naked Tasmanians. Governor Arthur
- rightly termed them a noble race."
- </p>
- </blockquote>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 Sunday-school was
- not a smoker, and so considered smoking immoral.
- </p>
- <p>
- The Natives were not used to clothes, and houses, and regular hours, and
- church, and school, and Sunday-school, 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 broke and they died.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.<br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
- <img alt="p266.jpg (40K)" src="images/p266.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
- </div>
- <p>
- <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 kindest-hearted 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 well-meaning
- 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
- savage&mdash;but 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; and well-meaning.
- </p>
- <p>
- <i>They</i> 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:
- </p>
- <blockquote>
- <p>
- <i>"It is from the wrath of God, which is revealed from heaven against
- cold ungodliness and unrighteousness of men."</i>
- </p>
- </blockquote>
- <p>
- That settles it.<br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <h2>
- <a name="ch28" id="ch28"></a><br /> <br /> CHAPTER XXVIII.
- </h2>
- <p>
- <i>Let us be thankful for the fools. But for them the rest of us could not
- succeed.</i>
- </p>
- <p>
- &mdash;Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 century&mdash;and 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 as I can call it back to mind.
- </p>
- <p>
- A few years before the outbreak of the Civil War it began to appear that
- Memphis, Tennessee, was going to be a great tobacco entrepot&mdash;the
- 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 each other.
- </p>
- <p>
- The favorite butt for the jokes was Ed Jackson, because he played none
- himself, and was easy game for other people's&mdash;for he always believed
- whatever was told him.
- </p>
- <p>
- One day he told the others his scheme for his holiday. He was not going
- fishing or hunting this time&mdash;no, he had thought out a better plan.
- Out of his $40 a month he had saved enough for his purpose, in an
- economical way, and he was going to have a look at New York.
- </p>
- <p>
- It was a great and surprising idea. It meant travel&mdash;immense travel&mdash;in
- 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 venture might afford for a
- practical joke.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 good-hearted, 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 Southerner&mdash;and the English of that
- was, that when he came back he would kill as many of the conspirators as
- he could before falling himself. However, the chances must be taken&mdash;it
- wouldn't do to waste such a joke as that.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 hat-full of doughnuts; and the time
- that we&mdash;&mdash;" 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- With all gravity Ed was asked if he would like to have a letter to
- Commodore Vanderbilt, the great millionaire. It was expected that the
- question would astonish Ed, and it did.
- </p>
- <p>
- "What? Do you know that extraordinary man?"
- </p>
- <p>
- "No; but my father does. They were schoolboys together. And if you like,
- I'll write and ask father. I know he'll be glad to give it to you for my
- sake."
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 good-bye all
- around. And when he was out of sight his comrades let fly their laughter
- in a storm of happy satisfaction&mdash;and then quieted down, and were
- less happy, less satisfied. For the old doubts as to the wisdom of this
- deception began to intrude again.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 two-minute 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 moment later, and found Mr.
- Vanderbilt alone, with the letter&mdash;open&mdash;in his hand.
- </p>
- <p>
- "Pray sit down, Mr. &mdash;er&mdash;"
- </p>
- <p>
- "Jackson."
- </p>
- <p>
- "Ah&mdash;sit down, Mr. Jackson. By the opening sentences it seems to be a
- letter from an old friend. Allow me&mdash;I will run my eye through it. He
- says he says&mdash;why, who is it?" He turned the sheet and found the
- signature. "Alfred Fairchild&mdash;hm&mdash;Fairchild&mdash;I don't recall
- the name. But that is nothing&mdash;a thousand names have gone from me. He
- says&mdash;he says-hm-hmoh, 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&mdash;he says&mdash;hm&mdash;hm-oh, but that was a game! Oh,
- spl-endid! How it carries me back! It's all dim, of course it's a long
- time ago&mdash;and the names&mdash;some of the names are wavery and
- indistinct&mdash;but sho', I know it happened&mdash;I 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 work-a-day world now&mdash;business
- presses and people are waiting&mdash;I'll keep the rest for bed to-night,
- and live my youth over again. And you'll thank Fairchild for me when you
- see him&mdash;I used to call him Alf, I think&mdash;and you'll give him my
- gratitude for&mdash;what this letter has done for the tired spirit of a
- hard-worked 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 boy&mdash;make yourself easy as to that."
- </p>
- <p>
- Ed stayed a week, and had an immense time&mdash;and 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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, "No&mdash;wait; leave
- it to me; I'll tell you when to go."
- </p>
- <p>
- In those days the Commodore was making some of those vast combinations of
- his&mdash;consolidations of warring odds and ends of railroads into
- harmonious systems, and concentrations of floating and rudderless commerce
- in effective centers&mdash;and among other things his farseeing eye had
- detected the convergence of that huge tobacco-commerce, already spoken of,
- toward Memphis, and he had resolved to set his grasp upon it and make it
- his own.
- </p>
- <p>
- The week came to an end. Then the Commodore said:
- </p>
- <p>
- "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 yourself&mdash;perhaps 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 business&mdash;and I appoint you."
- </p>
- <p>
- "Me!"
- </p>
- <p>
- "Yes. Your salary will be high&mdash;of course-for 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 yourself&mdash;and carefully. Take
- no man for friendship's sake; but, all things being equal, take the man
- you know, take your friend, in preference to the stranger." After some
- further talk under this head, the Commodore said:
- </p>
- <p>
- "Good-bye, my boy, and thank Alf for me, for sending you to me."
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 grain-sacks under an awning, and said to himself,
- "That's one of them," and hastened his step; next, he said, "It's Charley&mdash;it'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 sack-pile, and in an instant Ed
- was alone and Fairchild was flying for the wharf-boat like the wind!
- </p>
- <p>
- Ed was dazed, stupefied. Was Fairchild crazy? What could be the meaning of
- this? He started slow and dreamily down toward the wharf-boat; turned the
- corner of a freight-pile 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 wharf-boat, and stepped aboard&mdash;nothing but silence
- there, and vacancy. He crossed the deck, turned the corner to go down the
- outer guard, heard a fervent&mdash;
- </p>
- <p>
- "O lord!" and saw a white linen form plunge overboard.<br /> <br /> <br />
- <br />
- </p>
- <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
- <img alt="p274.jpg (62K)" src="images/p274.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
- </div>
- <p>
- <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <p>
- The youth came up coughing and strangling, and cried out&mdash;
- </p>
- <p>
- "Go 'way from here! You let me alone. I didn't do it, I swear I didn't!"
- </p>
- <p>
- "Didn't do what?"
- </p>
- <p>
- "Give you the&mdash;&mdash;"
- </p>
- <p>
- "Never mind what you didn't do&mdash;come out of that! What makes you all
- act so? What have I done?"
- </p>
- <p>
- "You? Why you haven't done anything. But&mdash;&mdash;"
- </p>
- <p>
- "Well, then, what have you got against me? What do you all treat me so
- for?"
- </p>
- <p>
- "I&mdash;er&mdash;but haven't you got anything against us?"
- </p>
- <p>
- "Of course not. What put such a thing into your head?"
- </p>
- <p>
- "Honor bright&mdash;you haven't?
- </p>
- <p>
- "Honor bright."
- </p>
- <p>
- "Swear it!"
- </p>
- <p>
- "I don't know what in the world you mean, but I swear it, anyway."
- </p>
- <p>
- "And you'll shake hands with me?"
- </p>
- <p>
- "Goodness knows I'll be glad to! Why, I'm just starving to shake hands
- with somebody!"
- </p>
- <p>
- The swimmer muttered, "Hang him, he smelt a rat and never delivered the
- letter!&mdash;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 cautiously&mdash;armed
- to the teeth&mdash;took in the amicable situation, then ventured warily
- forward and joined the love-feast.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 he only knew it or we were dull
- enough to come out and tell."
- </p>
- <p>
- Then, of course, they wanted to know all about the trip; and he said&mdash;
- </p>
- <p>
- "Come right up on the boiler deck and order the drinks&mdash;it's my
- treat. I'm going to tell you all about it. And to-night it's my treat
- again&mdash;and we'll have oysters and a time!"
- </p>
- <p>
- When the drinks were brought and cigars lighted, Ed said:
- </p>
- <p>
- "Well, when I delivered the letter to Mr. Vanderbilt&mdash;&mdash;"
- </p>
- <p>
- "Great Scott!"
- </p>
- <p>
- "Gracious, how you scared me. What's the matter?"
- </p>
- <p>
- "Oh&mdash;er&mdash;nothing. Nothing&mdash;it was a tack in the
- chair-seat," said one.
- </p>
- <p>
- "But you all said it. However, no matter. When I delivered the letter&mdash;&mdash;"
- </p>
- <p>
- "Did you deliver it?" And they looked at each other as people might who
- thought that maybe they were dreaming.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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&mdash;
- </p>
- <p>
- "And it's all owing to you, boys, and you'll never find me ungrateful&mdash;bless
- your hearts, the best friends a fellow ever had! You'll all have places; I
- want every one of you. I know you&mdash;I 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 first-class 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 here's to that great man&mdash;drink
- hearty!"
- </p>
- <p>
- Yes, when the Moment comes, the Man appears&mdash;even if he is a thousand
- miles away, and has to be discovered by a practical joke.<br /> <br /> <br />
- <br />
- </p>
- <h2>
- <a name="ch29" id="ch29"></a><br /> <br /> CHAPTER XXVIX.
- </h2>
- <p>
- <i>When people do not respect us we are sharply offended; yet deep down in
- his private heart no man much respects himself.</i>
- </p>
- <p>
- &mdash;Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.
- </p>
- <p>
- Necessarily, the human interest is the first interest in the log-book of
- any country. The annals of Tasmania, in whose shadow we were sailing, are
- lurid with that feature. Tasmania was a convict-dump, 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 convicts&mdash;children&mdash;who had been sent
- thither from their home and their friends on the other side of the globe
- to expiate their "crimes."<br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
- <img alt="p278.jpg (64K)" src="images/p278.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
- </div>
- <p>
- <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 rock-bound 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,
- she-oak, wild flower, and fern, from the delicately graceful 'maiden-hair'
- to the palm-like 'old man'; while the majestic gum-tree, clean and smooth
- as the mast of 'some tall ammiral' pierces the clear air to the height of
- 230 feet or more."
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 black-ribbed 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 spouting angry fountains of foam."
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 carving-knife
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 Arthur&mdash;a 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 by&mdash;that is, we had a glimpse of what we
- were told was the entrance to Port Arthur. The glimpse was worth
- something, as a remembrancer, but that was all.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 Rumney; presently we arrive at Sullivan's
- Cove&mdash;Hobart!
- </p>
- <p>
- It is an attractive town. It sits on low hills that slope to the harbor&mdash;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 water-glimpses! And it was in this paradise
- that the yellow-liveried convicts were landed, and the Corps-bandits
- quartered, and the wanton slaughter of the kangaroo-chasing 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 of heaven and
- hell together.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 assent&mdash;compels it
- always&mdash;even when, as happens sometimes, one does not see the
- resemblances as clearly as does the exile who is pointing them out.
- </p>
- <p>
- The resemblances do exist, it is quite true; and often they cunningly
- approximate the originals&mdash;but 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 alone&mdash;it has no
- duplicate.
- </p>
- <p>
- It is made up of very simple details&mdash;just grass, and trees, and
- shrubs, and roads, and hedges, and gardens, and houses, and vines, and
- churches, and castles, and here and there a ruin&mdash;and over it all a
- mellow dream-haze of history. But its beauty is incomparable, and all its
- own.
- </p>
- <p>
- Hobart has a peculiarity&mdash;it 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 weed-grown front-yards of the poor, no back-yards littered with
- tin cans and old boots and empty bottles, no rubbish in the gutters, no
- clutter on the sidewalks, no outer-borders fraying out into dirty lanes
- and tin-patched 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 gate, its comely cat
- asleep on the window ledge.
- </p>
- <p>
- We had a glimpse of the museum, by courtesy of the American gentleman who
- is curator of it. It has samples of half-a-dozen different kinds of
- marsupials&mdash;[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. Astor 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.]&mdash;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 sheep-run this bird killed a thousand sheep in a whole year.
- He doesn't want the whole sheep, but only the kidney-fat. 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 kidney-fat 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 kidney-fat better than the Chief
- Justice of the Supreme Court, or anybody else, for that matter&mdash;even
- an Admiral.
- </p>
- <p>
- And there was another curiosity&mdash;quite 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 thing&mdash;yes, 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 substances&mdash;glass: 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
- fairy-land, to the Refuge for the Indigent&mdash;a 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 world&mdash;a 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 ex-convicts, 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
- enough&mdash;after that, there is too much risk. Youth and gaiety might
- vanish, any day&mdash;and 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 ex-convicts.
- </p>
- <p>
- The steamer disappointed us. Instead of making a long visit at Hobart, as
- usual, she made a short one. So we got but a glimpse of Tasmania, and then
- moved on.<br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <h2>
- <a name="ch30" id="ch30"></a><br /> <br /> CHAPTER XXX.
- </h2>
- <p>
- <i>Nature makes the locust with an appetite for crops; man would have made
- him with an appetite for sand.</i>
- </p>
- <p>
- &mdash;Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 forty-seven 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 explain&mdash;everybody 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, hunted&mdash;he 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 short-sighted: in England they fine the poacher, whereas he ought to
- be banished to New Zealand. New Zealand would pay his way, and give him
- wages.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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, and 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.<br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
- <img alt="p286.jpg (11K)" src="images/p286.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
- </div>
- <p>
- <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 South."
- </p>
- <p>
- Dunedin, same date. The town justifies Michael Davitt's praises. The
- people are Scotch. They stopped here on their way from home to heaven&mdash;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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 past&mdash;some
- 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.
- After that, the undecorated European face is unpleasant and ignoble.<br />
- <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
- <img alt="p287.jpg (27K)" src="images/p287.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
- </div>
- <p>
- <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <p>
- Dr. Hockiun gave us a ghastly curiosity&mdash;a lignified caterpillar with
- a plant growing out of the back of its neck&mdash;a plant with a slender
- stem 4 inches high. It happened not by accident, but by design&mdash;Nature's
- design. This caterpillar was in the act of loyally carrying out a law
- inflicted upon him by Nature&mdash;a law purposely inflicted upon him to
- get him into trouble&mdash;a law which was a trap; in pursuance of this
- law he made the proper preparations for turning himself into a night-moth;
- 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 himself&mdash;then
- 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 grow&mdash;for there was soil
- there&mdash;he 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 monument&mdash;monument commemorative
- of his own loyalty and of Nature's unfair return for it.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 night-moth; and then
- fried him in the candle.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 re-grows 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- In Australia is prevalent a horrible disease due to an "unperfected
- tapeworm." Unperfected&mdash;that 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, and all that.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.&mdash;annual exhibition&mdash;just 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 republics&mdash;republics 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 citizens&mdash;not
- dead ones. They rob themselves to give, not their heirs. This S. of A.
- here owns its building built it by subscription.<br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <h2>
- <a name="ch31" id="ch31"></a><br /> <br /> CHAPTER XXXI.
- </h2>
- <p>
- <i>The spirit of wrath&mdash;not the words&mdash;is the sin; and the
- spirit of wrath is cursing. We begin to swear before we can talk.</i>
- </p>
- <p>
- &mdash;Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.
- </p>
- <p>
- November 11. On the road. This train-express goes twenty and one-half
- 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
- 20-mile gait; otherwise you may start on one of the five wrong days, and
- then you will get a train that can't overtake its own shadow.
- </p>
- <p>
- By contrast, these pleasant cars call to mind the branch-road cars at
- Maryborough, Australia, and the passengers' talk about the branch-road and
- the hotel.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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:
- </p>
- <p>
- In order to start conversation I asked him something about Maryborough. He
- said, in a most pleasant&mdash;even musical voice, but with quiet and
- cultured decision:
- </p>
- <p>
- "It's a charming town, with a hell of a hotel."
- </p>
- <p>
- I was astonished. It seemed so odd to hear a minister swear out loud. He
- went placidly on:
- </p>
- <p>
- "It's the worst hotel in Australia. Well, one may go further, and say in
- Australasia."<br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
- <img alt="p292.jpg (66K)" src="images/p292.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
- </div>
- <p>
- <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <p>
- "Bad beds?"
- </p>
- <p>
- "No&mdash;none at all. Just sand-bags."
- </p>
- <p>
- "The pillows, too?"
- </p>
- <p>
- "Yes, the pillows, too. Just sand. And not a good quality of sand. It
- packs too hard, and has never been screened. There is too much gravel in
- it. It is like sleeping on nuts."
- </p>
- <p>
- "Isn't there any good sand?"
- </p>
- <p>
- "Plenty of it. There is as good bed-sand in this region as the world can
- furnish. Aerated sand&mdash;and loose; but they won't buy it. They want
- something that will pack solid, and petrify."
- </p>
- <p>
- "How are the rooms?"
- </p>
- <p>
- "Eight feet square; and a sheet of iced oil-cloth to step on in the
- morning when you get out of the sand-quarry."
- </p>
- <p>
- "As to lights?"
- </p>
- <p>
- "Coal-oil lamp."
- </p>
- <p>
- "A good one?"
- </p>
- <p>
- "No. It's the kind that sheds a gloom."
- </p>
- <p>
- "I like a lamp that burns all night."
- </p>
- <p>
- "This one won't. You must blow it out early."
- </p>
- <p>
- "That is bad. One might want it again in the night. Can't find it in the
- dark."
- </p>
- <p>
- "There's no trouble; you can find it by the stench."
- </p>
- <p>
- "Wardrobe?"
- </p>
- <p>
- "Two nails on the door to hang seven suits of clothes on if you've got
- them."
- </p>
- <p>
- "Bells?"
- </p>
- <p>
- "There aren't any."
- </p>
- <p>
- "What do you do when you want service?"
- </p>
- <p>
- "Shout. But it won't fetch anybody."
- </p>
- <p>
- "Suppose you want the chambermaid to empty the slopjar?"
- </p>
- <p>
- "There isn't any slop-jar. The hotels don't keep them. That is, outside of
- Sydney and Melbourne."
- </p>
- <p>
- "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 dark, in the morning, to take the
- 5 o'clock train. Now if the boots&mdash;&mdash;"
- </p>
- <p>
- "There isn't any."
- </p>
- <p>
- "Well, the porter."
- </p>
- <p>
- "There isn't any."
- </p>
- <p>
- "But who will call me?"
- </p>
- <p>
- "Nobody. You'll call yourself. And you'll light yourself, too. There'll
- not be a light burning in the halls or anywhere. And if you don't carry a
- light, you'll break your neck."
- </p>
- <p>
- "But who will help me down with my baggage?"
- </p>
- <p>
- "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?"
- </p>
- <p>
- "I left him at Ballarat, studying the language. And besides, he had to go
- to Melbourne and get us ready for New Zealand. I've not tried to pilot
- myself before, and it doesn't look easy."
- </p>
- <p>
- "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 hope&mdash;tell me, have
- you good executive ability? first-rate executive ability?"
- </p>
- <p>
- "I&mdash;well, I think so, but&mdash;&mdash;"
- </p>
- <p>
- "That settles it. The tone of&mdash;&mdash;oh, you wouldn't ever make it
- in the world. However, that American will point you right, and you'll go.
- You've got tickets?"
- </p>
- <p>
- "Yes&mdash;round trip; all the way to Sydney."
- </p>
- <p>
- "Ah, there it is, you see! You are going in the 5 o'clock by Castlemaine&mdash;twelve
- miles&mdash;instead of the 7.15 by Ballarat&mdash;in order to save two
- hours of fooling along the road. Now then, don't interrupt&mdash;let 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 it isn't good over that
- twelve miles, and so&mdash;&mdash;"
- </p>
- <p>
- "But why should the government care which way I go?"
- </p>
- <p>
- "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 French&mdash;which was going backwards, you see; now it runs
- the roads itself&mdash;which 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 it&mdash;anybody 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 shillings a week."
- </p>
- <p>
- "Five dollars? Oh, come!"
- </p>
- <p>
- "It's true. It's the absolute truth."
- </p>
- <p>
- "Why, there are three or four men on wages at every station."
- </p>
- <p>
- "I know it. And the station-business doesn't pay for the sheep-dip 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 perfectly elegant. And the
- clock! Everybody will show you the clock. There isn't a station in Europe
- that's got such a clock. It doesn't strike&mdash;and 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.<br /> <br /> <br />
- <br />
- </p>
- <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
- <img alt="p295.jpg (70K)" src="images/p295.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
- </div>
- <p>
- <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <p>
- On every quarter-hour, night and day, they jingle a tiresome chime of half
- a dozen notes&mdash;all 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, sol&mdash;then upward scale: sol, si, re, do&mdash;down again:
- mi, re, do, sol&mdash;up again: sol, si, re, do&mdash;then the clock&mdash;say
- at midnight clang&mdash;clang&mdash;clang&mdash;clang&mdash;clang&mdash;clang&mdash;clang&mdash;clang&mdash;clang&mdash;
- clang&mdash;&mdash;and, by that time you're&mdash;hello, what's all this
- excitement about? Oh I see&mdash;a runaway&mdash;scared by the train; why,
- you wouldn't think this train could scare anything. Well, of cours, when
- they build and run eighty stations at a loss and a lot of palace-stations
- 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 freight-cars and two passenger-kennels; cheap, poor, shabby,
- slovenly; no drinking water, no sanitary arrangements, every imaginable
- inconvenience; and slow?&mdash;oh, the gait of cold molasses; no
- air-brake, 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' convict-transportation
- 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 sense&mdash;and out of place
- in a government. And then, besides, they save in that other little detail,
- you know&mdash;repudiate their own tickets, and collect a poor little
- illegitimate extra shilling out of you for that twelve miles, and&mdash;&mdash;"
- </p>
- <p>
- "Well, in any case&mdash;&mdash;"
- </p>
- <p>
- "Wait&mdash;there'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."
- </p>
- <p>
- "But can't I pay the conductor?"
- </p>
- <p>
- "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 here&mdash;continentally European
- I mean, not English. It's the continental business in perfection; down
- fine. Oh, yes, even to the peanut-commerce of weighing baggage."
- </p>
- <p>
- The train slowed up at his place. As he stepped out he said:
- </p>
- <p>
- "Yes, you'll like Maryborough. Plenty of intelligence there. It's a
- charming place&mdash;with a hell of a hotel."
- </p>
- <p>
- Then he was gone. I turned to the other gentleman:
- </p>
- <p>
- "Is your friend in the ministry?"
- </p>
- <p>
- "No&mdash;studying for it."<br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <h2>
- <a name="ch32" id="ch32"></a><br /> <br /> CHAPTER XXXII.
- </h2>
- <p>
- <i>The man with a new idea is a Crank until the idea succeeds.</i>
- </p>
- <p>
- &mdash;Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.
- </p>
- <p>
- It was Junior England all the way to Christchurch&mdash;in fact, just a
- garden. And Christchurch is an English town, with an English-park annex,
- and a winding English brook just like the Avon&mdash;and 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 home-life. If it
- had an established Church and social inequality it would be England over
- again with hardly a lack.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 carvings&mdash;wonderful, surely, considering who did them&mdash;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 totem-posts were there, ancestor above
- ancestor, with tongues protruded and hands clasped comfortably over
- bellies containing other people's ancestors&mdash;grotesque 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 canoe.
- </p>
- <p>
- And we saw little jade gods, to hang around the neck&mdash;not
- everybody's, but sacred to the necks of natives of rank. Also jade
- weapons, and many kinds of jade trinkets&mdash;all 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 them&mdash;nobody 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.<br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
- <img alt="p298.jpg (52K)" src="images/p298.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
- </div>
- <p>
- <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 did it, he would think he had
- been kicked by a wind-mill.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 himself&mdash;by tradition&mdash;been
- in New Zealand since the end of the fifteenth century. He came from an
- unknown land&mdash;the first Maori did&mdash;then 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 went 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 voted&mdash;85.18
- per cent. Do men ever turn out better than that&mdash;in America or
- elsewhere? Here is a remark to the other sex's credit, too&mdash;I take it
- from the official report:
- </p>
- <p>
- "A feature of the election was the orderliness and sobriety of the people.
- Women were in no way molested."
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 1848&mdash;and in forty-seven years they have never scored a hit.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 forty-seven 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&mdash;essentially.
- Men could not have done so much for themselves in that time without
- bloodshed&mdash;at 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
- inferior&mdash;yet in several important details the evidence seems to show
- that that is what he is. Man has ruled the human race from the beginning&mdash;but
- 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
- opportunity&mdash;she has had none before. I wonder where man will be in
- another forty-seven years?
- </p>
- <p>
- In the New Zealand law occurs this: "The word person wherever it occurs
- throughout the Act includes woman."
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 twenty-one. 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- November 16. After four pleasant days in Christchurch, we are to leave at
- midnight to-night. Mr. Kinsey gave me an ornithorhynchus, and I am taming
- it.
- </p>
- <p>
- Sunday, 17th. Sailed last night in the Flora, from Lyttelton.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 cattle-scow; but when the Union Company find it
- inconvenient to keep a contract and lucrative to break it, they smuggle
- her into passenger service, and "keep the change."
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 competition&mdash;and that is the
- trouble. It is too late now to make other arrangements if you have
- engagements ahead.
- </p>
- <p>
- It is a powerful company, it has a monopoly, and everybody is afraid of it&mdash;including
- the government's representative, who stands at the end of the stage-plank
- to tally the passengers and see that no boat receives a greater number
- than the law allows her to carry. This conveniently-blind 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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&mdash;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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 cattle-stalls in the main stable were full, the spaces at
- the heads of companionways were full, every inch of floor and table in the
- swill-room 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 occupied, and still there were people who had to walk about all
- night!
- </p>
- <p>
- If the Flora had gone down that night, half of the people on board would
- have been wholly without means of escape.
