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@@ -0,0 +1,3150 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of American Notes, by Rudyard Kipling + +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.org + + +Title: American Notes + +Author: Rudyard Kipling + +Posting Date: July 21, 2008 [EBook #977] +Release Date: July, 1997 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AMERICAN NOTES *** + + + + +Produced by Judith Boss + + + + + +AMERICAN NOTES + +by Rudyard Kipling + + +With Introduction + + + + +Introduction + +In an issue of the London World in April, 1890, there appeared the +following paragraph: "Two small rooms connected by a tiny hall afford +sufficient space to contain Mr. Rudyard Kipling, the literary hero of +the present hour, 'the man who came from nowhere,' as he says himself, +and who a year ago was consciously nothing in the literary world." + +Six months previous to this Mr. Kipling, then but twenty-four years old, +had arrived in England from India to find that fame had preceded him. He +had already gained fame in India, where scores of cultured and critical +people, after reading "Departmental Ditties," "Plain Tales from the +Hills," and various other stories and verses, had stamped him for a +genius. + +Fortunately for everybody who reads, London interested and stimulated +Mr. Kipling, and he settled down to writing. "The Record of Badalia +Herodsfoot," and his first novel, "The Light that Failed," appeared +in 1890 and 1891; then a collection of verse, "Life's Handicap, being +stories of Mine Own People," was published simultaneously in London and +New York City; then followed more verse, and so on through an unending +series. + +In 1891 Mr. Kipling met the young author Wolcott Balestier, at that +time connected with a London publishing house. A strong attachment grew +between the two, and several months after their first meeting they +came to Mr. Balestier's Vermont home, where they collaborated on "The +Naulahka: A Story of West and East," for which The Century paid the +largest price ever given by an American magazine for a story. The +following year Mr. Kipling married Mr. Balestier's sister in London and +brought her to America. + +The Balestiers were of an aristocratic New York family; the grandfather +of Mrs. Kipling was J. M. Balestier, a prominent lawyer in New York City +and Chicago, who died in 1888, leaving a fortune of about a million. Her +maternal grandfather was E. Peshine Smith of Rochester, N. Y., a noted +author and jurist, who was selected in 1871 by Secretary Hamilton +Fish to go to Japan as the Mikado's adviser in international law. The +ancestral home of the Balestiers was near Brattleboro', Vt., and here +Mr. Kipling brought his bride. The young Englishman was so impressed by +the Vermont scenery that he rented for a time the cottage on the "Bliss +Farm," in which Steele Mackaye the playwright wrote the well known drama +"Hazel Kirke." + +The next spring Mr. Kipling purchased from his brother-in-law, Beatty +Balestier, a tract of land about three miles north of Brattleboro', Vt., +and on this erected a house at a cost of nearly $50,000, which he named +"The Naulahka." This was his home during his sojourn in America. Here +he wrote when in the mood, and for recreation tramped abroad over the +hills. His social duties at this period were not arduous, for to his +home he refused admittance to all but tried friends. He made a study of +the Yankee country dialect and character for "The Walking Delegate," and +while "Captains Courageous," the story of New England fisher life, was +before him he spent some time among the Gloucester fishermen with an +acquaintance who had access to the household gods of these people. + +He returned to England in August, 1896, and did not visit America again +till 1899, when he came with his wife and three children for a limited +time. + +It is hardly fair to Mr. Kipling to call "American Notes" first +impressions, for one reading them will readily see that the impressions +are superficial, little thought being put upon the writing. They seem +super-sarcastic, and would lead one to believe that Mr. Kipling is +antagonistic to America in every respect. This, however, is not true. +These "Notes" aroused much protest and severe criticism when they +appeared in 1891, and are considered so far beneath Mr. Kipling's real +work that they have been nearly suppressed and are rarely found in +a list of his writings. Their very caustic style is of interest to a +student and lover of Kipling, and for this reason the publishers believe +them worthy of a good binding. + +G. P. T. + + + + +Contents + +AT THE GOLDEN GATE + +AMERICAN POLITICS + +AMERICAN SALMON + +THE YELLOWSTONE + +CHICAGO + +THE AMERICAN ARMY + +AMERICA'S DEFENCELESS COASTS + + + + + +I. AT THE GOLDEN GATE + + "Serene, indifferent to fate, + Thou sittest at the Western Gate; + Thou seest the white seas fold their tents, + Oh, warder of two continents; + Thou drawest all things, small and great, + To thee, beside the Western Gate." + +THIS is what Bret Harte has written of the great city of San Francisco, +and for the past fortnight I have been wondering what made him do it. + +There is neither serenity nor indifference to be found in these parts; +and evil would it be for the continents whose wardship were intrusted to +so reckless a guardian. + +Behold me pitched neck-and-crop from twenty days of the high seas into +the whirl of California, deprived of any guidance, and left to draw my +own conclusions. Protect me from the wrath of an outraged community +if these letters be ever read by American eyes! San Francisco is a mad +city--inhabited for the most part by perfectly insane people, whose +women are of a remarkable beauty. + +When the "City of Pekin" steamed through the Golden Gate, I saw with +great joy that the block-house which guarded the mouth of the "finest +harbor in the world, sir," could be silenced by two gunboats from Hong +Kong with safety, comfort, and despatch. Also, there was not a single +American vessel of war in the harbor. + +This may sound bloodthirsty; but remember, I had come with a grievance +upon me--the grievance of the pirated English books. + +Then a reporter leaped aboard, and ere I could gasp held me in his +toils. He pumped me exhaustively while I was getting ashore, demanding +of all things in the world news about Indian journalism. It is an awful +thing to enter a new land with a new lie on your lips. I spoke the truth +to the evil-minded Custom House man who turned my most sacred raiment on +a floor composed of stable refuse and pine splinters; but the reporter +overwhelmed me not so much by his poignant audacity as his beautiful +ignorance. I am sorry now that I did not tell him more lies as I passed +into a city of three hundred thousand white men. Think of it! Three +hundred thousand white men and women gathered in one spot, walking +upon real pavements in front of plate-glass-windowed shops, and talking +something that at first hearing was not very different from English. It +was only when I had tangled myself up in a hopeless maze of small wooden +houses, dust, street refuse, and children who played with empty kerosene +tins, that I discovered the difference of speech. + +"You want to go to the Palace Hotel?" said an affable youth on a dray. +"What in hell are you doing here, then? This is about the lowest ward in +the city. Go six blocks north to corner of Geary and Markey, then walk +around till you strike corner of Gutter and Sixteenth, and that brings +you there." + +I do not vouch for the literal accuracy of these directions, quoting but +from a disordered memory. + +"Amen," I said. "But who am I that I should strike the corners of such +as you name? Peradventure they be gentlemen of repute, and might hit +back. Bring it down to dots, my son." + +I thought he would have smitten me, but he didn't. He explained that no +one ever used the word "street," and that every one was supposed to know +how the streets ran, for sometimes the names were upon the lamps and +sometimes they weren't. Fortified with these directions, I proceeded +till I found a mighty street, full of sumptuous buildings four and five +stories high, but paved with rude cobblestones, after the fashion of the +year 1. + +Here a tram-car, without any visible means of support, slid stealthily +behind me and nearly struck me in the back. This was the famous cable +car of San Francisco, which runs by gripping an endless wire rope sunk +in the ground, and of which I will tell you more anon. A hundred yards +further there was a slight commotion in the street, a gathering together +of three or four, something that glittered as it moved very swiftly. A +ponderous Irish gentleman, with priest's cords in his hat and a small +nickel-plated badge on his fat bosom, emerged from the knot supporting +a Chinaman who had been stabbed in the eye and was bleeding like a +pig. The by-standers went their ways, and the Chinaman, assisted by the +policeman, his own. Of course this was none of my business, but I rather +wanted to know what had happened to the gentleman who had dealt +the stab. It said a great deal for the excellence of the municipal +arrangement of the town that a surging crowd did not at once block the +street to see what was going forward. I was the sixth man and the last +who assisted at the performance, and my curiosity was six times the +greatest. Indeed, I felt ashamed of showing it. + +There were no more incidents till I reached the Palace Hotel, a +seven-storied warren of humanity with a thousand rooms in it. All the +travel books will tell you about hotel arrangements in this country. +They should be seen to be appreciated. Understand clearly--and this +letter is written after a thousand miles of experiences--that money +will not buy you service in the West. When the hotel clerk--the man +who awards your room to you and who is supposed to give you +information--when that resplendent individual stoops to attend to your +wants he does so whistling or humming or picking his teeth, or pauses +to converse with some one he knows. These performances, I gather, are to +impress upon you that he is a free man and your equal. From his general +appearance and the size of his diamonds he ought to be your superior. +There is no necessity for this swaggering self-consciousness of freedom. +Business is business, and the man who is paid to attend to a man might +reasonably devote his whole attention to the job. Out of office hours he +can take his coach and four and pervade society if he pleases. + +In a vast marble-paved hall, under the glare of an electric light, +sat forty or fifty men, and for their use and amusement were provided +spittoons of infinite capacity and generous gape. Most of the men +wore frock-coats and top-hats--the things that we in India put on at a +wedding-breakfast, if we possess them--but they all spat. They spat on +principle. The spittoons were on the staircases, in each bedroom--yea, +and in chambers even more sacred than these. They chased one into +retirement, but they blossomed in chiefest splendor round the bar, and +they were all used, every reeking one of them. + +Just before I began to feel deathly sick another reporter grappled me. +What he wanted to know was the precise area of India in square miles. I +referred him to Whittaker. He had never heard of Whittaker. He wanted it +from my own mouth, and I would not tell him. Then he swerved off, just +like the other man, to details of journalism in our own country. I +ventured to suggest that the interior economy of a paper most concerned +the people who worked it. + +"That's the very thing that interests us," he said. "Have you got +reporters anything like our reporters on Indian newspapers?" + +"We have not," I said, and suppressed the "thank God" rising to my lips. + +"Why haven't you?" said he. + +"Because they would die," I said. + +It was exactly like talking to a child--a very rude little child. He +would begin almost every sentence with, "Now tell me something about +India," and would turn aimlessly from one question to the other without +the least continuity. I was not angry, but keenly interested. The man +was a revelation to me. To his questions I returned answers mendacious +and evasive. After all, it really did not matter what I said. He could +not understand. I can only hope and pray that none of the readers of the +"Pioneer" will ever see that portentous interview. The man made me out +to be an idiot several sizes more drivelling than my destiny intended, +and the rankness of his ignorance managed to distort the few poor facts +with which I supplied him into large and elaborate lies. Then, thought +I, "the matter of American journalism shall be looked into later on. At +present I will enjoy myself." + +No man rose to tell me what were the lions of the place. No one +volunteered any sort of conveyance. I was absolutely alone in this big +city of white folk. By instinct I sought refreshment, and came upon a +barroom full of bad Salon pictures in which men with hats on the backs +of their heads were wolfing food from a counter. It was the institution +of the "free lunch" I had struck. You paid for a drink and got as much +as you wanted to eat. For something less than a rupee a day a man can +feed himself sumptuously in San Francisco, even though he be a bankrupt. +Remember this if ever you are stranded in these parts. + +Later I began a vast but unsystematic exploration of the streets. I +asked for no names. It was enough that the pavements were full of white +men and women, the streets clanging with traffic, and that the restful +roar of a great city rang in my ears. The cable cars glided to all +points of the compass at once. I took them one by one till I could go no +further. San Francisco has been pitched down on the sand bunkers of the +Bikaneer desert. About one fourth of it is ground reclaimed from the +sea--any old-timers will tell you all about that. The remainder is just +ragged, unthrifty sand hills, to-day pegged down by houses. + +From an English point of view there has not been the least attempt +at grading those hills, and indeed you might as well try to grade the +hillocks of Sind. The cable cars have for all practical purposes made +San Francisco a dead level. They take no count of rise or fall, but +slide equably on their appointed courses from one end to the other of a +six-mile street. They turn corners almost at right angles, cross other +lines, and for aught I know may run up the sides of houses. There is +no visible agency of their flight, but once in awhile you shall pass +a five-storied building humming with machinery that winds up an +everlasting wire cable, and the initiated will tell you that here is the +mechanism. I gave up asking questions. If it pleases Providence to make +a car run up and down a slit in the ground for many miles, and if for +twopence halfpenny I can ride in that car, why shall I seek the reasons +of the miracle? Rather let me look out of the windows till the shops +give place to thousands and thousands of little houses made of wood (to +imitate stone), each house just big enough for a man and his family. Let +me watch the people in the cars and try to find out in what manner they +differ from us, their ancestors. + +It grieves me now that I cursed them (in the matter of book piracy), +because I perceived that my curse is working and that their speech is +becoming a horror already. They delude themselves into the belief that +they talk English--the English--and I have already been pitied for +speaking with "an English accent." The man who pitied me spoke, so far +as I was concerned, the language of thieves. And they all do. Where we +put the accent forward they throw it back, and vice versa where we +give the long "a" they use the short, and words so simple as to be past +mistaking they pronounce somewhere up in the dome of their heads. How do +these things happen? + +Oliver Wendell Holmes says that the Yankee school-marm, the cider and +the salt codfish of the Eastern States, are responsible for what he +calls a nasal accent. I know better. They stole books from across the +water without paying for 'em, and the snort of delight was fixed in +their nostrils forever by a just Providence. That is why they talk a +foreign tongue to-day. + +"Cats is dogs, and rabbits is dogs, and so's parrots. But this 'ere +tortoise is an insect, so there ain't no charge," as the old porter +said. + +A Hindoo is a Hindoo and a brother to the man who knows his vernacular. +And a Frenchman is French because he speaks his own language. But the +American has no language. He is dialect, slang, provincialism, accent, +and so forth. Now that I have heard their voices, all the beauty of Bret +Harte is being ruined for me, because I find myself catching through the +roll of his rhythmical prose the cadence of his peculiar fatherland. Get +an American lady to read to you "How Santa Claus Came to Simpson's +Bar," and see how much is, under her tongue, left of the beauty of the +original. + +But I am sorry for Bret Harte. It happened this way. A reporter asked +me what I thought of the city, and I made answer suavely that it was +hallowed ground to me, because of Bret Harte. That was true. + +"Well," said the reporter, "Bret Harte claims California, but California +don't claim Bret Harte. He's been so long in England that he's quite +English. Have you seen our cracker factories or the new offices of the +'Examiner'?" + +He could not understand that to the outside world the city was worth a +great deal less than the man. I never intended to curse the people with +a provincialism so vast as this. + +But let us return to our sheep--which means the sea-lions of the Cliff +House. They are the great show of San Francisco. You take a train which +pulls up the middle of the street (it killed two people the day +before yesterday, being unbraked and driven absolutely regardless of +consequences), and you pull up somewhere at the back of the city on the +Pacific beach. Originally the cliffs and their approaches must have been +pretty, but they have been so carefully defiled with advertisements that +they are now one big blistered abomination. A hundred yards from +the shore stood a big rock covered with the carcasses of the sleek +sea-beasts, who roared and rolled and walloped in the spouting surges. +No bold man had painted the creatures sky-blue or advertised newspapers +on their backs, wherefore they did not match the landscape, which was +chiefly hoarding. Some day, perhaps, whatever sort of government may +obtain in this country will make a restoration of the place and keep it +clean and neat. At present the sovereign people, of whom I have heard so +much already, are vending cherries and painting the virtues