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FOLLOWING
THE EQUATOR

A JOURNEY AROUND THE WORLD

MARK TWAIN

SAMUEL L. CLEMENS

;'j

HARTFORD NEW YORK

AMERICAN PUBLISHING CO. DOUBLEDAY & McCLURE CO.

MDCCCXCVII

OLIVIA L. CLEMENS
(all rights reserved)

THIS BOOK
f8 affectionate Ig IFnscribeO to

MY YOUNG FRIEND

HARRY ROGERS,

with recognition

of what he is, and apprehension of what he may become

unless he form himself a little more closely

upon the model of

The Author.

THE PUDDWHEAD MAXIMS.
at

THESE WISDOMS ARE FOR THE LURING OF YOUTH TOWARD

HIGH MORAL ALTITUDES. THE AUTHOR DID NOT

GATHER THEM FROM PRACTICE, BUT FROM

OBSERVATION. TO BE GOOD IS NOBLE ;

BUT TO SHOW OTHERS HOW

TO BE GOOD IS NOBLER

AND NO TROUBLE.

CHAPTER I.
The Party — Across America to Vancouver — On Board the
Wai-rimo — Steamer Chairs — The Captain — Going Home
under a Cloud — A Gritty Purser — The Brightest Passenger
— Remedy for Bad Habits — The Doctor and the Lumbago — A
Moral Pauper — Limited Smoking — Remittance-men. ... 25

CHAPTER II.

Change of Costume — Fish, Snake, and Boomerang Stories —
Tests of Memory — A Brahmin Expert — General Grant's
Memory — A Delicately Improper Tale 35

CHAPTER III.
Honolulu — Reminiscences of the Sandwich Islands — King Liholiho
and His Royal Equipment — The Tabu — The Population of
the Island — A Kanaka Diver — Cholera at Honolulu — Hono-
lulu, Past and Present — The Leper Colony 48

CHAPTER IV.
Leaving Honolulu — Flying-flsl^ — Approaching the Equator —
Why the Ship Went Slow — The Front Yard of the Ship —
Crossing the Equator — Horse Billiards or Shovel Board — The
Waterbury Watch — Washing Decks — Ship Paintei-s — The
Great Meridian — The Loss of a Day — A Babe without a
Birthday 65

CHAPTER V.
A Lesson in Pronunciation — Reverence for Robert Burns — The
Southern Cross — Troublesome Constellations — Victoria for a
Name — Islands on the Map — Alofa and Fortuna — Recruit-
ing for the Queensland Plantations — Captain Warren's Note-
Book — Recruiting not thoroughly Popular 77

(7)

8 CONTENTS.

CHAPTER VI.
Missionaries Obstruct Business — The Sugar Planter and the
Kanaka — The Planter's View — Civilizing the Kanaka —
The Missionary's View — The Result — Repentant Kanakas —
"Wrinkles — The Death Rate in Queensland 83

CHAPTER VII.
The Fiji Islands — Suva — The Ship from Duluth — Going Ashore

— Midwinter in Fiji — Seeing the Governor — Why Fiji was
Ceded to England — Old time Fijians — Convicts among the
Fijians — A Case Where Marriage was a Failure — Immor-
tality with Limitations 91

CHAPTER VIII.
A Wilderness of Islands — Two Men without a Country — A
Naturalist from New Zealand — The Fauna of Australasia —
Animals, Insects, and Birds — The Ornithorhyncus — Poetry
and Plagiarism . . . . _ 99

CHAPTER IX.
Close to Australia — Porpoises at Night — Entrance to Sydney
Harbor — The Loss of the Duncan Dunbar — The Harbor —
The City of Sydney — Spring-time in Australia — The Climate

— Information for Travelers — The Size of Australia — A Dust-
Storm and Hot Wind " 109

CHAPTER X.
The Discovery of Australia — Transportation of Convicts — Disci-
pline — English Laws, Ancient and Modern — Flogging Prison-
ers to Death — Arrival of Settlers — New South Wales Corps —
Rum Currency — Intemperance Everywhere — $100,000 for
One Gallon of Rum — Development of the Country — Immense
Resources 119

CHAPTER XI.
Hospitality of English-speaking People — Writers and their Grati-
tude — Mr. Gane and the Panegyrics — Population of Sydney —
An English City with American Trimming — ' ' Squatters " —
Palaces and Sheep Kingdoms — Wool and Mutton — Austra-
lians and Americans — Costermonger Pronunciation — England
is "Home" — Table Talk — English and Colonial Audiences 134

CHAPTER XII.
Mr. X. , a Missionary — Why Christianity Makes Slow Progress in '
India — A Large Dreary — Hindoo Miracles and Legends —
Sampson and Hanuman — The Sandstone Ridge — Where are
the Gates ? 132

CONTENTS. 9

CHAPTER XIII.

Public Works in Australasia — Botanical Garden of Sydney — Four
Special Socialties — The Government House — A Governor and
His Functions — The Admiralty House — The Tour of the Har-
bor— Shark Fishing — Cecil Rhodes' Shark and his First
Fortune — Free Board for Sharks 137

CHAPTER XIV.
Bad Health — To Melbourne by Rail — Maps Defective — The Colony
of Victoria — A Round-trip Ticket from Sydney — Change Cars,
from Wide to Narrow Gauge, a Peculiarity at Albury —
Customs-fences — "My Word" — The Blue Mountains —
Rabbit Piles — Government R. R. Restaurants — Duchesses for
Waiters — ' ' Sheep-dip " — Railroad Coffee — Things Seen and
Not Seen 151

CHAPTER XV.
Wagga-Wagga — The Tichborne Claimant — A Stock Mystery —
The Plan of the Romance — The Realization — The Henry
Bascom Mystery — Bascom Hall — The Author's Death and
Funeral , 156

CHAPTER XVI.

Melbourne and its Attractions — The Melbourne Cup Races — Cup
D^y — Great Crowds — Clothes Regardless of Cost — The
Australian Larrikin — Is He Dead ? — Australian Hospitality —
Melbourne Wool-brokers — The Museums — The Palaces — The
Origin of Melbourne 161

CHAPTER XVII.
The British Empire — Its Exports and Imports — The Trade of
Australia — To Adelaide — Broken Hill Silver Mine — A Round-
about road — The Scrub and its Possibilities for the Novel-
ist— The Aboriginal Tracker — A Test Case — How Does One
Cow-Track Differ from Another ? 170

CHAPTER XVIII.
The Gum Trees — Unsociable Trees — Gorse and Broom — A
Universal Defect — An Adventurer — Wanted £200, got £30,-
000,000 — A Vast Land Scheme — The Smash-up — The Corpse
Got Up and Danced — A Unique Business by One Man —
Buying the Kangaroo Skin — The Approach to Adelaide —
Everything Comes to Him who Waits — A Healthy Religious
Atmosphere — What is the Matter with the Specter ? . . . . 176

10 CONTENTS.

CHAPTER XIX.
The Botanical Gardens — Contributions from all Countries — The
Zoological Gardens of Adelaide — The Laughing Jackass —
The Dingo — A Misnamed Province — Telegraphing from
Melbourne to San Francisco — A Mania for Holidays — The
Temperature — The Death Rate — Celebration of the Reading of
the Proclamation of 1836 — Some old Settlers at the Com-
memoration— Their Staying Powers — The Intelligence of
the Aboriginal — The Antiquity of the Boomerang . . . . 184

CHAPTER XX.
A Caller— A Talk about Old Times — The Fox Hunt — An
Accurate Judgment of an Idiot — How We Passed the Custom
Officers in Italy 195

CHAPTER XXI.
The "Weet-Weet" — Keeping down the Population — Victoria —
Killing the Aboriginals — Pioneer Days in Queensland —
Material for a Drama — The Bush — Pudding with Arsenic —
Revenge — A Right Spirit but a Wrong Method — Death of
Donga Billy 206

CHAPTER XXII.
Continued Description of Aboriginals — Manly Qualities — Dodg-
ing Balls — Feats of Spring — Jumping — Where the Kangaroo
Learned its Art — Well Digging — Endurance — Surgery —
Artistic Abilities — Fennimore Cooper's Last Chance — Aus-
tralian Slang 314

CHAPTER XXIII.

To Horsham (Colony of Victoria) — Description of Horsham — At
the Hotel — Pepper Tree — The Agricultural College, Forty
Pupils — High Ten perature — Width of Road in Chains, Perches,
etc. — The Bird with a Forgetable Name — The Magpie and the
lady — Fruit Trees — Soils — Sheep Shearing — To Stawell —
Gold Mining Country — $75,000 per Month Income and able to
Keep House — Fine Grapes and Wine — The Dryest Community
on Earth— The Three Sisters — Gum Trees and Water ... 223

CHAPTER XXIV.
Eload to Ballarat — The City — Great Gold Strike, 1851 — Rush for
Australia— "Great Nuggets " — Taxation — Revolt and Vic-
tory — Peter Lalor and the Eureka Stockade —" Pencil Mark "
— Fine Statuary at Ballarat — Population — Ballarat English 330

CONTENTS. 11

CHAPTER XXV.
Bound for Bendigo — The Priest at Castlemaine — Time Saved by
Walking — Description of Bendigo — A Valuable Nugget —
Perseverence and Success — Mr. Blank and His Influence —
Conveyance of an Idea — I Had to Like the Irishman — Corri-
gan Castle, and the Mark Twain Club — My Bascom Mystery
Solved 241

CHAPTER XXVI.