- </p>
- <p>
- The owners of that boat were not technically guilty of conspiracy to
- commit murder, but they were morally guilty of it.<br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
- <img alt="p303.jpg (52K)" src="images/p303.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
- </div>
- <p>
- <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <p>
- I had a cattle-stall in the main stable&mdash;a cavern fitted up with a
- long double file of two-storied bunks, the files separated by a calico
- partition&mdash;twenty 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 ejaculations&mdash;it was
- wonderful.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 hurricane-deck.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 efficiency.
- </p>
- <p>
- A good many of us got ashore at the first way-port to seek another ship.
- After a wait of three hours we got good rooms in the Mahinapua, a wee
- little bridal-parlor of a boat&mdash;only 205 tons burthen; clean and
- comfortable; good service; good beds; good table, and no crowding. The
- seas danced her about like a duck, but she was safe and capable.
- </p>
- <p>
- Next morning early she went through the French Pass&mdash;a narrow gateway
- of rock, between bold headlands&mdash;so narrow, in fact, that it seemed
- no wider than a street. The current tore through there like a mill-race,
- 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 sand&mdash;so 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.<br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
- <img alt="p304.jpg (14K)" src="images/p304.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
- </div>
- <p>
- <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <h2>
- <a name="ch33" id="ch33"></a><br /> <br /> CHAPTER XXXIII.
- </h2>
- <p>
- <i>Let us be grateful to Adam our benefactor. He cut us out of the
- "blessing of idleness," and won for us the "curse of labor."</i>
- </p>
- <p>
- &mdash;Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.
- </p>
- <p>
- We soon reached the town of Nelson, and spent the most of the day there,
- visiting acquaintances and driving with them about the garden&mdash;the
- whole region is a garden, excepting the scene of the "Maungatapu Murders,"
- of thirty years ago. That is a wild place&mdash;wild 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
- rascals&mdash;Burgess, Sullivan, Levy, and Kelley&mdash;ambushed
- themselves beside the mountain-trail to murder and rob four travelers&mdash;Kempthorne,
- 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 out
- as they desired.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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
- statement&mdash;for that is what it is: a business statement of a murder,
- by the chief engineer of it, or superintendent, or foreman, or whatever
- one may prefer to call him.
- </p>
- <blockquote>
- <p>
- "We were getting impatient, when we saw four men and a pack-horse
- 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&mdash;[A "swag" is a kit, a pack, small
- baggage.]&mdash;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 half-an-hour 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 pack-horse? 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 work took nearly an hour and a half from the time we stopped
- the men."
- </p>
- </blockquote>
- <p>
- 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 feeling&mdash;utterly 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 regrets.
- </p>
- <blockquote>
- <p>
- "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 deep-dyed 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 promise I rely."
- </p>
- </blockquote>
- <p>
- 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 sea-view is superb. There are charming drives all about, and by
- courtesy of friends we had opportunity to enjoy them. From the grassy
- crater-summit of Mount Eden one's eye ranges over a grand sweep and
- variety of scenery&mdash;forests clothed in luxuriant foliage, rolling
- green fields, conflagrations of flowers, receding and dimming stretches of
- green plain, broken by lofty and symmetrical old craters&mdash;then the
- blue bays twinkling and sparkling away into the dreamy distances where the
- mountains loom spiritual in their veils of haze.
- </p>
- <p>
- It is from Auckland that one goes to Rotorua, the region of the renowned
- hot lakes and geysers&mdash;one 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 over-cautious 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 whisky-habit, he seems to have no
- reserves. The baths will cure the drinking-habit no matter how chronic it
- is&mdash;and 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 by going there, the rush will begin.<br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
- <img alt="p309.jpg (54K)" src="images/p309.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
- </div>
- <p>
- <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <p>
- The Thermal-springs 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 pleasure-seeker makes excursions. The crowd of sick
- people is great, and growing. Rotorua is the Carlsbad of Australasia.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 amber&mdash;the light-colored like new
- amber, and the dark brown like rich old amber. And it has the pleasant
- feel of amber, too. Some of the light-colored 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
- varnish which answers for copal varnish and is cheaper.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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
- knew what to do with it; so it was sold at L5 a ton, to light fires with.
- </p>
- <p>
- November 26&mdash;3 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&mdash;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 fog&mdash;20 miles
- out of her course&mdash;140 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 devotion&mdash;to&mdash;passengers'
- safety advertisement out of it, and his chance to make a livelihood would
- be permanently gone.<br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <h2>
- <a name="ch34" id="ch34"></a>XXXIV.
- </h2>
- <p>
- Let us not be too particular. It is better to have old second-hand
- diamonds than none at all.
- </p>
- <p>
- &mdash;Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.
- </p>
- <p>
- November 27. To-day we reached Gisborne, and anchored in a big bay; there
- was a heavy sea on, so we remained on board.
- </p>
- <p>
- We were a mile from shore; a little steam-tug 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 forecastle&mdash;and
- this she kept up, all the way out to us. She brought twenty-five
- passengers in her stomach&mdash;men and women&mdash;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
- yard-arm, hung a most primitive basketchair to it and swung it out into
- the spacious air of heaven, and there it swayed, pendulum-fashion, waiting
- for its chance&mdash;then down it shot, skillfully aimed, and was grabbed
- by the two men on the forecastle.<br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
- <img alt="p313.jpg (56K)" src="images/p313.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
- </div>
- <p>
- <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <p>
- A young fellow belonging to our crew was in the chair, to be a protection
- to the lady-comers. 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 twenty-five
- aboard, and delivered twenty-five into the tug&mdash;among them several
- aged ladies, and one blind one&mdash;and all without accident. It was a
- fine piece of work.
- </p>
- <p>
- Ours is a nice ship, roomy, comfortable, well-ordered, 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 by a clock, he won't stay where he cannot find out when dinner is
- ready.
- </p>
- <p>
- November 29. The doctor tells me of several old drunkards, one spiritless
- loafer, and several far-gone 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 noise&mdash;the
- swiftest creature in the world except the lightning-flash. 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 hour&mdash;the 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- December 2. Monday. Left Napier in the Ballarat Fly the one that goes
- twice a week. From Napier to Hastings, twelve miles; time, fifty-five
- minutes&mdash;not 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 highlands&mdash;not the customary
- roof-like 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&mdash;the
- timber that is now furnishing the wood-paving for Europe, and is the best
- of all wood for that purpose. Sometimes these towering upheavals of
- forestry were festooned and garlanded with vine-cables, and sometimes the
- masses of undergrowth were cocooned in another sort of vine of a delicate
- cobwebby texture&mdash;they call it the "supplejack," I think. Tree ferns
- everywhere&mdash;a stem fifteen feet high, with a graceful chalice of
- fern-fronds sprouting from its top&mdash;a lovely forest ornament. And
- there was a ten-foot 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 scalp-plant, this is it. A romantic gorge, with a brook
- flowing in its bottom, approaching Palmerston North.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 right-hand 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 wife&mdash;
- </p>
- <p>
- "Do you remember when the news came to Paris&mdash;&mdash;"
- </p>
- <p>
- "Of the killing of the Prince?"
- </p>
- <p>
- (Those were the very words I had in my mind.) "Yes, but what Prince?"
- </p>
- <p>
- "Napoleon. Lulu."
- </p>
- <p>
- "What made you think of that?"
- </p>
- <p>
- "I don't know."
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 sojourn in Paris of sixteen years
- before.
- </p>
- <p>
- Here was a clear case of mental telegraphy; of mind-transference; 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 head&mdash;it existed nowhere else.<br />
- <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <h2>
- <a name="ch35" id="ch35"></a><br /> <br /> CHAPTER XXXV.
- </h2>
- <p>
- <i>The Autocrat of Russia possesses more power than any other man in the
- earth; but he cannot stop a sneeze.</i>
- </p>
- <p>
- &mdash;Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.
- </p>
- <p>
- WAUGANUI, 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 value&mdash;at 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 dust&mdash;well, 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 find him waiting humbly beside the track, and
- glad to be taken aboard again.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 river&mdash;large, strong, carpeted from end to end with
- matting, and decorated with elaborate wood carvings, artistically
- executed. The Maoris were very polite.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 boat-building, and
- their tastes and capacities in the ornamental arts modify their savagery
- to a semi-civilization&mdash;or at least to, a quarter-civilization.<br />
- <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
- <img alt="p319.jpg (16K)" src="images/p319.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
- </div>
- <p>
- <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 landsharks&mdash;a protection
- which the New Zealand Government still extends to them. And it is still
- another compliment to the Maoris that the Government allows native
- representation&mdash;in 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 of the world for conquerors
- to act in this large spirit toward the conquered.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 good god is not going to do us any harm."
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 low-grade Maori or Hindoo drank from a vessel belonging
- to a high-grade man, the vessel was defiled, and had to be destroyed.
- There were other resemblances between Maori tabu and Hindoo caste-custom.<br />
- <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
- <img alt="p320.jpg (16K)" src="images/p320.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
- </div>
- <p>
- <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <p>
- 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
- to-night?" 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- December 8. A couple of curious war-monuments 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&mdash;always
- honorable, always noble&mdash;and 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 war&mdash;they 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 worthy of the sacrifice&mdash;the Maori patriots.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 object-lesson 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
- nationality&mdash;we honor such."
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- We are packing to-night for the return-voyage to Australia. Our stay in
- New Zealand has been too brief; still, we are not unthankful for the
- glimpse which we have had of it.
- </p>
- <p>
- The sturdy Maoris made the settlement of the country by the whites rather
- difficult. Not at first&mdash;but later. At first they welcomed the
- whites, and were eager to trade with them&mdash;particularly for muskets;
- for their pastime was internecine war, and they greatly preferred the
- white man's weapons to their own. War was their pastime&mdash;I 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 fight went on.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.<br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <h2>
- <a name="ch36" id="ch36"></a><br /> <br /> CHAPTER XXXVI.
- </h2>
- <p>
- <i>There are several good protections against temptations, but the surest
- is cowardice.</i>
- </p>
- <p>
- &mdash;Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.
- </p>
- <p>
- <i>Names are not always what they seem. The common Welsh name Bzjxxllwep
- is pronounced Jackson.</i>
- </p>
- <p>
- &mdash;Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.
- </p>
- <p>
- Friday, December 13. Sailed, at 3 p.m., in the 'Mararoa'. Summer seas and
- a good ship&mdash;life has nothing better.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 deck-awnings, 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 ago,
- and have held me in happy bonds ever since.
- </p>
- <p>
- "The Sentimental Song Book" has long been out of print, and has been
- forgotten by the world in general, but not by me. I carry it with me
- always&mdash;it and Goldsmith's deathless story.
- </p>
- <p>
- Indeed, it has the same deep charm for me that the Vicar of Wakefield has,
- and I find in it the same subtle touch&mdash;the 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&mdash;
- </p>
- <h3>
- WILLIAM UPSON.
- </h3>
- <table summary="">
- <tr>
- <td>
- <br /> <br /> Air&mdash;"The Major's Only Son."<br /> Come all good
- people far and near,<br /> Oh, come and see what you can hear,<br />
- It's of a young man true and brave,<br /> That is now sleeping in his
- grave.<br /> <br /> Now, William Upson was his name<br /> If it's not
- that, it's all the same<br /> He did enlist in a cruel strife,<br /> And
- it caused him to lose his life.<br /> <br /> He was Perry Upson's eldest
- son,<br /> His father loved his noble son,<br /> This son was nineteen
- years of age<br /> When first in the rebellion he engaged.<br /> <br />
- His father said that he might go,<br /> But his dear mother she said
- no,<br /> "Oh! stay at home, dear Billy," she said,<br /> But she could
- not turn his head.<br /> <br /> He went to Nashville, in Tennessee,<br />
- There his kind friends he could not see;<br /> He died among strangers,
- so far away,<br /> They did not know where his body lay.<br /> <br /> He
- was taken sick and lived four weeks,<br /> And Oh! how his parents
- weep,<br /> But now they must in sorrow mourn,<br /> For Billy has gone
- to his heavenly home.<br /> <br /> Oh! if his mother could have seen her
- son,<br /> For she loved him, her darling son;<br /> If she could heard
- his dying prayer,<br /> It would ease her heart till she met him there.<br />
- <br /> How it would relieve his mother's heart<br /> To see her son from
- this world depart,<br /> And hear his noble words of love,<br /> As he
- left this world for that above.<br /> <br /> Now it will relieve his
- mother's heart,<br /> For her son is laid in our graveyard;<br /> For
- now she knows that his grave is near,<br /> She will not shed so many
- tears.<br /> <br /> Although she knows not that it was her son,<br /> For
- his coffin could not be opened<br /> It might be someone in his place,<br />
- For she could not see his noble face.<br />
- </td>
- </tr>
- </table>
- <p>
- December, 17. Reached Sydney.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 hair&mdash;solidified with pomatum; it was
- all one shell. He smoked the most extraordinary cigarettes&mdash;made of
- some kind of manure, apparently. These and his hair made him smell like
- the very nation. He had a low-cut vest on, which exposed a deal of frayed
- and broken and unclean shirtfront. Showy studs, of imitation gold&mdash;they
- had made black disks on the linen. Oversized sleeve buttons of imitation
- gold, the copper base showing through. Ponderous watch-chain 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; 5-o'clock-tea-trousers 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 novelty&mdash;an 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 he 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&mdash;just with the condescendingest little
- royal air in the world. He stretched himself out on the front seat and
- rested his pomatum-cake 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 good as being
- in Marlborough House itself to see him do it so like.<br /> <br /> <br />
- <br />
- </p>
- <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
- <img alt="p327.jpg (17K)" src="images/p327.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
- </div>
- <p>
- <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <p>
- There was other scenery in the trip. That of the Hawksbury river, in the
- National Park region, fine&mdash;extraordinarily 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 plant&mdash;a particularly
- devilish little prickly pear, daily damned in the orisons of the
- agriculturist; imported by a lady of sentiment, and contributed gratis to
- the colony. Blazing hot, all day.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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:
- </p>
- <table summary="">
- <tr>
- <td>
- <br /> <br /> Tumut<br /> Takee<br /> Murriwillumba<br /> Bowral<br />
- Ballarat<br /> Mullengudgery<br /> Murrurundi<br /> Wagga-Wagga<br />
- Wyalong<br /> Murrumbidgee<br /> Goomeroo<br /> Wolloway<br /> Wangary<br />
- Wanilla<br /> Worrow<br /> Koppio<br /> Yankalilla<br /> Yaranyacka<br />
- Yackamoorundie<br /> Kaiwaka<br /> Coomooroo<br /> Tauranga<br /> Geelong<br />
- Tongariro<br /> Kaikoura<br /> Wakatipu<br /> Oohipara<br /> Waitpinga<br />
- Goelwa<br /> Munno Para<br /> Nangkita<br /> Myponga<br /> Kapunda<br />
- Kooringa<br /> Penola<br /> Nangwarry<br /> Kongorong<br /> Comaum<br />
- Koolywurtie<br /> Killanoola<br /> Naracoorte<br /> Muloowurtie<br />
- Binnum<br /> Wallaroo<br /> Wirrega<br /> Mundoora<br /> Hauraki<br />
- Rangiriri<br /> Teawamute<br /> Taranaki<br /> Toowoomba<br /> Goondiwindi<br />
- Jerrilderie<br /> Whangaroa<br /> Wollongong<br /> Woolloomooloo<br />
- Bombola<br /> Coolgardie<br /> Bendigo<br /> Coonamble<br /> Cootamundra<br />
- Woolgoolga<br /> Mittagong<br /> Jamberoo<br /> Kondoparinga<br /> Kuitpo<br />
- Tungkillo<br /> Oukaparinga<br /> Talunga<br /> Yatala<br /> Parawirra<br />
- Moorooroo<br /> Whangarei<br /> Woolundunga<br /> Booleroo<br /> Pernatty<br />
- Parramatta<br /> Taroom<br /> Narrandera<br /> Deniliquin<br /> Kawakawa.<br />
- </td>
- </tr>
- </table>
- <p>
- It may be best to build the poem now, and make the weather help
- </p>
- <h3>
- A SWELTERING DAY IN AUSTRALIA.
- </h3>
- <table summary="">
- <tr>
- <td>
- <br /> <br /> (To be read soft and low, with the lights turned down.)<br />
- <br /> The Bombola faints in the hot Bowral tree,<br /> Where fierce
- Mullengudgery's smothering fires<br /> Far from the breezes of
- Coolgardie<br /> Burn ghastly and blue as the day expires;<br /> <br />
- And Murriwillumba complaineth in song<br /> For the garlanded bowers of
- Woolloomooloo,<br /> And the Ballarat Fly and the lone Wollongong<br />
- They dream of the gardens of Jamberoo;<br /> <br /> The wallabi sighs
- for the Murrubidgee,<br /> For the velvety sod of the Munno Parah,<br />
- Where the waters of healing from Muloowurtie<br /> Flow dim in the
- gloaming by Yaranyackah;<br /> <br /> The Koppio sorrows for lost
- Wolloway,<br /> And sigheth in secret for Murrurundi,<br /> The
- Whangeroo wombat lamenteth the day<br /> That made him an exile from
- Jerrilderie;<br /> <br /> The Teawamute Tumut from Wirrega's glade,<br />
- The Nangkita swallow, the Wallaroo swan,<br /> They long for the peace
- of the Timaru shade<br /> And thy balmy soft airs, O sweet Mittagong!<br />
- <br /> The Kooringa buffalo pants in the sun,<br /> The Kondoparinga
- lies gaping for breath,<br /> The Kongorong Camaum to the shadow has
- won,<br /> But the Goomeroo sinks in the slumber of death;<br /> <br />
- In the weltering hell of the Moorooroo plain<br /> The Yatala Wangary
- withers and dies,<br /> And the Worrow Wanilla, demented with pain,<br />
- To the Woolgoolga woodlands despairingly flies;<br /> <br /> Sweet
- Nangwarry's desolate, Coonamble wails,<br /> And Tungkillo Kuito in
- sables is drest,<br /> For the Whangerei winds fall asleep in the sails<br />
- And the Booleroo life-breeze is dead in the west.<br /> <br /> Mypongo,
- Kapunda, O slumber no more<br /> Yankalilla, Parawirra, be warned<br />
- There's death in the air!<br /> Killanoola, wherefore<br /> Shall the
- prayer of Penola be scorned?<br /> <br /> Cootamundra, and Takee, and
- Wakatipu,<br /> Toowoomba, Kaikoura are lost<br /> From Onkaparinga to
- far Oamaru<br /> All burn in this hell's holocaust!<br /> <br />
- Paramatta and Binnum are gone to their rest<br /> In the vale of
- Tapanni Taroom,<br /> Kawakawa, Deniliquin&mdash;all that was best<br />
- In the earth are but graves and a tomb!<br /> <br /> Narrandera mourns,
- Cameron answers not<br /> When the roll of the scathless we cry<br />
- Tongariro, Goondiwindi, Woolundunga, the spot<br /> Is mute and forlorn
- where ye lie.
- </td>
- </tr>
- </table>
- <p>
- 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 pleasure-resort. It has eight O's in it.<br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
- <img alt="p330.jpg (4K)" src="images/p330.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
- </div>
- <p>
- <br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <h2>
- <a name="ch37" id="ch37"></a>CHAPTER XXXVII.
- </h2>
- <p>
- <i>To succeed in the other trades, capacity must be shown; in the law,
- concealment of it will do.</i>
- </p>
- <p>
- &mdash;Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.
- </p>
- <p>
- MONDAY,&mdash;December 23, 1895. Sailed from Sydney for Ceylon in the P.
- &amp; O. steamer 'Oceana'. A Lascar crew mans this ship&mdash;the 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."
- </p>
- <p>
- 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, man-of-war fashion; a pleasant
- change from the terrible gong . . . . Three big cats&mdash;very 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. . . .<br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
- <img alt="p332.jpg (24K)" src="images/p332.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
- </div>
- <p>
- <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 French-labeled claret in New York is made in
- California. And I remember what Professor S. told me once about Veuve
- Cliquot&mdash;if 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 America.
- </p>
- <p>
- "Oh, yes," said S., "a great abundance of it."
- </p>
- <p>
- "Is it easy to be had?"
- </p>
- <p>
- "Oh, yes&mdash;easy as water. All first and second-class hotels have it."
- </p>
- <p>
- "What do you pay for it?"
- </p>
- <p>
- "It depends on the style of the hotel&mdash;from fifteen to twenty-five
- francs a bottle."
- </p>
- <p>
- "Oh, fortunate country! Why, it's worth 100 francs right here on the
- ground."
- </p>
- <p>
- "No!"
- </p>
- <p>
- "Yes!"
- </p>
- <p>
- "Do you mean that we are drinking a bogus Veuve-Cliquot over there?"
- </p>
- <p>
- "Yes&mdash;and 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 person&mdash;the Emperor of Russia. He
- takes the whole crop in advance, be it big or little."
- </p>
- <p>
- January 4, 1896. Christmas in Melbourne, New Year's Day in Adelaide, and
- saw most of the friends again in both places . . . . Lying here at anchor
- all day&mdash;Albany (King George's Sound), Western Australia. It is a
- perfectly landlocked harbor, or roadstead&mdash;spacious to look at, but
- not deep water. Desolate-looking rocks and scarred hills. Plenty of ships
- arriving now, rushing to the new gold-fields. 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 gold-laced 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 puddle&mdash;and
- 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 tracks&mdash;a seeming impossibility. We had
- several casts of quarter-less 5, and one cast of half 4&mdash;27 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. &amp; 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
- semi-civilized countries are going to be grabbed . . . . A vulture on
- board; bald, red, queer-shaped 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 aspect&mdash;the 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 offal&mdash;and 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- January 5. At 9 this morning we passed Cape Leeuwin (lioness) and ceased
- from our long due-west 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 fast&mdash;but it isn't chilly, now. . . . The
- vulture is from the public menagerie at Adelaide&mdash;a 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 hyena&mdash;an ugly creature; as ugly as the tiger-kitty
- 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 assistance&mdash;and
- 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&mdash;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 wholly&mdash;there
- is no interference; and her commerce and manufactures are not oppressed in
- any way. If our case had been the same we should not have gone out when we
- did.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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"&mdash;an eloquent
- line, an incomparable line; it says little, but conveys whole libraries of
- sentiment, and Oriental charm and mystery, and tropic deliciousness&mdash;a
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 voyage&mdash;the night before the
- ship makes port&mdash;the 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 cricket-playing 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 properly
- violent and exciting . . . . We must part from this vessel here.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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&mdash;tortoise-shell
- comb in it, sign that he is a Singhalese; slender, shapely form; jacket;
- under it is a beltless and flowing white cotton gown&mdash;from neck
- straight to heel; he and his outfit quite unmasculine. It was an
- embarrassment to undress before him.<br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
- <img alt="p338.jpg (51K)" src="images/p338.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
- </div>
- <p>
- <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <p>
- We drove to the market, using the Japanese jinriksha&mdash;our first
- acquaintanceship with it. It is a light cart, with a native to draw it. He
- makes good speed for half-an-hour, but it is hard work for him; he is too
- slight for it. After the half-hour 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 tariff is incredibly cheap.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 South&mdash;that is
- granted; but you are not in the South; you are in a modified South, a
- tempered South. Cairo was a tempered Orient&mdash;an Orient with an
- indefinite something wanting. That feeling was not present in Ceylon.
- Ceylon was Oriental in the last measure of completeness&mdash;utterly
- 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 eyes; in sight were plants and flowers
- familiar to one on books but in no other way&mdash;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,&mdash;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 race&mdash;and this
- was as it should be, also, for nothing is quite satisfyingly Oriental that
- lacks the somber and impressive qualities of mystery and antiquity.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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,
- babies&mdash;each 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 silk&mdash;thin, 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&mdash;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 two&mdash;in both
- cases generous areas of polished dark skin showing&mdash;but always the
- arrangement compelled the homage of the eye and made the heart sing for
- gladness.
- </p>
- <p>
- I can see it to this day, that radiant panorama, that wilderness of rich
- color, that incomparable dissolving-view of harmonious tints, and lithe
- half-covered forms, and beautiful brown faces, and gracious and graceful
- gestures and attitudes and movements, free, unstudied, barren of stiffness
- and restraint, and&mdash;
- </p>
- <p>
- Just then, into this dream of fairyland and paradise a grating dissonance
- was injected.
- </p>
- <p>
- Out of a missionary school came marching, two and two, sixteen prim and
- pious little Christian black girls, Europeanly clothed&mdash;dressed, to
- the last detail, as they would have been dressed on a summer Sunday in an
- English or American village. Those clothes&mdash;oh, they were unspeakably
- ugly! Ugly, barbarous, destitute of taste, destitute of grace, repulsive
- as a shroud. I looked at my womenfolk's clothes&mdash;just full-grown
- duplicates of the outrages disguising those poor little abused creatures&mdash;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.<br /> <br />
- <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
- <img alt="p343.jpg (47K)" src="images/p343.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
- </div>
- <p>
- <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <p>
- However, we must put up with our clothes as they are&mdash;they have their
- reason for existing. They are on us to expose us&mdash;to 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 by&mdash;and 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 drawing-room we shut ourselves up
- in private and parade around in the theatrical court-dress 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 uniform&mdash;and 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 a moral
- decay.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 Sunday-school
- dowdies were masquerading.<br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
- <img alt="p344.jpg (8K)" src="images/p344.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
- </div>
- <p>
- <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <h2>
- <a name="ch38" id="ch38"></a><br /> <br /> CHAPTER XXXVIII.
- </h2>
- <p>
- <i>Prosperity is the best protector of principle.</i>
- </p>
- <p>
- &mdash;Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.
- </p>
- <p>
- EVENING&mdash;14th. 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- January 18th. We have been running up the Arabian Sea, latterly. Closing
- up on Bombay now, and due to arrive this evening.
- </p>
- <p>
- January 20th. Bombay! A bewitching place, a bewildering place, an
- enchanting place&mdash;the Arabian Nights come again? It is a vast city;
- contains about a million inhabitants. Natives, they are, with a slight
- sprinkling of white people&mdash;not 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 rich-colored 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
- sea-shore 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 liveries&mdash;two of these turbaned statues
- standing up behind, as fine as monuments. Sometimes even the public
- carriages have this superabundant crew, slightly modified&mdash;one to
- drive, one to sit by and see it done, and one to stand up behind and yell&mdash;yell
- 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
- swiftness and energy and confusion and pow-wow.