of "Little +Bile Beans" all over it. + +Night fell over the Pacific, and the white sea-fog whipped through the +streets, dimming the splendors of the electric lights. It is the use of +this city, her men and women folk, to parade between the hours of eight +and ten a certain street called Cairn Street, where the finest shops are +situated. Here the click of high heels on the pavement is loudest, here +the lights are brightest, and here the thunder of the traffic is most +overwhelming. I watched Young California, and saw that it was, at +least, expensively dressed, cheerful in manner, and self-asserting +in conversation. Also the women were very fair. Perhaps eighteen days +aboard ship had something to do with my unreserved admiration. The +maidens were of generous build, large, well groomed, and attired in +raiment that even to my inexperienced eyes must have cost much. Cairn +Street at nine o'clock levels all distinctions of rank as impartially +as the grave. Again and again I loitered at the heels of a couple of +resplendent beings, only to overhear, when I expected the level voice +of culture, the staccato "Sez he," "Sez I" that is the mark of the white +servant-girl all the world over. + +This was depressing because, in spite of all that goes to the contrary, +fine feathers ought to make fine birds. There was wealth--unlimited +wealth--in the streets, but not an accent that would not have been dear +at fifty cents. Wherefore, revolving in my mind that these folk were +barbarians, I was presently enlightened and made aware that they also +were the heirs of all the ages, and civilized after all. There appeared +before me an affable stranger of prepossessing appearance, with a blue +and an innocent eye. Addressing me by name, he claimed to have met me in +New York, at the Windsor, and to this claim I gave a qualified assent. +I did not remember the fact, but since he was so certain of it, why, +then--I waited developments. + +"And what did you think of Indiana when you came through?" was the next +question. + +It revealed the mystery of previous acquaintance and one or two other +things. With reprehensible carelessness my friend of the light-blue eye +had looked up the name of his victim in the hotel register, and read +"Indiana" for India. + +The provincialism with which I had cursed his people extended to +himself. He could not imagine an Englishman coming through the States +from west to east instead of by the regularly ordained route. My fear +was that in his delight in finding me so responsive he would make +remarks about New York and the Windsor which I could not understand. +And, indeed, he adventured in this direction once or twice, asking me +what I thought of such and such streets, which from his tone I gathered +to be anything but respectable. It is trying to talk unknown New York in +almost unknown San Francisco. But my friend was merciful. He protested +that I was one after his own heart, and pressed upon me rare and curious +drinks at more than one bar. These drinks I accepted with gratitude, as +also the cigars with which his pockets were stored. He would show me the +life of the city. Having no desire to watch a weary old play again, I +evaded the offer and received in lieu of the devil's instruction much +coarse flattery. Curiously constituted is the soul of man. Knowing how +and where this man lied, waiting idly for the finale, I was distinctly +conscious, as he bubbled compliments in my ear, of soft thrills of +gratified pride stealing from hat-rim to boot-heels. I was wise, quoth +he--anybody could see that with half an eye; sagacious, versed in the +ways of the world, an acquaintance to be desired; one who had tasted the +cup of life with discretion. + +All this pleased me, and in a measure numbed the suspicion that was +thoroughly aroused. Eventually the blue-eyed one discovered, nay, +insisted, that I had a taste for cards (this was clumsily worked in, +but it was my fault, for in that I met him half-way and allowed him +no chance of good acting). Hereupon I laid my head upon one side and +simulated unholy wisdom, quoting odds and ends of poker talk, all +ludicrously misapplied. My friend kept his countenance admirably, and +well he might, for five minutes later we arrived, always by the purest +of chance, at a place where we could play cards and also frivol with +Louisiana State Lottery tickets. Would I play? + +"Nay," said I, "for to me cards have neither meaning nor continuity; but +let us assume that I am going to play. How would you and your friends +get to work? Would you play a straight game, or make me drunk, or--well, +the fact is, I'm a newspaper man, and I'd be much obliged if you'd let +me know something about bunco steering." + +My blue-eyed friend erected himself into an obelisk of profanity. He +cursed me by his gods--the right and left bower; he even cursed the very +good cigars he had given me. But, the storm over, he quieted down and +explained. I apologized for causing him to waste an evening, and we +spent a very pleasant time together. + +Inaccuracy, provincialism, and a too hasty rushing to conclusions, +were the rocks that he had split on, but he got his revenge when he +said:--"How would I play with you? From all the poppycock Anglice bosh +you talked about poker, I'd ha' played a straight game, and skinned +you. I wouldn't have taken the trouble to make you drunk. You never knew +anything of the game, but how I was mistaken in going to work on you, +makes me sick." + +He glared at me as though I had done him an injury. To-day I know how it +is that year after year, week after week, the bunco steerer, who is the +confidence trick and the card-sharper man of other climes, secures +his prey. He clavers them over with flattery as the snake clavers the +rabbit. The incident depressed me because it showed I had left the +innocent East far behind and was come to a country where a man must look +out for himself. The very hotels bristled with notices about keeping my +door locked and depositing my valuables in a safe. The white man in a +lump is bad. Weeping softly for O-Toyo (little I knew then that my +heart was to be torn afresh from my bosom) I fell asleep in the clanging +hotel. + +Next morning I had entered upon the deferred inheritance. There are +no princes in America--at least with crowns on their heads--but a +generous-minded member of some royal family received my letter of +introduction. Ere the day closed I was a member of the two clubs, and +booked for many engagements to dinner and party. Now, this prince, upon +whose financial operations be continual increase, had no reason, nor had +the others, his friends, to put himself out for the sake of one Briton +more or less, but he rested not till he had accomplished all in my +behalf that a mother could think of for her debutante daughter. + +Do you know the Bohemian Club of San Francisco? They say its fame +extends over the world. It was created, somewhat on the lines of the +Savage, by men who wrote or drew things, and has blossomed into most +unrepublican luxury. The ruler of the place is an owl--an owl standing +upon a skull and cross-bones, showing forth grimly the wisdom of the man +of letters and the end of his hopes for immortality. The owl stands +on the staircase, a statue four feet high; is carved in the wood-work, +flutters on the frescoed ceiling, is stamped on the note-paper, and +hangs on the walls. He is an ancient and honorable bird. Under his wing +'twas my privilege to meet with white men whose lives were not chained +down to routine of toil, who wrote magazine articles instead of reading +them hurriedly in the pauses of office-work, who painted pictures +instead of contenting themselves with cheap etchings picked up at +another man's sale of effects. Mine were all the rights of social +intercourse, craft by craft, that India, stony-hearted step-mother of +collectors, has swindled us out of. Treading soft carpets and breathing +the incense of superior cigars, I wandered from room to room studying +the paintings in which the members of the club had caricatured +themselves, their associates, and their aims. There was a slick French +audacity about the workmanship of these men of toil unbending that went +straight to the heart of the beholder. And yet it was not altogether +French. A dry grimness of treatment, almost Dutch, marked the +difference. The men painted as they spoke--with certainty. The +club indulges in revelries which it calls "jinks"--high and low, at +intervals--and each of these gatherings is faithfully portrayed in +oils by hands that know their business. In this club were no amateurs +spoiling canvas, because they fancied they could handle oils without +knowledge of shadows or anatomy--no gentleman of leisure ruining the +temper of publishers and an already ruined market with attempts to write +"because everybody writes something these days." + +My hosts were working, or had worked for their daily bread with pen or +paint, and their talk for the most part was of the shop--shoppy--that is +to say, delightful. They extended a large hand of welcome, and were as +brethren, and I did homage to the owl and listened to their talk. An +Indian club about Christmas-time will yield, if properly worked, an +abundant harvest of queer tales; but at a gathering of Americans +from the uttermost ends of their own continent, the tales are larger, +thicker, more spinous, and even more azure than any Indian variety. +Tales of the war I heard told by an ex-officer of the South over his +evening drink to a colonel of the Northern army, my introducer, who had +served as a trooper in the Northern Horse, throwing in emendations from +time to time. "Tales of the Law," which in this country is an amazingly +elastic affair, followed from the lips of a judge. Forgive me for +recording one tale that struck me as new. It may interest the up-country +Bar in India. + +Once upon a time there was Samuelson, a young lawyer, who feared not +God, neither regarded the Bench. (Name, age, and town of the man were +given at great length.) To him no case had ever come as a client, partly +because he lived in a district where lynch law prevailed, and partly +because the most desperate prisoner shrunk from intrusting himself to +the mercies of a phenomenal stammerer. But in time there happened an +aggravated murder--so bad, indeed, that by common consent the citizens +decided, as a prelude to lynching, to give the real law a chance. They +could, in fact, gambol round that murder. They met--the court in its +shirt-sleeves--and against the raw square of the Court House window a +temptingly suggestive branch of a tree fretted the sky. No one appeared +for the prisoner, and, partly in jest, the court advised young Samuelson +to take up the case. + +"The prisoner is undefended, Sam," said the court. "The square thing to +do would be for you to take him aside and do the best you can for him." + +Court, jury, and witness then adjourned to the veranda, while Samuelson +led his client aside to the Court House cells. An hour passed ere the +lawyer returned alone. Mutely the audience questioned. + +"May it p-p-please the c-court," said Samuel-son, "my client's case is +a b-b-b-bad one--a d-d-amn bad one. You told me to do the b-b-best I +c-could for him, judge, so I've jest given him y-your b-b-bay gelding, +an' told him to light out for healthier c-climes, my p-p-professional +opinion being he'd be hanged quicker'n h-h-hades if he dallied here. +B-by this time my client's 'bout fifteen mile out yonder somewheres. +That was the b-b-best I could do for him, may it p-p-please the court." + +The young man, escaping punishment in lieu of the prisoner, made his +fortune ere five years. + +Other voices followed, with equally wondrous tales of riata-throwing +in Mexico and Arizona, of gambling at army posts in Texas, of newspaper +wars waged in godless Chicago (I could not help being interested, but +they were not pretty tricks), of deaths sudden and violent in Montana +and Dakota, of the loves of half-breed maidens in the South, and +fantastic huntings for gold in mysterious Alaska. Above all, they +told the story of the building of old San Francisco, when the "finest +collection of humanity on God's earth, sir, started this town, and the +water came up to the foot of Market Street." Very terrible were some +of the tales, grimly humorous the others, and the men in broadcloth and +fine linen who told them had played their parts in them. + +"And now and again when things got too bad they would toll the city +bell, and the Vigilance Committee turned out and hanged the suspicious +characters. A man didn't begin to be suspected in those days till he had +committed at least one unprovoked murder," said a calm-eyed, portly old +gentleman. + +I looked at the pictures around me, the noiseless, neat-uniformed waiter +behind me, the oak-ribbed ceiling above, the velvet carpet beneath. +It was hard to realize that even twenty years ago you could see a man +hanged with great pomp. Later on I found reason to change my opinion. +The tales gave me a headache and set me thinking. How in the world +was it possible to take in even one thousandth of this huge, roaring, +many-sided continent? In the tobacco-scented silence of the sumptuous +library lay Professor Bryce's book on the American Republic. + +"It is an omen," said I. "He has done all things in all seriousness, and +he may be purchased for half a guinea. Those who desire information of +the most undoubted, must refer to his pages. For me is the daily +round of vagabondage, the recording of the incidents of the hour and +intercourse with the travelling-companion of the day. I will not 'do' +this country at all." + +And I forgot all about India for ten days while I went out to dinners +and watched the social customs of the people, which are entirely +different from our customs, and was introduced to men of many millions. +These persons are harmless in their earlier stages--that is to say, a +man worth three or four million dollars may be a good talker, clever, +amusing, and of the world; a man with twice that amount is to be +avoided, and a twenty million man is--just twenty millions. Take an +instance. I was speaking to a newspaper man about seeing the proprietor +of his journal, as in my innocence I supposed newspaper men occasionally +did. My friend snorted indignantly:--"See him! Great Scott! No. If he +happens to appear in the office, I have to associate with him; but, +thank Heaven! outside of that I move in circles where he cannot come." + +And yet the first thing I have been taught to believe is that money was +everything in America! + + + + +II. AMERICAN POLITICS + +I HAVE been watching machinery in repose after reading about machinery +in action. + +An excellent gentleman, who bears a name honored in the magazine, +writes, much as Disraeli orated, of "the sublime instincts of an ancient +people," the certainty with which they can be trusted to manage their +own affairs in their own way, and the speed with which they are making +for all sorts of desirable goals. This he called a statement or purview +of American politics. + +I went almost directly afterward to a saloon where gentlemen interested +in ward politics nightly congregate. They were not pretty persons. Some +of them were bloated, and they all swore cheerfully till the heavy gold +watch-chains on their fat stomachs rose and fell again; but they talked +over their liquor as men who had power and unquestioned access to places +of trust and profit. + +The magazine writer discussed theories of government; these men the +practice. They had been there. They knew all about it. They banged their +fists on the table and spoke of political "pulls," the vending of votes, +and so forth. Theirs was not the talk of village babblers reconstructing +the affairs of the nation, but of strong, coarse, lustful men fighting +for spoil, and thoroughly understanding the best methods of reaching it. + +I listened long and intently to speech I could not understand--or but in +spots. + +It was the speech of business, however. I had sense enough to know that, +and to do my laughing outside the door. + +Then I began to understand why my pleasant and well-educated hosts in +San Francisco spoke with a bitter scorn of such duties of citizenship as +voting and taking an interest in the distribution of offices. Scores of +men have told me, without false pride, that they would as soon concern +themselves with the public affairs of the city or state as rake +muck with a steam-shovel. It may be that their lofty disdain covers +selfishness, but I should be very sorry habitually to meet the fat +gentlemen with shiny top-hats and plump cigars in whose society I have +been spending the evening. + +Read about politics as the cultured writer of the magazine regards 'em, +and then, and not till then, pay your respects to the gentlemen who run +the grimy reality. + +I'm sick of interviewing night editors who lean their chair against +the wall, and, in response to my demand for the record of a prominent +citizen, answer: "Well, you see, he began by keeping a saloon," etc. +I prefer to believe that my informants are treating me as in the old +sinful days in India I was used to treat the wandering globe-trotter. +They declare that they speak the truth, and the news of dog politics +lately vouchsafed to me in groggeries inclines me to believe, but I +won't. The people are much too nice to slangander as recklessly as I +have been doing. + +Besides, I am hopelessly in love with about eight American maidens--all +perfectly delightful till the next one comes into the room. + +O-Toyo was a darling, but she lacked several things--conversation for +one. You cannot live on giggles. She shall remain unmarried at Nagasaki, +while I roast a battered heart before the shrine of a big Kentucky +blonde, who had for a nurse when she was little a negro "mammy." + +By consequence she has welded on California beauty, Paris dresses, +Eastern culture, Europe trips, and wild Western originality, the queer, +dreamy superstitions of the quarters, and the result is soul-shattering. +And she is but one of many stars. + +Item, a maiden who believes in education and possesses it, with a few +hundred thousand dollars to boot and a taste for slumming. + +Item, the leader of a sort of informal salon where girls congregate, +read papers, and daringly discuss metaphysical problems and candy--a +sloe-eyed, black-browed, imperious maiden she. + +Item, a very small maiden, absolutely without reverence, who can in one +swift sentence trample upon and leave gasping half a dozen young men. + +Item, a millionairess, burdened with her money, lonely, caustic, with +a tongue keen as a sword, yearning for a sphere, but chained up to the +rock of her vast possessions. + +Item, a