Where New Zealand Is — But Few Know — Things People Think

They Know — The Yale Professor and His Visitor from N. Z. 251

CHAPTER XXVII.
The South Pole Swell — Tasmania — Extermination of the Natives
— The Picture Proclamation — The Conciliator — The Formid-
able Sixteen . 256

CHAPTER XXVIII.
When the Moment Comes the Man Appears — Why Ed. Jackson
called on Commodore Vanderbilt — Their Interview — Welcome
to the Child of His Friend — A Big Time but under Inspec-
tion — Sent on Important Business — A Visit to the Boys on the
Boat 268

CHAPTER XXIX.
Tasmania, Early Days — Description of the Town of Hobart — An
Englishman's Love of Home Surroundings — Neatest City on
Earth — The Museum — A Parrot with an Acquired Taste —
Glass Arrow Beads — Refuge for the Indigent too healthy . . 279

CHAPTER XXX.

Arrival at Bluff, N. Z.— Where the Rabbit Plague Began — The
Natural Enemy of the Rabbit — Dunedin — A Lovely Town —
A Visit to Dr. Hockin — His Museum — A Liquified Caterpiller —
The Unperfected Tape Worm — The Public Museum and Picture
GaUery 285

CHAPTER XXXI.

The Express Train — " A Hell of a Hotel at Maryborough "— Clocks

and Bells — Railroad Service 290

CHAPTER XXXII.
Description of the Town of Christ Church — A Fine Museum —
Jade-stone Trinkets — The Great Moa — The First Maori in New
Zealand — Women Voters — "Person" in New Zealand Law

12 CONTENTS.

Includes Woman — Taming an Ornithorhyncus — A Voyage in
the Flora from Lyttelton — Cattle Stalls for Everybody — A
Wonderful Time 297

CHAPTER XXXIII.
The Town of Nelson — "The Mongatapu Murders," the Great
Event of the Town — Burgess' Confession — Summit of Mount
Eden — Rotorua and the Hot Lakes and Geysers — Thermal
Springs District — Kauri Gum — Tangariwa Mountains . . 305

CHAPTER XXXIV.
The Bay of Gisbome — Taking in Passengers by the Yard Arm —
The Green Ballarat Fly — False Teeth — From Napier to Hast-
ings by the Ballarat Fly Train — Kauri Trees — A Case of
Mental Telegraphy 312

CHAPTER XXXV.
Fifty Miles in Four Hours — Comfortable Cars — Town of Wauga-
nui — Plenty of Maoris — On the Increase — Compliments to
the Maoris— The Missionary Ways all Wrong — The Tabu
among the Maoris — A Mysterious Sign — Curious W^ar-monu-
ments — Wellington 318

CHAPTER XXXVI.

The Poems of Mrs. Moore — The Sad Fate of William Upson — A
Fellow Traveler Imitating the Prince of Wales — A Would-be
Dude — Arrival at Sydney — Curious Town Names with Poem 324

CHAPTER XXXVII.
From Sydney for Ceylon — A Lascar Crew — A Fine Ship — Three
Cats and a Basket of Kittens — Dinner Conversations —
Veuve Cliquot Wine — At Anchor in King George's Sound
Albany Harbor — More Cats — A Vulture on Board — Nearing
the Equator again — Dressing for Dinner — Ceylon, Hotel Bris-
tol— Servant Brampy — A Feminine Man — Japanese Jin-
riksha or Cart — Scenes in Ceylon — A Missionary School —
Insincerity of Clothes 331

CHAPTER XXXVIII.
Steamer Rosetta to Bombay — Limes 14 cents a Barrel — Bombay,
a Bewitching City — Descriptions of People and Dress — Woman
as a Road Decoration — India, the Land of Dreams and Ro-
mance — Fourteen Porters to Carry Baggage — Correcting a
Servant — Killing a Slave — Arranging a Bedroom — Three
Hours' Work and a Terrible Racket — The Bird of Birds, the
Indian Grow 345

CONTENTS. 13

CHAPTER XXXIX.
Qrod Vishnu, 108 Names — Change of Titles or Hunting for an
Heir — Bombay as a Kaleidoscope — The Native's Man Ser-
vant— Servants' Recommendations — How Manuel got his
Name and his English — Satan — A Visit from God . . . 357

CHAPTER XL.
The Government House at Malabar Point — Mansion of Kumar
Shri Samatsin Hji Bahadur — The Indian Princess — A Diffi-
cult Game — Wardrobe and Jewels — Ceremonials — Decora-
tions when Leaving — The Towers of Silence — A Funeral . 369

CHAPTER XLI.
A Jain Temple — Mr. Roychand's Bungalow — A Decorated Six-
Gun Prince — Human Fireworks — European Dress, Past and
Present — Complexions — Advantages with the Zulu — Festivi-
ties at the Bungalow — Nautch Dancers — Entrance of the
Prince — Address to the Prince 379

CHAPTER XLII.
A Hindoo Betrothal, midnight, Sleepers on the ground, Home of
the Bride of Twelve Years Dressed as a Boy — Illumination —
Nautch Girls — Imitating Snakes — Later — Illuminated Porch
Filled with Sleepers —- The Plague 386

CHAPTER XLIII. .
Murder Trial in Bombay — Confidence Swindlers — Some Special-
ties of India — The Plague, Juggernaut, Suttee, etc. — Every-
thing on Gigantic Scale — India First in Everything — 80 States,
more Custom Houses than Cats — Rich Ground for Thug Society 393

CHAPTER XLIV.
Official Thug Book — Supplies for Traveling, Bedding, and other
Freight — Scene at Railway Station — Making Way for White
Man — Waiting Passengers, High and Low Caste, Touch in the
Cars — Our Car — Beds made up — Dreaming of Thugs —
Baroda — Meet Friends — Indian Well — The Old Town —
Narrow Streets — A Mad Elephant 400

CHAPTER XLV.
Elephant Riding — Howdahs — The New Palace — The Prince's Ex-
cursion — Gold and Silver Artillery — A Vice-royal Visit —
Remarkable Dog — The Bench Show — Augustin Daly's Back
Door — Fakeer 410

34 CONTENTS.

CHAPTER XLVI.
The Thugs — Government Efforts to Exterminate them — Choking

a Victim — A Fakeer Spared — Thief Strangled 426

CHAPTER XLVII.
Thugs, Continued — Record of Murders — A Joy of Hunting and
Killing Men — Gordon Camming Killing an Elephant —
Family Affection among Thugs — Burial Places 437

CHAPTER XLVIII.
Starting for Allahabad — Lower Berths in Sleepers — Elderly Ladies
have Preference of Berths — An American Lady Takes One
Anyhow — How Smythe Lost his Berth — How He Got Even —
The Suttee 447

CHAPTER XLIX.
Pyjamas — Day Scene in India — Clothed in a Turban and a Pocket
Handkerchief — Land Parceled Out — Established Village Ser-
vants— Witches in Families — Hereditary Midwifery — De-
struction of Girl Babies— Wedding Display— Tiger-Persuader—
Hailstorm Discourager — The Tyranny of the Sweeper —
Elephant Driver — Water Carrier — Curious Rivers — Arrival
at Allahabad — English Quarter — Lecture Hall Like a Snow-
storm— Private Carriages — A Milliner — Early Morning —
The Squatting Servant — A Religious Fair 459

CHAPTER L.
On the Road to Benares— Dust and Waiting — The Bejeweled
Crowd — A Native Prince and his Guard — Zenana Lady —
The Extremes of Fashion — The Hotel at Benares — An Annex
a Mile Away — Doors in India — The Peepul Tree — Warning
against Cold Baths — A Strange Fruit — Description of Benares
— The Beginning of Creation — Pilgrims to Benares — A Priest
with a Good Business Stand — Protestant Missionary — The
Trinity Brahma, Shiva, and Vishnu — Religion the Business at
Benares 475

CHAPTER LI.
Benares a Religious Temple — A Guide for Pilgrims to Save Time

in Securing Salvation 484

CHAPTER LIL

A Curious Way to Secure Salvation — The Banks of the Ganges —

Architecture Represents Piety — A Trip on the River — Bathers

and their Costumes — Drinking the Water — A Scientific Test

of the Nasty Purifier — Hindoo Faith in die Ganges — A Cre-

CONTENTS. 15

mation — Remembrances of the Suttee — All Life Sacred Ex-
cept Human Life — The Goddess Bhowanee, and the Sacrifl-
cers — Sacred Monkeys — Ugly Idols Everywhere — Two "White
Minarets — A Great View with a Monkey in it — A Picture
on the Water 496

CHAPTER LIII.
Btill in Benares — Another Living God — Why Things are Wonder-
ful—Sri 108 — Utterly Perfect— How He Came so — Our Visit
to Sri — A Friendly Diety — Exchanging Autographs and Books

— Sri's Pupil — An Interesting Man — Reverence and Irrever-
ence— Dancing in a Sepulchre 507

CHAPTER LIV.
By Rail to Calcutta — Population — The "City of Palaces" — A
Fluted Candlestick — Ochterlony — Newspaper Correspondence

— Average Knowledge of Countries — A Wrong Idea of Chi-
cago — Calcutta and the Black Hole — Description of the
Horrors — Those Who Lived — The Botanical Gardens — The
Afternoon Turnout — Grand Review — Military Tournament —
Excursion on the Hoogly — The Museum — What Winter Means

in Calcutta 517

CHAPTER LV.
On the Road Again — Flannels in Order — Across Country — From
Greenland's Icy Mountain — Swapping Civilization — No Field
Women in India — How it is in Other Countries — Canvas-
covered Cars — The Tiger Country — My First Hunt — Some
Wild Elephants Get Away — The Plains of India — The Ghurkas