- </p>
- <p>
- In the region of Scandal Point&mdash;felicitous name&mdash;where 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 repassing whirl and tumult of gay carriages, are
- great groups of comfortably-off Parsee women&mdash;perfect flower-beds 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 working-woman&mdash;but not clothed like ours. Usually the man is a
- nobly-built great athlete, with not a rag on but his loin-handkerchief;
- 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 lightning-rod, and she has but one thing on&mdash;a
- bright-colored piece of stuff which is wound about her head and her body
- down nearly half-way 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 cluster-rings 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&mdash;indeed,
- our working-women cannot begin with her as a road-decoration.<br /> <br />
- <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
- <img alt="p347.jpg (18K)" src="images/p347.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
- </div>
- <p>
- <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <p>
- It is all color, bewitching color, enchanting color&mdash;everywhere all
- around&mdash;all 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 and make it
- theatrically complete. I wish I were a 'chuprassy'.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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, great-grandmother of tradition, whose yesterdays
- bear date with the mouldering antiquities of the rest of the nations&mdash;the
- 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&mdash;straight
- away. The lobbies and halls were full of turbaned, and fez'd and
- embroidered, cap'd, and barefooted, and cotton-clad 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
- dining-room every man's own private native servant standing behind his
- chair, and dressed for a part in the Arabian Nights.
- </p>
- <p>
- Our rooms were high up, on the front. A white man&mdash;he was a burly
- German&mdash;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 article&mdash;and 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 touching about their demeanor.<br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
- <img alt="p349.jpg (28K)" src="images/p349.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
- </div>
- <p>
- <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 lie&mdash;which 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 awkwardnesses. 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 iron-ore at a slaveman in anger, for merely doing something
- awkwardly&mdash;as 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 village approved of
- that murder, but of course no one said much about it.
- </p>
- <p>
- It is curious&mdash;the space-annihilating 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 boyhood&mdash;fifty
- years; back to age again, another fifty; and a flight equal to the
- circumference of the globe-all in two seconds by the watch!
- </p>
- <p>
- Some natives&mdash;I don't remember how many&mdash;went into my bedroom,
- now, and put things to rights and arranged the mosquito-bar, 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 feet&mdash;what
- 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 them&mdash;roofs 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 peace&mdash;stillness deep and
- solemn and lasted till five.
- </p>
- <p>
- Then it all broke loose again. And who re-started 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 he 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 intolerably capable and comfortable than ever
- he was before.
- </p>
- <p>
- In his straddling wide forward-step, and his springy side-wise 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 awake&mdash;always 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 violent&mdash;violent and profane&mdash;the 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.<br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
- <img alt="p355.jpg (63K)" src="images/p355.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
- </div>
- <p>
- <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <p>
- 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,&mdash;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 all over again.
- </p>
- <p>
- They were very sociable when there was anything to eat&mdash;oppressively
- 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 out of
- it.<br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
- <img alt="p356.jpg (13K)" src="images/p356.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
- </div>
- <p>
- <br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <h2>
- <a name="ch39" id="ch39"></a><br /> <br /> CHAPTER XXXIX.
- </h2>
- <p>
- <i>By trying we can easily learn to endure adversity. Another man's, I
- mean.</i>
- </p>
- <p>
- &mdash;Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.
- </p>
- <p>
- You soon find your long-ago dreams of India rising in a sort of vague and
- luscious moonlight above the horizon-rim 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,&mdash;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 Ranee 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 108&mdash;108 special ones&mdash;108
- peculiarly holy ones&mdash;names 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 but John W.
- </p>
- <p>
- And the romances connected with those princely native houses&mdash;to 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 one-half 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 the true prince, and he has reigned ever
- since, with none to dispute his right.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 authentic, too.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 nerve-web 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- The series begins with the hiring of a "bearer"&mdash;native man-servant&mdash;a
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- In India your day may be said to begin with the "bearer's" knock on the
- bedroom door, accompanied by a formula of words&mdash;a 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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, table-waiter, lady's maid, courier&mdash;he is
- everything. He carries a coarse linen clothes-bag 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 large&mdash;from an Indian point of view&mdash;and 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,
- twenty-seven 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
- farm-hand 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, hand-made, and, doubtless, rent-free, 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
- farm-hand; 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 month&mdash;that is to say, less
- than a cent a day; nearly $2.90 a year. If such a wage-earner had a good
- deal of a family&mdash;and they all have that, for God is very good to
- these poor natives in some ways&mdash;he 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 his creditors in the face
- again.
- </p>
- <p>
- Think of these facts and what they mean. India does not consist of cities.
- There are no cities in India&mdash;to speak of. Its stupendous population
- consists of farm-laborers. India is one vast farm&mdash;one almost
- interminable stretch of fields with mud fences between. . . Think of the
- above facts; and consider what an incredible aggregate of poverty they
- place before you.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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
- them&mdash;except 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 lie&mdash;a silent lie&mdash;for
- 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't&mdash;as 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 dressing-down 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 repute&mdash;a 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 experience.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 them&mdash;I 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 mentioned&mdash;and praised-in detail. His English was
- spoken of in terms of warm admiration&mdash;admiration verging upon
- rapture. I took pleased note of that, and hoped that some of it might be
- true.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 stoop&mdash;an artificial stoop, a deferential
- stoop, a stoop rigidified by long habit&mdash;with face of European mould;
- short hair intensely black; gentle black eyes, timid black eyes, indeed;
- complexion very dark, nearly black in fact; face smooth-shaven. He was
- bareheaded and barefooted, and was never otherwise while his week with us
- lasted; his clothing was European, cheap, flimsy, and showed much wear.<br />
- <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
- <img alt="p362.jpg (10K)" src="images/p362.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
- </div>
- <p>
- <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <p>
- He stood before me and inclined his head (and body) in the pathetic Indian
- way, touching his forehead with the finger-ends of his right hand, in
- salute. I said:
- </p>
- <p>
- "Manuel, you are evidently Indian, but you seem to have a Spanish name
- when you put it all together. How is that?"
- </p>
- <p>
- A perplexed look gathered in his face; it was plain that he had not
- understood&mdash;but he didn't let on. He spoke back placidly.
- </p>
- <p>
- "Name, Manuel. Yes, master."
- </p>
- <p>
- "I know; but how did you get the name?"
- </p>
- <p>
- "Oh, yes, I suppose. Think happen so. Father same name, not mother."
- </p>
- <p>
- I saw that I must simplify my language and spread my words apart, if I
- would be understood by this English scholar.
- </p>
- <p>
- "Well&mdash;then&mdash;how&mdash;did&mdash;your&mdash;father&mdash;get&mdash;his
- name?"
- </p>
- <p>
- "Oh, he,"&mdash;brightening a little&mdash;"he Christian&mdash;Portygee;
- live in Goa; I born Goa; mother not Portygee, mother native-high-caste
- Brahmin&mdash;Coolin Brahmin; highest caste; no other so high caste. I
- high-caste Brahmin, too. Christian, too, same like father; high-caste
- Christian Brahmin, master&mdash;Salvation Army."
- </p>
- <p>
- All this haltingly, and with difficulty. Then he had an inspiration, and
- began to pour out a flood of words that I could make nothing of; so I
- said:
- </p>
- <p>
- "There&mdash;don't do that. I can't understand Hindostani."
- </p>
- <p>
- "Not Hindostani, master&mdash;English. Always I speaking English sometimes
- when I talking every day all the time at you."
- </p>
- <p>
- "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 are crippled by uncertainty of touch."
- </p>
- <p>
- "Master?"
- </p>
- <p>
- "Oh, never mind; it was only a random thought; I didn't expect you to
- understand it. How did you get your English; is it an acquirement, or just
- a gift of God?"
- </p>
- <p>
- After some hesitation&mdash;piously:
- </p>
- <p>
- "Yes, he very good. Christian god very good, Hindoo god very good, too.
- Two million Hindoo god, one Christian god&mdash;make 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 better man; good for me, good for my
- family, dam good."
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 slops&mdash;this 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 re-simplifying 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 society&mdash;the
- 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 ages&mdash;clear back to the beginning of
- things, so to speak. Buckle says that his name&mdash;laborer&mdash;is 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&mdash;[Without going into particulars I will remark that as a rule
- they wear no clothing that would conceal the brand.&mdash;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&mdash;[Population to-day,
- 300,000,000.]&mdash;"is the Sudras&mdash;the workers, the farmers, the
- creators of wealth."
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 table&mdash;a 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 was
- only a little thing to say, and saved his feelings and cost me nothing.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 newly-hired 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,
- shiney-eyed little devil, feruled on his upper end by a gleaming fire-coal
- of a fez with a red-hot tassel dangling from it. I said, with deep
- satisfaction&mdash;
- </p>
- <p>
- "You'll suit. What is your name?"
- </p>
- <p>
- He reeled it mellowly off.
- </p>
- <p>
- "Let me see if I can make a selection out of it&mdash;for business uses, I
- mean; we will keep the rest for Sundays. Give it to me in installments."
- </p>
- <p>
- He did it. But there did not seem to be any short ones, except Mousa&mdash;which
- 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&mdash;
- </p>
- <p>
- "Mousa is short enough, but I don't quite like it. It seems colorless&mdash;inharmonious&mdash;inadequate;
- and I am sensitive to such things. How do you think Satan would do?"
- </p>
- <p>
- "Yes, master. Satan do wair good."
- </p>
- <p>
- It was his way of saying "very good."
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 me to
- speak first.
- </p>
- <p>
- "What is it, Satan?"
- </p>
- <p>
- "God want to see you."
- </p>
- <p>
- "Who?"
- </p>
- <p>
- "God. I show him up, master?"
- </p>
- <p>
- "Why, this is so unusual, that&mdash;that&mdash;well, you see indeed I am
- so unprepared&mdash;I don't quite know what I do mean. Dear me, can't you
- explain? Don't you see that this is a most ex&mdash;&mdash;"
- </p>
- <p>
- "Here his card, master."
- </p>
- <p>
- Wasn't it curious&mdash;and amazing, and tremendous, and all that? Such a
- personage going around calling on such as I, and sending up his card, like
- a mortal&mdash;sending 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 India?
- </p>
- <p>
- We had the interview. Satan was right&mdash;the 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 worshiped&mdash;think of it&mdash;he
- 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!&mdash;men and women lay their
- cares and their griefs and their broken hearts at his feet; and he gives
- them his peace; and they go away healed."
- </p>
- <p>
- And just then the Awful Visitor said, in the simplest way&mdash;"There is
- a feature of the philosophy of Huck Finn which"&mdash;and went luminously
- on with the construction of a compact and nicely-discriminated literary
- verdict.
- </p>
- <p>
- It is a land of surprises&mdash;India! I had had my ambitions&mdash;I had
- hoped, and almost expected, to be read by kings and presidents and
- emperors&mdash;but 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 compliment from a man.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 young&mdash;for a god; not forty,
- perhaps not above thirty-five years old. He wears his immense honors with
- tranquil grace, 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 good-bye, the door swung open and
- I caught the flash of a red fez, and heard these words, reverently said&mdash;
- </p>
- <p>
- "Satan see God out?"
- </p>
- <p>
- "Yes." And these mis-mated Beings passed from view Satan in the lead and
- The Other following after.<br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
- <img alt="p368.jpg (19K)" src="images/p368.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
- </div>
- <p>
- <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <h2>
- <a name="ch40" id="ch40"></a><br /> <br /> CHAPTER XL.
- </h2>
- <p>
- <i>Few of us can stand prosperity. Another man's, I mean.</i>
- </p>
- <p>
- &mdash;Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.
- </p>
- <p>
- The next picture in my mind is Government House, on Malabar Point, with
- the wide sea-view from the windows and broad balconies; abode of His
- Excellency the Governor of the Bombay Presidency&mdash;a residence which
- is European in everything but the native guards and servants, and is a
- home and a palace of state harmoniously combined.
- </p>
- <p>
- That was England, the English power, the English civilization, the modern
- civilization&mdash;with 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 India&mdash;an
- hour in the mansion of a native prince: Kumar Schri Samatsinhji Bahadur of
- the Palitana State.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 out-door 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
- restraint and a weary captivity.
- </p>
- <p>
- The game which the prince amuses his leisure with&mdash;however, 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 well&mdash;but 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 two 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.<br />
- <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
- <img alt="p370.jpg (13K)" src="images/p370.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
- </div>
- <p>
- <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 meal-times, 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 low-caste 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 it&mdash;an 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 for the soft and ceremonious East.
- </p>
- <p>
- After being properly necklaced, according to custom, with great garlands
- made of yellow flowers, and provided with betel-nut 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 upon the ear with such
- deep and haunting pathos.
- </p>
- <p>
- On lofty ground, in the midst of a paradise of tropical foliage and
- flowers, remote from the world and its turmoil and noise, they stood&mdash;the
- 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 tower&mdash;waiting;
- 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 handkerchief&mdash;though
- 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&mdash;neither they nor any other human being
- but the bearers of the dead must approach within thirty feet of it&mdash;they
- turned and went back to one of the prayer-houses 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 covering-cloth, 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 clean-picked
- skeleton when they flocked-out again a few minutes afterward.<br /> <br />
- <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
- <img alt="p373.jpg (61K)" src="images/p373.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
- </div>
- <p>
- <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 corpse-bearer&mdash;save one&mdash;has
- 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"&mdash;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
- revocation of license and exile to England.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 wheel-spokes 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 water from the bottom of the well.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 grave&mdash;the 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 death&mdash;all 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 thither.
- </p>
- <p>
- The origin of at least one of the details of a Parsee funeral is not now
- known&mdash;the 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
- Byramjee, 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 ever-applicable
- remedy in case of need.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 disease-germs; 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 slowly&mdash;but hopefully&mdash;toward 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 fire&mdash;a fire which is
- supposed to have been burning without interruption for more than two
- centuries; and so, living by the same heat that was imparted to it so long
- ago.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 their
- lives by it.<br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
- <img alt="p378.jpg (11K)" src="images/p378.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
- </div>
- <p>
- <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 symbol&mdash;a voluntary symbol this one;
- it was a vulture standing on the sawed-off 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 look, too, which was in keeping with the place.<br /> <br /> <br />
- <br />
- </p>
- <h2>
- <a name="ch41" id="ch41"></a><br /> <br /> CHAPTER XLI.
- </h2>
- <p>
- <i>There is an old-time toast which is golden for its beauty. "When you
- ascend the hill of prosperity may you not meet a friend."</i>
- </p>
- <p>
- &mdash;Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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&mdash;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?
- </p>
- <p>
- 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,&mdash;oh, clear away up to eleven; possibly more, but I did
- not hear of any above eleven-gun princes. I was told that when a four-gun
- 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 Baroda, have more than eleven guns,
- but I don't know.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 his own region. This diversity of turbans made a beautiful
- effect.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 week-day&mdash;particularly
- an unfashionable street&mdash;and keeping count of the satisfactory
- complexions encountered in the course of a mile. Where dark complexions
- are massed, they make the whites look bleached-out, 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&mdash;'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:<br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
- <img alt="p382.jpg (69K)" src="images/p382.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
- </div>
- <p>
- <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <blockquote>
- <p>
- A lady. Complexion, new parchment. Another lady. Complexion, old
- parchment.
- </p>
- <p>
- Another. Pink and white, very fine.
- </p>
- <p>
- Man. Grayish skin, with purple areas.
- </p>
- <p>
- Man. Unwholesome fish-belly skin.
- </p>
- <p>
- Girl. Sallow face, sprinkled with freckles.
- </p>
- <p>
- Old woman. Face whitey-gray.
- </p>
- <p>
- Young butcher. Face a general red flush.
- </p>
- <p>
- Jaundiced man&mdash;mustard yellow.
- </p>
- <p>
- Elderly lady. Colorless skin, with two conspicuous moles.
- </p>
- <p>
- Elderly man&mdash;a drinker. Boiled-cauliflower nose in a flabby face
- veined with purple crinklings.
- </p>
- <p>
- Healthy young gentleman. Fine fresh complexion.
- </p>
- <p>
- Sick young man. His face a ghastly white.
- </p>
- </blockquote>
- <p>
- 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
- catch-all 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 few&mdash;to the very few. To ninety-nine
- persons she gives a bad complexion, to the hundredth a good one. The
- hundredth can keep it&mdash;how long? Ten years, perhaps.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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&mdash;firm,
- smooth, blemishless, pleasant and restful to the eye, afraid of no color,
- harmonizing with all colors and adding a grace to them all&mdash;I think
- there is no sort of chance for the average white complexion against that
- rich and perfect tint.
- </p>
- <p>
- To return to the bungalow. The most gorgeous costumes present were worn by
- some children. They seemed to blaze, so bright were the colors, and so
- brilliant the jewels strewing over the rich materials. These children were
- professional nautch-dancers, 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 monotony about the tune.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 emeralds&mdash;emeralds
- renowned in Bombay for their quality and value. Their size was marvelous,
- and enticing to the eye, those rocks. A boy&mdash;a princeling&mdash;was
- with the prince, and he also was a radiant exhibition.
- </p>
- <p>
- The ceremonies were not tedious. The prince strode to his throne with the
- port and majesty&mdash;and the sternness&mdash;of a Julius Caesar coming
- to receive and receipt for a back-country 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&mdash;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 ago&mdash;the 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 would have
- thanked the prince&mdash;
- </p>
- <blockquote>
- <p>
- 1. For not slaughtering too many of his people upon mere caprice;
- </p>
- <p>
- 2. For not stripping them bare by sudden and arbitrary tax levies, and
- bringing famine upon them;
- </p>
- <p>
- 3. For not upon empty pretext destroying the rich and seizing their
- property;
- </p>
- <p>
- 4. For not killing, blinding, imprisoning, or banishing the relatives of
- the royal house to protect the throne from possible plots;
- </p>
- <p>
- 5. For not betraying the subject secretly, for a bribe, into the hands
- of bands of professional Thugs, to be murdered and robbed in the
- prince's back lot.
- </p>
- </blockquote>
- <p>
- 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 community
- will show:
- </p>
- <blockquote>
- <p>
- "Your Highness,&mdash;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 distinction&mdash;the
- 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 Queen-Empress, 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 obedient
- servants."
- </p>
- </blockquote>
- <p>
- Factories, schools, hospitals, reforms. The prince propagates that kind of
- things in the modern times, and gets knighthood and guns for it.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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
- function ended.<br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <h2>
- <a name="ch42" id="ch42"></a><br /> <br /> CHAPTER XLII.
- </h2>
- <p>
- <i>Each person is born to one possession which outvalues all his others&mdash;his
- last breath.</i>
- </p>
- <p>
- &mdash;Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.
- </p>
- <p>
- Toward midnight, that night, there was another function. This was a Hindoo
- wedding&mdash;no, 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 natives-hundreds and hundreds. They lay
- stretched at full length and tightly wrapped in blankets, heads and all.
- Their attitude and their rigidity counterfeited death.<br /> <br /> <br />
- <br />
- </p>
- <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
- <img alt="p387.jpg (41K)" src="images/p387.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
- </div>
- <p>
- <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 light&mdash;the 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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,&mdash;mainly gas-work designs, gotten up specially for the
- occasion. Within was abundance of brilliancy&mdash;flames, costumes,
- colors, decorations, mirrors&mdash;it was another Aladdin show.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.<br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
- <img alt="p388.jpg (82K)" src="images/p388.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
- </div>
- <p>
- <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 India&mdash;twelve; they ought to have been
- married a year or two sooner; still to a stranger twelve seems quite young
- enough.
- </p>
- <p>
- A while after midnight a couple of celebrated and high-priced 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.<br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
- <img alt="p389.jpg (15K)" src="images/p389.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
- </div>
- <p>
- <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- We withdrew from the festivities at two in the morning. Another picture,
- then&mdash;but it has lodged itself in my memory rather as a stage-scene
- than as a reality. It is of a porch and short flight of steps crowded with
- dark faces and ghostly-white draperies flooded with the strong glare from
- the dazzling concentration of illuminations; and midway of the steps one
- conspicuous figure for accent&mdash;a 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 house-fronts on both sides of the narrow street
- were illuminations of a kind commonly employed by the natives&mdash;scores
- of glass tumblers (containing tapers) fastened a few inches apart all over
- great latticed frames, forming starry constellations which showed out
- vividly against their black backgrounds. 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 saw&mdash;saw
- before it happened&mdash;in 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,
- 214 deaths." A day or two later, "52 fresh cases, all of which proved
- fatal."
- </p>
- <p>
- The plague carries with it a terror which no other disease can excite; for
- of all diseases known to men it is the deadliest&mdash;by far the
- deadliest. "Fifty-two fresh cases&mdash;all fatal." It is the Black Death
- alone that slays like that. We can all imagine, after a fashion, the
- desolation of a plague-stricken 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 home-dreams, and reeling billiard-tables, and then
- the sudden blank of death:
- </p>
- <blockquote>
- <p>
- "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 devil-may-care indifference which might stand him instead of
- creeds&mdash;to such one, every rag that shivers in the breeze of a
- plague-stricken city has this sort of sublimity. If by any terrible
- ordinance he be forced to venture forth, he 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 love&mdash;the 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&mdash;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 sign&mdash;his mouth is parched; the
- throbbing brain&mdash;his brain does throb; the rapid pulse&mdash;he
- 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 arm&mdash;no 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?&mdash;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
- pistol-bullet, 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?&mdash;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
- chance-wise, 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 garden&mdash;sees
- his mother, and the long-since forgotten face of that little dear sister&mdash;(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 eternal&mdash;so much
- so that he feels&mdash;he knows&mdash;he swears he could make that
- winning hazard, if the billiard-table would not slant upwards, and if
- the cue were a cue worth playing with; but it is not&mdash;it's a cue
- that won't move&mdash;his own arm won't move&mdash;in 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
- jackal family, who fish him out by the foot from his shallow and sandy
- grave."
- </p>
- </blockquote>
- <p>
- <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <h2>
- <a name="ch43" id="ch43"></a><br /> <br /> CHAPTER XLIII.
- </h2>
- <p>
- <i>Hunger is the handmaid of genius</i>
- </p>
- <p>
- &mdash;Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 business-like
- 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 Meadows-Taylor Thug-tale of half a century ago, as may be seen by
- the official report of the trial:
- </p>
- <blockquote>
- <p>
- "At the Mazagon Police Court yesterday, Superintendent Nolan again
- charged Tookaram Suntoo Savat Baya, woman, her daughter Krishni, and
- Gopal Vithoo 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 offense.
- </p>
- <p>
- "Mr. F. A. Little, Public Prosecutor, conducted the case on behalf of
- the Crown, the accused being undefended.
- </p>
- <p>
- "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
- deceased girl Cassi was murdered.
- </p>
- <p>
- "The Magistrate having granted the Public Prosecutor's application, the
- accused Krishni went into the witness-box, and, on being examined by Mr.
- Little, made the following confession:&mdash;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 Bunder-road 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 out-house, and stood in
- front on the threshold 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 ear-studs, a nose-ring, some silver
- toe-rings, two necklaces, a pair of silver anklets and bracelets.
- Tookaram afterwards tried to remove the silver amulets, the ear-studs,
- and the nose-ring; 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 brother-in-law of
- Tookaram, came to the house and asked Tookaram why he was washing, the
- water-pipe 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 brother-in-law,
- 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."
- </p>
- </blockquote>
- <p>
- 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 light-throwing 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 about by Sir Philip Francis and his
- party:
- </p>
- <blockquote>
- <p>
- "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 death&mdash;no 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 twenty-four 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 hiding-place in his house."
- </p>
- </blockquote>
- <p>
- 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 to-day 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 it to respect:
- </p>
- <blockquote>
- <p>
- "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 water-mark
- and possessing the genuine appearance of age. Other districts have
- earned notoriety for skilled perjury, a pre-eminence 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."
- </p>
- </blockquote>
- <p>
- 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 a use he can put it to. I will quote one example:
- </p>
- <blockquote>
- <p>
- "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 pre-payment 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 of
- the manner in which he came to endorse the note."
- </p>
- </blockquote>
- <p>
- 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 itself&mdash;some other country has a
- duplicate. But India&mdash;that 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 them!
- </p>
- <p>
- There is the Plague, the Black Death: India invented it; India is the
- cradle of that mighty birth.
- </p>
- <p>
- The Car of Juggernaut was India's invention.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 would do
- it this year if the British government would let them.
- </p>
- <p>
- Famine is India's specialty. Elsewhere famines are inconsequential
- incidents&mdash;in India they are devastating cataclysms; in one case they
- annihilate hundreds; in the other, millions.
- </p>
- <p>
- India has 2,000,000 gods, and worships them all. In religion all other
- countries are paupers; India is the only millionaire.
- </p>
- <p>
- With her everything is on a giant scale&mdash;even 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&mdash;a
- 'lahk'; she describes ten millions with one word&mdash;a 'crore'.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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
- show-strongholds 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- On top of all this she is the mother and home of that wonder of wonders&mdash;caste&mdash;and
- of that mystery of mysteries, the satanic brotherhood of the Thugs.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 to-day 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 language&mdash;but
- 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 things as
- that, patriotism can have no healthy growth.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 custom-houses strung along all frontiers, plenty of
- interruptions for travelers and traders, interpreters able to handle all
- the languages very rare or non-existent, 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 custom-houses 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 long-felt want.
- </p>
- <p>
- How long ago that was nobody knows&mdash;centuries, 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 whole time.<br /> <br /> <br />
- <br />
- </p>
- <h2>
- <a name="ch44" id="ch44"></a><br /> <br /> CHAPTER XLIV.
- </h2>
- <p>
- <i>The old saw says, "Let a sleeping dog lie." Right.... Still, when there
- is much at stake it is better to get a newspaper to do it.</i>
- </p>
- <p>
- &mdash;Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.