typewriter maiden earning her own bread in this big city, +because she doesn't think a girl ought to be a burden on her parents, +who quotes Theophile Gautier and moves through the world manfully, much +respected for all her twenty inexperienced summers. + +Item, a woman from cloud-land who has no history in the past or future, +but is discreetly of the present, and strives for the confidences +of male humanity on the grounds of "sympathy" (methinks this is not +altogether a new type). + +Item, a girl in a "dive," blessed with a Greek head and eyes, that seem +to speak all that is best and sweetest in the world. But woe is me! She +has no ideas in this world or the next beyond the consumption of beer +(a commission on each bottle), and protests that she sings the songs +allotted to her nightly without more than the vaguest notion of their +meaning. + +Sweet and comely are the maidens of Devonshire; delicate and of gracious +seeming those who live in the pleasant places of London; fascinating for +all their demureness the damsels of France, clinging closely to their +mothers, with large eyes wondering at the wicked world; excellent in her +own place and to those who understand her is the Anglo-Indian "spin" in +her second season; but the girls of America are above and beyond them +all. They are clever, they can talk--yea, it is said that they think. +Certainly they have an appearance of so doing which is delightfully +deceptive. + +They are original, and regard you between the brows with unabashed eyes +as a sister might look at her brother. They are instructed, too, in the +folly and vanity of the male mind, for they have associated with "the +boys" from babyhood, and can discerningly minister to both vices or +pleasantly snub the possessor. They possess, moreover, a life among +themselves, independent of any masculine associations. They have +societies and clubs and unlimited tea-fights where all the guests are +girls. They are self-possessed, without parting with any tenderness that +is their sex-right; they understand; they can take care of themselves; +they are superbly independent. When you ask them what makes them so +charming, they say:--"It is because we are better educated than your +girls, and--and we are more sensible in regard to men. We have good +times all round, but we aren't taught to regard every man as a possible +husband. Nor is he expected to marry the first girl he calls on +regularly." + +Yes, they have good times, their freedom is large, and they do not abuse +it. They can go driving with young men and receive visits from young +men to an extent that would make an English mother wink with horror, and +neither driver nor drivee has a thought beyond the enjoyment of a good +time. As certain, also, of their own poets have said:-- + + "Man is fire and woman is tow, + And the devil he comes and begins to blow." + +In America the tow is soaked in a solution that makes it fire-proof, +in absolute liberty and large knowledge; consequently, accidents do not +exceed the regular percentage arranged by the devil for each class and +climate under the skies. + +But the freedom of the young girl has its drawbacks. She is--I say it +with all reluctance--irreverent, from her forty-dollar bonnet to the +buckles in her eighteen-dollar shoes. She talks flippantly to her +parents and men old enough to be her grandfather. She has a prescriptive +right to the society of the man who arrives. The parents admit it. + +This is sometimes embarrassing, especially when you call on a man and +his wife for the sake of information--the one being a merchant of varied +knowledge, the other a woman of the world. In five minutes your host has +vanished. In another five his wife has followed him, and you are left +alone with a very charming maiden, doubtless, but certainly not the +person you came to see. She chatters, and you grin, but you leave +with the very strong impression of a wasted morning. This has been my +experience once or twice. I have even said as pointedly as I dared to a +man:--"I came to see you." + +"You'd better see me in my office, then. The house belongs to my women +folk--to my daughter, that is to say." + +He spoke the truth. The American of wealth is owned by his family. They +exploit him for bullion. The women get the ha'pence, the kicks are all +his own. Nothing is too good for an American's daughter (I speak here of +the moneyed classes). + +The girls take every gift as a matter of course, and yet they develop +greatly when a catastrophe arrives and the man of many millions goes up +or goes down, and his daughters take to stenography or typewriting. I +have heard many tales of heroism from the lips of girls who counted the +principals among their friends. The crash came, Mamie, or Hattie, or +Sadie, gave up their maid, their carriages and candy, and with a No. 2 +Remington and a stout heart set about earning their daily bread. + +"And did I drop her from the list of my friends? No, sir," said a +scarlet-lipped vision in white lace; "that might happen to us any day." + +It may be this sense of possible disaster in the air that makes San +Francisco society go with so captivating a rush and whirl. Recklessness +is in the air. I can't explain where it comes from, but there it is. +The roaring winds of the Pacific make you drunk to begin with. The +aggressive luxury on all sides helps out the intoxication, and you spin +forever "down the ringing grooves of change" (there is no small change, +by the way, west of the Rockies) as long as money lasts. They make +greatly and they spend lavishly; not only the rich, but the artisans, +who pay nearly five pounds for a suit of clothes, and for other luxuries +in proportion. + +The young men rejoice in the days of their youth. They gamble, yacht, +race, enjoy prize-fights and cock-fights, the one openly, the other +in secret; they establish luxurious clubs; they break themselves over +horse-flesh and other things, and they are instant in a quarrel. At +twenty they are experienced in business, embark in vast enterprises, +take partners as experienced as themselves, and go to pieces with as +much splendor as their neighbors. Remember that the men who stocked +California in the fifties were physically, and, as far as regards +certain tough virtues, the pick of the earth. The inept and the weakly +died en route, or went under in the days of construction. To this +nucleus were added all the races of the Continent--French, Italian, +German, and, of course, the Jew. + +The result you can see in the large-boned, deep-chested, delicate-handed +women, and long, elastic, well-built boys. It needs no little golden +badge swinging from the watch-chain to mark the native son of the golden +West, the country-bred of California. + +Him I love because he is devoid of fear, carries himself like a man, and +has a heart as big as his books. I fancy, too, he knows how to enjoy the +blessings of life that his province so abundantly bestows upon him. At +least, I heard a little rat of a creature with hock-bottle shoulders +explaining that a man from Chicago could pull the eye-teeth of a +Californian in business. + +Well, if I lived in fairy-land, where cherries were as big as plums, +plums as big as apples, and strawberries of no account, where the +procession of the fruits of the seasons was like a pageant in a Drury +Lane pantomime and the dry air was wine, I should let business slide +once in a way and kick up my heels with my fellows. The tale of the +resources of California--vegetable and mineral--is a fairy-tale. You can +read it in books. You would never believe me. + +All manner of nourishing food, from sea-fish to beef, may be bought at +the lowest prices, and the people are consequently well-developed and of +a high stomach. They demand ten shillings for tinkering a jammed lock of +a trunk; they receive sixteen shillings a day for working as carpenters; +they spend many sixpences on very bad cigars, which the poorest of them +smoke, and they go mad over a prize-fight. When they disagree they do so +fatally, with fire-arms in their hands, and on the public streets. I +was just clear of Mission Street when the trouble began between two +gentlemen, one of whom perforated the other. + +When a policeman, whose name I do not recollect, "fatally shot Ed +Hearney" for attempting to escape arrest, I was in the next street. For +these things I am thankful. It is enough to travel with a policeman in +a tram-car, and, while he arranges his coat-tails as he sits down, to +catch sight of a loaded revolver. It is enough to know that fifty per +cent of the men in the public saloons carry pistols about them. + +The Chinaman waylays his adversary, and methodically chops him to pieces +with his hatchet. Then the press roars about the brutal ferocity of the +pagan. + +The Italian reconstructs his friend with a long knife. The press +complains of the waywardness of the alien. + +The Irishman and the native Californian in their hours of discontent use +the revolver, not once, but six times. The press records the fact, and +asks in the next column whether the world can parallel the progress of +San Francisco. The American who loves his country will tell you that +this sort of thing is confined to the lower classes. Just at present an +ex-judge who was sent to jail by another judge (upon my word I cannot +tell whether these titles mean anything) is breathing red-hot vengeance +against his enemy. The papers have interviewed both parties, and +confidently expect a fatal issue. + +Now, let me draw breath and curse the negro waiter, and through him +the negro in service generally. He has been made a citizen with a vote, +consequently both political parties play with him. But that is neither +here nor there. He will commit in one meal every betise that a senllion +fresh from the plow-tail is capable of, and he will continue to repeat +those faults. He is as complete a heavy-footed, uncomprehending, +bungle-fisted fool as any mem-sahib in the East ever took into her +establishment. But he is according to law a free and independent +citizen--consequently above reproof or criticism. He, and he alone, in +this insane city, will wait at table (the Chinaman doesn't count). + +He is untrained, inept, but he will fill the place and draw the pay. +Now, God and his father's fate made him intellectually inferior to the +Oriental. He insists on pretending that he serves tables by accident--as +a sort of amusement. He wishes you to understand this little fact. You +wish to eat your meals, and, if possible, to have them properly served. +He is a big, black, vain baby and a man rolled into one. + +A colored gentleman who insisted on getting me pie when I wanted +something else, demanded information about India. I gave him some facts +about wages. + +"Oh, hell!" said he, cheerfully, "that wouldn't keep me in cigars for a +month." + +Then he fawned on me for a ten-cent piece. Later he took it upon himself +to pity the natives of India. "Heathens," he called them--this woolly +one, whose race has been the butt of every comedy on the native stage +since the beginning. And I turned and saw by the head upon his shoulders +that he was a Yoruba man, if there be any truth in ethnological castes. +He did his thinking in English, but he was a Yoruba negro, and the race +type had remained the same throughout his generations. And the room was +full of other races--some that looked exactly like Gallas (but the +trade was never recruited from that side of Africa), some duplicates of +Cameroon heads, and some Kroomen, if ever Kroomen wore evening dress. + +The American does not consider little matters of descent, though by this +time he ought to know all about "damnable heredity." As a general rule +he keeps himself very far from the negro, and says things about him +that are not pretty. There are six million negroes, more or less, in +the States, and they are increasing. The American, once having made them +citizens, cannot unmake them. He says, in his newspapers, they ought to +be elevated by education. He is trying this, but it is likely to be +a long job, because black blood is much more adhesive than white, and +throws back with annoying persistence. When the negro gets religion he +returns directly as a hiving bee to the first instincts of his people. +Just now a wave of religion is sweeping over some of the Southern +States. + +Up to the present two Messiahs and a Daniel have appeared, and several +human sacrifices have been offered up to these incarnations. The Daniel +managed to get three young men, who he insisted were Shadrach, Meshach, +and Abednego, to walk into a blast furnace, guaranteeing non-combustion. +They did not return. I have seen nothing of this kind, but I have +attended a negro church. They pray, or are caused to pray by themselves +in this country. The congregation were moved by the spirit to groans and +tears, and one of them danced up the aisle to the mourners' bench. The +motive may have been genuine. The movements of the shaken body were +those of a Zanzibar stick dance, such as you see at Aden on the +coal-boats, and even as I watched the people, the links that bound them +to the white man snapped one by one, and I saw before me the hubshi +(woolly hair) praying to a God he did not understand. Those neatly +dressed folk on the benches, and the gray-headed elder by the window, +were savages, neither more nor less. + +What will the American do with the negro? The South will not consort +with him. In some States miscegenation is a penal offence. The North is +every year less and less in need of his services. + +And he will not disappear. He will continue as a problem. His friends +will urge that he is as good as the white man. His enemies--well, you +can guess what his enemies will do from a little incident that followed +on a recent appointment by the President. He made a negro an assistant +in a post-office where--think of it!--he had to work at the next desk +to a white girl, the daughter of a colonel, one of the first families +of Georgia's modern chivalry, and all the weary, weary rest of it. +The Southern chivalry howled, and hanged or burned some one in effigy. +Perhaps it was the President, and perhaps it was the negro--but the +principle remains the same. They said it was an insult. It is not good +to be a negro in the land of the free and the home of the brave. + +But this is nothing to do with San Francisco and her merry maidens, her +strong, swaggering men, and her wealth of gold and pride. They bore +me to a banquet in honor of a brave lieutenant--Carlin, of the +"Vandalia"--who stuck by his ship in the great cyclone at Apia and +comported himself as an officer should. On that occasion--'twas at the +Bohemian Club--I heard oratory with the roundest of o's, and devoured a +dinner the memory of which will descend with me into the hungry grave. + +There were about forty speeches delivered, and not one of them was +average or ordinary. It was my first introduction to the American eagle +screaming for all it was worth. The lieutenant's heroism served as a peg +from which the silver-tongued ones turned themselves loose and kicked. + +They ransacked the clouds of sunset, the thunderbolts of heaven, the +deeps of hell, and the splendor of the resurrection for tropes and +metaphors, and hurled the result at the head of the guest of the +evening. + +Never since the morning stars sung together for joy, I learned, had an +amazed creation witnessed such superhuman bravery as that displayed +by the American navy in the Samoa cyclone. Till earth rotted in the +phosphorescent star-and-stripe slime of a decayed universe, that +god-like gallantry would not be forgotten. I grieve that I cannot give +the exact words. My attempt at reproducing their spirit is pale +and inadequate. I sat bewildered on a coruscating Niagara of +blatherum-skite. It was magnificent--it was stupendous--and I was +conscious of a wicked desire to hide my face in a napkin and grin. +Then, according to rule, they produced their dead, and across the snowy +tablecloths dragged the corpse of every man slain in the Civil War, and +hurled defiance at "our natural enemy" (England, so please you), "with +her chain of fortresses across the world." Thereafter they glorified +their nation afresh from the beginning, in case any detail should have +been overlooked, and that made me uncomfortable for their sakes. How in +the world can a white man, a sahib, of our blood, stand up and plaster +praise on his own country? He can think as highly as he likes, but this +open-mouthed vehemence of adoration struck me almost as indelicate. My +hosts talked for rather more than three hours, and at the end seemed +ready for three hours more. + +But when the lieutenant--such a big, brave, gentle giant--rose to his +feet, he delivered what seemed to me as the speech of the evening. +I remember nearly the whole of it, and it ran something in this +way:--"Gentlemen--It's very good of you to give me this dinner and to +tell me all these pretty-things, but what I want you to understand--the +fact is, what we want and what we ought to get at once, is a navy--more +ships--lots of 'em--" + +Then we howled the top of the roof off, and I for one fell in love with +Carlin on the spot. Wallah! He was a man. + +The prince among merchants bid me take no heed to the warlike sentiments +of some of the old generals. + +"The sky-rockets are thrown in for effect," quoth he, "and whenever we +get on our hind legs we always express a desire to chaw up England. It's +a sort of family affair." + +And, indeed, when you come to think of it, there is no other country for +the American public speaker to trample upon. + +France has Germany; we have Russia; for Italy Austria is provided; and +the humblest Pathan possesses an ancestral enemy. + +Only America stands out of the racket, and therefore to be in fashion +makes a sand-bag of the mother country, and hangs her when occasion +requires. + +"The chain of fortresses" man, a fascinating talker, explained to me +after the affair that he was compelled to blow off steam. Everybody +expected it. + +When we had chanted "The Star Spangled Banner" not more than eight +times, we adjourned. America is a very great country, but it is not +yet heaven, with electric lights and plush fittings, as the speakers +professed to believe. My listening mind went back to the politicians +in the saloon, who wasted no time in talking about freedom, but quietly +made arrangements to impose their will on the citizens. + +"The judge is a great man, but give thy presents to the clerk," as the +proverb saith. + +And what more remains to tell? I cannot write connectedly, because I +am in love with all those girls aforesaid, and some others who do not +appear in the invoice. The typewriter is an institution of which the +comic papers make much capital, but she is vastly convenient. She and a +companion rent a room in a business quarter, and, aided by a typewriting +machine, copy MSS. at the rate of six annas a page. Only a woman can +operate a typewriting machine, because she has served apprenticeship to +the sewing machine. She can earn as much as one hundred dollars a +month, and professes to regard this form of bread-winning as her natural +destiny. But, oh! how she hates it in her heart of hearts! When I had +got over the surprise of doing business with and trying to give orders +to a young woman of coldly, clerkly aspect intrenched behind gold-rimmed +spectacles, I made inquiries concerning the pleasures of this +independence. They liked it--indeed they did. 