— Women for Pack-Horses — A Substitute for a Cab — Dar-
jeeling — The Hotel — The Highest Thing in the Himalayas —
The Club — Kinchinjunga and Mt. Everest — Thibetans — The
Prayer Wheel — People Going to the Bazar 534

CHAPTER LVI.
On the Road Again — The Hand-Car — A Thirty-five-mile Slide —
The Banyan Tree — A Dramatic Performance — The Railroad
Loop — The Half-way House — The Brain Fever Bird — The
Coppersmith Bird — Nightingales and Cue Owls 535

CHAPTER LVII.
India, the Most Extraordinary Country on Earth — Nothing For-
gotten — The Land of Wonders — Annual Statistics Everywhere
about Violence — Tiger vs. Man — A Handsome Fight — An-
nual Man Killing and Tiger Killing — Other Animals — Snakes

— Insurance and Snake Tables — The Cobra Bite — Muzaffur-

16 CONTENTS.

pore — Dinapore — A Train that Stopped for Gossip — Six
Hours for Thirty-five Miles — A Rupee to the Engineer —
Ninety Miles an Hour — Again to Benares, the Piety Hive —
To Lucknow 544

CHAPTER LVIIL

The Great Mutiny — The Massacre in Cawnpore — Terrible Scenes

in Lucknow — The Residency — The Siege 546

CHAPTER LIX.
A Visit to the Residency — Cawnpore — The Adjutant Bird and the
Hindoo Corpse — The Taj Mahal — The True Conception — The
Ice Storm — True Gems — Syrian Fountains — An Exaggerated
Niagara 567

CHAPTER LX.

To Lahore — The Governors Elephant — Taking a Ride — No Dan-
ger from Collision — Rawal Pindi — Back to Delhi — An
Orientalized Englishman — Monkeys and the Paint-pot —
Monkey Crying over my Note-book — Arrival at Jeypore — In
Rajputana — Watching Servants — The Jeypore Hotel — Our
Old and New Satan — Satan as a Liar — The Museum — A
Street Show — Blocks of Houses — A Religious Procession . 582

CHAPTER LXI.
Methods in American Deaf and Dumb Asylums — Methods in the
Public Schools — A Letter from a Youth in Punjab — Highly
Educated Service — A Damage to the Country — A Little Book
from Calcutta— Writing Poor English — Embarrassed by a
Beggar Girl — A Specimen Letter — An Application for Em-
ployment — A Calcutta School Examination — Two Samples of
Literature 597

CHAPTER LXII.
Sail from Calcutta to Madras — Thence to Ceylon — Thence for
Mauritius — The Indian Ocean — Our Captain's Peculiarity —
The Scot Has One too — The Flying-fish that Went Hunting in
the Field — Fined for Smuggling — Lots of Pets on Board —
The Color of the Sea — The Most Important Member of Nature's
Family — The Captain's Story of Cold Weather — Omissions
in the Ship's Library — Washing Decks — Pyjamas on Deck —
The Cat's Toilet — No Interest in the Bulletin — Perfect Rest —
The Milky Way an4 the Magellan Clouds — Mauritius — Port
Louis — A Hot Country — Under French Control — A Variety
of People and Complexions — Train to Curepipe — A Wonder-

CONTENTS. 17

ful Office-holder — The Wooden Peg Ornament — The Promi-
nent Historical Event of Mauritius — "Paul and Virginia" —
One of Virginia's Wedding Gifts — Heaven Copied after Mau-
ritius — Early History of Mauritius — Quarantines — Population
of all Kinds — What the World Consists of — Where Russia and
Germany are — A Picture of Milan Cathedral — Newspapers —
The Language — Best Sugar in the World — Literature of Mau-
ritius ^ . . 609

CHAPTER LXIIL
Port Louis — Matches no Good — Good Roads — Death Notices —
Why European Nations Rob Each Other — What Immigrants
to Mauritius Do — Population — Labor Wages — The Camaron

— The Palmiste and other Eatables — Monkeys — The Cyclone

of 1893 — Mauritius a Sunday Landscape 623

CHAPTER LXIV.
The Steamer "Arundel Castle" — Poor Beds in Ships — The Beds
in Noah's Ark — Getting a Rest in Europe — Ship in Sight —
Mozambique Channel — The Engineer and the Band —
Thackeray's " Madagascar " — Africanders Going Home — Sing-
ing on the After Deck — An Out-of- Place Story — Dynamite
Explosion in Johannesburg — Entering Delagoa Bay — Ashore

— A Hot Winter — Small Town — No Sights — No Carriages —
Working Women — Barnum's Purchase of Shakespeare's Birth-
place, Jumbo, and the Nelson Monument — Arrival at Durban 630

CHAPTER LXV.
Royal Hotel Durban — Bells that Did not Ring — Early Inquiries
for Comforts — Change of Temperature after Sunset — Rick-
shaws — The Hotel Chameleon — Natives not out after the Bell

— Preponderance of Blacks in Natal — Hair Fashions in Natal

— Zulus for Police — A Drive round the Berea — The Cactus
and other Trees — Religion a -Vital Matter — Peculiar Views
about Babies — Zulu Kings — A Trappist Monastery —
Transvaal Politics — Reasons why the Trouble came About . 644

CHAPTER LXVI.
Jameson over the Border — His Defeat and Capture — Sent to Eng-
land for Trial — Arrest of Citizens by the Boers — Commuted i
Sentences — Final Release of all but Two — Interesting Days
for a Stranger — Hard to Understand Either Side — What the
Reformers Expected to Accomplish — How They Proposed to
Do it — Testimonies a Year Later — A " Woman's Part " — The
Truth of the South African Situation — "Jameson's Ride" —

A Poem 654

18 CONTENTS.

CHAPTER LXVII.
Jameson's Raid — The Reform Committee's Difficult Task — Possi-
ble Plans — Advice that Jameson Ought to Have — The War
of 1881 and its Lessons — Statistics of Losses of the Combat-
ants — Jameson's Battles — Losses on Both Sides — The Military
Errors — How the Warfare Should Have Been Carried on to Be
Successful 667

CHAPTER LXVIII.

Judicious Mr. Rhodes — What South Africa Consists of — Johan-
nesburg—The Gold Mines — The Heaven of American En-
gineers— What the Author Knows about Mining — Description
of the Boer — What Should be Expected of Him — What Was —
A Dizzy Jump for Rhodes — Taxes — Rhodesian Method of
Reducing Native Population — Journeying in Cape Colony —
The Cars— The Country — The Weather — Tamed Blacks —
Familiar Figures in King William's Town — Boer Dress — Boer
Country Life — Sleeping Accommodations — The Reformers in
Boer Prison — Torturing a Black Prisoner 686

CHAPTER LXIX.
An Absorbing Novelty — The Kimberley Diamond Mines — Discovery
of Diamonds — The Wronged Stranger — Where the Gems Are —
A Judicious Change of Boundary — Modern Machinery and
Appliances — Thrilling Excitement in Finding a Diamond —
Testing a Diamond — Fences — Deep Mining by Natives in the
Compound — Stealing — Reward for the Biggest Diamond — A
Fortune in Wine — The Great Diamond — Office of the De Beer
Co. — Sorting the Gems — Cape Town — The Most Imposing
Man in British Provinces — Various Reasons for his Supremacy

— How He Makes Friends 699

CONCLUSION.
Table Rock — Table Bay — The Castle — Government and Parliament

— The Club — Dutch Mansions and their Hospitality — Dr.
John Barry and his Doings — On the Ship Norman — Madeira

— Arrived in Southhampton 710

llMRAnONS

Dan Beard> A. B. Frost, B. W. Clinedinst, Frederick Dielman, Peter Newell,
F. M. Scinor, T. J. Fogarty, C. H. Warren, A. G. Reinhart,
F, Berkeley Smith, C. Allan Gilbert.

The publishers acknotvledge the courtesy extended by Walter G. Chase^ Boston, Major J. B.
Pond, New York, and F. R, Reynolds, Manchester, England, in furnishing many of the photo-
graphs reproduced in this volume.

PAGE

1 Portrait of Author (By Walter G. Chase). . . Fivntispiece

2 They Passed in Review, 24

3 Head Piece, 25

4 Even the Gui-ls Smiled, . ' 26

5 " When I was a Youth," 82

6 The Remittance Man, 34

7 An Awkward Pause (PhiU Page) 39

8 The Climax 43

9 "We Worked until Three," 47

10 Facsimile Page from the Author's Note-book, {Full Page) 49

11 Royal Equipments, 53

12 Something Touched his Shoulder, . . . (Full Page) 56

13 Watching for the Blue Ribbon 66

14 The Blue Ribbon {Full Page) 67

15 "Horse Billiards," 68

16 Diagram, . . . ! 68

17 I Beat Her Brains Out, 72

18 A Day Off, .74

19 Out of Repair 79

20 Southern Cross, 80

21 The Kanaka's Departure 84

22 The Kanaka's Return, 85

23 A Civilized Savage, 90

24 Suva 92

25 Boats Came prom Shore, 93

26 Natives, 94

(19)