- </p>
- <p>
- FROM DIARY:
- </p>
- <p>
- January 28. I learned of an official Thug-book 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 nine-tenths 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 bullock-cart, and stopped over night in the small
- dak-bungalow provided at easy distances by the government&mdash;a 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- One buys the bedding, with waterproof hold-all for it at almost any shop&mdash;there
- is no difficulty about it.
- </p>
- <p>
- January 30. What a spectacle the railway station was, at train-time! It
- was a very large station, yet when we arrived it seemed as if the whole
- world was present&mdash;half of it inside, the other half outside, and
- both halves, bearing mountainous head-loads of bedding and other freight,
- trying simultaneously to pass each other, in opposing floods, in one
- narrow door. These opposing floods were patient, gentle, long-suffering
- 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.<br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
- <img alt="p402.jpg (59K)" src="images/p402.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
- </div>
- <p>
- <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <p>
- Inside the great station, tides upon tides of rainbow-costumed 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 hurly-burly, and seemingly undisturbed by it, sat great groups of
- natives on the bare stone floor,&mdash;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 nose-rings, toe-rings, 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 waited&mdash;for 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 matter&mdash;the 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 happen would happen&mdash;there
- was no hurrying it.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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
- castes&mdash;no 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
- third-class cars, for the natives travel by hordes; and a weary hard night
- of it the occupants would have, no doubt.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 real
- name, there wasn't time.
- </p>
- <p>
- It was a car that promised comfort; indeed, luxury. Yet the cost of it&mdash;well,
- economy could no further go; even in France; not even in Italy. It was
- built of the plainest and cheapest partially-smoothed 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 hand-baggage; 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 wash-bowl in one end of it, and a place to put a
- towel, in case you had one with you&mdash;and 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 leather-covered sofa to sit on in the day and sleep on at
- night. Over each sofa hung, by straps, a wide, flat, leather-covered shelf&mdash;to
- sleep on. In the daytime you can hitch it up against the wall, out of the
- way&mdash;and 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- At the foot of each sofa was a side-door, for entrance and exit. Along the
- whole length of the sofa on each side of the car ran a row of large
- single-plate windows, of a blue tint&mdash;blue 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 green-cloth
- attachment by which it could be covered when the light should be no longer
- needed.
- </p>
- <p>
- While we talked outside with friends, Barney and Satan placed the
- hand-baggage, books, fruits, and soda-bottles in the racks, and the
- hold-alls and heavy baggage in the closet, hung the overcoats and
- sun-helmets and towels on the hooks, hoisted the two bed-shelves up out of
- the way, then shouldered their bedding and retired to the third class.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 hold-alls, and spread the
- bedding on the sofas in both compartments&mdash;mattresses, sheets, gay
- coverlets, pillows, all complete; there are no chambermaids in India&mdash;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 slippers under them, then returned to their own quarters.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 morning&mdash;Rao 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 prince&mdash;and now he was
- misbehaving in my dreams. But all things can happen in dreams. It is
- indeed as the Sweet Singer of Michigan says&mdash;irrelevantly, 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
- irrelevancy:
- </p>
- <blockquote>
- <p>
- My heart was gay and happy,
- </p>
- <p>
- This was ever in my mind,
- </p>
- <p>
- There is better times a coming,
- </p>
- <p>
- And I hope some day to find
- </p>
- <p>
- Myself capable of composing,
- </p>
- <p>
- It was my heart's delight
- </p>
- <p>
- To compose on a sentimental subject
- </p>
- <p>
- If it came in my mind just right.
- </p>
- </blockquote>
- <p>
- &mdash;["The Sentimental Song Book," p. 49; theme, "The Author's Early
- Life," 19th stanza.]
- </p>
- <p>
- 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
- housed&mdash;with 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 and
- hospitable, and so all went well.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 machinery&mdash;not quite musical, and yet
- soothingly melancholy and dreamy and reposeful&mdash;a 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 road&mdash;a
- 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
- wilderness.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 houses&mdash;oh, indescribably quaint and curious they
- were, with their fronts an elaborate lace-work of intricate and beautiful
- wood-carving, 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&mdash;shops
- unbelievably small and impossibly packed with merchantable rubbish, and
- with nine-tenths-naked natives squatting at their work of hammering,
- pounding, brazing, soldering, sewing, designing, cooking, measuring out
- grain, grinding it, repairing idols&mdash;and then the swarm of ragged and
- noisy humanity under the horses' feet and everywhere, and the pervading
- reek and fume and smell! It was all wonderful and delightful.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 season (for elephants have a mad season).<br /> <br />
- <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
- <img alt="p409.jpg (47K)" src="images/p409.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
- </div>
- <p>
- <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <p>
- I wonder how old the town is. There are patches of building&mdash;massive
- structures, monuments, apparently&mdash;that 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 of its princes.<br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- <br />
- </p>
- <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
- <img alt="p410.jpg (70K)" src="images/p410.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- <a name="ch45" id="ch45"></a><br /> <br /> CHAPTER XLV.
- </h2>
- <p>
- <i>It takes your enemy and your friend, working together, to hurt you to
- the heart; the one to slander you and the other to get the news to you.</i>
- </p>
- <p>
- &mdash;Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 by&mdash;always interesting things to look at&mdash;and they
- were velvet-shod 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 person&mdash;a naked black fakeer, thin
- and skinny, and whitey-gray all over with ashes.
- </p>
- <p>
- By and by to the elephant stables, and I took a ride; but it was by
- request&mdash;I 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 command&mdash;one end of him at a time&mdash;and
- 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 twenty-five
- 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 the police were not looking.
- </p>
- <p>
- In the howdah-house 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&mdash;harness,
- so to speak; and monster hoops of massive gold for the elephant to wear on
- his ankles when he is out in procession on business of state.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 American-European, 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- We failed to see the jewels, but we saw the gold cannon and the silver one&mdash;they
- seemed to be six-pounders. 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 order to outdo him.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 tiger-fights, elephant-fights, illuminations, and
- elephant-processions of the most glittering and gorgeous character.
- </p>
- <p>
- It makes the circus a pale, poor thing.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 legs&mdash;legs
- that curved inboard, something like parentheses turned the 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 it&mdash;just
- 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 England&mdash;I saw them. He said its pedigree was on
- record in the Kennel Club, and that it was a well-known 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.<br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
- <img alt="p413.jpg (23K)" src="images/p413.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
- </div>
- <p>
- <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 going to be disappointed.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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:
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 train&mdash;the early one&mdash;the one that leaves Hartford at 8.29
- in the morning. At New Haven I bought a paper, and found it filled with
- glaring display-lines about a "bench-show" there. I had often heard of
- bench-shows, 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 dog-show. There was a double-leaded column about
- the king-feature 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 restore them with gruel.
- </p>
- <p>
- Also, there was a picture of this prize-dog 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 table&mdash;indeed,
- a huge fellow for a dog. Then there was a description which went into the
- details. It gave his enormous weight&mdash;150 1/2 pounds, and his length
- 4 feet 2 inches, from stem to stern-post; and his height&mdash;3 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 for the next two hours; then I reached New York, and he
- dropped out of my mind.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 around; enter the second door on the
- left, and come up stairs."
- </p>
- <p>
- "Is this all?"
- </p>
- <p>
- "Yes," I said.
- </p>
- <p>
- "Well, you'll never get in"
- </p>
- <p>
- "Why?"
- </p>
- <p>
- "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 twenty-five
- 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 get in and couldn't."
- </p>
- <p>
- "Why, what is the trouble?"
- </p>
- <p>
- "I'll tell you. You see&mdash;&mdash;"
- </p>
- <p>
- At that point we were swept apart by the crowd, somebody detained me with
- a moment's talk, and we did not get together again. But it did not matter;
- I believed he was joking, anyway.
- </p>
- <p>
- At eight in the evening I passed through the cigar shop and into the court
- and knocked at the second door.
- </p>
- <p>
- "Come in!"
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 marked courtesy of tone:
- </p>
- <p>
- "Well, sor, what will <i>you</i> have?"<br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
- <img alt="p418.jpg (45K)" src="images/p418.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
- </div>
- <p>
- <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 false
- start or two; then&mdash;&mdash;
- </p>
- <p>
- "I have just run down from&mdash;&mdash;"
- </p>
- <p>
- "Av ye plaze, ye'll not smoke here, ye understand."
- </p>
- <p>
- I laid my cigar on the window-ledge; chased my flighty thoughts a moment,
- then said in a placating manner:
- </p>
- <p>
- "I&mdash;I have come to see Mr. Daly."
- </p>
- <p>
- "Oh, ye have, have ye?"
- </p>
- <p>
- "Yes"
- </p>
- <p>
- "Well, ye'll not see him."
- </p>
- <p>
- "But he asked <i>me</i> to come."
- </p>
- <p>
- "Oh, <i>he</i> did, did <i>he</i>?"
- </p>
- <p>
- "Yes, <i>he</i> sent me this note, and&mdash;&mdash;"
- </p>
- <p>
- "Lemme see it."
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 gas-jet. A glance showed me that he had it upside down&mdash;disheartening
- evidence that he could not read.<br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
- <img alt="p420.jpg (13K)" src="images/p420.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
- </div>
- <p>
- <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <p>
- "Is ut his own handwrite?"
- </p>
- <p>
- "Yes&mdash;he wrote it himself."
- </p>
- <p>
- "He did, did he?"
- </p>
- <p>
- "Yes."
- </p>
- <p>
- "H'm. Well, then, why ud he write it like that?"
- </p>
- <p>
- "How do you mean?"
- </p>
- <p>
- "I mane, why wudn't he put his naime to ut?"
- </p>
- <p>
- "His name is to it. That's not it&mdash;you are looking at my name."
- </p>
- <p>
- I thought that that was a home shot, but he did not betray that he had
- been hit. He said:
- </p>
- <p>
- "It's not an aisy one to spell; how do you pronounce ut?"
- </p>
- <p>
- "Mark Twain."
- </p>
- <p>
- "H'm. H'm. Mike Train. H'm. I don't remember ut. What is it ye want to see
- him about?"
- </p>
- <p>
- "It isn't I that want to see him, he wants to see me."
- </p>
- <p>
- "Oh, he does, does he?"
- </p>
- <p>
- "Yes."
- </p>
- <p>
- "What does he want to see ye about?"
- </p>
- <p>
- "I don't know."
- </p>
- <p>
- "Ye don't know! And ye confess it, becod! Well, I can tell ye wan thing&mdash;ye'll
- not see him. Are ye in the business?"
- </p>
- <p>
- "What business?"
- </p>
- <p>
- "The show business."
- </p>
- <p>
- 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
- word&mdash;I 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- "I'll ask ye again. Are ye in the show business yerself?"
- </p>
- <p>
- "Yes!"
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- "Ye are? And what is it?"
- </p>
- <p>
- "I've got a bench-show in New Haven."
- </p>
- <p>
- The weather did change then.
- </p>
- <p>
- "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 dogs&mdash;more
- than ever they know theirselves, I'll take me oath to ut."<br /> <br />
- <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
- <img alt="p423.jpg (52K)" src="images/p423.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
- </div>
- <p>
- <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <p>
- I said, with modesty:
- </p>
- <p>
- "I believe I have some reputation that way. In fact, my business requires
- it."
- </p>
- <p>
- "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 mind giving a guess, if ye'll be so
- good?"
- </p>
- <p>
- I knew that upon my answer would depend my fate. If I made this dog bigger
- than the prize-dog, 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 had seen in the newspaper to a shade. I spoke
- promptly up and said:
- </p>
- <p>
- "It's no trouble to guess this noble creature's figures: height, three
- feet; length, four feet and three-quarters of an inch; weight, a hundred
- and forty-eight and a quarter."
- </p>
- <p>
- The man snatched his hat from its peg and danced on it with joy, shouting:
- </p>
- <p>
- "Ye've hardly missed it the hair's breadth, hardly the shade of a shade,
- your honor! Oh, it's the miraculous eye ye've got, for the judgmint of a
- dog!"
- </p>
- <p>
- And still pouring out his admiration of my capacities, he snatched off his
- vest and scoured off one of the wooden chairs with it, and scrubbed it and
- polished it, and said:
- </p>
- <p>
- "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."<br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
- <img alt="p425.jpg (15K)" src="images/p425.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
- </div>
- <p>
- <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 shoulder presently, then jumped up and said&mdash;
- </p>
- <p>
- "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. What is your secret?
- Look here; you owe me a hundred dollars for unintentionally giving you a
- chance to perform a miracle&mdash;for it is a miracle that you've done."
- </p>
- <p>
- "That is all right," I said, "collect it of Jimmy Lewis."
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 who had ever
- run the blockade of Augustin Daly's back door.<br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <h2>
- <a name="ch46" id="ch46"></a><br /> <br /> CHAPTER XLVI.
- </h2>
- <p>
- <i>If the desire to kill and the opportunity to kill came always together,
- who would escape hanging.</i>
- </p>
- <p>
- &mdash;Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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
- space&mdash;India; 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&mdash;"Feringhea"&mdash;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 again this time to stay dead.
- </p>
- <p>
- At first glance it seems strange that this should have happened; but
- really it was not strange&mdash;on the contrary&mdash;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.
- </p>
- <p>
- The Report was made in 1839 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 printing-office 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 remark:
- </p>
- <blockquote>
- <p>
- "The day that sees this far-spread evil eradicated from India and known
- only in name, will greatly tend to immortalize British rule in the
- East."
- </p>
- </blockquote>
- <p>
- He did not overestimate the magnitude and difficulty of the work, nor the
- immensity of the credit which would justly be due to British rule in case
- it was accomplished.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 see&mdash;and
- 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 book, together with their birthplaces
- and places of residence.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 choke-cloth, but were not allowed to perform
- officially with it until after long practice. No half-educated strangler
- could choke a man to death quickly enough to keep him from uttering a
- sound&mdash;a 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 to sit down, for that was the handiest position for business.
- </p>
- <p>
- If the Thug had planned India itself it could not have been more
- conveniently arranged for the needs of his occupation.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 his&mdash;and 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 country&mdash;treasure, jewels, money, and
- petty batches of silks, spices, and all manner of wares. It was a paradise
- for the Thug.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 high-caste and low-caste Hindoo were staunch and
- affectionate brothers in Thuggery.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 were bad
- omens. A bad omen would stop proceedings and send the men home.
- </p>
- <p>
- The sword and the strangling-cloth were sacred emblems. The Thugs
- worshiped the sword at home before going out to the assembling-place; the
- strangling-cloth 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 touch the
- vessels and other things used in them.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 killing-place 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 places&mdash;the 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&mdash;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 service.
- </p>
- <p>
- The Report shows that the travelers moved in exceedingly small groups&mdash;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
- extraordinary&mdash;particularly 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 people.
- </p>
- <p>
- Here is the tally-sheet of a gang of sixty Thugs for a whole season&mdash;gang
- under two noted chiefs, "Chotee and Sheik Nungoo from Gwalior":
- </p>
- <blockquote>
- <p>
- "Left Poora, in Jhansee, and on arrival at Sarora murdered a traveler.
- </p>
- <p>
- "On nearly reaching Bhopal, met 3 Brahmins, and murdered them.
- </p>
- <p>
- "Cross the Nerbudda; at a village called Hutteea, murdered a Hindoo.
- </p>
- <p>
- "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 treasure-bearers
- were killed the year before.
- </p>
- <p>
- "Between Jokur and Dholeea met a sepoy of the shepherd caste; killed him
- in the jungle.
- </p>
- <p>
- "Passed through Dholeea and lodged in a village; two miles beyond, on
- the road to Indore, met a Byragee (beggar-holy mendicant); murdered him
- at the Thapa.
- </p>
- <p>
- "In the morning, beyond the Thapa, fell in with 3 Marwarie travelers;
- murdered them.
- </p>
- <p>
- "Near a village on the banks of the Taptee met 4 travelers and killed
- them.
- </p>
- <p>
- "Between Choupra and Dhoreea met a Marwarie; murdered him.
- </p>
- <p>
- "At Dhoreea met 3 Marwaries; took them two miles and murdered them.
- </p>
- <p>
- "Two miles further on, overtaken by three treasure-bearers; took them
- two miles and murdered them in the jungle.
- </p>
- <p>
- "Came on to Khurgore Bateesa in Indore, divided spoil, and dispersed.
- </p>
- <p>
- "A total of 27 men murdered on one expedition."
- </p>
- </blockquote>
- <p>
- 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 that
- mendicant, that Byragee.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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
- fakeer&mdash;that repulsive skin-and-bone 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 tally-sheet of
- Feringhea's, who had been out with forty Thugs, I find a case of the kind.
- After the killing of thirty-nine men and one woman, the fakeer appears on
- the scene:
- </p>
- <blockquote>
- <p>
- "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.
- </p>
- <p>
- "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
- the grove.
- </p>
- <p>
- "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."
- </p>
- </blockquote>
- <p>
- 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&mdash;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 the most interesting place.
- </p>
- <p>
- These reports of Thug expeditions run along interminably in one monotonous
- tune: "Met a sepoy&mdash;killed him; met 5 pundits&mdash;killed them; met
- 4 Rajpoots and a woman&mdash;killed them"&mdash;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&mdash;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 treasure-bearers, 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 that trust, good man; and
- so we know what went with the traveler.
- </p>
- <p>
- Even Rajahs had no terrors for Feringhea; he came across an
- elephant-driver belonging to the Rajah of Oodeypore and promptly strangled
- him.
- </p>
- <p>
- "A total of 100 men and 5 women murdered on this expedition."
- </p>
- <p>
- Among the reports of expeditions we find mention of victims of almost
- every quality and estate:
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- Native soldiers.
- Fakeers.
- Mendicants.
- Holy-water carriers.
- Carpenters.
- Peddlers.
- Tailors.
- Blacksmiths.
- Policemen (native).
- Pastry cooks.
- Grooms.
- Mecca pilgrims.
- Chuprassies.
- Treasure-bearers.
- Children.
- Cowherds.
- Gardeners.
- Shopkeepers.
- Palanquin-bearers.
- Farmers.
- Bullock-drivers.
- Male servants seeking work.
- Women servants seeking work.
- Shepherds.
- Archers.
- Table-waiters.
- Weavers.
- Priests.
- Bankers.
- Boatmen.
- Merchants.
- Grass-cutters.
-</pre>
- <p>
- Also a prince's cook; and even the water-carrier of that sublime lord of
- lords and king of kings, the Governor-General of India! How broad they
- were in their tastes! They also murdered actors&mdash;poor wandering
- barnstormers. There are two instances recorded; the first one by a gang of
- Thugs under a chief who soils a great name borne by a better man&mdash;Kipling's
- deathless "Gungadin":
- </p>
- <p>
- "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
- Bhopal."
- </p>
- <p>
- Second instance:
- </p>
- <p>
- "At Deohuttee, joined by comedians. Murdered them eastward of that place."
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 out of his body.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 cow-keepers. 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."
- </p>
- <p>
- There were thousands of Thugs roving over India constantly, during many
- generations. They made Thuggee 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
- beast-hunting instinct enlarged, refined, ennobled. I will quote the
- passage:<br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <h2>
- <a name="ch47" id="ch47"></a><br /> <br /> CHAPTER XLVII.
- </h2>
- <p>
- <i>Simple rules for saving money: To save half, when you are fired by an
- eager impulse to contribute to a charity, wait, and count forty. To save
- three-quarters, count sixty. To save it all, count sixty-five.</i>
- </p>
- <p>
- &mdash;Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.
- </p>
- <p>
- The Thug said:
- </p>
- <p>
- "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 destruction&mdash;you even risk
- your lives in its pursuit. How much higher game is a Thug's!"
- </p>
- <p>
- That must really be the secret of the rise and development of Thuggee. The
- joy of killing! the joy of seeing killing done&mdash;these 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 bull-ring when
- opportunity offers; and we are gentle Thugs in the hunting-season, and
- love to chase a tame rabbit and kill it. Still, we have made some
- progress-microscopic, and in truth scarcely worth mentioning, and
- certainly nothing to be proud of&mdash;still, 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 in the same way.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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:
- </p>
- <blockquote>
- <p>
- "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 was about 60 or 70 years of
- age."
- </p>
- </blockquote>
- <p>
- 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 crew&mdash;30
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- A gang of forty-two 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 elephant-hunter'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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 leaden-footed 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 hunting-passions that burn in the breast of man,
- there is none that can lift him superior to discouragements like these but
- the one&mdash;the royal sport, the supreme sport, whose quarry is his
- brother. By comparison, tiger-hunting is a colorless poor thing, for all
- it has been so bragged about.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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
- longing soul with blood. Here is an instance:
- </p>
- <blockquote>
- <p>
- "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 stood&mdash;for
- 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 traveler&mdash;he 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 down&mdash;but 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."
- </p>
- </blockquote>
- <p>
- And here is another case-related by the terrible Futty Khan, a man with a
- tremendous record, to be re-mentioned by and by:
- </p>
- <blockquote>
- <p>
- "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 then proceeded homewards. A
- total of one man murdered on this expedition."
- </p>
- </blockquote>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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, but "he would not sit." No, not that&mdash;it
- was too awful to think of!
- </p>
- <p>
- There are a number of instances which indicate that when a man had once
- tasted the regal joys of man-hunting he could not be content with the dull
- monotony of a crimeless life after ward. Example, from a Thug's testimony:
- </p>
- <blockquote>
- <p>
- "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
- joy returned to his old trade."
- </p>
- </blockquote>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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
- business, and as I passed along, old and young made their salaam to me."
- </p>
- <p>
- 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!&mdash;with satisfactory results.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 armed&mdash;a 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 me."
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 Thug, my
- grandfather was a Thug, and I have thugged with many!'"
- </p>
- <p>
- So spoke the mighty hunter, the mightiest of the mighty, the Gordon
- Cumming of his day. Not much regret noticeable in it.&mdash;["Having
- planted a bullet in the shoulder-bone 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 salaam-like 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 two-grooved rifle, which must have
- eventually proved mortal, after which I fired six shots at the same part
- with the Dutch six-founder. Large tears now trickled down from his eyes,
- which he slowly shut and opened, his colossal frame shivered convulsively,
- and falling on his side he expired."&mdash;Gordon Cumming.]
- </p>
- <p>
- 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:
- </p>
- <blockquote>
- <p>
- "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."
- </p>
- </blockquote>
- <p>
- 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 wish I knew.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 hiding-place, 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
- family&mdash;the mother, wife, child, and brother&mdash;and 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
- man.
- </p>
- <p>
- Another example of family affection. A little while previously to the
- capture of Feringhea's family, the British officer had captured
- Feringhea's foster-brother, 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
- foster-brother, Jhurhoo, entreated to be allowed to see the aged mother
- and the others. The prayer was granted, and this is what took place&mdash;it
- is the British officer who speaks:
- </p>
- <blockquote>
- <p>
- "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."
- </p>
- </blockquote>
- <p>
- 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 self-respect&mdash;and 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! The incongruities of our human
- nature seem to reach their limit here.
- </p>
- <p>
- I wish to make note of one curious thing while I think of it. One of the
- very commonest remarks to be found in this bewildering array of Thug
- confessions is this:
- </p>
- <p>
- "Strangled him and threw him in a well!" In one case they threw sixteen
- into a well&mdash;and they had thrown others in the same well before. It
- makes a body thirsty to read about it.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 burying-places ('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 seventy-four
- '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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 604&mdash;he is the one who got leave of
- absence to attend a wedding and went thugging instead; and he is also the
- one who betrayed Buhram to the British.
- </p>
- <p>
- But the biggest records of all were the murder-lists 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 Oude-Thug 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 another man per month during his twenty years of
- usefulness.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 true&mdash;with one reservation. In all the long file
- of Thug confessions an English traveler is mentioned but once&mdash;and
- this is what the Thug says of the circumstance:
- </p>
- <blockquote>
- <p>
- "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."
- </p>
- </blockquote>
- <p>
- 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 the
- might of the English name.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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&mdash;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 here&mdash;the 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:
- </p>
- <blockquote>
- <p>
- "The day that sees this far-spread evil completely eradicated from
- India, and known only in name, will greatly tend to immortalize British
- rule in the East."
- </p>
- </blockquote>
- <p>
- It would be hard to word a claim more modestly than that for this most
- noble work.<br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <h2>
- <a name="ch48" id="ch48"></a><br /> <br /> CHAPTER XLVIII.
- </h2>
- <p>
- <i>Grief can take care of itself; but to get the full value of a joy you
- must have somebody to divide it with.</i>
- </p>
- <p>
- &mdash;Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- You do not pay anything extra for your sleeping place; that is where the
- trouble lies. If you buy a fare-ticket 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 travel.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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
- then the road would suffer no loss if the purchaser did not occupy it.
- </p>
- <p>
- The present system encourages good manners&mdash;and 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 berth&mdash;a lower
- one. At the last moment, a middle-aged 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 possession of that lower berth.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 24-hour 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 to the train;
- consequently, we were a little late.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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:&mdash;
- </p>
- <p>
- "I have been hunting for you everywhere. What are you doing here? Don't
- you know&mdash;&mdash;"
- </p>
- <p>
- The train started before he could finish. Mr. Smythe's opportunity was
- come. His bedding, on the shelf, at once changed places with the bedding&mdash;a
- stranger's&mdash;that 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. After a bit he said:&mdash;
- </p>
- <p>
- "Well!" And that was all.
- </p>
- <p>
- But that was enough. It was easy to understand. It meant: "This is
- extraordinary. This is high-handed. I haven't had an experience like this
- before."
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.<br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
- <img alt="p450.jpg (41K)" src="images/p450.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
- </div>
- <p>
- <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 to him:
- </p>
- <p>
- "So you didn't stop off, after all?"
- </p>
- <p>
- "No. The guard found a place for me that had been engaged and not
- occupied. I had a whole saloon car all to myself&mdash;oh, quite palatial!
- I never had such luck in my life."
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 assisted in gathering this impression.
- </p>
- <p>
- The Indian trains are manned by natives exclusively. The Indian stations
- except very large and important ones&mdash;are 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, and said politely:
- </p>
- <p>
- "Don't you belong in the train, sir?"