'Twas the natural fate +of almost all girls--the recognized custom in America--and I was a +barbarian not to see it in that light. + +"Well, and after?" said I. "What happens?" + +"We work for our bread." + +"And then what do you expect?" + +"Then we shall work for our bread." + +"Till you die?" + +"Ye-es--unless--" + +"Unless what? This is your business, you know. A man works until he +dies." + +"So shall we"--this without enthusiasm--"I suppose." + +Said the partner in the firm, audaciously:--"Sometimes we marry our +employees--at least, that's what the newspapers say." + +The hand banged on half a dozen of the keys of the machine at once. "Yet +I don't care. I hate it--I hate it--I hate it--and you needn't look so!" + +The senior partner was regarding the rebel with grave-eyed reproach. + +"I thought you did," said I. "I don't suppose American girls are much +different from English ones in instinct." + +"Isn't it Theophile Gautier who says that the only difference between +country and country lie in the slang and the uniform of the police?" + +Now, in the name of all the gods at once, what is one to say to a young +lady (who in England would be a person) who earns her own bread, and +very naturally hates the employ, and slings out-of-the-way quotations at +your head? That one falls in love with her goes without saying, but that +is not enough. + +A mission should be established. + + + + +III. AMERICAN SALMON + +The race is neither to the swift nor the battle to the strong; but time +and chance cometh to all. + +I HAVE lived! + +The American Continent may now sink under the sea, for I have taken the +best that it yields, and the best was neither dollars, love, nor real +estate. + +Hear now, gentlemen of the Punjab Fishing Club, who whip the reaches +of the Tavi, and you who painfully import trout over to Octamund, and I +will tell you how old man California and I went fishing, and you shall +envy. + +We returned from The Dalles to Portland by the way we had come, the +steamer stopping en route to pick up a night's catch of one of the +salmon wheels on the river, and to deliver it at a cannery downstream. + +When the proprietor of the wheel announced that his take was two +thousand two hundred and thirty pounds weight of fish, "and not a heavy +catch neither," I thought he lied. But he sent the boxes aboard, and +I counted the salmon by the hundred--huge fifty-pounders hardly dead, +scores of twenty and thirty pounders, and a host of smaller fish. They +were all Chenook salmon, as distinguished from the "steel head" and the +"silver side." That is to say, they were royal salmon, and California +and I dropped a tear over them, as monarchs who deserved a better fate; +but the lust of slaughter entered into our souls, and we talked fish and +forgot the mountain scenery that had so moved us a day before. + +The steamer halted at a rude wooden warehouse built on piles in a +lonely reach of the river, and sent in the fish. I followed them up a +scale-strewn, fishy incline that led to the cannery. The crazy building +was quivering with the machinery on its floors, and a glittering bank of +tin scraps twenty feet high showed where the waste was thrown after the +cans had been punched. + +Only Chinamen were employed on the work, and they looked like +blood-besmeared yellow devils as they crossed the rifts of sunlight that +lay upon the floor. When our consignment arrived, the rough wooden boxes +broke of themselves as they were dumped down under a jet of water, and +the salmon burst out in a stream of quicksilver. A Chinaman jerked up +a twenty-pounder, beheaded and detailed it with two swift strokes of a +knife, flicked out its internal arrangements with a third, and case it +into a blood-dyed tank. The headless fish leaped from under his hands as +though they were facing a rapid. Other Chinamen pulled them from the vat +and thrust them under a thing like a chaff-cutter, which, descending, +hewed them into unseemly red gobbets fit for the can. + +More Chinamen, with yellow, crooked fingers, jammed the stuff into the +cans, which slid down some marvellous machine forthwith, soldering their +own tops as they passed. Each can was hastily tested for flaws, and then +sunk with a hundred companions into a vat of boiling water, there to +be half cooked for a few minutes. The cans bulged slightly after the +operation, and were therefore slidden along by the trolleyful to men +with needles and soldering-irons who vented them and soldered the +aperture. Except for the label, the "Finest Columbia Salmon" was ready +for the market. I was impressed not so much with the speed of the +manufacture as the character of the factory. Inside, on a floor ninety +by forty, the most civilized and murderous of machinery. Outside, three +footsteps, the thick-growing pines and the immense solitude of the +hills. Our steamer only stayed twenty minutes at that place, but I +counted two hundred and forty finished cans made from the catch of the +previous night ere I left the slippery, blood-stained, scale-spangled, +oily floors and the offal-smeared Chinamen. + +We reached Portland, California and I crying for salmon, and a +real-estate man, to whom we had been intrusted by an insurance man, met +us in the street, saying that fifteen miles away, across country, we +should come upon a place called Clackamas, where we might perchance find +what we desired. And California, his coat-tails flying in the wind, ran +to a livery-stable and chartered a wagon and team forthwith. I could +push the wagon about with one hand, so light was its structure. The team +was purely American--that is to say, almost human in its intelligence +and docility. Some one said that the roads were not good on the way to +Clackamas, and warned us against smashing the springs. "Portland," who +had watched the preparations, finally reckoned "He'd come along, +too;" and under heavenly skies we three companions of a day set forth, +California carefully lashing our rods into the carriage, and the +by-standers overwhelming us with directions as to the saw-mills we were +to pass, the ferries we were to cross, and the sign-posts we were to +seek signs from. Half a mile from this city of fifty thousand souls we +struck (and this must be taken literally) a plank road that would have +been a disgrace to an Irish village. + +Then six miles of macadamized road showed us that the team could move. +A railway ran between us and the banks of the Willamette, and another +above us through the mountains. All the land was dotted with small +townships, and the roads were full of farmers in their town wagons, +bunches of tow-haired, boggle-eyed urchins sitting in the hay behind. +The men generally looked like loafers, but their women were all well +dressed. + +Brown braiding on a tailor-made jacket does not, however, consort with +hay-wagons. Then we struck into the woods along what California called a +camina reale--a good road--and Portland a "fair track." It wound in and +out among fire-blackened stumps under pine-trees, along the corners of +log fences, through hollows, which must be hopeless marsh in the winter, +and up absurd gradients. But nowhere throughout its length did I see any +evidence of road-making. There was a track--you couldn't well get off +it, and it was all you could do to stay on it. The dust lay a foot thick +in the blind ruts, and under the dust we found bits of planking and +bundles of brushwood that sent the wagon bounding into the air. The +journey in itself was a delight. Sometimes we crashed through bracken; +anon, where the blackberries grew rankest, we found a lonely little +cemetery, the wooden rails all awry and the pitiful, stumpy head-stones +nodding drunkenly at the soft green mullions. Then, with oaths and +the sound of rent underwood, a yoke of mighty bulls would swing down a +"skid" road, hauling a forty-foot log along a rudely made slide. + +A valley full of wheat and cherry-trees succeeded, and halting at +a house, we bought ten-pound weight of luscious black cherries for +something less than a rupee, and got a drink of icy-cold water for +nothing, while the untended team browsed sagaciously by the road-side. +Once we found a way-side camp of horse-dealers lounging by a pool, ready +for a sale or a swap, and once two sun-tanned youngsters shot down a +hill on Indian ponies, their full creels banging from the high-pommelled +saddle. They had been fishing, and were our brethren, therefore. We +shouted aloud in chorus to scare a wild cat; we squabbled over the +reasons that had led a snake to cross a road; we heaved bits of bark +at a venturesome chipmunk, who was really the little gray squirrel of +India, and had come to call on me; we lost our way, and got the wagon so +beautifully fixed on a khud-bound road that we had to tie the two hind +wheels to get it down. + +Above all, California told tales of Nevada and Arizona, of lonely nights +spent out prospecting, the slaughter of deer and the chase of men, of +woman--lovely woman--who is a firebrand in a Western city and leads +to the popping of pistols, and of the sudden changes and chances +of Fortune, who delights in making the miner or the lumber-man a +quadruplicate millionaire and in "busting" the railroad king. + +That was a day to be remembered, and it had only begun when we drew rein +at a tiny farm-house on the banks of the Clackamas and sought horse feed +and lodging, ere we hastened to the river that broke over a weir not a +quarter of a mile away. Imagine a stream seventy yards broad divided +by a pebbly island, running over seductive "riffles" and swirling into +deep, quiet pools, where the good salmon goes to smoke his pipe after +meals. Get such a stream amid fields of breast-high crops surrounded +by hills of pines, throw in where you please quiet water, long-fenced +meadows, and a hundred-foot bluff just to keep the scenery from growing +too monotonous, and you will get some faint notion of the Clackamas. +The weir had been erected to pen the Chenook salmon from going further +up-stream. We could see them, twenty or thirty pounds, by the score in +the deep pools, or flying madly against the weir and foolishly skinning +their noses. They were not our prey, for they would not rise at a fly, +and we knew it. All the same, when one made his leap against the weir, +and landed on the foot-plank with a jar that shook the board I was +standing on, I would fain have claimed him for my own capture. + +Portland had no rod. He held the gaff and the whiskey. California +sniffed up-stream and down-stream, across the racing water, chose +his ground, and let the gaudy fly drop in the tail of a riffle. I was +getting my rod together, when I heard the joyous shriek of the reel and +the yells of California, and three feet of living silver leaped into the +air far across the water. The forces were engaged. + +The salmon tore up-stream, the tense line cutting the water like a +tide-rip behind him, and the light bamboo bowed to breaking. What +happened thereafter I cannot tell. California swore and prayed, and +Portland shouted advice, and I did all three for what appeared to be +half a day, but was in reality a little over a quarter of an hour, and +sullenly our fish came home with spurts of temper, dashes head on and +sarabands in the air, but home to the bank came he, and the remorseless +reel gathered up the thread of his life inch by inch. We landed him in +a little bay, and the spring weight in his gorgeous gills checked at +eleven and one half pounds. Eleven and one half pounds of fighting +salmon! We danced a war-dance on the pebbles, and California caught me +round the waist in a hug that went near to breaking my ribs, while he +shouted:--"Partner! Partner! This is glory! Now you catch your fish! +Twenty-four years I've waited for this!" + +I went into that icy-cold river and made my cast just above the weir, +and all but foul-hooked a blue-and-black water-snake with a coral mouth +who coiled herself on a stone and hissed male-dictions. + +The next cast--ah, the pride of it, the regal splendor of it! the thrill +that ran down from finger-tip to toe! Then the water boiled. He broke +for the fly and got it. There remained enough sense in me to give him +all he wanted when he jumped not once, but twenty times, before the +up-stream flight that ran my line out to the last half-dozen turns, and +I saw the nickelled reel-bar glitter under the thinning green coils. My +thumb was burned deep when I strove to stopper the line. + +I did not feel it till later, for my soul was out in the dancing weir, +praying for him to turn ere he took my tackle away. And the prayer was +heard. As I bowed back, the butt of the rod on my left hip-bone and the +top joint dipping like unto a weeping willow, he turned and accepted +each inch of slack that I could by any means get in as a favor from on +high. There lie several sorts of success in this world that taste well +in the moment of enjoyment, but I question whether the stealthy theft of +line from an able-bodied salmon who knows exactly what you are doing and +why you are doing it is not sweeter than any other victory within human +scope. Like California's fish, he ran at me head on, and leaped against +the line, but the Lord gave me two hundred and fifty pairs of fingers in +that hour. The banks and the pine-trees danced dizzily round me, but I +only reeled--reeled as for life--reeled for hours, and at the end of +the reeling continued to give him the butt while he sulked in a pool. +California was further up the reach, and with the corner of my eye I +could see him casting with long casts and much skill. Then he struck, +and my fish broke for the weir in the same instant, and down the reach +we came, California and I, reel answering reel even as the morning stars +sing together. + +The first wild enthusiasm of capture had died away. We were both at +work now in deadly earnest to prevent the lines fouling, to stall off a +down-stream rush for shaggy water just above the weir, and at the same +time to get the fish into the shallow bay down-stream that gave the +best practicable landing. Portland bid us both be of good heart, and +volunteered to take the rod from my hands. + +I would rather have died among the pebbles than surrender my right to +play and land a salmon, weight unknown, with an eight-ounce rod. I +heard California, at my ear, it seemed, gasping: "He's a fighter from +Fightersville, sure!" as his fish made a fresh break across the stream. +I saw Portland fall off a log fence, break the overhanging bank, and +clatter down to the pebbles, all sand and landing-net, and I dropped on +a log to rest for a moment. As I drew breath the weary hands slackened +their hold, and I forgot to give him the butt. + +A wild scutter in the water, a plunge, and a break for the head-waters +of the Clackamas was my reward, and the weary toil of reeling in with +one eye under the water and the other on the top joint of the rod was +renewed. Worst of all, I was blocking California's path to the little +landing bay aforesaid, and he had to halt and tire his prize where he +was. + +"The father of all the salmon!" he shouted. "For the love of Heaven, get +your trout to bank, Johnny Bull!" + +But I could do no more. Even the insult failed to move me. The rest of +the game was with the salmon. He suffered himself to be drawn, skip-ping +with pretended delight at getting to the haven where I would fain bring +him. Yet no sooner did he feel shoal water under his ponderous belly +than he backed like a torpedo-boat, and the snarl of the reel told me +that my labor was in vain. A dozen times, at least, this happened ere +the line hinted he had given up the battle and would be towed in. He was +towed. The landing-net was useless for one of his size, and I would not +have him gaffed. I stepped into the shallows and heaved him out with a +respectful hand under the gill, for which kindness he battered me about +the legs with his tail, and I felt the strength of him and was proud. +California had taken my place in the shallows, his fish hard held. I was +up the bank lying full length on the sweet-scented grass and gasping in +company with my first salmon caught, played and landed on an eight-ounce +rod. My hands were cut and bleeding, I was dripping with sweat, spangled +like a harlequin with scales, water from my waist down, nose peeled by +the sun, but utterly, supremely, and consummately happy. + +The beauty, the darling, the daisy, my Salmon Bahadur, weighed twelve +pounds, and I had been seven-and-thirty minutes bringing him to bank! He +had been lightly hooked on the angle of the right jaw, and the hook had +not wearied him. That hour I sat among princes and crowned heads greater +than them all. Below the bank we heard California scuffling with his +salmon and swearing Spanish oaths. Portland and I assisted at the +capture, and the fish dragged the spring balance out by the roots. It +was only constructed to weigh up to fifteen pounds. We stretched the +three fish on the grass--the eleven and a half, the twelve and fifteen +pounder--and we gave an oath that all who came after should merely be +weighed and put back again. + +How shall I tell the glories of that day so that you may be interested? +Again and again did California and I prance down that reach to the +little bay, each with a salmon in tow, and land him in the shallows. +Then Portland took my rod and caught some ten-pounders, and my spoon was +carried away by an unknown leviathan. Each fish, for the merits of the +three that had died so gamely, was hastily hooked on the balance and +flung back. Portland recorded the weight in a pocket-book, for he was +a real-estate man. Each fish fought for all he was worth, and none more +savagely than the smallest, a game little six-pounder. At the end of +six hours we added up the list. Read it. Total: Sixteen fish; aggregate +weight, one hundred and forty pounds. The score in detail runs something +like this--it is only interesting to those concerned: fifteen, eleven +and a