20 ILLUSTRATIONS;

PAGE

27 In Town 94

28 Out of Town, 94

29 The Rigors of Winter 95

30 Off Goes His Head {Full Page) 103

31 Was Never in the Ark, 105

33 The Naturalist 108

33 View in Sydney Harbor . . . 113

84 A Comparative Map, 116

35 A Dust Storm, 118

86 New South Wales Corps, . , 123

37 Heedless Man, . . 125

38 Squatter Life, {Pull Page) 127

89 A Difference, 181

40 Hanuman Moving the Mountains, . . . {Fall Page) 135

41 Sydney's Four Entertainments, , . . {Fkill Page) 140
43 "Got it out of a Shark," (Full Page) 147

43 The Oddest Thing in Australasia 152

44 Things Not Seen, 155

45 "Hello, Mark," {Full Fage) 166

46 Sunrise Blue Mountains 169

47 The British Empire (7^^^ Page) 171

48 A Test Case, 175

49 "Here I am Yet," 178

50 "Not Wanted Here," 183

51 Laughing Jackass, . . . 185

52 The White Man's World, {t\ill Page) 187

53 The Old Settlers {Full Page) 191

54 Adam at Practice, 194

55 "Which Fox?" {Full Page) 198

56 "We Marched BY THE Crowd," . . . {Full Page) 203

57 Royal Letter, 205

58 The White Man's Appliances, 208

59 The Usual Spirit, . . 211

60 His Place in Art, 218

61 "No Feeling In It," 230

62 An Aboriginal Athlete 322

63 A Wide Space 224

64 The Three Sisters 328

65 Ballarat Statuary, {Full Page) 236

66 "Do You Remember that Trip?" . . . {Full Page) 240

67 All Through His Influence, 243

68 The Club Badge 247

69 The Faculty Read Up, 251

70 The Scheme Worked, 258

71 "What Do You?" 254

72 "Close to Aus — " .' 254

73 He Looked Dazed, 255

ILLUSTRATIONS. 21

PAGE

74 The Govern ok's Proclamation, .... {Full Page) 258

75 The Last op Her Race, {Full Page) 266

76 "Go 'way from Here!" 274

77 Relics op Convict Discipline, .... {Full Page) 278

78 Lake Manapouri, 286

79 Monument to Maori Robber ^ . 287

80 A Theological Student, 293

81 Australian Bells , . 295

82 Carved Canoe Prow, 298

83 Cattle Stalls on the Flora, 303

84 A Change of Boats, 304

85 Hot Springs and Geysers, {Full Page) 309

86 Protecting the Ladies, {Full Page) 313

87 Maori Women with Feather Robes 319

88 Nose Rubbing, Form op Salutation, . . . - . . 320

89 So Like the Prince, 327

90 "woolloomoolloo 330

91 What the Sailors Believe, . , .... 332

92 Servant Brompy {Full Page) 338

93 Abused Creatures {Full Page) 342

94 Suppressed Vanity, 844

95 A Road Decoration, 847

96 Fourteen Followed {Full Page) 349

97 Oppressively Sociable, 355

98 Indian Crow, . 356

99 Manuel, 362

100 "Satan see God Out," 368

101 Kumar Sohri Samatsinhji Bahaduh, 370

102 One of the Towers op Silence, . . . {Full Page) 373

103 A Parsee, 378

104 The Passers By 882

105 Midnight in a Bombay Street, 387

106 A High-Priced Nautch Girl, 388

107 Nautch Dancing 389

108 A Railway Station, . , {Full Page) 402

109 A Mad Season, . {Full Page) 409

110 Roadside Views 410

111' A Prize Winner, 413

112 "Well, Sor, What Will 2/0 w Have," . . {Full Page) 418

113 " He Had it Upside Down," .... . . 420

114 "You Don't «ay. Sir!" {Full Page) 423

115 He Lighted Me up the Stairs, 425

116 Smythe's Revenge, 450

117 He Stole Blankets, ...... {Full Page) 458

118 A Street Sprinkler, . . • 463

119 A South African Style 464

120 "It Worried Me," 468

22 ILLUSTRATIONS.

PAGE

121 A Religious Fair {Full Page) 472

122 Religious Fakeers, 474

123 They Spoke op it with Rapture 479

124 Do it Reverently, 485

125 The Well op Fate (Full Page) 487

126 Considering the Matter, 493

127 Benares,. {Pull Page) 495

128 The Purifying Waters op the Ganges, , . {Full Page) 498

129 Extra Expense, . , . 501

130 Monkey Antics 503

131 Page prom Bahadur's Book, . . . . . . . 512

182 Title Page of Bahadur's Book, 613

133 A PiciNic IN A Sepulchre, 516

134 Mushy Weather, . . . . 523

135 India, , 525

136 Austria, 526

137 France, 527

138 A Cab Substitute {Full Page) 531

139 Mt. Kinchinjunga, {Full Page) 533

140 The Prayer Wheel, 534

141 We Played with the Train {Fill Page) 537

142 The Loop {Full Page) 541

143 Where the Women and Children Lodged, . {Full Page) 559

144 The Bailie Guard Gate, {Full Page) 563

145 Mouldering Memorials, ... .... 565

146 Rums OF the Residency, {Full Page) 566

147 The Residency Gateway, (Ftill Page) 568

148 An Exaggerated Niagara and the Taj, . . {Full Page) 576

149 An Honest Critic, {Full Page) 585

150 City Gate — Jeypore, {Full Page) 592

151 Sahadat Khan, 593

152 Street Scene in Jeypore, {Full Page) 595

153 "I WAS Embarrassed," {Full Page) 601

154 Types 608

155 A Female Uncle, 610

156 A Cat Would Like that Place, 611

157 "The Mate's Shadow Froze to the Deck," . {Full Page) 613

158 "The Barber Flays us on the Breezy Deck," . . . 615

159 The Wettest Place on Earth, 619

160 Ancient News at Port Louis, 621

161 Only One in Sixteen, 622

162 "The Third Year they do not Gather Shells," . . 625

163 A Stevedore, 626

164 A Cyclone, 628

165 Stupidity in Europe 631

166 Good Fun and Wholesome, .... {Full Page) 638

167 Indians and Chinamen, 636

ILLUSTRATIONS. 23

PAex

168 Like Our Southern Negroes, 688

169 Barnum's Chance, 640

170 Types, 643

171 A Congressional Expression, 645

172 A Fashion in Hair, > . 646

173 The Suppression op Human Instincts, . . {Fall Page) 650

174 Seven Proud Mothers, 653

175 The Political Pot, . . . . . . {Full Page) 655

176 Boer Patrol, ....... {Full Page) 664

177 Boer State Artillery, <« <« gg^

178 Boer Assembling, << << gg^

179 Boers Receiving Arms, 670

180 Pretoria Jail Outside {Full Page 675

181 Prisoners at the Race Course, . . . <« «< g^s

182 Boers Coming into Pretoria, .... <« << g-j's

183 Captors of Jameson " " 675

184 Prisoners at Roll Call 678

185 Tiring the Enemy, {Full Page) 681

186 The Document in Evidence, 684

187 Old Acquaintances, 693

188 He Said "No" Rudely, 694

189 He Felt Stuffy, . . . . . . {Full Page) 696

190 Searching for Gems, 702

191 Compound with Netting, 704

192 The Big Diamond, 705

193 Native Miners Gambling, 707

FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR

CHAPTER I.

A man may have no bad habits and have worse.

— PudiVnhead Wilson''s New Calendar.

rHE starting point of this lecturing-trip around the
world was Paris, where we had been living a year
or two.

We sailed for America, and there made certain prepara-
tions. This took but little time. Two members of my
family elected to go with me. Also a carbuncle. The dic-
tionary says a carbuncle is a kind of jewel. Humor is out
of place in a dictionary.

We started westward from New York in midsummer,
with Major Pond to manage the platform-business as far as
the Pacific. It was warm work, all the way, and the last
fortnight of it was suffocatingly smoky, for in Oregon and
British Columbia the forest fires were raging. We had an
added week of smoke at the seaboard, where we were obliged
to wait awhile for our ship. She had been getting herself
ashore in the smoke, and she had to be docked and repaired.
We sailed at last ; and so ended a snail-paced march across the
continent, which had lasted forty days.

We;moved westward about mid-afternoon over a rippled and
sparkling summer sea ; an enticing sea, a clean and cool sea, and
apparently a welcome sea to all on board ; it certainly was to
me, after the distressful dustings and smokings and swelterings

(25)

FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

of the past weeks. The voyage would furnish a three-weeks

holiday, with hardly a break in it. We had the whole Pacific

Ocean in front of us, with nothing to do but do nothing and

be comfortable. The

city of Victoria was

twinkling dim in the

deep heart

of her

smoke-

cloud, and

EVEN THE GULLS SMILED.

getting ready to
vanish ; and now
we closed the field-
glasses and sat
down on our
steamer chairs contented and at peace. But they Avent to
wreck and ruin under us and brought us to shame before all
the passengers. They had been furnished by the largest fur-
niture-dealing house in Yictoria, and were worth a couple of
farthings a dozen, though they had cost us the price of honest
chairs. In the Pacific and Indian Oceans one must still bring
his own deck-chair on board or go without, just as in the old
forgotten Atlantic times — those Dark Ages of sea travel.