- </p>
- <p>
- "Yes." I said.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 Indians&mdash;so nearly
- non-existent, in fact&mdash;that 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 world&mdash;and 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 turn-riddles which are a trifle more perplexing after
- they are explained than they were before. You can get the facts of a
- custom&mdash;like caste, and Suttee, and Thuggee, and so on&mdash;and 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 why.
- </p>
- <p>
- For instance&mdash;the Suttee. This is the explanation of it:
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 self-sacrifice 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 chosen&mdash;why
- wouldn't a gentle one have answered? "Nobody knows; maybe that was a
- revelation, too."
- </p>
- <p>
- No&mdash;you 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 Tuesday&mdash;note the day of the week&mdash;the
- 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 sixty-five 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,
- and with no clothing but a sheet over her shoulders.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 to get him to let her burn herself. He refused, hoping to save her
- yet.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 woman.'"
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 the funeral pile mine have been already three
- times mixed."
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 the name of her husband."
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 rent-free 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 giving me any pain."
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 nephew&mdash;the distance was
- a hundred and fifty yards.
- </p>
- <p>
- "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 without
- uttering a shriek or betraying one sign of agony."
- </p>
- <p>
- It is fine and beautiful. It compels one's reverence and respect&mdash;no,
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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
- come.<br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <h2>
- <a name="ch49" id="ch49"></a><br /> <br /> CHAPTER XLIX.
- </h2>
- <p>
- <i>He had had much experience of physicians, and said "the only way to
- keep your health is to eat what you don't want, drink what you don't like,
- and do what you'd druther not."</i>
- </p>
- <p>
- &mdash;Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.
- </p>
- <p>
- It was a long journey&mdash;two 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 night-dress 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 elephant-legged and elephant-waisted 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 night&mdash;defects 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 day-gear to night-gear. I missed the
- refreshing and luxurious sense, induced by the night-gown, 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 life
- thenceforth.<br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
- <img alt="p458.jpg (40K)" src="images/p458.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
- </div>
- <p>
- <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <p>
- Out in the country in India, the day begins early. One sees a plain,
- perfectly flat, dust-colored and brick-yardy, stretching limitlessly away
- on every side in the dim gray light, striped everywhere with hard-beaten
- 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 water-jars on their heads, the men carrying
- hoes. The man is not entirely naked; always there is a bit of white rag, a
- loin-cloth; it amounts to a bandage, and is a white accent on his black
- person, like the silver band around the middle of a pipe-stem. 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 him&mdash;as a person who is dressed in "a turban and a pocket
- handkerchief."
- </p>
- <p>
- All day long one has this monotony of dust-colored 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 ice-barrens 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 ugliness and veil it with a charm.
- </p>
- <p>
- There is nothing pretty about an Indian village&mdash;a mud one&mdash;and
- I do not remember that we saw any but mud ones on that long flight to
- Allahabad. It is a little bunch of dirt-colored 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 fat-up 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 books&mdash;particularly 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 nine-tenths 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
- servants&mdash;mechanics 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 upon them by the witches connected with the neighboring
- families.
- </p>
- <p>
- The office of midwife was hereditary in the family of the basket-maker. It
- belonged to his wife. She might not be competent, but the office was hers,
- anyway. Her pay was not high&mdash;25 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 wedding-display everything he had and
- all he could borrow&mdash;in fact, reduce himself to a condition of
- poverty which he might never more recover from.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 in villages&mdash;<i>where
- girl-voices were never heard!</i>
- </p>
- <p>
- The wedding-display folly is still in full force in India, and by
- consequence the destruction of girl-babies is still furtively practiced;
- but not largely, because of the vigilance of the government and the
- sternness of the penalties it levies.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 tiger-persuader 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 idiot who can't earn a living in
- India.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 low&mdash;all
- other castes despise him and scorn his office. But that does not trouble
- him. His caste is a caste, and that is sufficient for him, and so he is
- proud of it, not ashamed. Sleeman says:
- </p>
- <blockquote>
- <p>
- "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 excommunicated&mdash;no 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 by these people than by any other."
- </p>
- </blockquote>
- <p>
- <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
- <img alt="p463.jpg (10K)" src="images/p463.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
- </div>
- <p>
- <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <p>
- 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:
- </p>
- <blockquote>
- <p>
- "The sweepers cannot be readily coerced, because no Hindoo or Mussulman
- would do their work to save his life, nor will he pollute himself by
- beating the refractory scavenger."
- </p>
- </blockquote>
- <p>
- They certainly do seem to have the whip-hand; 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 of sale or mortgage."
- </p>
- <p>
- Just like a milk-route; or like a London crossing-sweepership. It is said
- that the London crossing-sweeper'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 is saving up his daughter to marry her
- to a duke.<br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
- <img alt="p464.jpg (5K)" src="images/p464.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
- </div>
- <p>
- <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <p>
- It appears from Sleeman that in India the occupation of elephant-driver is
- confined to Mohammedans. I wonder why that is. The water-carrier
- ('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 water-sack 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 water-channels, 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
- sand-flats with sluggish little veins of water dribbling around amongst
- them; Saharas of sand, smallpox-pitted with footprints punctured in belts
- as straight as the equator clear from the one shore to the other (barring
- the channel-interruptions)&mdash;a dry-shod 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 river-bed&mdash;most of it was overflow
- ground.
- </p>
- <p>
- Allahabad means "City of God." I get this from the books. From a printed
- curiosity&mdash;a letter written by one of those brave and confident
- Hindoo strugglers with the English tongue, called a "babu"&mdash;I got a
- more compressed translation: "Godville." It is perfectly correct, but that
- is the most that can be said for it.
- </p>
- <p>
- We arrived in the forenoon, and short-handed; 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 dreaming.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 there upon their business occasions. And not in cabs&mdash;no; in the
- Indian cities cabs are for the drifting stranger; all the white citizens
- have private carriages; and each carriage has a flock of white-turbaned
- black footmen and drivers all over it. The vicinity of a lecture-hall
- looks like a snowstorm,&mdash;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 is the Land of the Private
- Carriage.
- </p>
- <p>
- In Bombay the forewoman of a millinery shop came to the hotel in her
- private carriage to take the measure for a gown&mdash;not 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
- third-class by underground train to and from her work, swallowing
- coal-smoke 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
- woman-of-all-work she had had in her English home. Later, in Calcutta, I
- found that the Standard Oil clerks had small one-horse vehicles, and did
- no walking; and I was told that the clerks of the other large concerns
- there had the like equipment. But to return to Allahabad.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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
- child-nurses. 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.<br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
- <img alt="p468.jpg (33K)" src="images/p468.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
- </div>
- <p>
- <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <p>
- 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: "Jeldy jow!"
- ("Come, shove along!")
- </p>
- <p>
- Why, it was the very thing.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.<br /> <br />
- <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
- <img alt="p472.jpg (54K)" src="images/p472.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
- </div>
- <p>
- <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 self-sacrifice, but the rest of
- us know that we should not be equal to anything approaching it. Still, we
- all talk self-sacrifice, and this makes me hope that we are large enough
- to honor it in the Hindoo.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 year&mdash;for 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 was not financially asleep when
- he took the Ganges out of the market.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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; sometimes 2,000 or 3,000 rupees' worth of it
- is consumed at a wedding."
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 Emperor&mdash;a
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- From the lofty ramparts one has a fine view of the sacred rivers. They
- join at that point&mdash;the 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 cow-dung; 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.<br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
- <img alt="p474.jpg (11K)" src="images/p474.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
- </div>
- <p>
- <br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <h2>
- <a name="ch50" id="ch50"></a><br /> <br /> CHAPTER L.
- </h2>
- <p>
- <i>The man who is ostentatious of his modesty is twin to the statue that
- wears a fig-leaf.</i>
- </p>
- <p>
- &mdash;Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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
- mid-afternoon at Moghul-serai&mdash;if that was the name&mdash;and 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 costumes&mdash;dear me, the delight of it, the charm of
- it are beyond speech. The two-hour 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 flint-lock 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 impossibility had
- happened.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 canvas-boxes&mdash;palanquins. A canvas-box is not
- much of a sight&mdash;when 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 three-quarters 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 their 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 good-hearted 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 ladies&mdash;indeed,
- 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 seemed to be about that.
- </p>
- <p>
- Without doubt modesty is nothing less than a holy feeling; and without
- doubt the person whose rule of modesty has been transgressed 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 high-caste
- 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 mid-thigh." Both parties were clean-minded 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 get used to it, and does.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 peepul&mdash;the 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 pocket-handkerchief." 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 attached&mdash;a room ten or twelve feet square, with a
- roomy stone-paved 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 intelligent now. Now that it is too late.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 rind. Some day
- somebody will import it into Europe and sell it for cheese.<br /> <br />
- <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
- <img alt="p479.jpg (19K)" src="images/p479.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
- </div>
- <p>
- <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 temple-spires rise out of
- it and give it picturesqueness, viewed from the river. The city is as busy
- as an ant-hill, and the hurly-burly 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 beginning-place of the Creation.
- It was merely an upright "lingam," at first, no larger than a stove-pipe,
- 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
- earth. This is considered an advantage.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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
- centuries&mdash;twelve, perhaps&mdash;but 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
- one-eighth 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 power&mdash;an 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 natives&mdash;no, that is not a force; it
- is the reverse of it; 640 marching against an intrenched camp of
- 300,000,000&mdash;the odds are too great. A force of 640 in Benares alone
- would have its hands over-full 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 mathematicians. For instance:
- </p>
- <p>
- "During the past few years competent observers declare that the number of
- pilgrims to Benares has increased."
- </p>
- <p>
- And then he adds up this fact and gets this conclusion:
- </p>
- <p>
- "But the revival, if so it may be called, has in it the marks of death. It
- is a spasmodic struggle before dissolution."
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- I should have been glad to acquire some sort of idea of Hindoo theology,
- but the difficulties were too great, the matter was too intricate. Even
- the mere A, B, C of it is baffling.
- </p>
- <p>
- There is a trinity&mdash;Brahma, Shiva, and Vishnu&mdash;independent
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 symbol&mdash;the "lingam" with which Vishnu began
- the Creation&mdash;is 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 thimble&mdash;sometimes like an
- elongated thimble. This priapus-worship, then, is older than history. Mr.
- Parker says that the lingams in Benares "outnumber the inhabitants."
- </p>
- <p>
- In Benares there are many Mohammedan mosques. There are Hindoo temples
- without number&mdash;these 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 gold-production is the business of
- Johannesburg. Other industries count for nothing as compared with the vast
- and all-absorbing 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'
- (Benares)." And then he gives you this vivid and moving picture:
- </p>
- <blockquote>
- <p>
- "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 jai jai jai! (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 oven-like 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."
- </p>
- </blockquote>
- <p>
- 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.<br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <h2>
- <a name="ch51" id="ch51"></a><br /> <br /> CHAPTER LI.
- </h2>
- <p>
- <i>Let me make the superstitions of a nation and I care not who makes its
- laws or its songs either.</i>
- </p>
- <p>
- &mdash;Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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
- speak&mdash;a sort of Army and Navy Stores, theologically stocked.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 to Benares; they are therefore
- trustworthy.
- </p>
- <p>
- 1. Purification. At sunrise you must go down to the Ganges and bathe,
- pray, and drink some of the water. This is for your general purification.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 hunger
- for the day.<br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
- <img alt="p485.jpg (10K)" src="images/p485.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
- </div>
- <p>
- <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 under-study is there&mdash;a rude
- human figure behind a brass screen. You will worship this for reasons to
- be furnished presently.<br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
- <img alt="p487.jpg (37K)" src="images/p487.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
- </div>
- <p>
- <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 Temporal Army and Navy Store. You must get yourself carried to the
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 you will
- find
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 be well to go frequently to a place where you
- can get
- </p>
- <p>
- 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
- ascending&mdash;descending 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
- sweat&mdash;Vishnu'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&mdash;these are all good.
- But you must do something more. You must
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 forty-four
- 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 for it. But
- you may not get it unless you
- </p>
- <p>
- 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. <i>He</i> 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
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 thing&mdash;an 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 give you now. For you it is
- bankrupt.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 helter-skelter worship, we
- then have a definite starting-place, 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 cow-tails, and that removes it. It is now business hours, and
- longings for material prosperity rise in his mind, and he 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 leper-pus which would kill a microbe. Logically, Youth has
- re-equipped 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 many million sins as he wants to and nothing can come of it.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 uses
- of this fretful brief life of ours.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 self-respect,
- and nine-tenths of his intelligence. But the Hindoo changed into an ass
- wouldn't lose anything, unless you count his religion. And he would gain
- much&mdash;release 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 and
- die on the other side.<br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
- <img alt="p493.jpg (18K)" src="images/p493.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
- </div>
- <p>
- <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 cling to the religion they
- were brought up in.<br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
- <img alt="p495.jpg (48K)" src="images/p495.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
- </div>
- <p>
- <br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <h2>
- <a name="ch52" id="ch52"></a><br /> <br /> CHAPTER LII.
- </h2>
- <p>
- <i>Wrinkles should merely indicate where smiles have been.</i>
- </p>
- <p>
- &mdash;Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 each&mdash;to 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 pious&mdash;also
- their coppers. He had a sure living here, and was earning a high place in
- the hereafter.
- </p>
- <p>
- The Ganges front is the supreme show-place 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, stair-flights, rich and
- stately palaces&mdash;nowhere 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&mdash;streaming
- in rainbows up and down the lofty stairways, and massed in metaphorical
- flower-gardens on the miles of great platforms at the river's edge.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 to compassion, for his spendings
- keep him poor, yet get him no glory.
- </p>
- <p>
- We made the usual trip up and down the river, seated in chairs under an
- awning on the deck of the usual commodious hand-propelled 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 bead-tellings.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 water-and 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 touches&mdash;instantly 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 snow-pure, and could defile no one.
- The memory of that sight will always stay by me; but not by request.<br />
- <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
- <img alt="p498.jpg (57K)" src="images/p498.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
- </div>
- <p>
- <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <p>
- A word further concerning the nasty but all-purifying Ganges water. When
- we went to Agra, by and by, we happened there just in time to be in at the
- birth of a marvel&mdash;a memorable scientific discovery&mdash;the
- 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 barren of animal life, and put into it a few
- cholera germs; they always began to propagate at once, and always within
- six hours they swarmed&mdash;and were numberable by millions upon
- millions.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 burning-ghat.
- </p>
- <p>
- They do not burn fakeers&mdash;those 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 mid-stream and
- thrown overboard. He was sandwiched between two great slabs of stone.
- </p>
- <p>
- We lay off the cremation-ghat 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 bier-bearers deliver the body to some low-caste natives&mdash;Doms&mdash;and
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- The first subject was a man. When the Doms unswathed him to wash him, he
- proved to be a sturdily built, well-nourished 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 have no son, he will adopt one. This answers every purpose.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- The fire used is sacred, of course&mdash;for 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 suppose it is quite safe to conclude that that
- fire-bug is in holy orders.<br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
- <img alt="p501.jpg (16K)" src="images/p501.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
- </div>
- <p>
- <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <p>
- Close to the cremation-ground stand a few time-worn 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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
- of-some 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.<br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
- <img alt="p503.jpg (72K)" src="images/p503.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
- </div>
- <p>
- <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 swollen tongue painted a deep red. She wears a necklace of
- skulls.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 idols&mdash;and 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 have called it Idolville or Lingamburg.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 summit&mdash;scarcely
- 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 there&mdash;a 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&mdash;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 gun, and look at the view.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 Singh, 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&mdash; sepoys&mdash;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 them to arrest a native sovereign.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 thing&mdash;that 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 over-confidence 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 of pitiless oppression and abuse.<br />
- <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <h2>
- <a name="ch53" id="ch53"></a><br /> <br /> CHAPTER LIII.
- </h2>
- <p>
- <i>True irreverence is disrespect for another man's god.</i>
- </p>
- <p>
- &mdash;Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 that
- pair of gods.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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
- thing&mdash;and 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 emotions&mdash;they 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- But the Taj&mdash;with all your inflation of delusive emotions, acquired
- at second-hand from people to whom in the majority of cases they were also
- delusions acquired at second-hand&mdash;a 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 a God, and humbly and gratefully worship as
- a God?
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 him&mdash;because 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 have to use all of it, but only this
- much:
- </p>
- <p>
- Sri 108 Matparamahansrzpairivrajakacharyaswamibhaskaranandasaraswati.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 race.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 re-incarnation after another&mdash;a 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 substance of the Supreme Deity and be at peace
- forever.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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. Then&mdash;like John Bunyan's Christian he bade
- perpetual good-bye 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 waist-cloth which he had previously
- worn. He could resume it now if he chose, for neither that nor any other
- contact can defile him; but he does not choose.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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
- sacred books. He was also meditating upon Brahma, and he does that now.
- </p>
- <p>
- White marble relief-portraits 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 and
- business would come to a standstill.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 riff-raff, and we belonged in between,
- somewhere. But presently, a servant came out saying it was all right, he
- was coming.
- </p>
- <p>
- And sure enough, he came, and I saw him&mdash;that 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 hand-shake
- with their god I had ground-circuited their wire and got their monster
- battery's whole charge.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 to Mr. Parker's European prejudices, no doubt.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 knows about those, and will keep them in
- mind one while.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 him any harm.<br />
- <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
- <img alt="p512.jpg (53K)" src="images/p512.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
- </div>
- <p>
- <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <p>
- He has a scholar meditating under him&mdash;Mina Bahadur Rana&mdash;but 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 india-rubber man. There is a life-size
- marble relief of Shri 108, S.B.S. in the garden. It represents him in this
- same posture.<br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
- <img alt="p513.jpg (17K)" src="images/p513.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
- </div>
- <p>
- <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 things&mdash;parents, religion, flag, laws, and respect for one's
- own beliefs&mdash;these 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, and that settles
- it. I mean it does nowadays, because now we can't burn him.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 reverent&mdash;in 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&mdash;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 we should meet with a paragraph like the following, in the
- newspapers:
- </p>
- <p>
- "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."
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 hard names.<br />
- <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
- <img alt="p516.jpg (30K)" src="images/p516.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
- </div>
- <p>
- <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <p>
- And suppose we found this paragraph in the newspapers:
- </p>
- <p>
- "Yesterday a visiting party of American pork-millionaires 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."
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 pork-millionaires would be denounced in round terms; they
- would be called hard names.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 to Americans, it is what the Abbey is to the
- English.
- </p>
- <p>
- Major Sleeman wrote forty or fifty years ago (the italics are mine):
- </p>
- <blockquote>
- <p>
- "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 good things in their season, but they are sadly out of place in a
- sepulchre."
- </p>
- </blockquote>
- <p>
- Were there any Americans among those lunch parties? If they were invited,
- there were.
- </p>
- <p>
- If my imagined lunch-parties 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- As we took our leave of the Benares god and started away we noticed a
- group of natives waiting respectfully just within the gate&mdash;a 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- If Barnum&mdash;but 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
- would answer.<br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <h2>
- <a name="ch54" id="ch54"></a><br /> <br /> CHAPTER LIV.
- </h2>
- <p>
- <i>Do not undervalue the headache. While it is at its sharpest it seems a
- bad investment; but when relief begins, the unexpired remainder is worth
- $4 a minute.</i>
- </p>
- <blockquote>
- <p>
- &mdash;Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.
- </p>
- </blockquote>
- <p>
- A comfortable railway journey of seventeen and a half hours brought us to
- the capital of India, which is likewise the capital of Bengal&mdash;Calcutta.
- 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
- achievement&mdash;military, 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 one Ochterlony.
- </p>
- <p>
- It is a fluted candlestick 250 feet high. This lingam is the only large
- monument in Calcutta, I believe. It is a fine ornament, and will keep
- Ochterlony in mind.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 Empire&mdash;and there is no monument; this other soldier
- must have whipped a billion with a dozen and saved the world."
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 seventy-five or a hundred other Englishmen of courage,
- rectitude, and distinguished capacity. For India has been a fertile
- breeding-ground 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 one&mdash;certainly 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 sweet and peaceful to him. There is a sort of
- unfairness about it all.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 laws&mdash;and by keeping their word to the native whenever they
- give it.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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
- twenty-line 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 Pyramids-nothing 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 name&mdash;George Washington&mdash;with
- 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 City&mdash;Chicago."
- For he knows about the Congress of Religion, and this has enabled him to
- get an erroneous impression of Chicago.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 Calcutta&mdash;and is disappointed.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 ready-made 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
- Empire&mdash;the 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 Indian sovereignty.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 prison&mdash;a
- cell is nearer the right word&mdash;eighteen 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 twenty-three. 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 twenty-three 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 brief excerpt:
- </p>
- <blockquote>
- <p>
- "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 two bars.
- </p>
- <p>
- "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 time of my resurrection from this hole of
- horrors, I can give you no account."
- </p>
- </blockquote>
- <p>
- 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 beautiful and wonderful things without
- exhausting their interest.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 in that kind of weather&mdash;138 in the shade&mdash;and had taken it
- for historical embroidery. I had read it again in Serjeant-Major
- Forbes-Mitchell's account of his military experiences in the Mutiny&mdash;at
- least I thought I had&mdash;and 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 door-knob 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 Himalayas&mdash;a
- twenty-four hour journey.<br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
- <img alt="p523.jpg (8K)" src="images/p523.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
- </div>
- <p>
- <br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <h2>
- <a name="ch55" id="ch55"></a><br /> <br /> CHAPTER LV.
- </h2>
- <p>
- <i>There are 869 different forms of lying, but only one of them has been
- squarely forbidden. Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy
- neighbor.</i>
- </p>
- <p>
- &mdash;Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.
- </p>
- <p>
- FROM DIARY:
- </p>
- <p>
- February 14. We left at 4:30 P.M. Until dark we moved through rich
- vegetation, then changed to a boat and crossed the Ganges.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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, clean-stemmed, 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 ahead&mdash;brown-bodied, naked men and
- boys, plowing in the fields. But not a woman. In these two hours I have
- not seen a woman or a girl working in the fields.<br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
- <img alt="p525.jpg (34K)" src="images/p525.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
- </div>
- <p>
- <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 high-civilization 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
- diary of those days I find this:
- </p>
- <blockquote>
- <p>
- "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 roads&mdash;figures of the Saviour nailed to the cross and streaming
- with blood from the wounds of the nails and the thorns.
- </p>
- <p>
- "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."
- </p>
- </blockquote>
- <p>
- 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:
- </p>
- <blockquote>
- <p>
- "In the fields I often see a woman and a cow harnessed to the plow, and
- a man driving.
- </p>
- <p>
- "In the public street of Marienbad to-day, I saw an old, bent,
- gray-fheaded 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 pipe, a hale fellow not thirty years old."
- </p>
- </blockquote>
- <p>
- <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
- <img alt="p526.jpg (9K)" src="images/p526.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
- </div>
- <p>
- <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <p>
- Five or six years ago I bought an open boat, made a kind of a canvas
- wagon-roof over the stern of it to shelter me from sun and rain; hired a
- courier and a boatman, and made a twelve-day 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 Rhone then:
- </p>
- <blockquote>
- <p>
- "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.
- </p>
- <p>
- " . . . . 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 pipe-smoke 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
- melancholy&mdash;nothing 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 pebble-splashes.
- </p>
- <p>
- "With the exception of a very occasional woodenshod peasant, nobody was
- abroad in this bitter weather&mdash;I 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; another&mdash;the mother!&mdash;above
- fifty; the third&mdash;grandmother!&mdash;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
- gunnysacks&mdash;simply conductors for rivers of water; some of the
- volume reached the ground; the rest soaked in on the way.
- </p>
- </blockquote>
- <p>
- <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
- <img alt="p527.jpg (17K)" src="images/p527.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
- </div>
- <p>
- <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <blockquote>
- <p>
- "At last a vigorous fellow of thirty-five arrived, dry and comfortable,
- smoking his pipe under his big umbrella in an open donkey-cart-husband,
- 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 temper when they were not obeyed swiftly enough.
- </p>
- <p>
- "Without complaint or murmur the drowned women patiently carried out the
- orders, lifting the immense baskets of soggy, wrung-out 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 sight.
- </p>
- <p>
- "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 hers is fine and true generosity."
- </p>
- </blockquote>
- <p>
- But to get back to India&mdash;where, as my favorite poem says&mdash;
- </p>
- <table summary="">
- <tr>
- <td>
- "Every prospect pleases,<br /> And only man is vile."<br />
- </td>
- </tr>
- </table>
- <p>
- 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
- out of him.
- </p>
- <p>
- Some time during the forenoon, approaching the mountains, we changed from
- the regular train to one composed of little canvas-sheltered 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 half-a-dozen 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 only, but in fact.
- </p>
- <p>
- After a while we 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 station-master on front porch; telegraph instructions."
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 vines and shrubs that it holds precious.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 tea-gardens; 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 happy take in sin for sin's own
- sake.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 picture&mdash;the
- Plains of India, stretching to the horizon, soft and fair, level as a
- floor, shimmering with heat, mottled with cloud-shadows, 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 cream-yellow all over them and about them,
- every curve and twist sharply distinct.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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
- above the level of the Plains.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 weighing&mdash;I 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 cab-substitutes&mdash;open coffins, in which
- you sit, and are then borne on men's shoulders up the steep roads into the
- town.<br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
- <img alt="p531.jpg (53K)" src="images/p531.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
- </div>
- <p>
- <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 bill&mdash;to be just to him&mdash;and 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 twenty-two 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 lie.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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
- cold, 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 snow-peaks one after another with
- pale pink splashes and delicate washes of gold, and finally flood the
- whole mighty convulsion of snow-mountains with a deluge of rich splendors.