half, twelve, ten, nine and three quarters, eight, and so forth; +as I have said, nothing under six pounds, and three ten-pounders. + +Very solemnly and thankfully we put up our rods--it was glory enough for +all time--and returned weeping in each other's arms, weeping tears of +pure joy, to that simple, bare-legged family in the packing-case house +by the water-side. + +The old farmer recollected days and nights of fierce warfare with the +Indians "way back in the fifties," when every ripple of the Columbia +River and her tributaries hid covert danger. God had dowered him with a +queer, crooked gift of expression and a fierce anxiety for the welfare +of his two little sons--tanned and reserved children, who attended +school daily and spoke good English in a strange tongue. + +His wife was an austere woman, who had once been kindly, and perhaps +handsome. + +Very many years of toil had taken the elasticity out of step and voice. +She looked for nothing better than everlasting work--the chafing +detail of housework--and then a grave somewhere up the hill among the +blackberries and the pines. + +But in her grim way she sympathized with her eldest daughter, a small +and silent maiden of eighteen, who had thoughts very far from the meals +she tended and the pans she scoured. + +We stumbled into the household at a crisis, and there was a deal of +downright humanity in that same. A bad, wicked dress-maker had promised +the maiden a dress in time for a to-morrow's rail-way journey, and +though the barefooted Georgy, who stood in very wholesome awe of his +sister, had scoured the woods on a pony in search, that dress never +arrived. So, with sorrow in her heart and a hundred Sister-Anne glances +up the road, she waited upon the strangers and, I doubt not, cursed them +for the wants that stood between her and her need for tears. It was +a genuine little tragedy. The mother, in a heavy, passionless voice, +rebuked her impatience, yet sat up far into the night, bowed over a heap +of sewing for the daughter's benefit. + +These things I beheld in the long marigold-scented twilight and +whispering night, loafing round the little house with California, who +un-folded himself like a lotus to the moon, or in the little boarded +bunk that was our bedroom, swap-ping tales with Portland and the old +man. + +Most of the yarns began in this way:--"Red Larry was a bull-puncher back +of Lone County, Montana," or "There was a man riding the trail met a +jack-rabbit sitting in a cactus," or "'Bout the time of the San Diego +land boom, a woman from Monterey," etc. + +You can try to piece out for yourselves what sort of stories they were. + + + + +IV. THE YELLOWSTONE + +ONCE upon a time there was a carter who brought his team and a friend +into the Yellowstone Park without due thought. Presently they came upon +a few of the natural beauties of the place, and that carter turned his +team into his friend's team, howling:--"Get out o' this, Jim. All hell's +alight under our noses!" + +And they called the place Hell's Half-Acre to this day to witness if the +carter lied. + +We, too, the old lady from Chicago, her husband, Tom, and the good +little mares, came to Hell's Half-Acre, which is about sixty acres in +extent, and when Tom said:--"Would you like to drive over it?" + +We said:--"Certainly not, and if you do we shall report you to the park +authorities." + +There was a plain, blistered, peeled, and abominable, and it was given +over to the sportings and spoutings of devils who threw mud, and steam, +and dirt at each other with whoops, and halloos, and bellowing curses. + +The places smelled of the refuse of the pit, and that odor mixed with +the clean, wholesome aroma of the pines in our nostrils throughout the +day. + +This Yellowstone Park is laid out like Ollendorf, in exercises of +progressive difficulty. Hell's Half-Acre was a prelude to ten or twelve +miles of geyser formation. + +We passed hot streams boiling in the forest; saw whiffs of steam beyond +these, and yet other whiffs breaking through the misty green hills in +the far distance; we trampled on sulphur in crystals, and sniffed things +much worse than any sulphur which is known to the upper world; and so +journeying, bewildered with the novelty, came upon a really park-like +place where Tom suggested we should get out and play with the geysers on +foot. + +Imagine mighty green fields splattered with lime-beds, all the flowers +of the summer growing up to the very edge of the lime. That was our +first glimpse of the geyser basins. + +The buggy had pulled up close to a rough, broken, blistered cone of +spelter stuff between ten and twenty feet high. There was trouble in +that place--moaning, splashing, gurgling, and the clank of machinery. +A spurt of boiling water jumped into the air, and a wash of water +followed. + +I removed swiftly. The old lady from Chicago shrieked. "What a wicked +waste!" said her husband. + +I think they call it the Riverside Geyser. Its spout was torn and ragged +like the mouth of a gun when a shell has burst there. It grumbled madly +for a moment or two, and then was still. I crept over the steaming +lime--it was the burning marl on which Satan lay--and looked fearfully +down its mouth. You should never look a gift geyser in the mouth. + +I beheld a horrible, slippery, slimy funnel with water rising and +falling ten feet at a time. Then the water rose to lip level with a +rush, and an infernal bubbling troubled this Devil's Bethesda before +the sullen heave of the crest of a wave lapped over the edge and made me +run. + +Mark the nature of the human soul! I had begun with awe, not to say +terror, for this was my first experience of such things. I stepped back +from the banks of the Riverside Geyser, saying:--"Pooh! Is that all it +can do?" + +Yet for aught I knew, the whole thing might have blown up at a minute's +notice, she, he, or it being an arrangement of uncertain temper. + +We drifted on, up that miraculous valley. On either side of us were +hills from a thousand or fifteen hundred feet high, wooded from crest to +heel. As far as the eye could range forward were columns of steam in the +air, misshapen lumps of lime, mist-like preadamite monsters, still pools +of turquoise-blue stretches of blue corn-flowers, a river that coiled on +itself twenty times, pointed bowlders of strange colors, and ridges of +glaring, staring white. + +A moon-faced trooper of German extraction--never was park so carefully +patrolled--came up to inform us that as yet we had not seen any of +the real geysers; that they were all a mile or so up the valley, and +tastefully scattered round the hotel in which we would rest for the +night. + +America is a free country, but the citizens look down on the soldier. I +had to entertain that trooper. The old lady from Chicago would have none +of him; so we loafed alone together, now across half-rotten pine logs +sunk in swampy ground, anon over the ringing geyser formation, then +pounding through river-sand or brushing knee-deep through long grass. + +"And why did you enlist?" said I. + +The moon-faced one's face began to work. I thought he would have a fit, +but he told me a story instead--such a nice tale of a naughty little +girl who wrote pretty love letters to two men at once. She was a simple +village wife, but a wicked "family novelette" countess couldn't have +accomplished her ends better. She drove one man nearly wild with the +pretty little treachery, and the other man abandoned her and came West +to forget the trickery. + +Moon-face was that man. + +We rounded and limped over a low spur of hill, and came out upon a field +of aching, snowy lime rolled in sheets, twisted into knots, riven with +rents, and diamonds, and stars, stretching for more than half a mile in +every direction. + +On this place of despair lay most of the big, bad geysers who know when +there is trouble in Krakatoa, who tell the pines when there is a cyclone +on the Atlantic seaboard, and who are exhibited to visitors under pretty +and fanciful names. + +The first mound that I encountered belonged to a goblin who was +splashing in his tub. + +I heard him kick, pull a shower-bath on his shoulders, gasp, crack his +joints, and rub himself down with a towel; then he let the water out of +the bath, as a thoughtful man should, and it all sunk down out of sight +till another goblin arrived. + +So we looked and we wondered at the Beehive, whose mouth is built up +exactly like a hive, at the Turban (which is not in the least like a +turban), and at many, many other geysers, hot holes, and springs. Some +of them rumbled, some hissed, some went off spasmodically, and others +lay dead still in sheets of sapphire and beryl. + +Would you believe that even these terrible creatures have to be guarded +by the troopers to prevent the irreverent Americans from chipping the +cones to pieces, or, worse still, making the geyser sick? If you take a +small barrel full of soft-soap and drop it down a geyser's mouth, that +geyser will presently be forced to lay all before you, and for days +afterward will be of an irritated and inconstant stomach. + +When they told me the tale I was filled with sympathy. Now I wish that +I had soft-soap and tried the experiment on some lonely little beast far +away in the woods. It sounds so probable and so human. + +Yet he would be a bold man who would administer emetics to the Giantess. +She is flat-lipped, having no mouth; she looks like a pool, fifty +feet long and thirty wide, and there is no ornamentation about her. At +irregular intervals she speaks and sends up a volume of water over +two hundred feet high to begin with, then she is angry for a day and a +half--sometimes for two days. + +Owing to her peculiarity of going mad in the night, not many people have +seen the Giantess at her finest; but the clamor of her unrest, men say, +shakes the wooden hotel, and echoes like thunder among the hills. + +The congregation returned to the hotel to put down their impressions +in diaries and note-books, which they wrote up ostentatiously in the +verandas. It was a sweltering hot day, albeit we stood some-what higher +than the level of Simla, and I left that raw pine creaking caravansary +for the cool shade of a clump of pines between whose trunks glimmered +tents. + +A batch of United States troopers came down the road and flung +themselves across the country into their rough lines. The Mexican +cavalryman can ride, though he keeps his accoutrements pig-fashion and +his horse cow-fashion. + +I was free of that camp in five minutes--free to play with the heavy, +lumpy carbines, have the saddles stripped, and punch the horses +knowingly in the ribs. One of the men had been in the fight with +"Wrap-up-his-Tail," and he told me how that great chief, his horse's +tail tied up in red calico, swaggered in front of the United States +cavalry, challenging all to single combat. But he was slain, and a few +of his tribe with him. + +"There's no use in an Indian, anyway," concluded my friend. + +A couple of cow-boys--real cow-boys--jingled through the camp amid a +shower of mild chaff. They were on their way to Cook City, I fancy, +and I know that they never washed. But they were picturesque ruffians +exceedingly, with long spurs, hooded stirrups, slouch hats, fur +weather-cloth over their knees, and pistol-butts just easy to hand. + +"The cow-boy's goin' under before long," said my friend. "Soon as the +country's settled up he'll have to go. But he's mighty useful now. What +would we do without the cow-boy?" + +"As how?" said I, and the camp laughed. + +"He has the money. We have the skill. He comes in winter to play poker +at the military posts. We play poker--a few. When he's lost his money we +make him drunk and let him go. Sometimes we get the wrong man." + +And he told me a tale of an innocent cow-boy who turned up, cleaned out, +at an army post, and played poker for thirty-six hours. But it was +the post that was cleaned out when that long-haired Caucasian removed +himself, heavy with everybody's pay and declining the proffered liquor. + +"Noaw," said the historian, "I don't play with no cow-boy unless he's a +little bit drunk first." + +Ere I departed I gathered from more than one man the significant fact +that up to one hundred yards he felt absolutely secure behind his +revolver. + +"In England, I understand," quoth the limber youth from the South,--"in +England a man isn't allowed to play with no fire-arms. He's got to be +taught all that when he enlists. I didn't want much teaching how to +shoot straight 'fore I served Uncle Sam. And that's just where it is. +But you was talking about your Horse Guards now?" + +I explained briefly some peculiarities of equipment connected with our +crackest crack cavalry. I grieve to say the camp roared. + +"Take 'em over swampy ground. Let 'em run around a bit an' work the +starch out of 'em, an' then, Almighty, if we wouldn't plug 'em at ease +I'd eat their horses." + +There was a maiden--a very little maiden--who had just stepped out of +one of James's novels. She owned a delightful mother and an equally +delightful father--a heavy-eyed, slow-voiced man of finance. The parents +thought that their daughter wanted change. + +She lived in New Hampshire. Accordingly, she had dragged them up to +Alaska and to the Yosemite Valley, and was now returning leisurely, via +the Yellowstone, just in time for the tail-end of the summer season at +Saratoga. + +We had met once or twice before in the park, and I had been amazed and +amused at her critical commendation of the wonders that she saw. +From that very resolute little mouth I received a lecture on American +literature, the nature and inwardness of Washington society, the precise +value of Cable's works as compared with Uncle Remus Harris, and a few +other things that had nothing whatever to do with geysers, but were +altogether pleasant. + +Now, an English maiden who had stumbled on a dust-grimed, lime-washed, +sun-peeled, collarless wanderer come from and going to goodness knows +where, would, her mother inciting her and her father brandishing an +umbrella, have regarded him as a dissolute adventurer--a person to be +disregarded. + +Not so those delightful people from New Hampshire. They were good enough +to treat him--it sounds almost incredible--as a human being, possibly +respectable, probably not in immediate need of financial assistance. + +Papa talked pleasantly and to the point. + +The little maiden strove valiantly with the accent of her birth and that +of her rearing, and mamma smiled benignly in the background. + +Balance this with a story of a young English idiot I met mooning about +inside his high collar, attended by a valet. He condescended to tell +me that "you can't be too careful who you talk to in these parts." And +stalked on, fearing, I suppose, every minute for his social chastity. + +That man was a barbarian (I took occasion to tell him so), for he +comported himself after the manner of the head-hunters and hunted of +Assam who are at perpetual feud one with another. + +You will understand that these foolish stories are introduced in order +to cover the fact that this pen cannot describe the glories of the Upper +Geyser Basin. The evening I spent under the lee of the Castle Geyser, +sitting on a log with some troopers and watching a baronial keep forty +feet high spouting hot water. If the Castle went off first, they said +the Giantess would be quiet, and vice versa, and then they told tales +till the moon got up and a party of campers in the woods gave us all +something to eat. + +Then came soft, turfy forest that deadened the wheels, and two +troopers on detachment duty stole noiselessly behind us. One was the +Wrap-up-his-Tail man, and they talked merrily while the half-broken +horses bucked about among the trees. And so a cavalry escort was with +us for a mile, till we got to a mighty hill strewn with moss agates, +and everybody had to jump out and pant in that thin air. But how +intoxicating it was! The old lady from Chicago ducked like an +emancipated hen as she scuttled about the road, cramming pieces of rock +into her reticule. She sent me fifty yards down to the hill-side to pick +up a piece of broken bottle which she insisted was moss agate. + +"I've some o' that at home, an' they shine. Yes, you go get it, young +man." + +As we climbed the long path the road grew viler and viler till it +became, without disguise, the bed of a torrent; and just when things +were at their rockiest we nearly fell into a little sapphire lake--but +never sapphire was so blue--called Mary's Lake; and that between eight +and nine thousand feet above the sea. + +Afterward, grass downs, all on a vehement slope, so that the buggy, +following the new-made road, ran on the two off-wheels mostly till we +dipped head-first into a ford, climbed up a cliff, raced along down, +dipped again, and pulled up dishevelled at "Larry's" for lunch and an +hour's rest. + +Then we lay on the grass and laughed with sheer bliss of being alive. +This have I known once in Japan, once on the banks of the Columbia, what +time the salmon came in and California howled, and once again in the +Yellowstone by the light of the eyes of the maiden from New Hampshire. +Four little pools lay at my elbow, one was of black water (tepid), one +clear water (cold), one clear water (hot), one red water (boiling). +My newly washed handkerchief covered them all, and we two marvelled as +children marvel. + +"This evening we shall do the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone," said the +maiden. + +"Together?" said I; and she said, "Yes." + +The sun was beginning to sink when we heard the roar of falling waters +and came to a broad river along whose banks we ran. And then--I might +at a pinch describe the infernal regions, but not the other place. The +Yellowstone River has occasion to run through a gorge about eight miles +long. To get to the bottom of the gorge it makes two leaps, one of +about one hundred and twenty and the other of three hundred feet. I +investigated the upper or lesser fall, which is close to the hotel. + +Up to that time nothing particular happens to the Yellowstone--its banks +being only rocky, rather steep, and plentifully adorned with pines. + +At the falls it comes round a corner, green, solid, ribbed with a little +foam, and not more than thirty yards wide. Then it goes over, still +green, and rather more solid than before. After a minute or two, you, +sitting upon a rock directly above the drop, begin to understand that +something has occurred; that the river has jumped between solid cliff +walls, and that the gentle froth of water lapping the sides of the gorge +below is really the outcome of great waves. + +And the river yells aloud; but the cliffs do not allow the yells to +escape. + +That inspection