Ours was a reasonably comfortable ship, with the custom-
ary sea-going fare — plenty of good food furnished by the
Deity and cooked by the devil. The discipline observable on
board was perhaps as good as it is anywhere in the Pacific and
Indian Oceans. The ship was not very well arranged for tropi-

OUR CAPTAIN. 27

cal service ; but that is nothing, for this is the rule for ships
which ply in the tropics. She had an over-sufply of cock-
roaches, but this is also the rule with ships doing business
in the summer seas — at least such as have been long in service.
Our young captain was a very handsome man, tall and per-
fectly formed, the very figure to show up a smart uniform's
finest eifects. He was a man of the best intentions, and was
polite and courteous even to courtliness. There was a soft
grace and finish about his manners which made whatever place
he happened to be in seem for the moment a drawing-room.
He avoided the smoking-room. He had no vices. He did not
smoke or chew tobacco or take snuff ; he did not swear, or use
slang, or rude, or coarse, or indelicate language, or make puns,
or tell anecdotes, or laugh intemperately, or raise his voice
above the moderate pitch enjoined by the canons of good form.
When he gave an order, his manner modified it into a request.
After dinner he and his officers joined the ladies and gentle-
men in the ladies' saloon, and shared in the singing and piano
playing, and helped turn the music. He had a sweet and
sympathetic tenor voice, and used it with taste and effect.
After the music he played whist there, always with the same
partner and opponents, until the ladies' bedtime. The electric
lights burned there as late as the ladies and their friends might
desire, but they were not allowed to burn in the smoking-room
after eleven. There were many laws on the ship's statute
book, of course ; but so far as I could see, this and one other
were the only ones that were rigidly enforced. The captain
explained that he enforced this one because his own cabin
adjoined the smoking-room, and the smell of tobacco smoke
made him sick, I did not see how our smoke could reach him,
for the smoking-room and his cabin were on the upper deck,
targets for all the winds that blew ; and besides there was no
crack of communication between them, no opening of any sort

28 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

in the solid intervening bulkhead. Still, to a delicate stomach
even imaginary smoke can convey damage.

The captain, with his gentle nature, his polish, his sweet-
ness, his moral and verbal purity, seemed pathetically out of
place in his rude and autocratic vocation. It seemed another
instance of the irony of fate.

He was going home under a cloud. The passengers knew
about his trouble, and were sorry for him. Approaching
Vancouver through a narrow and difficult passage densely
befogged with smoke from the forest fires, he had had the ill-
luck to lose his bearings and get his ship on the rocks. A
matter like this would rank merely as an error with you and
me ; it ranks as a crime with the directors of steamship com-
panies. The captain had been tried by the Admiralty Court
at Vancouver, and its verdict had acquitted him of blame.
But that was insufficient comfort. A sterner court would ex-
amine the case in Sydney — the Court of Directors, the lords
of a company in whose ships the captain had served as mate
a number pf years. This was his first voyage as captain.

The officers of our ship were hearty and companionable
young men, and they entered into the general amusements and
helped the passengers pass the time. Voyages in the Pacific
and Indian Oceans are but pleasure excursions for all hands.
Our purser was a young Scotchman who was equipped Avith a
grit that was remarkable. He was an invalid, and looked it,
as far as his body was concerned, but illness could not subdue
his spirit. He was full of life, and had a gay and capable
tongue. To all appearances he was a sick man without being
aware of it, for he did not talk about his ailments, and his
bearing and conduct were those of a person in robust health ;
yet he was the prey, at intervals, of ghastly sieges of pain in
his heart. These lasted many hours, and while the attack con-
tinued he could neither sit nor lie. In one instance he stood

CONQUERING AN ENEMY. SO

on his feet twenty-four hours fighting for his life with these
sharp agonies, and yet was as full of life and cheer and activity
the next day as if nothing had happened.

The brightest passenger in the ship, and the most inWest-
ing and felicitous talker, was a young Canadian who was not
able to let the whisky bottle alone. He was of a rich and
powerful family, and could have had a distinguished career
and abundance of effective help toward it if he could have
conquered his appetite for drink ; but he could not do it, so his
great equipment of talent was of no use to him. He had often
taken the pledge to drink no more, and was a good sample of
what that sort of unwisdom can do for a man — for a man
with anything short of an iron will. The system is wrong in
two ways : it does not strike at the root of the trouble, for one
thing, and to make a pledge of any kind is to declare war
against nature ; for a pledge is a chain that is always clanking
and reminding the wearer of it that he is not a free man.

I have said that the system does not strike at the root of
the trouble, and I venture to repeat that. The root is not the
drinking, but the desire to drink. These are very different
things. The one merely requires will — and a great deal of it,
both as to bulk and staying capacity — the other merely re-
quires watchfulness — and for no long time. The desii'e of
course precedes the act, and should have one's first attention ;
it can do but little good to rtefuse the act over and over again,
always leaving the desire unmolested, unconquered ; the desire
will continue to assert itself, and will be almost sure to win in
the long run. When the desire intrudes, it should be at once
banished out of the mind. One should be on the watch for it
all the time — otherwise it will get in. It must be taken in
time and not allowed to get a lodgment. A desire constantly
repulsed for a fortnight should die, then. That should cure
the drinking habit. The system of refusing the mere act of

30 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

drinking, and leaving the desire in full force, is unintelligent
war tactics, it seems to me.

I used to take pledges — and soon violate them. My will
was not strong, and I could not help it. And then, to be tied
in any way naturally irks an otherwise free person and makes
him chafe in his bonds and want to get his liberty. But when
I finally ceased from taking definite pledges, and merely re-
solved that I would kill an injurious desire, but leave myself
free to resume the desire and the habit whenever I should
choose to do so, I had no more trouble. In five days I drove
out the desire to smoke and was not obliged to keep watch
after that ; and I never experienced any strong desire to smoke
again. At the end of a year and a quarter of idleness I began
to write a book, and presently found that the pen was strangely
reluctant to go. I tried a smoke to see if that would help me
out of the diificulty. It did. I smoked eight or ten cigars
and as many pipes a day for five months ; finished the book,
and did not smoke again until a year had gone by and another
book had to be begun.

I can quit any of my nineteen injurious habits at any time,
and without discomfort or inconvenience. I think that the
Dr. Tanners and those others who go forty days without
eating do it by resolutely keeping out the desire to eat, in the
beginning; and that after a few hours the desire is dis-
couraged and comes no more.

Once I tried my scheme in a large medical way. I had
been confined to my bed several days with lumbago. My case
refused to improve. Finally the doctor said, —

" My remedies have no fair chance. Consider what they
have to fight, besides the lumbago. You smoke extravagantly,
don't you ? "

" Yes."

" You take cofifee immoderately ? "

NOTHING TO FALL BACK ON. 31

"Yes."

" And some tea ? "

" Yes."

"You eat all kinds of things that are dissatisfied with
each other's company?"

" Yes."

" You drink two hot Scotches every night ? "

" Yes."

"Very well, there you see what I have to contend
against. We can't make progress the way the matter
stands. You must make a reduction in these things; you
must cut down your consumption of them considerably for
some days."

" I can't, doctor."

" Why can't you."

" I lack the will-power. I can cut them off entirely, bat I
can't merely moderate them."

He said that that would answer, and said he would come
around in twenty-four hours and begin work again. He was
taken ill himself and could not come ; but I did not need
him. I cut off all those things for two days and nights ; in
fact, I cut off all kinds of food, too, and all drinks except
water, and at the end of the forty-eight hours the lumbago
was discouraged and left me. I was a well man ; so I gave
thanks and took to those delicacies again.

It seemed a valuable medical course, and I recommended
it to a lady. She had run down and down and down, and
had at last reached a point where medicines no longer had
any helpful effect upon her. I said I knew I could put her
upon her feet in a week. It brightened her up, it filled her
with hope, and she said she would do everything I told her
to do. So I said she must stop swearing and drinking, and
smoking and eating for four days, and then she would be all

FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

right again. And it would have happened just so, I know
it; but she said she could not stop swearing, and smok-
ing, and drinking, because she had never done those
things. So there it was. She had neglected her habits, and
hadn't any. Now that they would have come good, there
were none in stock. She had nothing to fall back on. She
was a sinking vessel, with no freight in her to throw over-

.V ^*

board and
lighten ship
withal. Why,
even one or
two little bad
habits could
have saved
her, but she
was just a
moral pauper.
When she
could have ac-
quired them
she was dis-
suaded by her parents, who were ignorant people though
reared in the best society, and it was too late to begin now.
It seemed such a pity ; but there was no help for it. These
things ought to be attended to while a person is young;
otherwise, when age and disease come, there is nothing effect-
ual to fight them with.

WHEN I WAS A YOUTH.

REMITTANCE MEN. 33

When I was a youth I used to take all kinds of pledges,
and do my best to keep them, but I never could, because
I didn't strike at the root of the habit — the deswe ; I generally
broke down within the month. Once I tried limiting a habit.
That worked tolerably well for a while. I pledged myself to
smoke but one cigar a day. I kept the cigar waiting until
bedtime, then I had a luxurious time with it. But desire per-
secuted me every day and all day long ; so, within the week I
found myself hunting for larger cigars than I had been used
to smoke ; then larger ones still, and still larger ones. "Within
the fortnight I was getting cigars made for me — on a yet
larger pattern. They still grew and grew in size. Within
the month my cigar had grown to such proportions that I
could have used it as a crutch. It now seemed to me that a
one-cigar limit was no real protection to a person, so I knocked
my pledge on the head and resumed my liberty.

To go back to that young Canadian. He was a " remit-
tance man," the first one I had ever seen or heard of. Passen-
gers explained the term to me. They said that dissipated ne'er-
do-weels belonging to important families in England and Canada
were not cast off by their people while there was any hope of
reforming them, but when that last hope perished at last, the
ne'er-do-weel was sent abroad to get him out of the way. He
was shipped off with just enough money in his pocket — no, in
the purser's pocket — for the needs of the voyage — and when
he reached his destined port he would find a remittance await-
ing him there. Not a large one, but just enough to keep him
a month. A similar remittance would come monthly there-
after. It was the remittance-man's custom to pay his month's
board and lodging straightway — a duty which his landlord
did not allow him to forget — then spree away the rest of his
money in a single night, then brood and mope and grieve in
idleness till the next remittance came. It is a pathetic life.

FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

We had other i*emittance-inen on board, it was said. At
least they said they were R. M.'s. Tliere were two. But they
did not resemble the Canadian ; they lacked his tidiness, and
his brains, and his gentlemanly ways, and his resolute spirit,
and his humanities and generosities. One of them was a lad
of nineteen or twenty, and he was a good deal of a ruin, as to
clothes, and morals, and general aspect. lie said he was a
scion of a ducal house in England, and had been shipped to
Canada for the house's relief, that he had fallen into trouble
there, and was now being shipped to Australia. He said he
had no title. Beyond this remark he Avas economical of the
truth. The first thing he did in Australia Avas to get into the
lockup, and the next thing he did was to proclaim himself an
earl in the police court in the morning and fail to prove it.

CHAPTER II.

When iu doubt, tell the truth. — PiuWnhead Wilson's New Calendar.

BOUT four days out from Victoria we plunged into hot
weather, and all the male passengers put on white
linen clothes. One or two days later we crossed the
25th parallel of north latitude, and then, by order, the officers
of the ship laid away their blue uniforms and came out in
white linen ones. All the ladies were in white by this time.
This prevalence of snowy costumes gave the promenade deck
an invitingly cool and cheerful and picnicky aspect.

From my diary :

There are several sorts of ills in the world from which a
person can never escape altogether, let him journey as far as
he will. One escapes from one breed of an ill only to en-
counter another breed of it. We have come far from the
snake liar and the fish liar, and there was rest and peace in the
thought ; but now we have reached the realm of the boome-
rang liar, and sorrow is with us once more. The first officer
has seen a man try to escape from his enemy by getting behind
a tree ; but the enemy sent his boomerang sailing into the sky
far above and beyond the tree ; then it turned, descended, and
killed the man. The Australian passenger has seen this thing
done to two men, behind two trees — and by the one arrow.
This being received with a large silence that suggested doubt,
he buttressed it with the statement that his brother once saw
the boomerang kill a bird away off a hundred yards and hring
it to the thrower. But these are ills Avhich must be borne.

There is no other way.

(35)

36 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

The talk passed from the boomerang to dreams — usually
a fruitful subject, afloat or ashore — but this time the output
was poor. Then it passed to instances of extraordinary
memory — with better results. Blind Tom, the negro pianist,
was spoken of, and it was said that he could accurately play
any piece of music, howsoever long and difficult, after hearing
it once ; and that six months later he could accurately play it
asrain, without havino; touched it in the interval. One of the
most striking of the stories told was furnished by a gentleman
who had served on the staff of the Viceroy of India. He
read the details from his note-book, and explained that he had
written them down, right after the consummation of the inci-
dent which they described, because he thought that if he did
not put them down in black and white he might presently
come to think he had dreamed them or invented them.

The Viceroy was making a progress, and among the shows"
offered by the Maharajah of Mysore for his entertainment was
a memory-exhibition. The Viceroy and thirty gentlemen of
his suite sat in a row, and the memory-expert, a high-caste
Brahmin, was brought in and seated on the floor in front of
them. He said he knew but two languages, the English and
his own, but would not exclude any foreign tongue from the
tests to be applied to his memory. Then he laid before the
assemblage his program — a sufficiently extraordinary one.
He proposed that one gentleman should give him one word of
a foreign sentence, and tell him its place in the sentence. He
was furnished with the French word est, and was told it was
second in a sentence of three words. The next gentleman
gave him the German word verloren and said it was the third
in a sentence of four words. He asked the next gentleman
for one detail in a sum in addition ; another for one detail in a
sum of subtraction ; others for single details in mathematical
problems of various kinds ; he got them. Intermediates gave

A TEST OP MEMORY. 3Y

him single words from sentences in Greek, Latin, Spanish,
Portuguese, Italian, and other languages, and told him their
places in the sentences. When at last everybody had furnished
him a single rag from a foreign sentence or a figure
from a problem, he went over the ground again, and got a
second word and a second figure and was told their places in
the sentences and the sums ; and so on and so on. He went
over the ground again and again until he had collected all the
parts of the sums and all the parts of the sentences — and all
in disorder, of course, not in their proper rotation. This had
occupied two hours.

The Brahmin now sat silent and thinking, a while, then
began and repeated all the sentences, placing tlie words in
their proper order, and untangled the disordered arithmetical
problems and gave accurate answers to them all.

In the beginning he had asked the company to throw
almonds at him during the two hours, he to remember how
many each gentleman had thrown ; but none were thrown, for
the Viceroy said that the test would be a sufficiently severe
strain without adding that burden to it.

General Grant had a fine memory for all kinds of things,
including even names and faces, and I could have furnished
an instance of it if I had thought of it. The first time I
ever saw him was early in his first term as President. I had
just arrived in Washington from the Pacific coast, a stranger
and wholly unknown to the public, and was passing the White
House one morning when I met a friend, a Senator from
Nevada. He asked me if I would like to see the President.
I said I should be very glad ; so we entered. I supposed that the
President would be in the midst of a crowd, and that I could
look at him in peace and security from a distance, as another
stray cat might look at another king. But it was in the
morning, and the Senator was using a privilege of his office

38 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

which I had not heard of — the privilege of intruding upon
the Chief Magistrate's working hours. Before I knew it, the
Senator and I were in the presence, and there was none there
but we three. General Grant got slowly up from his table,
put his pen down, and stood before me with the iron expression
of a man who had not smiled for seven years, and was not
intending to smile for another seven. He looked me steadil}^
in the eyes — mine lost confidence and fell. I had never con-
fronted a great man before, and was in a miserable state of
funk and inefficiency. The Senator said: —

" Mr. President, may I have the privilege of introducing
Mr. Clemens ? "

The President gave my hand an unsympathetic wag and
dropped it. He did not say a Avord but just stood. In my
trouble I could not think of anything to say, I merely wanted
to resign. There was an awkward pause, a dreary pause, a
horrible pause. Then I thought of something, and looked up
into that unyielding face, and said timidly : —

" Mr. President, I — I am embarrassed. Are you ? "

His face broke — just a little — a wee glimmer, the
momentary flicker of a summer-lightning smile, seven years
ahead of time — and I was out and gone as soon as it was.

Ten years passed away before I saw him the second time.
Meantime I was become better known ; and was one of the
people appointed to respond to toasts at the banquet given
to General Grant in Chicago by the Army of the Tennessee
when he came back from his tour around the world. I arrived
late at night and got up late in the morning. All the corri-
dors of the hotel were crowded with people waiting to get
a glimpse of General Grant when he should pass to the place
whence he was to review the great procession. I worked my
way by the suite of packed drawing-rooms, and at the corner
of the house I found a window open where there was a roomy

AN AWKWARD PAUSE.

GEN. GRANT'S FINE MEMORY. 41

platform decorated with flags, and carpeted. I stepped out on
it, and saw below me millions of people blocking all the streets,
and other millions caked together in all the windows and on
all the house-tops around. These masses took me for General
Grant, and broke into volcanic explosions and cheers; but
it was a good place to see the procession, and I stayed.
Presently I heard the distant blare of military music, and far
up the street I saw the procession come in sight, cleaving its
way through the huzzaing multitudes, with Sheridan, the most
martial figure of the "War, riding at its head in the dress
uniform of a Lieutenant-General.

And now General Grant, arm-in-arm with Major Carter
Harrison, stepped out on the platform, followed two and two
by the badged and uniformed reception committee. General
Grant was looking exactly as he had looked upon that trying
occasion of ten years before — all iron and bronze self-posses-
sion. Mr. Harrison came over and led me to the General and
formally introduced me. Before I could put together the
proper remark, General Grant said —

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

Seventeen years have gone by since then, and to-day, in
New York, the streets are a crush of people Avho are there to
honor the remains of the great soldier as they pass to their
final resting-place under the monument ; and the air is heavy
with dirges and the boom of artillery, and all the millions of
America are thinking of the man who restored the Union and
the flag, and gave to democratic government a new lease of
life, and, as we may hope and do believe, a permanent place
among the beneficent institutions of men.

We had one game in the ship which was a good time-
passer — at least it was at night in the smoking-room when
the men were getting freshened up from the day's monotonies

42 Following the equator.

and duUnessesy It was the completing of non-complete stories.
That is to say, a man would tell all of a story except the
finish, then the others would try to supply the ending out
of their own invention. When every one who wanted a
chance had had it, the man who had introduced the story
would give it its original ending — then you could take your
choice. Sometimes the new endings turnetl out to be better
than the old one. But the story which called out the most
persistent and determined and ambitious effort was one which
liad no ending, and so there was nothing to compare the new-
made endings with. The man Avho told it said he could
furnish the particulars up to a certain point only, because that
was as much of the tale as he knew. lie had read it in a
volume of sketches twenty-five years ago, and was interrupted
before the end was reached. He would give any one fifty
dollars Avho would finish the story to the satisfaction of a jury
to be appointed by ourselves. We appointed a jury and
wrestled with the tale. We invented plenty of endings, but
the jury voted them all down. The jury was right. It was a
tale which the author of it may possibly have completed satis-
factorily, and if he really had that good fortune I woukl like
to know what the ending was. Any ordinary man will find
that the story's strength is in its middle, and that there is
apparently no way to transfer it to the close, where of course
it ought to be. In substance the storiette was as follows :

John Brown, aged thirty-one, good, gentle, bashful, timid, lived in a quiet
village in Missouri. He was superintendent of the Presbyterian Sunday-
school. It was but a humble distinction ; still, it was his only official one,
and he was modestly proud of it and was devoted to its work and its interests.
The extreme kindliness of his nature was recognized by all ; in fact, people
said that he was made entirely out of good impulses and bashfulness ; that he
could always be counted upon for help when it was needed, and for bashful-
ness both when it was needed and when it wasn't.