- </p>
- <p>
- Kinchinjunga's peak was but fitfully visible, but in the between times it
- was vividly clear against the sky&mdash;away up there in the blue dome
- more than 28,000 feet above sea level&mdash;the 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 that mountains that are as high as that are disagreeable.<br /> <br />
- <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
- <img alt="p533.jpg (55K)" src="images/p533.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
- </div>
- <p>
- <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 prayer-wheel 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.<br />
- <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
- <img alt="p534.jpg (11K)" src="images/p534.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
- </div>
- <p>
- <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 coming from Calcutta to
- see, even if there were no Kinchinjunga and Everest.<br /> <br /> <br />
- <br />
- </p>
- <h2>
- <a name="ch56" id="ch56"></a><br /> <br /> CHAPTER LVI.
- </h2>
- <p>
- <i>There are two times in a man's life when he should not speculate: when
- he can't afford it, and when he can.</i>
- </p>
- <p>
- &mdash;Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.
- </p>
- <p>
- On Monday and Tuesday at sunrise we again had fair-to-middling 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- We traveled up hill by the regular train five miles to the summit, then
- changed to a little canvas-canopied hand-car for the 35-mile 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
- Lieutenant-Governor 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
- lieutenant-governor 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 handcar.
- </p>
- <p>
- But after all, there was but small danger&mdash;for 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 hand-car, 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 mountain in it
- many a time.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.<br /> <br /> <br />
- <br />
- </p>
- <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
- <img alt="p537.jpg (49K)" src="images/p537.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
- </div>
- <p>
- <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 crooked 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 pleasurable&mdash;intensely so; it was a sudden and immense
- exaltation, a mixed ecstasy of deadly fright and unimaginable joy. I
- believe that this combination makes the perfection of human delight.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 it&mdash;and had hopes; but it was only playing with us; when we
- got near, it released its brake, made 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&mdash;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 could bring the car to a standstill on a slope as steep as a
- house-roof.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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, with the idea of having the compliment ready in
- time for the event.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 spider-legged 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
- lighted&mdash;apparently. 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 torch-plant&mdash;should 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
- yellow.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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-engineering&mdash;a 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 that end of the train. It was like a snake swallowing itself.<br />
- <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
- <img alt="p541.jpg (64K)" src="images/p541.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
- </div>
- <p>
- <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <p>
- Half-way 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.&mdash;[It killed it the day before.]&mdash;It
- is a wild place and lovely. From the woods all about came the songs of
- birds,&mdash;among them the contributions of a couple of birds which I was
- not then acquainted with: the brain-fever bird and the coppersmith. The
- song of the brain-fever 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 stone-breaker, coppersmith,
- and bung-starter, 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 fecundity.
- </p>
- <p>
- I am bringing some nightingales, too, and some cue-owls. 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 cue-owl
- is infinitely soft and sweet&mdash;soft and sweet as the whisper of a
- flute. But penetrating&mdash;oh, beyond belief; it can bore through
- boiler-iron. It is a lingering note, and comes in triplets, on the one
- unchanging key: hoo-o-o, hoo-o-o, hoo-o-o; 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 two hours the listener is a maniac.
- </p>
- <p>
- And so, presently we took to the hand-car 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
- bird-flight down the Himalayas in a hand-car. It has no fault, no blemish,
- no lack, except that there are only thirty-five miles of it instead of
- five hundred.<br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <h2>
- <a name="ch57" id="ch57"></a><br /> <br /> CHAPTER LVII.
- </h2>
- <p>
- <i>She was not quite what you would call refined. She was not quite what
- you would call unrefined. She was the kind of person that keeps a parrot.</i>
- </p>
- <p>
- &mdash;Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 hanging 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 supremacy&mdash;the Land of
- Murderous Wild Creatures. Perhaps it will be simplest to throw away the
- tags and generalize her with one all-comprehensive name, as the Land of
- Wonders.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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
- difficult one.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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, dog-bite, 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 kill
- each year for the next five years.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 years, is absolutely sure to lose.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 tigers were killed, minus 400.
- </p>
- <p>
- The wolf kills nearly as many people as the tiger&mdash;700 a year to the
- tiger's 800 odd&mdash;but while he is doing it, more than 5,000 of his
- tribe fall.
- </p>
- <p>
- The leopard kills an average of 230 people per year, but loses 3,300 of
- his own mess while he is doing it.
- </p>
- <p>
- The bear kills 100 people per year at a cost of 1,250 of his own tribe.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 forty&mdash;five
- persons to make up for it.
- </p>
- <p>
- But when it comes to killing cattle, the lord of the jungle is not
- interested. He kills but 100 in six years&mdash;horses of hunters, no
- doubt&mdash;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.
- </p>
- <p>
- In response, the government kills, in the six years, a total of 3,201,232
- wild beasts and snakes. Ten for one.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- In India, the annual man-killings by snakes are as uniform, as regular,
- and as forecastable as are the tiger-average and the suicide-average.
- 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 snake-bite 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- I should like to have a royalty on the government-end 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&mdash;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 all&mdash;I 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 is a fool, anyway. He always regrets it afterwards.
- </p>
- <p>
- To finish the statistics. In six years the wild beasts kill 20,000
- persons, and the snakes kill 103,000. In the same six the government kills
- 1,073,546 snakes. Plenty left.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.
- Usually death would result in fifteen minutes.
- </p>
- <p>
- We struck out westward or northwestward from Calcutta on an itinerary of a
- zig-zag 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 garden&mdash;miles
- 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 thirty-five 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 engine-driver 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 twenty-four hours and inspected that strange
- and fascinating piety-hive again; then left for Lucknow, a city which is
- perhaps the most conspicuous of the many monuments of British fortitude
- and valor that are scattered about the earth.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.<br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <h2>
- <a name="ch58" id="ch58"></a><br /> <br /> CHAPTER LVIII.
- </h2>
- <p>
- <i>Make it a point to do something every day that you don't want to do.
- This is the golden rule for acquiring the habit of doing your duty without
- pain.</i>
- </p>
- <p>
- &mdash;Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 Company&mdash;characterized 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.
- Old men were in the high places of the army&mdash;men who should have been
- retired long before, because of their great age&mdash;and 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 said it was nothing.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 well-armed 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 hands&mdash;they 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&mdash; prophecy&mdash;a 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 experience. Sir G. O. Trevelyan quotes an example:
- </p>
- <blockquote>
- <p>
- "This is what befell Mrs. M&mdash;&mdash;, 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 mess-house, 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 mess-house 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 match-lockmen, 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&mdash;&mdash; 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 Sergeant-major and some women.
- The bandsmen left us on the nineteenth of June. We were fired at again
- by match-lockmen, 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&mdash;&mdash; 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&mdash;&mdash; 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 drinking-vessel was M&mdash;&mdash;'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&mdash;&mdash;
- 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 wedding-ring, 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 bury 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 their flight be not in the winter."
- </p>
- </blockquote>
- <p>
- 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
- four-foot 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 twenty-one days and nights of hunger, thirst,
- Indian heat, and a never-ceasing storm of bullets, bombs, and cannon-balls&mdash;a
- defense conducted, not by the aged and infirm general, but by a young
- officer named Moore&mdash;is 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,&mdash;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 spared&mdash;for the present&mdash;but all the men except
- three or four were killed. Among the incidents of the massacre quoted by
- Sir G. O. Trevelyan, is this:
- </p>
- <blockquote>
- <p>
- "When, after the lapse of some twenty minutes, the dead began to
- outnumber the living;&mdash;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 half-caste Christian women, the wives of
- musicians in the band of the Fifty-sixth, witnessed a scene which should
- not be related at second-hand. 'In the boat where I was to have gone,'
- says Mrs. Bradshaw, confirmed throughout by Mrs. Setts, 'was the
- school-mistress and twenty-two 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,
- head-foremost, 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
- water-rat, when some boatmen, armed with cudgels, cut off his retreat,
- and beat him down dead into the mud."
- </p>
- </blockquote>
- <p>
- The women and children who had been reserved from the massacre were
- imprisoned during a fortnight in a small building, one story high&mdash;a
- cramped place, a slightly modified Black Hole of Calcutta. They were
- waiting in suspense; there was none who could forecaste their fate.
- Meantime the news of the massacre had traveled far and an army of rescuers
- with Havelock at its head was on its way&mdash;at least an army which
- hoped to be rescuers. It was crossing the country by forced marches, and
- strewing its way with its own dead&mdash;men struck down by cholera, and
- by a heat which reached 135 deg. It was in a vengeful fury, and it stopped
- for nothing&mdash;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 a
- crushing defeat, and entered.
- </p>
- <p>
- But too late&mdash;only 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 work. Sir G.
- O. Trevelyan says:
- </p>
- <blockquote>
- <p>
- "Thereupon the five men entered. It was the short gloaming of Hindostan&mdash;the
- 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 scuffling 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- "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 half-caste, 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.'
- </p>
- <p>
- "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 flung him and his companions down the well."
- </p>
- </blockquote>
- <p>
- The soldiers had made a march of eighteen days, almost without rest, to
- save the women and the children, and now they were too late&mdash;all were
- dead and the assassin had flown. What happened then, Trevelyan hesitated
- to put into words. "Of what took place, the less said is the better."
- </p>
- <p>
- Then he continues:
- </p>
- <blockquote>
- <p>
- "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 ankle-deep in
- blood. The plaster was scored with sword-cuts; 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."
- </p>
- </blockquote>
- <p>
- 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 remark-two 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
- book-reviewers 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 wall&mdash;a wall not for defense, but for
- privacy. The mutinous spirit was in the air, but the whites were not
- afraid, and did not feel much troubled.
- </p>
- <p>
- Then came the outbreak at Meerut, then the capture of Delhi by the
- mutineers; in June came the three-weeks leaguer of Sir Hugh Wheeler in his
- open lot at Cawnpore&mdash;40 miles distant from Lucknow&mdash;then the
- treacherous massacre of that gallant little garrison; and now the great
- revolt was in full flower, and the comfortable condition of things at
- Lucknow was instantly changed.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 Residency&mdash;called the siege of Lucknow&mdash;began. Sir
- Henry was killed three days later, and Brigadier Inglis succeeded him in
- command.
- </p>
- <p>
- Outside of the Residency fence was an immense host of hostile and
- confident native besiegers; inside it were 480 loyal native soldiers, 730
- white ones, and 500 women and children.
- </p>
- <p>
- In those days the English garrisons always managed to hamper themselves
- sufficiently with women and children.
- </p>
- <p>
- The natives established themselves in houses close at hand and began to
- rain bullets and cannon-balls 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 women&mdash;with
- any pretext, or with none&mdash;would sally out into the storm-swept
- grounds. The defense was kept up week after week, with stubborn fortitude,
- in the midst of death, which came in many forms&mdash;by bullet,
- small-pox, 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 caused by the intolerable pest of mosquitoes, flies, mice,
- rats, and fleas.<br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
- <img alt="p559.jpg (42K)" src="images/p559.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
- </div>
- <p>
- <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <p>
- Six weeks after the beginning of the siege more than one-half of the
- original force of white soldiers was dead, and close upon three-fifths of
- the original native force.
- </p>
- <p>
- But the fighting went on just the same. The enemy mined, the English
- counter-mined, and, turn about, they blew up each other's posts. The
- Residency grounds were honey-combed with the enemy's tunnels. Deadly
- courtesies were constantly exchanged&mdash;sorties by the English in the
- night; rushes by the enemy in the night&mdash;rushes whose purpose was to
- breach the walls or scale them; rushes which cost heavily, and always
- failed.
- </p>
- <p>
- The ladies got used to all the horrors of war&mdash;the shrieks of
- mutilated men, the sight of blood and death. Lady Inglis makes this
- mention in her diary:
- </p>
- <blockquote>
- <p>
- "Mrs. Bruere's nurse was carried past our door to-day, wounded in the
- eye. To extract the bullet it was found necessary to take out the eye&mdash;a
- fearful operation. Her mistress held her while it was performed."
- </p>
- </blockquote>
- <p>
- 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
- itself.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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
- siege:
- </p>
- <blockquote>
- <p>
- "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 firing. 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 brigade-mess 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 were picked up by Colonel Masters."
- </p>
- </blockquote>
- <p>
- The exhausted garrison fought doggedly on all through the next month&mdash;October.
- Then, November 2d, news came Sir Colin Campbell's relieving force would
- soon be on its way from Cawnpore.
- </p>
- <p>
- On the 12th the boom of his guns was heard.
- </p>
- <p>
- On the 13th the sounds came nearer&mdash;he was slowly, but steadily,
- cutting his way through, storming one stronghold after another.
- </p>
- <p>
- On the 14th he captured the Martiniere College, and ran up the British
- flag there. It was seen from the Residency.
- </p>
- <p>
- Next he took the Dilkoosha.
- </p>
- <p>
- On the 17th he took the former mess-house of the 32d regiment&mdash;a
- 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"&mdash;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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 mile-stoned 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 character of that devastating
- march.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 battle-smoke marked the way to the eye, and
- the thunder of the guns marked it to the ear.<br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
- <img alt="p563.jpg (68K)" src="images/p563.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
- </div>
- <p>
- <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 fifty children had been previously
- removed. Captain Birch says:
- </p>
- <blockquote>
- <p>
- "And now commenced a movement of the most perfect arrangement and
- successful generalship&mdash;the 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
- Commander-in-Chief, which joined on in the rear of Havelock's force.
- Regiment by regiment was withdrawn with the utmost order and regularity.
- The whole operation resembled the movement of a telescope. Stern silence
- was kept, and the enemy took no alarm."
- </p>
- </blockquote>
- <p>
- 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 defended so long and so well:
- </p>
- <blockquote>
- <p>
- "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 relate."
- </p>
- </blockquote>
- <p>
- <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
- <img alt="p565.jpg (21K)" src="images/p565.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
- </div>
- <p>
- <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <h2>
- <a name="ch59" id="ch59"></a><br /> <br /> CHAPTER LIX.
- </h2>
- <p>
- <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
- <img alt="p566.jpg (63K)" src="images/p566.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
- </div>
- <p>
- <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <p>
- <i>Don't part with your illusions. When they are gone you may still exist
- but you have ceased to live.</i>
- </p>
- <p>
- &mdash;Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.
- </p>
- <p>
- <i>Often, the surest way to convey misinformation is to tell the strict
- truth.</i>
- </p>
- <p>
- &mdash;Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 battle-plan, the confusion remains.
- In me the east was born west, the battle-plans which have the east on the
- right-hand side are of no use to me.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 siege.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 forty-one when I saw him, a strangely youthful link to connect
- the present with so ancient an episode as the Great Mutiny.<br /> <br />
- <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
- <img alt="p568.jpg (53K)" src="images/p568.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
- </div>
- <p>
- <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 bugle-signal 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 bald-headed bird, the Adjutant,
- standing on his six-foot stilts, solitary on a distant bar, with his head
- sunk between his shoulders, thinking; thinking of his prize, I suppose&mdash;the
- 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. They were in keeping with it, they emphasized its loneliness and
- its solemnity.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 the garrisons of Lucknow and Cawnpore will
- be guarded and preserved.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 and sorrow.
- </p>
- <p>
- I mean to speak of only one of these many world-renowned 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 <i>the</i> wonder of the world, with no
- competitor now and no possible future competitor; and yet, it was not <i>my</i>
- Taj. <i>My</i> Taj had been built by excitable literary people; it was
- solidly lodged in my head, and I could not blast it out.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 truth&mdash;as 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 facts&mdash;by 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- I will begin with a few sentences from the excellent little local
- guide-book of Mr. Satya Chandra Mukerji. I take them from here and there
- in his description:
- </p>
- <blockquote>
- <p>
- "The inlaid work of the Taj and the flowers and petals that are to be
- found on all sides on the surface of the marble evince a most delicate
- touch."
- </p>
- </blockquote>
- <p>
- That is true.
- </p>
- <blockquote>
- <p>
- "The inlaid work, the marble, the flowers, the buds, the leaves, the
- petals, and the lotus stems are almost without a rival in the whole of
- the civilized world."
- </p>
- <p>
- "The work of inlaying with stones and gems is found in the highest
- perfection in the Taj."
- </p>
- </blockquote>
- <p>
- Gems, inlaid flowers, buds, and leaves to be found on all sides. What do
- you see before you? Is the fairy structure growing? Is it becoming a jewel
- casket?
- </p>
- <blockquote>
- <p>
- "The whole of the Taj produces a wonderful effect that is equally
- sublime and beautiful."
- </p>
- </blockquote>
- <p>
- Then Sir William Wilson Hunter:
- </p>
- <blockquote>
- <p>
- "The Taj Mahal with its beautiful domes, 'a dream of marble,' rises on
- the river bank."
- </p>
- <p>
- "The materials are white marble and red sandstone."
- </p>
- <p>
- "The complexity of its design and the delicate intricacy of the
- workmanship baffle description."
- </p>
- </blockquote>
- <p>
- Sir William continues. I will italicize some of his words:
- </p>
- <blockquote>
- <p>
- "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 as to form an unequal octagon. The main
- feature in this central pile is the great dome, which swells upward to
- nearly two-thirds of a sphere and tapers at its extremity into a pointed
- spire crowned by a crescent. Beneath it an enclosure of marble
- trellis-work 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 Itimad-ud-doulah 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 all-prevailing 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 trellis-work 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
- pen-box 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."
- </p>
- </blockquote>
- <p>
- Bayard Taylor, after describing the details of the Taj, goes on to say:
- </p>
- <blockquote>
- <p>
- "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 weaknesses and ills with which mankind are beset."
- </p>
- </blockquote>
- <p>
- All of these details are true. But, taken together, they state a falsehood&mdash;to
- 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 values&mdash;then we shall see the difference
- between a writer's ciphering and a mistaken reader's:
- </p>
- <p>
- Precious stones, such as agate, jasper, etc.&mdash;5.
- </p>
- <p>
- With which every salient point is richly fretted&mdash;5.
- </p>
- <p>
- First in the world for purely decorative workmanship&mdash;9.
- </p>
- <p>
- The Taj represents the stage where the architect ends and the jeweler
- begins&mdash;5.
- </p>
- <p>
- The Taj is entirely of marble and gems&mdash;7.
- </p>
- <p>
- Inlaid with precious stones in lovely patterns of flowers&mdash;5.
- </p>
- <p>
- The inlaid work of flowers done in gems is very brilliant (followed by a
- most important modification which the reader is sure to read too
- carelessly)&mdash;2.
- </p>
- <p>
- The vast mausoleum&mdash;5.
- </p>
- <p>
- This marvel of marble&mdash;5.
- </p>
- <p>
- The exquisite enclosure&mdash;5.
- </p>
- <p>
- Inlaid with flowers made of costly gems&mdash;5.
- </p>
- <p>
- A thing of perfect beauty and absolute finish&mdash;5.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 reader&mdash;beguiled
- by his heated imagination&mdash;masses them in the wrong way. The writer
- would mass the first three figures in the following way, and they would
- speak the truth.
- </p>
- <p>
- Total&mdash;19
- </p>
- <p>
- But the reader masses them thus&mdash;and then they tell a lie&mdash;559.
- </p>
- <p>
- The writer would add all of his twelve numerals together, and then the sum
- would express the whole truth about the Taj, and the truth only&mdash;63.
- </p>
- <p>
- But the reader&mdash;always helped by his imagination&mdash;would put the
- figures in a row one after the other, and get this sum, which would tell
- him a noble big lie:
- </p>
- <p>
- 559575255555.
- </p>
- <p>
- You must put in the commas yourself; I have to go on with my work.
- </p>
- <p>
- The reader will always be sure to put the figures together in that wrong
- way, and then as surely before him will stand, sparkling in the sun, a
- gem-crusted Taj tall as the Matterhorn.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 cloud-vexed Himalayan heights, a sea-green wall of water sixty
- miles front and six miles high, and so, when the toy reality came suddenly
- into view&mdash;that beruffled little wet apron hanging out to dry&mdash;the
- shock was too much for me, and I fell with a dull thud.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 sixty-five 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.<br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
- <img alt="p576.jpg (49K)" src="images/p576.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
- </div>
- <p>
- <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <p>
- I know that I ought to do with the Taj as I was obliged to do with Niagara&mdash;see
- 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 suppose&mdash;an 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 effect&mdash;an effect which is not correct, and which is
- not warranted by the particulars placed before me&mdash;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 to go and look at an illustrious world's wonder.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 ice-storm 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 ice-storm 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
- ice-storm, the Taj rose before me divinely beautiful; if I thought of the
- Taj, with its encrustings and inlayings of jewels, the vision of the
- ice-storm 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&mdash;it was man's architectural ice-storm.
- </p>
- <p>
- Here in London the other night I was talking with some Scotch and English
- friends, and I mentioned the ice-storm, using it as a figure&mdash;a
- figure which failed, for none of them had heard of the ice-storm. 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- The oversight is strange, for in America the ice-storm 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 ice-storm! the ice-storm!" and even the laziest sleepers
- throw off the covers and join the rush for the windows. The ice-storm
- 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
- glass&mdash;glass that is crystal-clear. All along the underside of every
- branch and twig is a comb of little icicles&mdash;the frozen drip.
- Sometimes these pendants do not quite amount to icicles, but are round
- beads&mdash;frozen tears.
- </p>
- <p>
- The weather clears, toward dawn, and leaves a brisk pure atmosphere and a
- sky without a shred of cloud in it&mdash;and 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 eyes-but 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 gates of heaven.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 ice-storm.
- </p>
- <p>
- In the ice-storm every one of the myriad ice-beads 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 forest-front exhibits the
- splendors of the single tree multiplied by a thousand.
- </p>
- <p>
- It occurs to me now that I have never seen the ice-storm 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 has created has been neglected by the
- brush.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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
- sense&mdash;its scientific sense. In that sense it is a mild word, and
- promises but little to the eye&mdash;nothing bright, nothing brilliant,
- nothing sparkling, nothing splendid in the way of color. It accurately
- describes the sober and unobtrusive gem-work of the Taj; that is, to the
- very highly-educated 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 quiet-colored
- 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 glorious colors clothed in fire.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 fountains&mdash;imagine
- 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 moonlight-and he would be
- deceived. But the Syrian would not be deceived; he would merely see two
- hundred fresh-water springs&mdash;two hundred drowsing puddles, as level
- and unpretentious and unexcited as so many door-mats, 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
- gems&mdash;and gems&mdash;and more gems&mdash;and gems again&mdash;and
- still other gems&mdash;the 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
- so."<br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <h2>
- <a name="ch60" id="ch60"></a><br /> <br /> CHAPTER LX.
- </h2>
- <p>
- <i>SATAN (impatiently) to NEW-COMER. The trouble with you Chicago people
- is, that you think you are the best people down here; whereas you are
- merely the most numerous.</i>
- </p>
- <p>
- &mdash;Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.
- </p>
- <p>
- We wandered contentedly around here and there in India; to Lahore, among
- other places, where the Lieutenant-Governor 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 case&mdash;we
- are not afraid of dynamite till we get acquainted with it.
- </p>
- <p>
- We drifted as far as Rawal Pindi, away up on the Afghan frontier&mdash;I
- think it was the Afghan frontier, but it may have been Hertzegovina&mdash;it
- was around there somewhere&mdash;and 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 impudent daring and immortal valor.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 orientalized&mdash;so 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 garden&mdash;oriental fashion&mdash;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 dressing-room
- painting that when help arrived and routed them.<br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
- <img alt="p585.jpg (55K)" src="images/p585.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
- </div>
- <p>
- <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 note-book,
- and was reading a page of humorous notes and crying. I did not mind the
- one with the hair-brush, 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 Europeans&mdash;only 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 India&mdash;that 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 them&mdash;a receipt
- for us to sign; otherwise the things might not arrive. If a gentleman sent
- up his carriage, the chit stated "from" such-and-such an hour "to"
- such-and-such an hour&mdash;which 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 own.
- </p>
- <p>
- We were pleasantly situated in a small two-storied 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 one-storied 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 crows bothered him
- a good deal.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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, and were proper to the silence and serenity of the
- surroundings.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 life&mdash;lamented 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 say:
- </p>
- <p>
- "Pack the trunks and bags, Satan."
- </p>
- <p>
- "Wair good" (very good).
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 and
- touch&mdash;
- </p>
- <p>
- "Awready, master."
- </p>
- <p>
- It was wonderful. It made one dizzy. He crumpled dresses a good deal, and
- he had no particular plan about the work&mdash;at first&mdash;except 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 day.
- </p>
- <p>
- He was always busy; kept the rooms tidied up, the boots polished, the
- clothes brushed, the wash-basin full of clean water, my dress clothes laid
- out and ready for the lecture-hall 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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
- station&mdash;yes, 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 luggage&mdash;one
- 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&mdash;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 noise.
- </p>
- <p>
- Speaking of noise, he certainly was the noisest little devil in India&mdash;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
- I would be happy to myself, and the family would say, with shame:
- </p>
- <p>
- "There&mdash;that's Satan. Why do you keep him?"
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 fez-tassel dancing,
- his jaws pouring out floods of billingsgate upon his gang of beseeching
- and astonished coolies.
- </p>
- <p>
- I loved him; I couldn't help it; but the family&mdash;why, they could
- hardly speak of him with patience. To this day I regret his loss, and wish
- I had him back; but they&mdash;it 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 Chowder. It was too long for
- handy use, anyway; so I reduced it.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 pow-wow 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 said, fumblingly saluting:
- </p>
- <p>
- "Scoose me, mem Saheb, scoose me, Missy Saheb; Satan not prefer it,
- please."
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 house&mdash;snow-white muslin from his chin to his bare feet, a
- crimson sash embroidered with gold thread around his waist, and on his
- head a great sea-green turban like to the turban of the Grand Turk.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 becomes a liar.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 was, it seemed always Sunday. It was not so in
- Satan's time.<br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
- <img alt="p592.jpg (60K)" src="images/p592.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
- </div>
- <p>
- <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 water-supply 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 with him.
- </p>
- <p>
- We drove often to the city from the hotel Kaiser-i-Hind, 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 strange and
- outlandish vehicles.<br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
- <img alt="p595.jpg (62K)" src="images/p595.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
- </div>
- <p>
- <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <p>
- 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
- ice-cream. 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
- doors&mdash;the impression that it is an unreality, a picture, a scene in
- a theater, is the only one that will take hold.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 was 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 museum&mdash;a beautiful construction of stone which
- shows arched colonnades, one above another, and receding, terrace-fashion,
- 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 Indian sun turning them all to beds of fire and flame.