began with curiosity and finished in terror, for it +seemed that the whole world was sliding in chrysolite from under my +feet. I followed with the others round the corner to arrive at the brink +of the canyon. We had to climb up a nearly perpendicular ascent to begin +with, for the ground rises more than the river drops. Stately pine woods +fringe either lip of the gorge, which is the gorge of the Yellowstone. +You'll find all about it in the guide books. + +All that I can say is that without warning or preparation I looked into +a gulf seventeen hundred feet deep, with eagles and fish-hawks +circling far below. And the sides of that gulf were one wild welter of +color--crimson, emerald, cobalt, ochre, amber, honey splashed with port +wine, snow white, vermilion, lemon, and silver gray in wide washes. The +sides did not fall sheer, but were graven by time, and water, and air +into monstrous heads of kings, dead chiefs--men and women of the old +time. So far below that no sound of its strife could reach us, the +Yellowstone River ran a finger-wide strip of jade green. + +The sunlight took those wondrous walls and gave fresh hues to those that +nature had already laid there. + +Evening crept through the pines that shadowed us, but the full glory +of the day flamed in that canyon as we went out very cautiously to +a jutting piece of rock--blood-red or pink it was--that overhung the +deepest deeps of all. + +Now I know what it is to sit enthroned amid the clouds of sunset as the +spirits sit in Blake's pictures. Giddiness took away all sensation of +touch or form, but the sense of blinding color remained. + +When I reached the mainland again I had sworn that I had been floating. + +The maid from New Hampshire said no word for a very long time. Then she +quoted poetry, which was perhaps the best thing she could have done. + +"And to think that this show-place has been going on all these days an' +none of we ever saw it," said the old lady from Chicago, with an acid +glance at her husband. + +"No, only the Injians," said he, unmoved; and the maiden and I laughed. + +Inspiration is fleeting, beauty is vain, and the power of the mind for +wonder limited. Though the shining hosts themselves had risen choiring +from the bottom of the gorge, they would not have prevented her papa +and one baser than he from rolling stones down those stupendous +rainbow-washed slides. Seventeen hundred feet of steep-est pitch and +rather more than seventeen hundred colors for log or bowlder to whirl +through! + +So we heaved things and saw them gather way and bound from white rock to +red or yellow, dragging behind them torrents of color, till the noise of +their descent ceased and they bounded a hundred yards clear at the last +into the Yellowstone. + +"I've been down there," said Tom, that evening. "It's easy to get down +if you're careful--just sit an' slide; but getting up is worse. An' +I found down below there two stones just marked with a picture of the +canyon. I wouldn't sell these rocks not for fifteen dollars." + +And papa and I crawled down to the Yellowstone--just above the first +little fall--to wet a line for good luck. The round moon came up and +turned the cliffs and pines into silver; and a two-pound trout came up +also, and we slew him among the rocks, nearly tumbling into that wild +river. + + . . . . . . + +Then out and away to Livingstone once more. The maiden from New +Hampshire disappeared, papa and mamma with her. Disappeared, too, the +old lady from Chicago, and the others. + + + + +V. CHICAGO + + "I know thy cunning and thy greed, + Thy hard high lust and wilful deed, + And all thy glory loves to tell + Of specious gifts material." + +I HAVE struck a city--a real city--and they call it Chicago. + +The other places do not count. San Francisco was a pleasure-resort as +well as a city, and Salt Lake was a phenomenon. + +This place is the first American city I have encountered. It holds +rather more than a million of people with bodies, and stands on the same +sort of soil as Calcutta. Having seen it, I urgently desire never to +see it again. It is inhabited by savages. Its water is the water of the +Hooghly, and its air is dirt. Also it says that it is the "boss" town of +America. + +I do not believe that it has anything to do with this country. They told +me to go to the Palmer House, which is overmuch gilded and mirrored, +and there I found a huge hall of tessellated marble crammed with people +talking about money, and spitting about everywhere. Other barbarians +charged in and out of this inferno with letters and telegrams in their +hands, and yet others shouted at each other. A man who had drunk quite +as much as was good for him told me that this was "the finest hotel in +the finest city on God Almighty's earth." By the way, when an American +wishes to indicate the next country or state, he says, "God A'mighty's +earth." This prevents discussion and flatters his vanity. + +Then I went out into the streets, which are long and flat and without +end. And verily it is not a good thing to live in the East for any +length of time. Your ideas grow to clash with those held by every +right-thinking man. I looked down interminable vistas flanked with nine, +ten, and fifteen-storied houses, and crowded with men and women, and the +show impressed me with a great horror. + +Except in London--and I have forgotten what London was like--I had +never seen so many white people together, and never such a collection of +miserables. There was no color in the street and no beauty--only a maze +of wire ropes overhead and dirty stone flagging under foot. + +A cab-driver volunteered to show me the glory of the town for so much +an hour, and with him I wandered far. He conceived that all this turmoil +and squash was a thing to be reverently admired, that it was good to +huddle men together in fifteen layers, one atop of the other, and to dig +holes in the ground for offices. + +He said that Chicago was a live town, and that all the creatures +hurrying by me were engaged in business. That is to say they were trying +to make some money that they might not die through lack of food to put +into their bellies. He took me to canals as black as ink, and filled +with un-told abominations, and bid me watch the stream of traffic across +the bridges. + +He then took me into a saloon, and while I drank made me note that the +floor was covered with coins sunk in cement. A Hottentot would not have +been guilty of this sort of barbarism. The coins made an effect pretty +enough, but the man who put them there had no thought of beauty, and, +therefore, he was a savage. + +Then my cab-driver showed me business blocks gay with signs and studded +with fantastic and absurd advertisements of goods, and looking down the +long street so adorned, it was as though each vender stood at his door +howling:--"For the sake of my money, employ or buy of me, and me only!" + +Have you ever seen a crowd at a famine-relief distribution? You know +then how the men leap into the air, stretching out their arms above the +crowd in the hope of being seen, while the women dolorously slap the +stomachs of their children and whimper. I had sooner watch famine relief +than the white man engaged in what he calls legitimate competition. The +one I understand. The other makes me ill. + +And the cabman said that these things were the proof of progress, and +by that I knew he had been reading his newspaper, as every intelligent +American should. The papers tell their clientele in language fitted to +their comprehension that the snarling together of telegraph-wires, the +heaving up of houses, and the making of money is progress. + +I spent ten hours in that huge wilderness, wandering through scores of +miles of these terrible streets and jostling some few hundred thousand +of these terrible people who talked paisa bat through their noses. + +The cabman left me; but after awhile I picked up another man, who was +full of figures, and into my ears he poured them as occasion required or +the big blank factories suggested. Here they turned out so many hundred +thousand dollars' worth of such and such an article; there so many +million other things; this house was worth so many million dollars; +that one so many million, more or less. It was like listening to a child +babbling of its hoard of shells. It was like watching a fool playing +with buttons. But I was expected to do more than listen or watch. +He demanded that I should admire; and the utmost that I could say +was:--"Are these things so? Then I am very sorry for you." + +That made him angry, and he said that insular envy made me unresponsive. +So, you see, I could not make him understand. + +About four and a half hours after Adam was turned out of the Garden of +Eden he felt hungry, and so, bidding Eve take care that her head was not +broken by the descending fruit, shinned up a cocoanut-palm. That hurt +his legs, cut his breast, and made him breathe heavily, and Eve was +tormented with fear lest her lord should miss his footing, and so bring +the tragedy of this world to an end ere the curtain had fairly risen. +Had I met Adam then, I should have been sorry for him. To-day I find +eleven hundred thousand of his sons just as far advanced as their father +in the art of getting food, and immeasurably inferior to him in +that they think that their palm-trees lead straight to the skies. +Consequently, I am sorry in rather more than a million different ways. + +In the East bread comes naturally, even to the poorest, by a little +scratching or the gift of a friend not quite so poor. In less favored +countries one is apt to forget. Then I went to bed. And that was on a +Saturday night. + +Sunday brought me the queerest experiences of all--a revelation of +barbarism complete. I found a place that was officially described as a +church. It was a circus really, but that the worshippers did not know. +There were flowers all about the building, which was fitted up +with plush and stained oak and much luxury, including twisted brass +candlesticks of severest Gothic design. + +To these things and a congregation of savages entered suddenly a +wonderful man, completely in the confidence of their God, whom he +treated colloquially and exploited very much as a newspaper reporter +would exploit a foreign potentate. But, unlike the newspaper reporter, +he never allowed his listeners to forget that he, and not He, was the +centre of attraction. With a voice of silver and with imagery borrowed +from the auction-room, he built up for his hearers a heaven on the lines +of the Palmer House (but with all the gilding real gold, and all +the plate-glass diamond), and set in the centre of it a loud-voiced, +argumentative, very shrewd creation that he called God. One sentence at +this point caught my delighted ear. It was apropos of some question of +the Judgment, and ran:--"No! I tell you God doesn't do business that +way." + +He was giving them a deity whom they could comprehend, and a gold +and jewelled heaven in which they could take a natural interest. He +interlarded his performance with the slang of the streets, the counter, +and the exchange, and he said that religion ought to enter into daily +life. Consequently, I presume he introduced it as daily life--his own +and the life of his friends. + +Then I escaped before the blessing, desiring no benediction at such +hands. But the persons who listened seemed to enjoy themselves, and I +understood that I had met with a popular preacher. + +Later on, when I had perused the sermons of a gentleman called Talmage +and some others, I perceived that I had been listening to a very mild +specimen. Yet that man, with his brutal gold and silver idols, his +hands-in-pocket, cigar-in-mouth, and hat-on-the-back-of-the-head style +of dealing with the sacred vessels, would count himself, spiritually, +quite competent to send a mission to convert the Indians. + +All that Sunday I listened to people who said that the mere fact of +spiking down strips of iron to wood, and getting a steam and iron thing +to run along them was progress, that the telephone was progress, and the +net-work of wires overhead was progress. They repeated their statements +again and again. + +One of them took me to their City Hall and Board of Trade works, and +pointed it out with pride. It was very ugly, but very big, and the +streets in front of it were narrow and unclean. When I saw the faces of +the men who did business in that building, I felt that there had been a +mistake in their billeting. + +By the way, 'tis a consolation to feel that I am not writing to an +English audience. Then I should have to fall into feigned ecstasies over +the marvellous progress of Chicago since the days of the great fire, to +allude casually to the raising of the entire city so many feet above +the level of the lake which it faces, and generally to grovel before the +golden calf. But you, who are desperately poor, and therefore by these +standards of no ac-count, know things, will understand when I write that +they have managed to get a million of men together on flat land, and +that the bulk of these men together appear to be lower than Mahajans and +not so companionable as a Punjabi Jat after harvest. + +But I don't think it was the blind hurry of the people, their argot, and +their grand ignorance of things beyond their immediate interests that +displeased me so much as a study of the daily papers of Chicago. + +Imprimis, there was some sort of a dispute between New York and Chicago +as to which town should give an exhibition of products to be hereafter +holden, and through the medium of their more dignified journals the +two cities were yahooing and hi-yi-ing at each other like opposition +newsboys. They called it humor, but it sounded like something quite +different. + +That was only the first trouble. The second lay in the tone of the +productions. Leading articles which include gems such as "Back of such +and such a place," or, "We noticed, Tuesday, such an event," or, "don't" +for "does not," are things to be accepted with thankfulness. All that +made me want to cry was that in these papers were faithfully reproduced +all the war-cries and "back-talk" of the Palmer House bar, the slang of +the barber-shops, the mental elevation and integrity of the Pullman car +porter, the dignity of the dime museum, and the accuracy of the excited +fish-wife. I am sternly forbidden to believe that the paper educates +the public. Then I am compelled to believe that the public educate the +paper; yet suicides on the press are rare. + +Just when the sense of unreality and oppression was strongest upon me, +and when I most wanted help, a man sat at my side and began to talk what +he called politics. + +I had chanced to pay about six shillings for a travelling-cap worth +eighteen-pence, and he made of the fact a text for a sermon. He said +that this was a rich country, and that the people liked to pay two +hundred per cent, on the value of a thing. They could afford it. He said +that the government imposed a protective duty of from ten to seventy +per cent on foreign-made articles, and that the American manufacturer +consequently could sell his goods for a healthy sum. Thus an imported +hat would, with duty, cost two guineas. The American manufacturer would +make a hat for seventeen shillings, and sell it for one pound fifteen. +In these things, he said, lay the greatness of America and the +effeteness of England. Competition between factory and factory kept the +prices down to decent limits, but I was never to forget that this people +were a rich people, not like the pauper Continentals, and that they +enjoyed paying duties. + +To my weak intellect this seemed rather like juggling with counters. +Everything that I have yet purchased costs about twice as much as it +would in England, and when native made is of inferior quality. + +Moreover, since these lines were first thought of, I have visited a +gentleman who owned a factory which used to produce things. He owned the +factory still. Not a man was in it, but he was drawing a handsome income +from a syndicate of firms for keeping it closed, in order that it might +not produce things. This man said that if protection were abandoned, +a tide of pauper labor would flood the country, and as I looked at his +factory I thought how entirely better it was to have no labor of any +kind whatever rather than face so horrible a future. + +Meantime, do you remember that this peculiar country enjoys paying money +for value not received? I am an alien, and for the life of me I cannot +see why six shillings should be paid for eighteen-penny caps, or eight +shillings for half-crown cigar-cases. When the country fills up to a +decently populated level a few million people who are not aliens will be +smitten with the same sort of blindness. + +But my friend's assertion somehow thoroughly suited the grotesque +ferocity of Chicago. + +See now and judge! In the village of Isser Jang, on the road to +Montgomery, there be four Changar women who winnow corn--some seventy +bushels a year. Beyond their hut lives Purun Dass, the money-lender, who +on good security lends as much as five thousand rupees in a year. Jowala +Singh, the smith, mends the village plows--some thirty, broken at the +share, in three hundred and sixty-five days; and Hukm Chund, who is +letter-writer and head of the little club under the travellers' tree, +generally keeps the village posted in such gossip as the barber and the +mid-wife have not yet made public property. + +Chicago husks and winnows her wheat by the million bushels, a hundred +banks lend hundreds of millions of dollars in the year, and scores of +factories turn out plow-gear and machinery by steam. Scores of daily +papers do work which Hukm Chund and the barber and the midwife perform, +with due regard for public opinion, in the village of Isser Jang. So +far as manufactories go, the difference between Chicago on the lake, +and Isser Jang on the Montgomery road, is one of degree only, and not of +kind. As far as the understanding of the uses of life goes, Isser Jang, +for all its seasonal cholers, has the advantage over Chicago. + +Jowala Singh knows and takes care to avoid the three or four +ghoul-haunted fields on the outskirts of the village; but he is not +urged by millions of devils to run about all day in the sun and swear +that his plowshares are the best in the Punjab; nor does Purun Dass +fly forth in an ekka more than once or twice a year, and he knows, on +a pinch, how to use the railway and the telegraph as well as any son of +Israel in Chicago. But this is absurd. + +The East is not the West, and these men must continue to deal with the +machinery of life, and to call it progress. Their very preachers +dare not rebuke them. They gloss over the hunting