Mary Taylor, twenty-three, modest, sweet, winning, and in character and
person beautiful, was all in all to him. And he was very nearly all in all to
her. She was wavering, his hopes were high. Her mother had been iu

A Delicately improper tale.

opposition from the first. But she was wavering, too ; lie could see it. She
was being touched by his warm interest in her two charity-proteges and by
his contributions toward their support. These were two forlorn and aged
sisters who lived in a log hut in a lonely place up a cross road four miles from
Mrs. Taylor's farm. One of the sisters was crazy, and sometimes a little
violent, but not often.

At last the time seemed ripe for a final advance, and Brown gathered his
courage together and resolved to make it. He would take along a contribu-
tion of double the usual size, and win the mother over ; with her opposition
annulled, the rest of the conquest would be sure and prompt.

He took to the road in the middle of a placid Sunday afternoon in the soft
Missourian summer, and he was equipped properly for his mission. He was
clothed all in white linen, with a blue ribbon for a necktie, and he had on
dressy tight boots. His horse and buggy were the finest that the livery stable
could furnish. The lap robe was of white linen, it was new, and it had a
hand-worked border that could not be rivaled in that region for beauty and
elaboration.

When he was four miles out on the lonely road and w^as walking his horse
over a wooden bridge, his straw hat blew off and fell in the creek, and floated
down and lodged against a bar. lie did not quite know what to do. He
must have the hat, that was manifest ; but how was he to get it ?

Then he had an idea. The roads were empty, nobody was stirring. Yes,
he would risk it. He led the horse to the roadside and set it to cropping the
grass ; then he undressed and put his clothes in the buggy, petted the horse
a moment to secure its compassion and
its loyalty, then hurried to the stream.
He swam out and soon had the hat.
When he got to the top of the bank the
horse was gone !

His legs almost gave way under him.
The horse was walking leisurely along
the road. Brown trotted after it, say-
ing, 'Whoa, whoa, there's a good fel-
low ; " but whenever he got near enough
to chance a jump for the buggy, the Jiorse
quickened its pace a little and defeated
him. And so this went on, the naked
man perishing with anxiety, and expect-
ing every moment to see people come in
sight. He tagged on and on, imploring
the horse, beseeching the horse, till ho
had left a mile behind him, and was clos-
ing up on the Taylor premises ; then at
last he was successful, and got into the
buggy. He flung on his shirt, his neck-
tie, and his coat ; then reached for — but he was too late ; he sat suddenly
down and pulled up the lap-robe, for he saw some one coming out of the

-A^

TUK CLIMAX.

44 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

gate — a woman, he thought. He wheeled the horse to the left, and struck
briskly up the cross-road. It was perfectly straight, and exposed on both
sides ; but there were woods and a sharp turn three miles ahead, and he was
very grateful when he got there. As he passed around the turn he slowed
down to a walk, and reached for his tr — too late again.

He had come upon Mrs. Enderby, Mrs. Glossop, Mrs. Taylor, and Mary.
They were on foot, and seemed tired and excited. They came at once to the
buggy and shook hands, and all spoke at once, and said eagerly and earnestly,
how glad they were that he was come, and how fortunate it was. And Mrs.
Enderby said, impressively :

"It looks like an accident, his coming at such a time ; but let no one pro-
fane it with such a name ; he was sent — sent from on high."

They were all moved, and Mrs. Glossop said in an awed voice :

" Sarah Enderby, you never said a truer word in your life. This is no ac-
cident, it is a special Providence. He was sent. He is an angel — an angel
as truly as ever angel was — an angel of deliverance, /say angel, Sarah En-
derby, and will have no other word. Don't let any one ever say to me again,
that there's no such thing as special Providences ; for if this isn't one, let
them account for it that can."

"Iknow it's so," said Mrs. Taylor, fervently, "John Brown, I could
worship you ; I could go down on my knees to you. Didn't something tell
you ? — didn't you feel that you were sent ? I could kiss the hem of your lap-
robe."

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

"Why, just look at it all around, Julia Glossop. Any person can see
the hand of Providence in it. Here at noon what do we see ? We see the
smoke rising. I speak up and say, 'That's the Old People's cabin afire.'
Didn't I, Julia Glossop ? "

" The very words you said, Nancy Taylor. I was as close to you as I am
now, and I heard them. You may have said hut instead of cabin, but in
substance it's the same. And you were looking pale, too."

" Pale ? I was that pale that if — why, you just compare it with this lap-
robe. Then the next thing I said was, ' Mary Taylor, tell the hired man to rig up
the team — we'll go to the rescue.' And she said, 'Mother, don't you know
you told him he could drive to see his people, and stay over Sunday ?' And
it was just so. I declare for it, I had forgotten it. 'Then,' said I, 'we'll go
afoot.' And go we did. And found Sarah Enderby on the road."

"And we all went together," said Mrs. Enderby. " And found the cabin
set fire to and burnt down by the crazy one, and the poor old things so old and
feeble that they couldn't go afoot. And we got them to a shady place and
made them as comfortable as we could, and began to wonder which way
to turn to find some way to get them conveyed to Nancy Taylor's house.
And I spoke up and said — now what did I say ? Didn't I say, ' Providence
will provide ' ? "

" Why sure as you live, so you did ! I had forgotten it."

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

A CONSULTATION. 45

" Yes, I said it. And then we went to Mr. Moseley's, two miles, and all
of them were gone to the camp meeting over on Stony Fork ; and then we
came all the way back, two miles, and then here, another mile — and Provi-
dence has provided. You see it yourselves "

They gazed at each other awe-struck, and lifted their hands and said in
unison :

"It's per-fectly wonderful."

" And then," said Mrs. Glossop, " what do you think we had better do —
let Mr. Brown drive the Old People to Nancy Taylor's one at a time, or put
both of them in the buggy, and him lead the horse ? "

Brown gasped.

"Now, then, that's a question," said Mrs. Enderby. "You see, we are
all tired out, and any way we fix it it's going to be difficult. For if Mr.
Brown takes both of them, at least one of us must go back to help him, for
he can't load them into the buggy by himself, and they so helpless."

"That is so," said Mrs. Taylor. " It doesn't look — oh, how would this
do ? — one of us drive there with Mr. Brown, and the rest of you go along to
my house and get things ready. I'll go with him. He and I together can
lift one of the Old People into the buggy ; then drive her to ray house and —

"But who will take care of the other one ?" said Mrs. Enderby. "We
musn't leave her there in the woods alone, you know — especially the crazy
one. There and back is eight miles, you see."

They had all been sitting on the grass beside the buggy for a while, now,
trying to rest their weary bodies. They fell silent a moment or two, and
struggled in thought over the baffling situation ; then Mrs. Enderby bright-
ened and said :

" I think I've got the idea, now. You see, we can't walk any more.
Think what we've done : four miles there, two to Moseley's, is six, then back
to here — nine miles since noon, and not a bite to eat ; I declare I don't see
how we've done it ; and as for me, I am just famishing. Now, somebody's
got to go back, to help Mr. Brown — there's no getting aiound that; but
whoever goes has got to ride, not walk. So my idea is this : one of us to ride
back with Mr. Brown, then ride to Nancy Taylor's house with one of the Old
People, leaving Mr. Brown to keep the other old one company, you all to go
now to Nancy's and rest and wait ; then one of you drive back and get the
other one and drive her to Nancy's, and Mr. Brown walk."

" Splendid !" they all cried. "Oh, that will do — that will answer per-
fectly." And they all said that Mrs. Enderby had the best head for planning,
in the company ; and they said that they wondered that they hadn't thought
of this simple plan themselves. They hadn't meant to take back the compli-
ment, good simple souls, and didn't know they had done it. After a consulta-
tion it was decided that Mrs. Enderby should drive back with Brown, she
being entitled to the distinction because she had invented the plan. Every-
thing now being satisfactorily arranged and settled, the ladies rose, relieved
and happy, and brushed down their gowns, and three of them started home-
ward ; Mrs. Enderby set her foot on the buggy-step and was about to climb
in, when Brown found a remnant of his Toice and gasped out —

46 TOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

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

"Why, dear Mr. Brown ! You do look pale; I am ashamed of myself
that I didn't notice it .sooner. Come back — all of you ! Mr. Brown is not
well. Is there anything I can do for you, Mr. Brown? — I'm real sorry.
Are you in pain ? "

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

The others came back, and poured out their sympathies and commisera-
tions, and were full of self-reproaches for not having noticed how pale he was.
And they at once struck out a new plan, and soon agreed that it was by far
the best of all. They would all go to Nancy Taylor's house and see to
Brown's needs first. He could lie on the sofa in the parlor, and while Mrs.
Taylor and Mary took care of him the other two ladies would take the buggy
and go and get one of the Old People, and leave one of themselves with the
other one, and —

By this time, without any solicitation, they were at the horse's head and
were beginning to turn him around. The danger was imminent, but Brown
found his voice again and saved himself. He said —

"But ladies, you are overlooking something which makes the plan im-
practicable. You see, if you bring one of them home, and one remains
behind with the other, there will be three persons there when one of you
comes back for that other, for some one must drive the buggy back, and three
can't come home in it."

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

"Dear, dear, what cnn we do?" said Mrs. Glossop ; "it is the most
mixed-up thing that ever was. The fox and the goose and the corn and
things — oh, dear, they are nothing to it."

They sat wearily down once more, to further torture their tormented heads
for a plan that would work. Presently Mary offered a plan ; it was her first
effort. She said :

"I am young and strong, and am refreshed, now. Take Mr. Brown to
our house, and give him help — you see how plainly he needs it. I will go
back and take care of the Old People ; I can be there in twenty minutes.
You can go on and do what you first started to do —wait on the main road at
our house until somebody comes along with a wagon ; then send and bring
away the fhree of us. You won't have to wait long ; the farmers will soon
be coming back from town, now. I will keep old Polly patient and cheered
up — the crazy one doesn't need it."