- </p>
- <p>
- Later, when we reached the city, and glanced down the chief avenue,
- smouldering in its crushed-strawberry tint, those splendid effects were
- repeated; for every balcony, and every fanciful bird-cage of a snuggery
- countersunk in the house-fronts, and all the long lines of roofs were
- crowded with people, and each crowd was an explosion of brilliant color.
- </p>
- <p>
- Then the wide street itself, away down and down and down into the
- distance, was alive with gorgeously-clothed 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 rearguard of
- stately camels, with their picturesque riders.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 again.<br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <h2>
- <a name="ch61" id="ch61"></a><br /> <br /> CHAPTER LXI.
- </h2>
- <p>
- <i>In the first place God made idiots. This was for practice. Then He made
- School Boards.</i>
- </p>
- <p>
- &mdash;Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 vacancy&mdash;according
- to the average public-school 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 extravagant&mdash;and is; yet it goes no great way
- beyond the facts.
- </p>
- <p>
- I received a curious letter one day, from the Punjab (you must pronounce
- it Punjawb). The handwriting was excellent, and the wording was English&mdash;English,
- and yet not exactly English. The style was easy and smooth and flowing,
- yet there was something subtly foreign about it&mdash;A 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 snow-summits of
- learning&mdash;and 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&mdash;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&mdash;richly
- over-supplying the market for highly-educated service; and thereby doing a
- damage to the scholar, and through him to the country.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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
- book-knowledge. The same mail that brought me the letter from the Punjab,
- brought also a little book published by Messrs. Thacker, Spink &amp; Co.,
- of Calcutta, which interested me, for both its preface and its contents
- treated of this matter of over-education. 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:
- </p>
- <blockquote>
- <p>
- "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 ex-students 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."
- </p>
- </blockquote>
- <p>
- The little book which I am quoting from is called "Indo-Anglian
- Literature," and is well stocked with "baboo" English&mdash;clerkly
- English, booky English, acquired in the schools. Some of it is very funny,&mdash;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 English&mdash;but 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 help&mdash;bread,
- money, kindness, office&mdash;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 that she was merely following the custom of the dependent and the
- supplicant.<br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
- <img alt="p601.jpg (43K)" src="images/p601.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
- </div>
- <p>
- <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <blockquote>
- <p>
- "SIR,
- </p>
- <p>
- "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 wish.
- </p>
- <p>
- "Your Sirvent, P. C. B."
- </p>
- </blockquote>
- <p>
- 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
- Bible-text in the hope that it may catch something if all else fail.
- </p>
- <p>
- Here is an application for the post of instructor in English to some
- children:
- </p>
- <blockquote>
- <p>
- "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
- of English language."
- </p>
- </blockquote>
- <p>
- As a sample of the flowery Eastern style, I will take a sentence or two
- from a long letter written by a young native to the Lieutenant-Governor of
- Bengal&mdash;an application for employment:
- </p>
- <blockquote>
- <p>
- "HONORED AND MUCH RESPECTED SIR,
- </p>
- <p>
- "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 bird-like happiness has flown away from my nest-like
- 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 never danced before me."
- </p>
- </blockquote>
- <p>
- It is all school-English, book-English, 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 public-school children&mdash;loaded 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.
- Apparently&mdash;like our public-school boy&mdash;he must work, work,
- work, in school and out, and play but little. Apparently&mdash;like our
- public-school boy&mdash;his "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 one&mdash;the one which goes most into detail:
- </p>
- <blockquote>
- <p>
- "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 tiffin, 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."
- </p>
- </blockquote>
- <p>
- 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 afterward&mdash;that much of it seems straight;
- but why he should rise again three hours later and resume his studies till
- morning is puzzling.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 mixed-up 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 follows&mdash;from a Calcutta school examination:
- </p>
- <p>
- "Q. Who was Cardinal Wolsey?
- </p>
- <p>
- "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 after releasing went to France.
- </p>
- <p>
- "3. As Bishop of York but died in disentry in a church on his way to be
- blockheaded.
- </p>
- <p>
- "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 obstacles and
- many confusion he become King and afterwards his brother."
- </p>
- <p>
- There is probably not a word of truth in that.
- </p>
- <p>
- "Q. What is the meaning of 'Ich Dien'?
- </p>
- <p>
- "10. An honor conferred on the first or eldest sons of English Sovereigns.
- It is nothing more than some feathers.
- </p>
- <p>
- "11. Ich Dien was the word which was written on the feathers of the blind
- King who came to fight, being interlaced with the bridles of the horse.
- </p>
- <p>
- "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."
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 teachers.
- They were totally empty; there was nothing to "examine."
- </p>
- <p>
- Helen Keller has been dumb, stone deaf, and stone blind, ever since she
- was a little baby a year-and-a-half 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 asylums.
- </p>
- <p>
- To continue the Calcutta exposure:
- </p>
- <p>
- "What is the meaning of a Sheriff?"
- </p>
- <p>
- "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.
- </p>
- <p>
- "26. Sheriff was the English bill of common prayer.
- </p>
- <p>
- "27. The man with whom the accusative persons are placed is called
- Sheriff.
- </p>
- <p>
- "28. Sheriff&mdash;Latin 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- "29. Sheriff is a kind of titlous sect of people, as Barons, Nobles, etc.
- </p>
- <p>
- "30. Sheriff; a tittle given on those persons who were respective and
- pious in England."
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 answers is
- this:
- </p>
- <p>
- "49. The whole BD = the whole CA, and so-so-so-so-so-so-so."
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 to understand:
- </p>
- <p>
- "50. Oh my dear father examiner you my father and you kindly give a number
- of pass you my great father.
- </p>
- <p>
- "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 are placed, then, I think, you will
- not be able to suppress the tender tear.
- </p>
- <p>
- "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
- tiresome and very heavy propositions to prove."
- </p>
- <p>
- 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"&mdash;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 that one
- his own, his performance is no whit better than his Indian brother's:
- </p>
- <p>
- "ON HISTORY.
- </p>
- <p>
- "Christopher Columbus was called the father of his Country. Queen Isabella
- of Spain sold her watch and chain and other millinery so that Columbus
- could discover America.
- </p>
- <p>
- "The Indian wars were very desecrating to the country.
- </p>
- <p>
- "The Indians pursued their warfare by hiding in the bushes and then
- scalping them.
- </p>
- <p>
- "Captain John Smith has been styled the father of his country. His life
- was saved by his daughter Pochahantas.
- </p>
- <p>
- "The Puritans found an insane asylum in the wilds of America.
- </p>
- <p>
- "The Stamp Act was to make everybody stamp all materials so they should be
- null and void.
- </p>
- <p>
- "Washington died in Spain almost broken-hearted. His remains were taken to
- the cathedral in Havana.
- </p>
- <p>
- "Gorilla warfare was where men rode on gorillas."
- </p>
- <p>
- 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
- display the assification of the whole system:
- </p>
- <p>
- "ON LITERATURE.
- </p>
- <p>
- "'Bracebridge Hall' was written by Henry Irving.
- </p>
- <p>
- "Edgar A. Poe was a very curdling writer.
- </p>
- <p>
- "Beowulf wrote the Scriptures.
- </p>
- <p>
- "Ben Johnson survived Shakespeare in some respects.
- </p>
- <p>
- "In the 'Canterbury Tale' it gives account of King Alfred on his way to
- the shrine of Thomas Bucket.
- </p>
- <p>
- "Chaucer was the father of English pottery.
- </p>
- <p>
- "Chaucer was succeeded by H. Wads. Longfellow."
- </p>
- <p>
- We will finish with a couple of samples of "literature," one from America,
- the other from India. The first is a Brooklyn public-school boy's attempt
- to turn a few verses of the "Lady of the Lake" into prose. You will have
- to concede that he did it:
- </p>
- <p>
- "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 he drew with cries full of sorrow,
- the young deer made imperfect who worked hard filtered in sight."
- </p>
- <p>
- The following paragraph is from a little book which is famous in India&mdash;the
- biography of a distinguished Hindoo judge, Onoocool Chunder Mookerjee; it
- was written by his nephew, and is unintentionally funny&mdash;in fact,
- exceedingly so. I offer here the closing scene. If you would like to
- sample the rest of the book, it can be had by applying to the publishers,
- Messrs. Thacker, Spink &amp; Co., Calcutta
- </p>
- <blockquote>
- <p>
- "And having said these words he hermetically sealed his lips not to open
- them again. All the well-known doctors of Calcutta that could be
- procured for a man of his position and wealth were brought,&mdash;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 us at 6.12 P.m. according to
- the caprice of God which passeth understanding."
- </p>
- </blockquote>
- <p>
- <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
- <img alt="p608.jpg (7K)" src="images/p608.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
- </div>
- <p>
- <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <h2>
- <a name="ch62" id="ch62"></a><br /> <br /> CHAPTER LXII.
- </h2>
- <p>
- <i>There are no people who are quite so vulgar as the over-refined ones.</i>
- </p>
- <p>
- &mdash;Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.
- </p>
- <p>
- We sailed from Calcutta toward the end of March; stopped a day at Madras;
- two or three days in Ceylon; then sailed westward on a long flight for
- Mauritius. From my diary:
- </p>
- <p>
- April 7. We are far abroad upon the smooth waters of the Indian Ocean,
- now; it is shady and pleasant and peaceful under the vast spread of the
- awnings, and life is perfect again&mdash;ideal.
- </p>
- <p>
- The difference between a river and the sea is, that the river looks fluid,
- the sea solid&mdash;usually looks as if you could step out and walk on it.
- </p>
- <p>
- The captain has this peculiarity&mdash;he 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
- flying-fish 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- By and by, in the course of some talk about custom-house 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
- credence. He said:
- </p>
- <blockquote>
- <p>
- "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, saying I had taken a whisky just before I came ashore.
- </p>
- <p>
- "It was a fatal admission. The officer at once made me pay sixpence
- import-duty on the whisky-just 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, sixty-five
- pounds sixpence for a little thing like that."
- </p>
- </blockquote>
- <p>
- 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.<br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
- <img alt="p610.jpg (10K)" src="images/p610.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
- </div>
- <p>
- <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <p>
- Lots of pets on board&mdash;birds 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 birds&mdash;the 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 cat would have liked that place.<br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
- <img alt="p611.jpg (17K)" src="images/p611.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
- </div>
- <p>
- <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <p>
- April 9. Tea-planting is the great business in Ceylon, now. A passenger
- says it often pays 40 per cent. on the investment. Says there is a boom.
- </p>
- <p>
- April 10. The sea is a Mediterranean blue; and I believe that that is
- about the divinest color known to nature.
- </p>
- <p>
- It is strange and fine&mdash;Nature'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 spacious&mdash;a 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 domain&mdash;a
- domain which is miles deep and covers four-fifths 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 one-fifth&mdash;the naked bones stick up through it in most
- places. On the one-half 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 family&mdash;in fact, her
- favorite. Surely, it must occur to even his dull head, sometimes, that she
- has a curious way of showing it.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 two-thirds
- of it back. Nobody said anything, and the captain went away. I think he is
- becoming disheartened . . . .<br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
- <img alt="p613.jpg (92K)" src="images/p613.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
- </div>
- <p>
- <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 cheap-john
- 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 goody-goody 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 a library that hadn't a book in it.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.<br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
- <img alt="p615.jpg (38K)" src="images/p615.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
- </div>
- <p>
- <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 you&mdash;the world is far, far away; it has ceased to exist
- for you&mdash;seemed 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 on the ship's run is not a custom here&mdash;nobody
- ever mentions it.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 the solid ground again.
- </p>
- <p>
- One of Kipling's ballads has delivered the aspect and sentiment of this
- bewitching sea correctly:
- </p>
- <table summary="">
- <tr>
- <td>
- "The Injian Ocean sets an' smiles<br /> So sof', so bright, so bloomin'
- blue;<br /> There aren't a wave for miles an' miles<br /> Excep' the
- jiggle from the screw."<br />
- </td>
- </tr>
- </table>
- <p>
- 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 exploded bombshell.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.&mdash;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 Virginia.
- </p>
- <p>
- Island under French control&mdash;which means a community which depends
- upon quarantines, not sanitation, for its health.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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, half-whites, quadroons&mdash;and
- great varieties in costumes and colors.
- </p>
- <p>
- Took the train for Curepipe at 1.30&mdash;two 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 mountains, with the monotony of the Indian dead-levels.
- </p>
- <p>
- A native pointed out a handsome swarthy man of grave and dignified
- bearing, and said in an awed tone, "That is so-and-so; has held office of
- one sort or another under this government for 37 years&mdash;he is known
- all over this whole island and in the other countries of the world perhaps&mdash;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 even seem to know it."
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 ornament is universal.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- A clergyman was asked to guess what was in a box on a table. It was a
- vellum fan painted with the shipwreck, and was "one of Virginia's wedding
- gifts."
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 world.<br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
- <img alt="p619.jpg (14K)" src="images/p619.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
- </div>
- <p>
- <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <p>
- An English citizen said:
- </p>
- <blockquote>
- <p>
- "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 and will take
- it.
- </p>
- <p>
- "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 off-season 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 held in
- worshipful reverence and affection by the French.
- </p>
- <p>
- "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
- was a boy. That and because he was English.
- </p>
- <p>
- "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, old-ivory white, new-ivory white, fish-belly white&mdash;this
- latter the leprous complexion frequent with the Anglo-Saxon long
- resident in tropical climates.
- </p>
- <p>
- "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 countries&mdash;Judaea, 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 peg-tops and
- toothpicks that makes the roofs of Curepipe look so fine and prickly.
- </p>
- <p>
- "There is not much trade in books. The newspapers educate and entertain
- the people. Mainly the latter. They have two pages of large-print
- reading-matter-one of them English, the other French. The English page
- is a translation of the French one. The typography is super-extra
- primitive&mdash;in this quality it has not its equal anywhere. There is
- no proof-reader now; he is dead.
- </p>
- </blockquote>
- <p>
- <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
- <img alt="p621.jpg (31K)" src="images/p621.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
- </div>
- <p>
- <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <blockquote>
- <p>
- "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 creoles&mdash;French.
- </p>
- <p>
- "The language of the country is French. Everybody speaks it&mdash;has
- to. You have to know French particularly mongrel French, the patois
- spoken by Tom, Dick, and Harry of the multiform complexions&mdash;or you
- can't get along.
- </p>
- </blockquote>
- <p>
- "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 rupee&mdash;for the planter pays wages in rupees
- but sells his crop for gold&mdash;and the insurrection in Cuba and
- paralyzation of the sugar industry there have given our prices here a
- life-saving lift; but the outlook has nothing permanently favorable about
- it. It takes a year to mature the canes&mdash;on the high ground three and
- six months longer&mdash;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.
- </p>
- <p>
- "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 Mauritius, and the only one."<br /> <br />
- <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <h2>
- <a name="ch63" id="ch63"></a><br /> <br /> CHAPTER LXIII.
- </h2>
- <p>
- <i>The principal difference between a cat and a lie is that the cat has
- only nine lives.</i>
- </p>
- <p>
- &mdash;Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.
- </p>
- <p>
- April 20.&mdash;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 water-pipes; and for a time after the flood had disappeared there was
- much distress from want of water.
- </p>
- <p>
- This is the only place in the world where no breed of matches can stand
- the damp. Only one match in 16 will light.<br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
- <img alt="p622.jpg (12K)" src="images/p622.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
- </div>
- <p>
- <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 hedges, too,
- both the white and the red; I never saw that before.
- </p>
- <p>
- As to healthiness: I translate from to-day'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:
- </p>
- <blockquote>
- <p>
- "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, death is a guest in our
- home."
- </p>
- </blockquote>
- <p>
- This daily paper has a meteorological report which tells you what the
- weather was day before yesterday.
- </p>
- <p>
- One is never pestered by a beggar or a peddler in this town, so far as I
- can see. This is pleasantly different from India.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 to-day. 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 earth&mdash;including America, of course&mdash;consist
- 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 clothes-lines
- for ages, and every acre of ground in the continent had been stolen and
- re-stolen 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
- to-day, as open and above-board, in discussing projects for raiding each
- other's clothes-lines 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 Land-Robber-in-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 hip-rag 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 land-robbery, claim-jumping,
- 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&mdash;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 neglected&mdash;no signs up,
- "Keep off the grass," "Trespassers-forbidden," etc.&mdash;and she stepped
- in with a cold calm smile and put up the signs herself, and swept those
- English pioneers promptly out of the country.
- </p>
- <p>
- There is a tremendous point there. It can be put into the form of a maxim:
- Get your formalities right&mdash;never mind about the moralities.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 clothes-line. 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- April 23. "The first year they gather shells; the second year they gather
- shells and drink; the third year they do not gather shells." (Said of
- immigrants to Mauritius.)<br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
- <img alt="p625.jpg (30K)" src="images/p625.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
- </div>
- <p>
- <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <p>
- Population 375,000. 120 sugar factories.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 island by and by.
- </p>
- <p>
- The Indian women do very hard labor (for wages running from 40 one
- hundredths of a rupee for twelve hours' work to 50 one hundredths of a
- rupee.) 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.<br />
- <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
- <img alt="p626.jpg (11K)" src="images/p626.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
- </div>
- <p>
- <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <p>
- The camaron is a fresh water creature like a cray-fish. It is regarded
- here as the world's chiefest delicacy&mdash;and 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 further up his person and draws it
- taut, and his days are ended.
- </p>
- <p>
- Another dish, called palmiste, is like raw turnip-shavings and tastes like
- green almonds; is very delicate and good. Costs the life of a palm tree 12
- to 20 years old&mdash;for it is the pith.
- </p>
- <p>
- Another dish&mdash;looks like greens or a tangle of fine seaweed&mdash;is
- a preparation of the deadly nightshade. Good enough.
- </p>
- <p>
- The monkeys live in the dense forests on the flanks of the toy mountains,
- and they flock down nights and raid the sugar-fields. Also on other
- estates they come down and destroy a sort of bean-crop&mdash;just for fun,
- apparently&mdash;tear off the pods and throw them down.
- </p>
- <p>
- The cyclone of 1892 tore down two great blocks of stone buildings in the
- center of Port Louis&mdash;the chief architectural feature&mdash;and 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.<br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
- <img alt="p628.jpg (35K)" src="images/p628.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
- </div>
- <p>
- <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <p>
- Whole streets in Port Louis were laid flat&mdash;wrecked. 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 four-two 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 calm&mdash;people did not know the barometer was still going down&mdash;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 comparison.
- </p>
- <p>
- What there is of Mauritius is beautiful. You have undulating wide expanses
- of sugar-cane&mdash;a 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
- hide-and-seek 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 view.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 sky&mdash;these
- are the things which exalt the spirit and move it to see visions and dream
- dreams.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 lava-floods 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 do not wish to
- have to speak of it again.<br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <h2>
- <a name="ch64" id="ch64"></a><br /> <br /> CHAPTER LXIV.
- </h2>
- <p>
- <i>When your watch gets out of order you have choice of two things to do:
- throw it in the fire or take it to the watch-tinker. The former is the
- quickest.</i>
- </p>
- <p>
- &mdash;Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 sailed&mdash;she 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,
- strong-backed, self-made 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 8 A.M. Passing Isle de Bourbon. Broken-up sky-line 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 use&mdash;voyage too short, sea
- too rough. The peaceful Indian and Pacific Oceans and the long stretches
- of time are the healing thing.<br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
- <img alt="p631.jpg (25K)" src="images/p631.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
- </div>
- <p>
- <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 Delagoa
- Bay.
- </p>
- <p>
- Last night, the burly chief engineer, middle-aged, 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-four&mdash;those
- awake doing it while the others slept&mdash;those impressive bars forever
- floating up out of the various climes, never silent and never lacking
- reverent listeners.
- </p>
- <p>
- All that I remember about Madagascar is that Thackeray's little Billie
- went up to the top of the mast and there knelt him upon his knee, saying,
- "I see
- </p>
- <table summary="">
- <tr>
- <td>
- <br /> "Jerusalem and Madagascar,<br /> And North and South Amerikee."<br />
- </td>
- </tr>
- </table>
- <p>
- May 3. Sunday. Fifteen or twenty Africanders who will end their voyage
- to-day and strike for their several homes from Delagoa Bay to-morrow, 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.<br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
- <img alt="p633.jpg (41K)" src="images/p633.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
- </div>
- <p>
- <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 thing&mdash;began
- 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
- reputation-maker. 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 picture&mdash;the 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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
- lamp and things for opium smoking in the center.<br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
- <img alt="p636.jpg (31K)" src="images/p636.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
- </div>
- <p>
- <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <p>
- A passenger said it was ten 2-ton 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 or
- collapsed 200 yards off; fragment of iron flung three and a half miles.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 amounts&mdash;too 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"&mdash;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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- A bold headland&mdash;precipitous wall, 150 feet high, very strong, red
- color, stretching a mile or so. A man said it was Portuguese blood&mdash;battle
- fought here with the natives last year. I think this doubtful. Pretty
- cluster of houses on the tableland above the red and rolling stretches of
- grass and groups of trees, like England.
- </p>
- <p>
- The Portuguese have the railroad (one passenger train a day) to the border&mdash;70
- miles&mdash;then the Netherlands Company have it. Thousands of tons of
- freight on the shore&mdash;no cover. This is Portuguese allover&mdash;indolence,
- piousness, poverty, impotence.
- </p>
- <p>
- Crews of small boats and tugs, all jet black woolly heads and very
- muscular.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 town&mdash;no sights. No carriages. Three 'rickshas, but we
- couldn't get them&mdash;apparently private. These Portuguese are a rich
- brown, like some of the Indians. Some of the blacks have the long horse
- heads 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, good-natured, and easy laughers.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 stevedore's
- work. They were very erect when unladden&mdash;from carrying heavy loads
- on their heads&mdash;just like the Indian women. It gives them a proud
- fine carriage.
- </p>
- <p>
- Sometimes one saw a woman carrying on her head a laden and top-heavy
- basket the shape of an inverted pyramid&mdash;its top the size of a
- soup-plate, its base the diameter of a teacup. It required nice balancing&mdash;and
- got it.<br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
- <img alt="p638.jpg (57K)" src="images/p638.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
- </div>
- <p>
- <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <p>
- No bright colors; yet there were a good many Hindoos.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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
- which was evidently characteristic of that great showman in several ways:
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 heterodox&mdash;for
- 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 else&mdash;Jumbo 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 Nelson monument. Barnum spoke up with
- vivacity and said:
- </p>
- <p>
- "It's a first-rate idea. I'll buy the Monument."
- </p>
- <p>
- Jamrach was speechless for a second. Then he said, like one ashamed "You
- caught me. I was napping. For a moment I thought you were in earnest."
- </p>
- <p>
- Barnum said pleasantly&mdash;
- </p>
- <p>
- "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 world."
- </p>
- <p>
- Jamrach started to deliver a burst of admiration, but was interrupted by
- Barnum, who said:
- </p>
- <p>
- "Here is a state of things! England ought to blush."
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 Stratford-on-Avon 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
- of salaried and trustworthy keepers had fallen resultless. Then Barnum
- said:
- </p>
- <p>
- "There's my chance. Let Jumbo and the Monument alone for the present&mdash;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. You'll
- see."<br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
- <img alt="p640.jpg (29K)" src="images/p640.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
- </div>
- <p>
- <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <p>
- In conclusion the S. C. P. said:
- </p>
- <p>
- "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 master-genius of all the ages and all the climes&mdash;that
- priceless possession of Britain&mdash;to be carted out of the country like
- so much old lumber and set up for sixpenny desecration in a Yankee
- show-shop&mdash;the 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
- concession&mdash;England must let him have Jumbo. And England consented,
- but not cheerfully."
- </p>
- <p>
- It shows how, by help of time, a story can grow&mdash;even 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 warm-hearted letter of
- apology, and in a postscript to it would have naively proposed to let the
- Monument go, and take Stonehenge in place of it at the same price.
- </p>
- <p>
- It was his opinion that such a letter, written with well-simulated asinine
- innocence and gush would have gotten his ignorance and stupidity an amount
- of newspaper abuse worth six fortunes to him, and not purchasable for
- twice the money.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 going-to 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&mdash;$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 name-scribblers and other desecrators, and leave it by bequest to the
- safe and perpetual guardianship of the Smithsonian Institute at
- Washington.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 in&mdash;and money, too, to stop
- the outrage. Offers of repurchase were made&mdash;offers 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 him&mdash;but on the condition
- that an endowment sufficient for the future safeguarding and maintenance
- of the sacred relic should be raised. This condition was fulfilled.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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&mdash;represented
- by him&mdash;saved the birthplace of Shakespeare from destruction.
- </p>
- <p>
- At 3 P.M., May 6th, the ship slowed down, off the land, and thoughtfully
- and cautiously picked her way into the snug harbor of Durban, South
- Africa.<br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
- <img alt="p643.jpg (7K)" src="images/p643.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
- </div>
- <p>
- <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <h2>
- <a name="ch65" id="ch65"></a><br /> <br /> CHAPTER LXV.
- </h2>
- <p>
- <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <p>
- <i>In statesmanship get the formalities right, never mind about the
- moralities.</i>
- </p>
- <p>
- &mdash;Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.
- </p>
- <p>
- FROM DIARY:
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 hesitated&mdash;like
- one who isn't quite sure&mdash;then conceded the point.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 hotel.
- </p>
- <p>
- Evening. At 4 P.M. it was unpleasantly warm. Half-hour after sunset one
- needed a spring overcoat; by 8 a winter one.
- </p>
- <p>
- Durban is a neat and clean town. One notices that without having his
- attention called to it.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 teeth&mdash;a
- good-natured lot. Not allowed to drink; 2s per hour for one person; 3s for
- two; 3d for a course&mdash;one person.