for money and the +thrice-sharpened bitterness of Adam's curse, by saying that such things +dower a man with a larger range of thoughts and higher aspirations. They +do not say, "Free yourselves from your own slavery," but rather, "If you +can possibly manage it, do not set quite so much store on the things of +this world." + +And they do not know what the things of this world are! + +I went off to see cattle killed, by way of clearing my head, which, as +you will perceive, was getting muddled. They say every Englishman goes +to the Chicago stock-yards. You shall find them about six miles from the +city; and once having seen them, you will never forget the sight. + +As far as the eye can reach stretches a town-ship of cattle-pens, +cunningly divided into blocks, so that the animals of any pen can be +speedily driven out close to an inclined timber path which leads to an +elevated covered way straddling high above the pens. These viaducts are +two-storied. On the upper story tramp the doomed cattle, stolidly +for the most part. On the lower, with a scuffling of sharp hoofs and +multitudinous yells, run the pigs, the same end being appointed for +each. Thus you will see the gangs of cattle waiting their turn--as they +wait sometimes for days; and they need not be distressed by the sight of +their fellows running about in the fear of death. All they know is that +a man on horseback causes their next-door neighbors to move by means of +a whip. Certain bars and fences are unshipped, and behold! that crowd +have gone up the mouth of a sloping tunnel and return no more. + +It is different with the pigs. They shriek back the news of the exodus +to their friends, and a hundred pens skirl responsive. + +It was to the pigs I first addressed myself. Selecting a viaduct which +was full of them, as I could hear, though I could not see, I marked a +sombre building whereto it ran, and went there, not unalarmed by stray +cattle who had managed to escape from their proper quarters. A pleasant +smell of brine warned me of what was coming. I entered the factory +and found it full of pork in barrels, and on another story more pork +un-barrelled, and in a huge room the halves of swine, for whose behoof +great lumps of ice were being pitched in at the window. That room was +the mortuary chamber where the pigs lay for a little while in state ere +they began their progress through such passages as kings may sometimes +travel. + +Turning a corner, and not noting an overhead arrangement of greased +rail, wheel, and pulley, I ran into the arms of four eviscerated +carcasses, all pure white and of a human aspect, pushed by a man clad in +vehement red. When I leaped aside, the floor was slippery under me. Also +there was a flavor of farm-yard in my nostrils and the shouting of a +multitude in my ears. But there was no joy in that shouting. Twelve men +stood in two lines six a side. Between them and overhead ran the railway +of death that had nearly shunted me through the window. Each man carried +a knife, the sleeves of his shirt were cut off at the elbows, and from +bosom to heel he was blood-red. + +Beyond this perspective was a column of steam, and beyond that was +where I worked my awe-struck way, unwilling to touch beam or wall. The +atmosphere was stifling as a night in the rains by reason of the steam +and the crowd. I climbed to the beginning of things and, perched upon a +narrow beam, overlooked very nearly all the pigs ever bred in Wisconsin. +They had just been shot out of the mouth of the viaduct and huddled +together in a large pen. Thence they were flicked persuasively, a few +at a time, into a smaller chamber, and there a man fixed tackle on their +hinder legs, so that they rose in the air, suspended from the railway of +death. + +Oh! it was then they shrieked and called on their mothers, and made +promises of amendment, till the tackle-man punted them in their backs +and they slid head down into a brick-floored passage, very like a big +kitchen sink, that was blood-red. There awaited them a red man with +a knife, which he passed jauntily through their throats, and the +full-voiced shriek became a splutter, and then a fall as of heavy +tropical rain, and the red man, who was backed against the passage-wall, +you will understand, stood clear of the wildly kicking hoofs and passed +his hand over his eyes, not from any feeling of compassion, but because +the spurted blood was in his eyes, and he had barely time to stick the +next arrival. Then that first stuck swine dropped, still kicking, into +a great vat of boiling water, and spoke no more words, but wallowed +in obedience to some unseen machinery, and presently came forth at +the lower end of the vat, and was heaved on the blades of a blunt +paddle-wheel, things which said "Hough, hough, hough!" and skelped all +the hair off him, except what little a couple of men with knives could +remove. + +Then he was again hitched by the heels to that said railway, and passed +down the line of the twelve men, each man with a knife--losing with each +man a certain amount of his individuality, which was taken away in a +wheel-barrow, and when he reached the last man he was very beautiful +to behold, but excessively unstuffed and limp. Preponderance of +individuality was ever a bar to foreign travel. That pig could have been +in case to visit you in India had he not parted with some of his most +cherished notions. + +The dissecting part impressed me not so much as the slaying. They were +so excessively alive, these pigs. And then, they were so excessively +dead, and the man in the dripping, clammy, not passage did not seem to +care, and ere the blood of such a one had ceased to foam on the floor, +such another and four friends with him had shrieked and died. But a pig +is only the unclean animal--the forbidden of the prophet. + + + + +VI. THE AMERICAN ARMY + +I SHOULD very much like to deliver a dissertation on the American army +and the possibilities of its extension. You see, it is such a beautiful +little army, and the dear people don't quite understand what to do with +it. The theory is that it is an instructional nucleus round which +the militia of the country will rally, and from which they will get a +stiffening in time of danger. Yet other people consider that the +army should be built, like a pair of lazy tongs--on the principle of +elasticity and extension--so that in time of need it may fill up its +skeleton battalions and empty saddle troops. This is real wisdom, +be-cause the American army, as at present constituted, is made up +of:--Twenty-five regiments infantry, ten companies each. + +Ten regiments cavalry, twelve companies each. + +Five regiments artillery, twelve companies each. + +Now there is a notion in the air to reorganize the service on these +lines:--Eighteen regiments infantry at four battalions, four companies +each; third battalion, skeleton; fourth on paper. + +Eight regiments cavalry at four battalions, four troops each; third +battalion, skeleton; fourth on paper. + +Five regiments artillery at four battalions, four companies each; third +battalion, skeleton; fourth on paper. + +Observe the beauty of this business. The third battalion will have its +officers, but no men; the fourth will probably have a rendezvous and +some equipment. + +It is not contemplated to give it anything more definite at present. +Assuming the regiments to be made up to full complement, we get an army +of fifty thousand men, which after the need passes away must be cut down +fifty per cent, to the huge delight of the officers. + +The military needs of the States be three: (a) Frontier warfare, an +employment well within the grip of the present army of twenty-five +thousand, and in the nature of things growing less arduous year by year; +(b) internal riots and commotions which rise up like a dust devil, whirl +furiously, and die out long before the authorities at Washington could +begin to fill up even the third skeleton battalions, much less hunt +about for material for the fourth; (c) civil war, in which, as the case +in the affair of the North and South, the regular army would be swamped +in the mass of militia and armed volunteers would turn the land into a +hell. + +Yet the authorities persist in regarding an external war as a thing to +be seriously considered. + +The Power that would disembark troops on American soil would be capable +of heaving a shovelful of mud into the Atlantic in the hope of filling +it up. Consequently, the authorities are fascinated with the idea of the +sliding scale or concertina army. This is an hereditary instinct, for +you know that when we English have got together two companies, one +machine gun, a sick bullock, forty generals, and a mass of W. O. forms, +we say we possess "an army corps capable of indefinite extension." + +The American army is a beautiful little army. Some day, when all +the Indians are happily dead or drunk, it ought to make the finest +scientific and survey corps that the world has ever seen; it does +excellent work now, but there is this defect in its nature: It is +officered, as you know, from West Point. + +The mischief of it is that West Point seems to be created for the +purpose of spreading a general knowledge of military matters among the +people. A boy goes up to that institution, gets his pass, and returns +to civil life, so they tell me, with a dangerous knowledge that he is +a suckling Von Moltke, and may apply his learning when occasion offers. +Given trouble, that man will be a nuisance, because he is a hideously +versatile American, to begin with, as cock-sure of himself as a man +can be, and with all the racial disregard for human life to back him, +through any demi-semi-professional generalship. + +In a country where, as the records of the daily papers show, men engaged +in a conflict with police or jails are all too ready to adopt a military +formation and get heavily shot in a sort of cheap, half-constructed +warfare, instead of being decently scared by the appearance of the +military, this sort of arrangement does not seem wise. + +The bond between the States is of an amazing tenuity. So long as they +do not absolutely march into the District of Columbia, sit on the +Washington statues, and invent a flag of their own, they can legislate, +lynch, hunt negroes through swamps, divorce, railroad, and rampage +as much as ever they choose. They do not need knowledge of their own +military strength to back their genial lawlessness. + +That regular army, which is a dear little army, should be kept to +itself, blooded on detachment duty, turned into the paths of science, +and now and again assembled at feasts of Free Masons, and so forth. + +It is too tiny to be a political power. The immortal wreck of the +Grand Army of the Republic is a political power of the largest and most +unblushing description. It ought not to help to lay the foundations of +an amateur military power that is blind and irresponsible. + +By great good luck the evil-minded train, already delayed twelve hours +by a burned bridge, brought me to the city on a Saturday by way of that +valley which the Mormons, over their efforts, had caused to blossom like +the rose. Twelve hours previously I had entered into a new world where, +in conversation, every one was either a Mormon or a Gentile. It is not +seemly for a free and independent citizen to dub himself a Gentile, but +the Mayor of Ogden--which is the Gentile city of the valley--told me +that there must be some distinction between the two flocks. + +Long before the fruit orchards of Logan or the shining levels of the +Salt Lake had been reached, that mayor--himself a Gentile, and one +renowned for his dealings with the Mormons--told me that the great +question of the existence of the power within the power was being +gradually solved by the ballot and by education. + +All the beauty of the valley could not make me forget it. And the valley +is very fair. Bench after bench of land, flat as a table against the +flanks of the ringing hills, marks where the Salt Lake rested for awhile +in its collapse from an inland sea to a lake fifty miles long and thirty +broad. + +There are the makings of a very fine creed about Mormonism. To begin +with, the Church is rather more absolute than that of Rome. Drop the +polygamy plank in the platform, but on the other hand deal lightly with +certain forms of excess; keep the quality of the recruit down to the +low mental level, and see that the best of all the agricultural +science available is in the hands of the elders, and there you have +a first-class engine for pioneer work. The tawdry mysticism and the +borrowing from Freemasonry serve the low caste Swede and Dane, the +Welshman and the Cornish cotter, just as well as a highly organized +heaven. + +Then I went about the streets and peeped into people's front windows, +and the decorations upon the tables were after the manner of the year +1850. Main Street was full of country folk from the desert, come in to +trade with the Zion Mercantile Co-operative Institute. The Church, I +fancy, looks after the finances of this thing, and it consequently pays +good dividends. + +The faces of the women were not lovely. In-deed, but for the certainty +that ugly persons are just as irrational in the matter of undivided love +as the beautiful, it seems that polygamy was a blessed institution for +the women, and that only the dread threats of the spiritual power could +drive the hulking, board-faced men into it. The women wore hideous +garments, and the men appeared to be tied up with strings. + +They would market all that afternoon, and on Sunday go to the +praying-place. I tried to talk to a few of them, but they spoke strange +tongues, and stared and behaved like cows. Yet one woman, and not an +altogether ugly one, confided to me that she hated the idea of Salt Lake +City being turned into a show-place for the amusement of the Gentiles. + +"If we 'have our own institutions, that ain't no reason why people +should come 'ere and stare at us, his it?" + +The dropped "h" betrayed her. + +"And when did you leave England?" I said. + +"Summer of '84. I am Dorset," she said. "The Mormon agent was very +good to us, and we was very poor. Now we're better off--my father, an' +mother, an' me." + +"Then you like the State?" + +She misunderstood at first. + +"Oh, I ain't livin' in the state of polygamy. Not me, yet. I ain't +married. I like where I am. I've got things o' my own--and some land." + +"But I suppose you will--" + +"Not me. I ain't like them Swedes an' Danes. I ain't got nothin' to say +for or against polygamy. It's the elders' business, an' between you an' +me, I don't think it's going on much longer. You'll 'ear them in the +'ouse to-morrer talkin' as if it was spreadin' all over America. The +Swedes, they think it his. I know it hisn't." + +"But you've got your land all right?" + +"Oh, yes; we've got our land, an' we never say aught against polygamy, +o' course--father, an' mother, an' me." + +On a table-land overlooking all the city stands the United States +garrison of infantry and artillery. The State of Utah can do nearly +anything it pleases until that much-to-be-desired hour when the Gentile +vote shall quietly swamp out Mormonism; but the garrison is kept there +in case of accidents. The big, shark-mouthed, pig-eared, heavy-boned +farmers sometimes take to their creed with wildest fanaticism, and in +past years have made life excessively unpleasant for the Gentile when he +was few in the land. But to-day, so far from killing openly or secretly, +or burning Gentile farms, it is all the Mormon dare do to feebly try +to boycott the interloper. His journals preach defiance to the United +States Government, and in the Tabernacle on a Sunday the preachers +follow suit. + +When I went there, the place was full of people who would have been much +better for a washing. + +A man rose up and told them that they were the chosen of God, the elect +of Israel; that they were to obey their priests, and that there was a +good time coming. I fancy that they had heard all this before so +many times it produced no impression whatever, even as the sublimest +mysteries of another faith lose salt through constant iteration. They +breathed heavily through their noses, and stared straight in front of +them--impassive as flat fish. + + + + +VII. AMERICA'S DEFENCELESS COASTS + +JUST suppose that America were twenty days distant from England. Then a +man could study its customs with undivided soul; but being so very +near next door, he goes about the land with one eye on the smoke of the +flesh-pots of the old country across the seas, while with the other he +squints biliously and prejudicially at the alien. + +I can lay my hand upon my sacred heart and affirm that up to to-day I +have never taken three consecutive trips by rail without being delayed +by an accident. That it was an accident to another train makes no +difference. My own turn may come next. + +A few miles from peaceful, pleasure-loving Lakewood they had managed to +upset an express goods train to the detriment of the flimsy permanent +way; and thus the train which should have left at three departed at +seven in the evening. I was not angry. I was scarcely even interested. +When an American train starts on time I begin to anticipate disaster--a +visitation for such good luck, you understand. + +Buffalo is a large village of a quarter of a million inhabitants, +situated on the seashore, which is falsely called Lake Erie. It is a +peaceful place, and more like an English county town than most of its +friends. + +Once clear of the main business streets, you launch upon miles and miles +of asphalted roads running between cottages and cut-stone residences of +those who have money and peace. All the Eastern cities own this fringe +of elegance, but except in Chicago nowhere is the fringe deeper or more +heavily widened than in Buffalo. + +The American will go to a bad place because he cannot speak English, +and is proud of it; but he knows how to make a home for himself and his +mate, knows how to keep the grass green in front of his veranda, and how +to fullest use the mechanism of life--hot water, gas, good bell-ropes, +telephones, etc. His shops sell him delightful household fitments +at very moderate rates, and he is encompassed with all manner of +labor-saving appliances. This does not prevent his wife and his daughter +working themselves to death over household drudgery; but the intention +is good. + +When you have seen the outside of a few hundred thousand of these homes +and the insides of a few score, you begin to understand why the American +(the respectable one) does not take a deep interest in what they call +"politics," and why he is so vaguely and generally proud of the country +that enables him to be so comfortable. How can the owner of a dainty +chalet, with smoked-oak furniture, imitation Venetian tapestry curtains, +hot and cold water laid on, a bed of geraniums and hollyhocks, a baby +crawling down the veranda, and a self-acting twirly-whirly hose gently +hissing over the grass in the balmy dusk of an August evening--how +can such a man despair of the Republic, or descend into the streets on +voting days and mix cheerfully with "the boys"? + +No, it is the stranger--the homeless jackal of a stranger--whose +interest in the country is limited to his hotel-bill and a +railway-ticket, that can run from Dan to Beersheba, crying:--"All is +barren!" + +Every good American wants a home--a pretty house and a little piece of +land of his very own; and every other good American seems to get it. + +It was when my gigantic intellect was grappling with this question +that I confirmed a discovery half made in the West. The natives of +most classes marry young--absurdly young. One of my informants--not the +twenty-two-year-old husband I met on Lake Chautauqua--said that from +twenty to twenty-four was about the usual time for this folly. And +when I asked whether the practice was confined to the constitutionally +improvident classes, he said "No" very quickly. He said it was a general +custom, and nobody saw anything wrong with it. + +"I guess, perhaps, very early marriage may account for a good deal of +the divorce," said he, reflectively. + +Whereat I was silent. Their marriages and their divorces only concern +these people; and neither I travelling, nor you, who may come after, +have any right to make rude remarks about them. Only--only coming from +a land where a man begins to lightly turn to thoughts of love not before +he is thirty, I own that playing at house-keeping before that age rather +surprised me. Out in the West, though, they marry, boys and girls, from +sixteen upward, and I have met more than one bride of fifteen--husband +aged twenty. + +"When man and woman are agreed, what can the Kazi do?" + +From those peaceful homes, and the envy they inspire (two trunks and +a walking-stick and a bit of pine forest in British Columbia are not +satisfactory, any way you look at them), I turned me to the lake front +of Buffalo, where the steamers bellow to the grain elevators, and the +locomotives yell to the coal-shutes, and the canal barges jostle the +lumber-raft half a mile long as it snakes across the water in tow of a +launch, and earth, and sky, and sea alike are thick with smoke. + +In the old days, before the railway ran into the city, all the business +quarters fringed the lake-shore where the traffic was largest. To-day +the business quarters have gone up-town to meet the railroad; the lake +traffic still exists, but you shall find a narrow belt of red-brick +desolation, broken windows, gap-toothed doors, and streets where the +grass grows between the crowded wharves and the bustling city. To the +lake front comes wheat from Chicago, lumber, coal, and ore, and a large +trade in cheap excursionists. + +It was my felicity to catch a grain steamer and an elevator emptying +that same steamer. The steamer might have been two thousand tons burden. +She was laden with wheat in bulk; from stem to stern, thirteen feet +deep, lay the clean, red wheat. There was no twenty-five per cent dirt +admixture about it at all. It was wheat, fit for the grindstones as it +lay. They manoeuvred the fore-hatch of that steamer directly under an +elevator--a house of red tin a hundred and fifty feet high. Then they +let down into that fore-hatch a trunk as if it had been the trunk of an +elephant, but stiff, because it was a pipe of iron-champed wood. And +the trunk had a steel-shod nose to it, and contained an endless chain of +steel buckets. + +Then the captain swore, raising his eyes to heaven, and a gruff voice +answered him from the place he swore at, and certain machinery, also in +the firmament, began to clack, and the glittering, steel-shod nose of +that trunk burrowed into the wheat, and the wheat quivered and sunk +upon the instant as water sinks when the siphon sucks, because the steel +buckets within the trunk were flying upon their endless round, carrying +away each its appointed morsel of wheat. + +The elevator was a Persian well wheel--a wheel squashed out thin +and cased in a pipe, a wheel driven not by bullocks, but by much +horse-power, licking up the grain at the rate of thou-sands of +bushels the hour. And the wheat sunk into the fore-hatch while a man +looked--sunk till the brown timbers of the bulkheads showed bare, and +men leaped down through clouds of golden dust and shovelled the wheat +furiously round the nose of the trunk, and got a steam-shovel of +glittering steel and made that shovel also, till there remained of the +grain not more than a horse leaves in the fold of his nose-bag. + +In this manner do they handle wheat at Buffalo. On one side of the +elevator is the steamer, on the other the railway track; and the wheat +is loaded into the cars in bulk. Wah! wah! God is great, and I do not +think He ever intended Gar Sahai or Luckman Narain to supply England +with her wheat. India can cut in not without profit to herself when her +harvest is good and the American yield poor; but this very big country +can, upon the average, supply the earth with all the beef and bread that +is required. + +A man in the train said to me:--"We kin feed all the earth, jest as +easily as we kin whip all the earth." + +Now the second statement is as false as the first is true. One of these +days the respectable Republic will find this out. + +Unfortunately we, the English, will never be the people to teach her; +because she is a chartered libertine allowed to say and do anything +she likes, from demanding the head of the empress in an editorial +waste-basket, to chevying Canadian schooners up and down the Alaska +Seas. It is perfectly impossible to go to war with these people, +whatever they may do. + +They are much too nice, in the first place, and in the second, it would +throw out all the passenger traffic of the Atlantic, and upset the +financial arrangements of the English syndicates who have invested their +money in breweries, railways, and the like, and in the third, it's not +to be done. Everybody knows that, and no one better than the American. + +Yet there are other powers who are not "ohai band" (of the +brotherhood)--China, for instance. Try to believe an irresponsible +writer when he assures you that China's fleet to-day, if properly +manned, could waft the entire American navy out of the water and into +the blue. The big, fat Republic that is afraid of nothing, because +nothing up to the present date has happened to make her afraid, is as +unprotected as a jelly-fish. Not internally, of course--it would be +madness for any Power to throw men into America; they would die--but as +far as regards coast defence. + +From five miles out at sea (I have seen a test of her "fortified" ports) +a ship of the power of H. M. S. "Collingwood" (they haven't run her on +a rock yet) would wipe out any or every town from San Francisco to Long +Branch; and three first-class ironclads would account for New York, +Bartholdi's Statue and all. + +Reflect on this. 'Twould be "Pay up or go up" round the entire coast +of the United States. To this furiously answers the patriotic +American:--"We should not pay. We should invent a Columbiad in Pittsburg +or--or anywhere else, and blow any outsider into h--l." + +They might invent. They might lay waste their cities and retire inland, +for they can subsist entirely on their own produce. Meantime, in a war +waged the only way it could be waged by an unscrupulous Power, their +coast cities and their dock-yards would be ashes. They could construct +their navy inland if they liked, but you could never bring a ship down +to the water-ways, as they stand now. + +They could not, with an ordinary water patrol, despatch one regiment +of men six miles across the seas. There would be about five million +excessively angry, armed men pent up within American limits. These men +would require ships to get themselves afloat. The country has no such +ships, and until the ships were built New York need not be allowed a +single-wheeled carriage within her limits. + +Behold now the glorious condition of this Republic which has no fear. +There is ransom and loot past the counting of man on her seaboard +alone--plunder that would enrich a nation--and she has neither a navy +nor half a dozen first-class ports to guard the whole. No man catches a +snake by the tail, because the creature will sting; but you can build a +fire around a snake that will make it squirm. + +The country is supposed to be building a navy now. When the ships are +completed her alliance will be worth having--if the alliance of any +republic can be relied upon. For the next three years she can be hurt, +and badly hurt. Pity it is that she is of our own blood, looking at the +matter from a Pindarris point of view. Dog cannot eat dog. + +These sinful reflections were prompted by the sight of the beautifully +unprotected condition of Buffalo--a city that could be made to pay up +five million dollars without feeling it. There are her companies of +infantry in a sort of port there. A gun-boat brought over in pieces from +Niagara could get the money and get away before she could be caught, +while an unarmored gun-boat guarding Toronto could ravage the towns on +the lakes. When one hears so much of the nation that can whip the earth, +it is, to say the least of it, surprising to find her so temptingly +spankable. + +The average American citizen seems to have a notion that any Power +engaged in strife with the Star Spangled Banner will disembark men from +flat-bottomed boats on a convenient beach for the purpose of being shot +down by local militia. In his own simple phraseology:--"Not by a darned +sight. No, sir." + +Ransom at long range will be about the size of it--cash or crash. + +Let us revisit calmer scenes. + +In the heart of Buffalo there stands a magnificent building which the +population do innocently style a music-hall. Everybody comes here +of evenings to sit around little tables and listen to a first-class +orchestra. The place is something like the Gaiety Theatre at Simla, +enlarged twenty times. The "Light Brigade" of Buffalo occupy the boxes +and the stage, "as it was at Simla in the days of old," and the others +sit in the parquet. Here I went with a friend--poor or boor is the man +who cannot pick up a friend for a season in America--and here was shown +the really smart folk of the city. I grieve to say I laughed, because +when an American wishes to be correct he sets himself to imitate the +Englishman. This he does vilely, and earns not only the contempt of his +brethren, but the amused scorn of the Briton. + +I saw one man who was pointed out to me as being the glass of fashion +hereabouts. He was aggressively English in his get-up. From eye-glass +to trouser-hem the illusion was perfect, but--he wore with evening-dress +buttoned boots with brown cloth tops! Not till I wandered about this +land did I understand why the comic papers belabor the Anglomaniac. + +Certain young men of the more idiotic sort launch into dog-carts and +raiment of English cut, and here in Buffalo they play polo at four +in the afternoon. I saw three youths come down to the polo-ground +faultlessly attired for the game and mounted on their best ponies. +Expecting a game, I lingered; but I was mistaken. These three shining +ones with the very new yellow hide boots and the red silk sashes had +assembled themselves for the purpose of knocking the ball about. They +smote with great solemnity up and down the grounds, while the little +boys looked on. When they trotted, which was not seldom, they rose +and sunk in their stirrups with a conscientiousness that cried out +"Riding-school!" from afar. + +Other young men in the park were riding after the English manner, in +neatly cut riding-trousers and light saddles. Fate in derision had +made each youth bedizen his animal with a checkered enamelled leather +brow-band visible half a mile away--a black-and-white checkered +brow-band! They can't do it, any more than an Englishman, by taking +cold, can add that indescribable nasal twang to his orchestra. + +The other sight of the evening was a horror. The little tragedy played +itself out at a neighboring table where two very young men and two very +young women were sitting. It did not strike me till far into the evening +that the pimply young reprobates were making the girls drunk. They gave +them red wine and then white, and the voices rose slightly with the +maidens' cheek flushes. I watched, wishing to stay, and the youths drank +till their speech thickened and their eye-balls grew watery. It was +sickening to see, because I knew what was going to happen. My friend +eyed the group, and said:--"Maybe they're children of respectable +people. I hardly think, though, they'd be allowed out without any better +escort than these boys. And yet the place is a place where every one +comes, as you see. They may be Little Immoralities--in which case they +wouldn't be so hopelessly overcome with two glasses of wine. They may +be--" + +Whatever they were they got indubitably drunk--there in that lovely +hall, surrounded by the best of Buffalo society. One could do nothing +except invoke the judgment of Heaven on the two boys, themselves half +sick with liquor. At the close of the performance the quieter maiden +laughed vacantly and protested she couldn't keep her feet. The four +linked arms, and staggering, flickered out into the street--drunk, +gentlemen and ladies, as Davy's swine, drunk as lords! They disappeared +down a side avenue, but I could hear their laughter long after they were +out of sight. + +And they were all four children of sixteen and seventeen. Then, +recanting previous opinions, I became a prohibitionist. Better it is +that a man should go without his beer in public places, and content +himself with swearing at the narrow-mindedness of the majority; better +it is to poison the inside with very vile temperance drinks, and to buy +lager furtively at back-doors, than to bring temptation to the lips +of young fools such as the four I had seen. I understand now why the +preachers rage against drink. I have said: "There is no harm in it, +taken moderately;" and yet my own demand for beer helped directly to +send those two girls reeling down the dark street to--God alone knows +what end. + +If liquor is worth drinking, it is worth taking a little trouble to come +at--such trouble as a man will undergo to compass his own desires. It +is not good that we should let it lie before the eyes of children, and +I have been a fool in writing to the contrary. Very sorry for myself, I +sought a hotel, and found in the hall a reporter who wished to know what +I thought of the country. Him I lured into conversation about his own +profession, and from him gained much that confirmed me in my views +of the grinding tyranny of that thing which they call the Press here. +Thus:--I--But you talk about interviewing people whether they like it or +not. Have you no bounds beyond which even your indecent curiosity must +not go? + +HE--I haven't struck 'em yet. What do you think of interviewing a widow +two hours after her husband's death, to get her version of his life? + +I--I think that is the work of a ghoul. Must the people have no privacy? + +HE--There is no domestic privacy in America. If there was, what the +deuce would the papers do? See here. Some time ago I had an assignment +to write up the floral tributes when a prominent citizen had died. + +I--Translate, please; I do not understand your pagan rites and +ceremonies. + +HE--I was ordered by the office to describe the flowers, and wreaths, +and so on, that had been sent to a dead man's funeral. Well, I went +to the house. There was no one there to stop me, so I yanked the +tinkler--pulled the bell--and drifted into the room where the corpse +lay all among the roses and smilax. I whipped out my note-book and pawed +around among the floral tributes, turn-ing up the tickets on the wreaths +and seeing who had sent them. In the middle of this I heard some one +saying: "Please, oh, please!" behind me, and there stood the daughter of +the house, just bathed in tears--I--You unmitigated brute! + +HE--Pretty much what I felt myself. "I'm very sorry, miss," I said, +"to intrude on the privacy of your grief. Trust me, I shall make it as +little painful as possible." + +I--But by what conceivable right did you outrage--HE--Hold your horses. +I'm telling you. Well, she didn't want me in the house at all, +and between her sobs fairly waved me away. I had half the tributes +described, though, and the balance I did partly on the steps when the +stiff 'un came out, and partly in the church. The preacher gave the +sermon. That wasn't my assignment. I skipped about among the floral +tributes while he was talking. I could have made no excuse if I had gone +back to the office and said that a pretty girl's sobs had stopped me +obeying orders. I had to do it. What do you think of it all? + +I (slowly)--Do you want to know? + +HE (with his note-book ready)--Of course. How do you regard it? + +I--It makes me regard your interesting nation with the same shuddering +curiosity that I should bestow on a Pappan cannibal chewing the scalp +off his mother's skull. Does that convey any idea to your mind? It makes +me regard the whole pack of you as heathens--real heathens--not the sort +you send missions to--creatures of another flesh and blood. You ought to +have been shot, not dead, but through the stomach, for your share in the +scandalous business, and the thing you call your newspaper ought to have +been sacked by the mob, and the managing proprietor hanged. + +HE--From which, I suppose you have nothing of that kind in your country? + +Oh! "Pioneer," venerable "Pioneer," and you not less honest press of +India, who are occasionally dull but never blackguardly, what could I +say? A mere "No," shouted never so loudly, would not have met the needs +of the case. I said no word. + +The reporter went away, and I took a train for Niagara Falls, which are +twenty-two miles distant from this bad town, where girls get drunk of +nights and reporters trample on corpses in the drawing-rooms of the +brave and the free! + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of American Notes, by Rudyard Kipling + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AMERICAN NOTES *** + +***** This file should be named 977.txt or 977.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/9/7/977/ + +Produced by Judith Boss + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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