- </p>
- <p>
- The chameleon in the hotel court. He is fat and indolent and
- contemplative; but is business-like and capable when a fly comes about&mdash;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 grave&mdash;for 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
- pivot-guns and point every-which-way, 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 forwards&mdash;which
- 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 downward&mdash;and
- this changes his expression, but does not improve it.<br /> <br /> <br />
- <br />
- </p>
- <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
- <img alt="p645.jpg (18K)" src="images/p645.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
- </div>
- <p>
- <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <p>
- Natives must not be out after the curfew bell without a pass. In Natal
- there are ten blacks to one white.
- </p>
- <p>
- Sturdy plump creatures are the women. They comb their wool up to a peak
- and keep it in position by stiffening it with brown-red clay&mdash;half of
- this tower colored, denotes engagement; the whole of it colored denotes
- marriage.<br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
- <img alt="p646.jpg (11K)" src="images/p646.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
- </div>
- <p>
- <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <p>
- None but heathen Zulus on the police; Christian ones not allowed.
- </p>
- <p>
- May 9. A drive yesterday with friends over the Berea. Very fine roads and
- lofty, overlooking the whole town, the harbor, and the sea-beautiful
- views. Residences all along, set in the midst of green lawns with shrubs
- and generally one or two intensely red outbursts of poinsettia&mdash;the
- flaming splotch of blinding red a stunning contrast with the world of
- surrounding green. The cactus tree&mdash;candelabrum-like; and one twisted
- like gray writhing serpents. The "flat-crown" (should be flat-roof)&mdash;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 green&mdash;so dark that you
- notice it at once, notwithstanding there are so many orange trees. The
- "flamboyant"&mdash;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
- gum-tree; half a dozen lofty Norfolk Island pines lifting their fronded
- arms skyward. Groups of tall bamboo.
- </p>
- <p>
- Saw one bird. Not many birds here, and they have no music&mdash;and the
- flowers not much smell, they grow so fast.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 that is what it probably is.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 stand&mdash;St.
- 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&mdash;like
- Tchaka, Dingaan, and Cetewayo.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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
- went out to see it.
- </p>
- <p>
- There it all was, just as one reads about it in books and cannot believe
- that it is so&mdash;I 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 man as an
- individual.<br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
- <img alt="p650.jpg (49K)" src="images/p650.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
- </div>
- <p>
- <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <p>
- La Trappe must have known the human race well. The scheme which he
- invented hunts out everything that a man wants and values&mdash;and
- 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?
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 has&mdash;yet he floated his project, and it has prospered for two
- hundred years, and will go on prospering forever, no doubt.
- </p>
- <p>
- Man likes personal distinction&mdash;there in the monastery it is
- obliterated. He likes delicious food&mdash;there he gets beans and bread
- and tea, and not enough of it. He likes to lie softly&mdash;there 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 chat&mdash;there
- a monk reads a holy book aloud during meals, and nobody speaks or laughs.
- When a man has a hundred friends about him, evenings, he likes to have a
- good time and run late&mdash;there 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 night-clothes to put on, a light is not needed. Man likes to lie
- abed late&mdash;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 all&mdash;there 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 women&mdash;there he never has it. He likes
- to have his children about him, and pet them and play with them&mdash;there
- he has none. He likes billiards&mdash;there is no table there. He likes
- outdoor sports and indoor dramatic and musical and social entertainments&mdash;there
- are none there. He likes to bet on things&mdash;I 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 animals&mdash;pets; there
- are none there. He likes to smoke&mdash;there he cannot do it. He likes to
- read the news&mdash;no 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 him&mdash;there he cannot know. A man likes a
- pretty house, and pretty furniture, and pretty things, and pretty colors&mdash;there
- he has nothing but naked aridity and sombre colors. A man likes&mdash;name
- it yourself: whatever it is, it is absent from that place.
- </p>
- <p>
- From what I could learn, all that a man gets for this is merely the saving
- of his soul.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 somebody
- would want to try it.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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
- wage-yielding 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
- "rice-Christians" (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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 Beit&mdash;which 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 instigation of Rhodes, to bull the stock market.<br />
- <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
- <img alt="p653.jpg (18K)" src="images/p653.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
- </div>
- <p>
- <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <h2>
- <a name="ch66" id="ch66"></a><br /> <br /> CHAPTER LXVI.
- </h2>
- <p>
- <i>Every one is a moon, and has a dark side which he never shows to
- anybody.</i>
- </p>
- <p>
- &mdash;Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.
- </p>
- <p>
- When I scribbled in my note-book 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 mind thereby.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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, the sources of his information
- being such as they were.<br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
- <img alt="p655.jpg (48K)" src="images/p655.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
- </div>
- <p>
- <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 raid-conspirators, 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 permanent exile added, in one case.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- I was disappointed. There were singularities, perplexities,
- unaccountabilities about it which I was not able to master. I had no
- personal access to Boers&mdash;their 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&mdash;apparently&mdash;all
- the details of their side of the quarrel except one&mdash;what they
- expected to accomplish by an armed rising.
- </p>
- <p>
- Nobody seemed to know.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 thirteen-fifteenths 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, water-supply, 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
- railway-freight-charges. 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 working.
- </p>
- <p>
- There&mdash;it was plain enough that the reasons for wanting some changes
- made were abundant and reasonable, if this statement of the existing
- grievances was correct.
- </p>
- <p>
- What the Uitlanders wanted was reform&mdash;under the existing Republic.
- </p>
- <p>
- What they proposed to do was to secure these reforms by, prayer, petition,
- and persuasion.
- </p>
- <p>
- They did petition. Also, they issued a Manifesto, whose very first note is
- a bugle-blast of loyalty: "We want the establishment of this Republic as a
- true Republic."
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 citizen-like and law-respecting than their attitude as expressed
- by their Manifesto? No. Those things were perfectly clear, perfectly
- comprehensible.
- </p>
- <p>
- But at this point the puzzles and riddles and confusions begin to flock
- in. You have arrived at a place which you cannot quite understand.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 companies composed of clerks, merchants, and
- citizens generally.
- </p>
- <p>
- What was their idea? Did they suppose that the Boers would attack them for
- petitioning, for redress? That could not be.
- </p>
- <p>
- Did they suppose that the Boers would attack them even for issuing a
- Manifesto demanding relief under the existing government?
- </p>
- <p>
- Yes, they apparently believed so, because the air was full of talk of
- forcing the government to grant redress if it were not granted peacefully.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 compensate in ten years if they won the fight and
- secured the reforms.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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, monthly-nurses of the
- Revolution which was born dead. These testimonies have thrown light. Three
- books have added much to this light:
- </p>
- <p>
- "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:
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 procure
- by peaceful means a modification of the laws.
- </p>
- <p>
- 2. Mr. Cecil Rhodes, Premier of the British Cape Colony, millionaire,
- creator and managing director of the territorially-immense 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 mentioned&mdash;make 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 threatenings&mdash;the 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 rational and practical one.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 government&mdash;now
- hardened into demands&mdash;by 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.
- Jameson&mdash;as per instructions from Rhodes, perhaps&mdash;wanted 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 letter&mdash;that 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 Cape. Jameson had kept a copy,
- though.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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&mdash;British;
- yet a report began to spread that Mr. Rhodes's embarrassing assistance had
- for its end this latter object.
- </p>
- <p>
- Jameson was away up on the frontier tugging at his leash, fretting to
- burst over the border. By hard work the Reformers got his starting-date
- postponed a little, and wanted to get it postponed eleven days.
- Apparently, Rhodes's agents were seconding their efforts&mdash;in 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- Jameson endured postponement three days, then resolved to wait no longer.
- Without any orders&mdash;excepting Mr. Rhodes's significant silence&mdash;he
- 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 old&mdash;as per date,&mdash;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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.<br /> <br /> <br />
- <br />
- </p>
- <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
- <img alt="p664.jpg (74K)" src="images/p664.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
- </div>
- <p>
- <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <p>
- 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
- sand-storm. The early ones fared best; they secured seats&mdash;by sitting
- in them&mdash;eight hours before the first train was timed to leave.
- </p>
- <p>
- Mr. Rhodes lost no time. He cabled the renowned Johannesburg letter of
- invitation to the London press&mdash;the gray-headedest piece of ancient
- history that ever went over a cable.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 20th.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 him&mdash;in case of emergency&mdash;to 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
- saddle-bag. <i>Why, in the name of all that is discreet and honorable,
- didn't he eat it!</i>"
- </p>
- <p>
- She requires too much. He was not in the service of the Reformers&mdash;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 original&mdash;and 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
- knuckles deserved a rap, the principal's deserved as many as a couple of
- them.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 poet-laureatic 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 been a year old it would have done miracles. &lt;&lt;br&gt;<br /> <br />
- <br />
- </p>
- <h2>
- <a name="ch67" id="ch67"></a><br /> <br /> CHAPTER LXVII.
- </h2>
- <p>
- <i>First catch your Boer, then kick him.</i>
- </p>
- <p>
- &mdash;Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.
- </p>
- <p>
- Those latter days were days of bitter worry and trouble for the harassed
- Reformers.
- </p>
- <p>
- From Mrs. Hammond we learn that on the 31st (the day after Johannesburg
- heard of the invasion), "The Reform Committee repudiates Dr. Jameson's
- inroad."
- </p>
- <p>
- It also publishes its intention to adhere to the Manifesto.
- </p>
- <p>
- It also earnestly desires that the inhabitants shall refrain from overt
- acts against the Boer government.
- </p>
- <p>
- It also "distributes arms" at the Court House, and furnishes horses "to
- the newly-enrolled volunteers."
- </p>
- <p>
- It also brings a Transvaal flag into the committee-room, and the entire
- body swear allegiance to it "with uncovered heads and upraised arms."
- </p>
- <p>
- Also "one thousand Lee-Metford rifles have been given out"&mdash;to
- rebels.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 would stand by him."
- </p>
- <p>
- Also the populace are in a state of "wild enthusiasm," and "can scarcely
- be restrained; they want to go out to meet Jameson and bring him in with
- triumphal outcry."
- </p>
- <p>
- Also the British High Commissioner has issued a damnifying proclamation
- against Jameson and all British abettors of his game. It arrives January
- 1st.
- </p>
- <p>
- It is a difficult position for the Reformers, and full of hindrances and
- perplexities. Their duty is hard, but plain:
- </p>
- <p>
- 1. They have to repudiate the inroad, and stand by the inroader.
- </p>
- <p>
- 2. They have to swear allegiance to the Boer government, and distribute
- cavalry horses to the rebels.
- </p>
- <p>
- 3. They have to forbid overt acts against the Boer government, and
- distribute arms to its enemies.
- </p>
- <p>
- 4. They have to avoid collision with the British government, but still
- stand by Jameson and their new oath of allegiance to the Boer government,
- taken, uncovered, in presence of its flag.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 risks&mdash;as 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
- president&mdash;one 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 heavy&mdash;even if the whole town had been armed.
- With only 2,500 rifles in the place, they stood really no chance.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 morning&mdash;New Year's&mdash;when 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 later&mdash;a thing not conceivable to me&mdash;I 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
- growing.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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
- war-worn 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 horseback.<br />
- <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
- <img alt="p670.jpg (31K)" src="images/p670.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
- </div>
- <p>
- <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <p>
- If pluck were the only thing essential to battle-winning, 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 me&mdash;he would have been intent upon
- repeating history, according to precedent. Americans are not acquainted
- with the British-Boer 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 text-book whose purpose is the instruction
- of the Natal English youth.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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. (Krugersdorp&mdash;the
- 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 re-establishment 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 regiment&mdash;already on the march to suppress this rebellion&mdash;had
- been heard to say that "the Boers would turn tail at the first beat of the
- big drum."&mdash;["South Africa As It Is," by F. Reginald Statham, page
- 82. London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1897.]
- </p>
- <p>
- Four days after the flag-raising, the Boer force which had been sent
- forward to forbid the invasion of the English troops met them at
- Bronkhorst Spruit&mdash;246 men of the 94th regiment, in command of a
- colonel, the big drum beating, the band playing&mdash;and the first battle
- was fought. It lasted ten minutes. Result:
- </p>
- <blockquote>
- <p>
- British loss, more than 150 officers and men, out of the 246. Surrender
- of the remnant.
- </p>
- <p>
- Boer loss&mdash;if any&mdash;not stated.
- </p>
- </blockquote>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- "General Sir George Colley, Lieutenant-Governor and Commander-in-Chief 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 Nek&mdash;every
- 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 column. The battle was soon finished, with this result,
- according to Russell&mdash;
- </p>
- <blockquote>
- <p>
- British loss in killed and wounded, 174.
- </p>
- <p>
- Boer loss, "trifling."
- </p>
- </blockquote>
- <p>
- 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.")
- </p>
- <p>
- That ended the second battle.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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&mdash;
- </p>
- <blockquote>
- <p>
- British loss 150 out of 270 engaged.
- </p>
- <p>
- Boer loss, 8 killed, 9 wounded&mdash;17.
- </p>
- </blockquote>
- <p>
- 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 night&mdash;a
- 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 retreat&mdash;up that
- mountain. He asked for volunteers, and got them.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 killed the British General:
- </p>
- <blockquote>
- <p>
- British loss, 226, out of 400 engaged.
- </p>
- <p>
- Boer loss, 1 killed, 5 wounded.
- </p>
- </blockquote>
- <p>
- That ended the war. England listened to reason, and recognized the Boer
- Republic&mdash;a government which has never been in any really awful
- danger since, until Jameson started after it with his 500 "raw young
- fellows." To recapitulate:
- </p>
- <p>
- The Boer farmers and British soldiers fought 4 battles, and the Boers won
- them all. Result of the 4, in killed and wounded:
- </p>
- <blockquote>
- <p>
- British loss, 700 men.
- </p>
- <p>
- Boer loss, so far as known, 23 men.
- </p>
- </blockquote>
- <p>
- 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 with, and my impressions of the Raid are drawn from that.<br /> <br />
- <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
- <img alt="p675.jpg (62K)" src="images/p675.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
- </div>
- <p>
- <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 Boer-British 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- Jameson arrived in the presence of the Boers. They&mdash;according to
- precedent&mdash;were not visible. It was a country of ridges, depressions,
- rocks, ditches, moraines of mining-tailings&mdash;not 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
- ridge-according 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 return-fire 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 wounded&mdash;the wounded
- to Krugersdorp hospital. "Sixty per cent. of the assaulted force disposed
- of"&mdash;according to Mr. Garrett's estimate.
- </p>
- <p>
- It was according to Amajuba precedent, where the British loss was 226 out
- of about 400 engaged.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 not been able to get near enough to a
- Boer to kick him around the Transvaal.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 7-pounder 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."
- </p>
- <p>
- Jameson hoisted a white flag and surrendered.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.<br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
- <img alt="p678.jpg (33K)" src="images/p678.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
- </div>
- <p>
- <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <p>
- The following is (as I understand it) Mr. Garrett's estimate of Jameson's
- total loss in killed and wounded for the two days:
- </p>
- <p>
- "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."
- </p>
- <p>
- Total, 133, out of the original 530. It is just 25 per cent.&mdash;[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 Krugersdorp 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.]&mdash;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 Raid-episode 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 army&mdash;one 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 killed was not
- larger."
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 time 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 travel. Further endorsement does not
- seem to me to be necessary.<br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
- <img alt="p681.jpg (65K)" src="images/p681.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
- </div>
- <p>
- <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <p>
- 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, was 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 until&mdash;using British methods&mdash;it should
- be large enough to equalize results with the Boer.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- Another thing.&mdash;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 rocks&mdash;he knew quite well
- that there would be nothing to shoot at but rocks&mdash;and he knew that
- artillery and rifles have no effect upon rocks. He was badly overloaded
- with unessentials. He had 8 Maxims&mdash;a 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 7-pounders; also, 145,000 rounds of ammunition.
- He worked the Maxims so hard upon the rocks that five of them became
- disabled&mdash;five 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 no weight.
- </p>
- <p>
- Mr. Garrett&mdash;not very carefully concealing a smile&mdash;excuses 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 lives.
- </p>
- <p>
- Three cannon, eight Maxims, and five hundred rifles yielded a result which
- emphasized a fact which had already been established&mdash;that 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 of war is to kill, not merely to waste
- ammunition.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 the Boer's main standby. He has a
- passion for it, and he is right.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 any Amajuba results.
- </p>
- <p>
- &mdash;[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 merely promised to
- send out "some" men "to meet you."]
- </p>
- <p>
- [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 persons&mdash;people who do not read
- history, and people, like Jameson, who do not understand what it means,
- after they have read it.]<br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
- <img alt="p684.jpg (59K)" src="images/p684.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
- </div>
- <p>
- <br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <h2>
- <a name="ch68" id="ch68"></a><br /> <br /> CHAPTER LXVIII.
- </h2>
- <p>
- <i>None of us can have as many virtues as the fountain-pen, or half its
- cussedness; but we can try.</i>
- </p>
- <p>
- &mdash;Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 dare-devil 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 also was
- unarmed.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 with June, 1895, it was
- $45,553,700.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 America, but apparently upon what a whole
- family of him would get there.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 coarser-grained "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 tailing-pile under the former conditions.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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
- gold-mining 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 Africa. Summed up&mdash;according to the
- information thus gained&mdash;this is the Boer:
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 with&mdash;well-satisfied 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 all-night dance interspersed
- with vigorous feeding and boisterous jollity, but ready to ride twice as
- far for a prayer-meeting; 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 wishes that they had never been discovered.
- </p>
- <p>
- I think that the bulk of those details can be found in Olive Schreiner's
- books, and she would not be accused of sketching the Boer's portrait with
- an unfair hand.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 company and be a
- pleasant change for him.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 they would be in the poorhouse in twelve months.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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
- village, and says&mdash;
- </p>
- <p>
- "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
- latter-day race and struggle, and are dropping one by one into the grip of
- the usurer&mdash;getting hopelessly in debt&mdash;and 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 they sell their daughters to the blacks."
- </p>
- <p>
- Under date of another South African town I find the note which is
- creditable to the Boers:
- </p>
- <p>
- "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 skeletons&mdash;one a woman with the
- skeleton of a child hugged to her breast."
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.&mdash;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 starve&mdash;his
- master is under no obligation to support him.
- </p>
- <p>
- The reduction of the population by Rhodesian methods to the desired limit
- is a return to the old-time slow-misery and lingering-death 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 right-hearted
- 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 twenty-year 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 pillage, and
- puts the right stain upon it.
- </p>
- <p>
- Several long journeys&mdash;gave us experience of the Cape Colony
- railways; easy-riding, 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 sea&mdash;a sea made of
- dream-stuff and flushed with colors faint and rich; and dear me, the depth
- of the sky, and the beauty of the strange new cloud-forms, and the glory
- of the sunshine, the lavishness, the wastefulness of it! The vigor and
- freshness and inspiration of the air and the sun&mdash;well, it was all
- just as Olive Schreiner had made it in her books.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 base of the sky.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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, good-natured 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- One Sunday in King William's Town a score of colored women came mincing
- across the great barren square dressed&mdash;oh, in the last perfection of
- fashion, and newness, and expensiveness, and showy mixture of unrelated
- colors,&mdash;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 good-fellowship 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 would answer in anything but
- American.<br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
- <img alt="p693.jpg (25K)" src="images/p693.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
- </div>
- <p>
- <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 State&mdash;no, over its capital&mdash;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 flowing.
- </p>
- <p>
- In moving about the country in the trains, I had opportunity to see a good
- many Boers of the veldt. One day at a village station a hundred of them
- got out of the third-class cars to feed.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 new&mdash;showing 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 resin-colored breeches, had on a hideous brand-new
- woolen coat which was imitation tiger skin&mdash;wavy broad stripes of
- dazzling yellow and deep brown. I thought he ought to be hanged, and asked
- the station-master 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 public
- sentiment against me. It is what one gets for trying to do good.<br />
- <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
- <img alt="p694.jpg (21K)" src="images/p694.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
- </div>
- <p>
- <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 week-day 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 business-progress 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 it&mdash;awake and
- suffering&mdash;until toward dawn, when sleep again fell upon him for an
- hour. Then he woke again. The Boer was gone, but the wife was still at his
- side.<br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
- <img alt="p696.jpg (48K)" src="images/p696.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
- </div>
- <p>
- <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- In the train Mr. B. told me that the Boer jail-guards treated the black
- prisoners&mdash;even political ones&mdash;mercilessly. 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 guard himself."<br /> <br /> <br />
- <br />
- </p>
- <h2>
- <a name="ch69" id="ch69"></a><br /> <br /> CHAPTER LXIX.
- </h2>
- <p>
- <i>The very ink with which all history is written is merely fluid
- prejudice.</i>
- </p>
- <p>
- &mdash;Pudd'nhead Wilsons's New Calendar
- </p>
- <p>
- <i>There isn't a Parallel of Latitude but thinks it would have been the
- Equator if it had had its rights.</i>
- </p>
- <p>
- &mdash;Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.
- </p>
- <p>
- Next to Mr. Rhodes, to me the most interesting convulsion of nature in
- South Africa was the diamond-crater. The Rand gold fields are a stupendous
- marvel, and they make all other gold fields small, but I was not a
- stranger to gold-mining; 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 novelty which the globe has in
- stock.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 diamonds&mdash;for he
- must have picked 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 laid there so long without exciting any one's interest.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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."&mdash;I know these
- particulars to be correct.<br /> <br />
- </p>
- <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
- <img alt="p700.jpg (5K)" src="images/p700.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
- </div>
- <p>
- <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <p>
- The news flew around, and the South African diamond-boom began. The
- original traveler&mdash;the dishonest one&mdash;now remembered that he had
- once seen a Boer teamster chocking his wagon-wheel 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 filled-up 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, and lost her chance.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 diamonds be found.
- </p>
- <p>
- There are three or four other celebrated craters near by&mdash;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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 $400,000 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.<br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
- <img alt="p702.jpg (18K)" src="images/p702.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
- </div>
- <p>
- <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <p>
- In our day the mines are worked upon scientific principles, under the
- guidance of the ablest mining-engineering 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 diamonds&mdash;and was told that
- each could stir and churn and properly treat 300 car-loads of mud per day
- 1,600 pounds to the car-load&mdash;and reduce it to 3 car-loads of slush.
- I saw the 3 carloads of slush taken to the "pulsators" and there reduced
- to a quarter of a load of nice clean dark-colored 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&mdash;about 6,000 tons&mdash;of 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 car-loads 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- In the dirt of the Kimberley streets there is much hidden wealth. Some
- time ago the people were granted the privilege of a free wash-up. There
- was a general rush, the work was done with thoroughness, and a good
- harvest of diamonds was gathered.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 good-natured lot, and accommodating. They performed a war-dance
- 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 routine they repeat, day in and day out.<br /> <br />
- <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
- <img alt="p704.jpg (28K)" src="images/p704.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
- </div>
- <p>
- <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 he is wholly independent, and need never do a stroke of work again.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 it has made nobody rich but the native who found it.<br />
- <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
- <img alt="p705.jpg (18K)" src="images/p705.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
- </div>
- <p>
- <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 blue-rock, 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 $2,000,000-diamond and handed it over to them. Even the diamond
- culture is not without its romantic episodes.
- </p>
- <p>
- The Koh-i-Noor is a large diamond, and valuable; but it cannot compete in
- these matters with three which&mdash;according to legend&mdash;are 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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
- that&mdash;an incident which had occurred twenty-seven 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 devoted twenty-seven years to hunting for it, and was
- in a position to know.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 shipping-day. 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
- steal diamonds there without inconvenience.
- </p>
- <p>
- We saw the day's output&mdash;shining 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 $20,000,000. Profit,
- about $12,000,000.
- </p>
- <p>
- Young girls were doing the sorting&mdash;a 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.<br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
- <img alt="p707.jpg (15K)" src="images/p707.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
- </div>
- <p>
- <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 it&mdash;wavy
- sea-water with the sunlight playing through it and striking a white-sand
- bottom.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 Mountain&mdash;a
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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
- deputy-God on the one side, deputy-Satan 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 whispers only.
- </p>
- <p>
- What is the secret of his formidable supremacy? One says it is his
- prodigious wealth&mdash;a 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 upon
- him and keeps him in the zenith where the view is unobstructed.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 Fife&mdash;it is the Duke's word&mdash;but 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 harshly-taxed Johannesburgers and makes them his
- friends; at the same time he taxes his Charter-settlers 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
- Charter-Christian 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 common-run 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
- other half.
- </p>
- <p>
- I admire him, I frankly confess it; and when his time comes I shall buy a
- piece of the rope for a keepsake.<br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <h2>
- <a name="CONCLUSION" id="CONCLUSION"></a>CONCLUSION.
- </h2>
- <p>
- <i>I have traveled more than anyone else, and I have noticed that even the
- angels speak English with an accent.</i>
- </p>
- <p>
- &mdash;Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.
- </p>
- <p>
- I saw Table Rock, anyway&mdash;a 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 best-informed 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 Castle&mdash;built by the Dutch East India Company three hundred
- years ago&mdash;where 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 sea-girt 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 to-day, and enjoyed the privilege of their
- hospitalities.
- </p>
- <p>
- And just before I sailed I saw in one of them a quaint old picture which
- was a link in a curious romance&mdash;a 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 back&mdash;nothing came
- but just an impressive silence. This made him an imposing and uncanny
- wonder to the town.
- </p>
- <p>
- Next, he was promoted&mdash;away 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 house I
- saw it&mdash;the quaint figure in pink coat and high black collar.
- </p>
- <p>
- The story seems to be arriving nowhere. But that is because I have not
- finished. Dr. Barry died in Cape Town 30 years ago. It was then discovered
- that he was <i>a woman</i>.
- </p>
- <p>
- The legend goes that enquiries&mdash;soon silenced&mdash;developed 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 chose to change her name and her
- sex and take a new start in the world.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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
- seclusion in the Pretoria prison.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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
- accomplished&mdash;the circumnavigation of this great globe in that little
- time, and I was privately proud of it. For a moment. Then came one of
- those vanity-snubbing 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 wind
- out of it.<br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
-
-
-
-
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