This plan was discussed and accepted ; it seemed the best that could be
done, in the circumstances, and the Old People must be getting discouraged
by this time.

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

Then Mrs. Taylor said :

" The evening chill will be coming on, pretty soon, and- those poor old

AN IMPRACTICABLE PLAN.

burnt-out things will need some kind of covering. Take tlie lap-robe with you,
dear."

" Very well, Mother, I will."

She stepped to the buggy and put out her hand to take it —

That was the end of the tale. The passenger who told it said that when
he read the story twenty-live years ago in a train he was interrupted at that
point — the train jumped off a bridge.

At first we thought we could finish the story quite easily, and we set to
work with confidence ; but it soon began to appear that it was not a simple
thing, but difficult and baffling. This was on ac-
count of Brown's character — great generosity and t
kindliness, but complicated with unusual shyness
and diffidence, particularly in the presence of ladies.
There was his love for Mary, in a hopeful state bur
not yet secure — just in a condition, indeed,
where its affair must be handled with great
tact, and no mistakes made, no offense
given. And there was the mother —
wavering, half willing — by adroit and
flawless diplomacy to be won over,
now, or perhaps never at all. Also,
there were the helpless Old People
yonder in the woods waiting — their
fate and Brown's happiness to be de-
termined by what Brown should do
within the next two seconds. Mary
was reaching for the lap-robe ; Brown
must decide — there was no time to
be lost.

Of course none but a happy end-
ing of the story would be accepted by

the jury ; the finish must find Brown in high credit with the ladies, his
behavior without blemish, his modesty unwounded, his character for self-
sacrifice maintained, the Old People rescued through him, their benefactor,
all the party proud of him, happy in. him, his praises on all their tongues.

We tried to arrange this, but it was beset with persistent and irreconcilable
difficulties. We saw that Brown's shyness would not allow him to give up
the lap-robe. This would offend Mary and her mother ; and it would surprise
the other ladies, partly because this stinginess toward the suffering Old People
would be out of character with Brown, and partly because he was a special
Providence and could not properly act so. If asked to explain his conduct,
his shyness would not allow him to tell the truth, and lack of invention and
practice would find him incapable of contriving a lie that would wash. We
worked at the. troublesome problem until three in the morning.

Meantime Mary was still reaching for the lap-robe. We gave it up, and
decided to let her continue to reach. It is the reader's privilege to determine
for himself how the thing came out.

WE WORKED UNTIL THREE.

CHAPTER III.

It is more trouble to make a maxim than it is to do right.

— Piidd^nhead Wilson's New Calendar.

ON the seventh day out we saw a dim vast bulk standing
up out of the wastes of the Pacific and knew that
that spectral promontory was Diamond Head, a piece
of this world which I had not seen before for twenty-nine
years. So we were nearing Honolulu, the capital city of the
Sandwich Islands — those islands which to me were Paradise ;
a Paradise which I had been longing all those years to see
again. Not any other thing in the world could have stirred
me as the sight of that great rock did.

In the night we anchored a mile from shore. Through
my port I could see the twinkling lights of Honolulu and the
dark bulk of the mountain-range that stretched away right
and left. I could not make out the beautiful Nuuana valley,
but I knew where it lay, and remembered how it used to look
in the old times. We used to ride up it on horseback in those
days — we young people — and branch off and gather bones in
a sandy region where one of the first Kamehameha's battles
was fought. He was a remarkable man, for a king ; and he
wOiS also a remarkable man for a savage. He was a mere
kinglet and of little or no consequence at the time of Captain
Cook's arrival in 1788; but about four years afterward he
conceived the idea of enlarging his sphere of influence. That
is a courteous modern phrase which means robbing your neigh-
bor— for your neighbor's benefit ; and the great theater of its

benevolences is Africa. Kameharaeha went to war, and in the

(48)

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FACSIMILE PAGE FROM THE AUTHOR'S NOTE BOOK,

[49)1

AN ENERGETIC MONARCH. 51

course of ten years he whipped out all the other kings and
made himself master of every one of the nine or ten islands
that form the group. But he did more than that, lie bought
ships, freighted them with sandal wood and other native pro-
ducts, and sent them as far as South America and China ; he
sold to his savages the foreign stuffs and tools and utensils
which came back in these ships, and started the march of
civilization. It is doubtful if the match to this extraordinary
thing is to be found in the history of any other savage.
Savages are eager to learn from the white man any new way
to kill each other, but it is not their habit to seize with avidity
and apply with energy the larger and nobler ideas which he
offers them. The details of Kamehameha's history show that
he was always hospitably ready to examine the white man's
ideas, and that he exercised a tidy discrimination in making
his selections from the samples placed on view.

A shrewder discrimination than was exhibited by his son
and successor, Liholiho, I think. Liholiho could have qualified
as a reformer, perhaps, but as a king he was a mistake. A
mistake because he tried to be both king and reformer. This
is mixing fire and gunpowder together. A king has no proper
business with reforming. His best policy is to keep things as
they are ; and if he can't do that, he ought to try to make
them worse than they are. This is not guesswork; 1 have
thought over this matter a good deal, so that if I should ever
have a chance to become a king I would know how to conduct
the business in the best way.

When Liholiho succeeded his father he found himself pos-
sessed of an equipment of royal tools and safeguards which a
wiser king would have known how to husband, and judiciously
employ, and make profitable. The entire country was under
the one scepter, and his was that scepter. There was an
Established Church, and he was the head of it. There was a

52 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

Standing Army, and he was the head of that; an Army of
114 privates under command of 27 Generals and a Field Mar-
shal. There was a proud and ancient Hereditary Nobility.
There was still one other asset. This was the tabu — an agent
endowed with a mysterious and stupendous power, an agent
not found among the properties of any European monarch, a
tool of inestimable value in the business. Liholiho was head-
master of the tabu. The tabu was the most ingenious and
effective of all the inventions that has ever been devised for
keeping a people's privileges satisfactorily restricted.

It required the sexes to live in separate houses. It did not
allow people to eat in either house ; they must eat in another
place. It did not allow a man's woman-folk to enter his
house. It did not allow the sexes to eat' together ; the men
must eat first, and the women must wait on them. Then the
women could eat what was left — if anything was left — and
wait on themselves. I mean, if anything of a coarse or un-
palatable sort was left, the women could have it. But not the
good things, the fine things, the choice things, such as pork,
poultry, bananas, cocoanuts, the choicer varieties of fish, and
so on. By the tabu, all these were sacred to the men ; the
women spent their lives longing for them and wondering what
they might taste like ; and they died without finding out.

These rules, as you see, were quite simple and clear. It
was easy to remember them ; and useful. For the penalty for
infringing any rule in the whole list was death. Those women
easily learned to put up with shark and taro and dog for a diet
when the other things were so expensive.

It was death for any one to walk upon tabu'd ground ; or
defile a tabu'd thing with his touch ; or fail in due servility to
a chief ; or step upon the king's shadow. The nobles and the
King and the priests were always suspending little rags here
and there and yonder, to give notice to the people that the

THREW AWAY HIS CHANCE.

ROYAL EQUIPMENTS.

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

Thus advantageously
was the new king situated.
Will it be believed that the
first thing he did was to
destroy his Established
Church, root and branch ?
He did indeed do that. To
state the case figuratively,
he was a prosperous sailor
who burnt his ship and took
to a raft. This Church was
a horrid thing. It heavily
oppressed the people ; it
kept them always trembling
in the gloom of mysterious threatenings ; it slaughtered them
in sacrifice before its grotesque idols of wood and stone ; it
cowed them, it terrorized them, it made them slaves to its
priests, and through the priests to the king. It was the best
friend a king could have, and the most dependable. To a
professional reformer who should annihilate so frightful and
so devastating a power as this Church, reverence and praise
would be due ; but to a king who should do it, could properl}'^
be due nothing but reproach ; reproach softened by sorrow ;
sorrow for his unfitness for his position.

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

When he destroyed the Church and burned the idols he did
a mighty thing for civilization and for his people's weal — but
it was not " business." It was unkingly, it was inartistic. It
made trouble for his line. The American missionaries arrived

54 FOLLOWING THP: EQUATOR.

while the burned idols were still smoking. They found the
nation without a religion, and they repaired the defect. They
offered their own religion and it was gladly received. But it
Avas no support to arbitrary kingship, and so the kingly power
began to weaken from that day. Forty-seven years later,
when I was in tlie islands, Kamehameha V. was trying to
repair Liholiho's blunder, and not succeeding. He had set up
an Established Church and made himself the head of it. But
it was only a pinchbeck thing, an imitation, a bauble, an empty
show. It had no power, no value for a king. It could not
harry or burn or slay, it in no way resembled the admirable
machine which Liholiho destroyed. It was an Established
Church without an Establishment ; all the people were Dis-
senters.

Long before that, the kingship had itself become but a
name, a show. At an early day the missionaries had turned it
into something very much like a republic; and here lately the
business Avhites have turned it into something exactly like it.

In Captain Cook's time (1T78), the native population of the
islands was estimated at 400,000; in 1836 at something short of
200,000, in 1866 at 50,000 ; it is to-day, per census, 25,000. All
intelligent people praise Kamehameha I. and Liholiho for con-
ferring upon their people the great boon of civilization. I
would do it myself, but my intelligence is out of repair, now,
from over-work.

"When I was in the islands nearly a generation ago, I was
acquainted with a young American couple who had among
their belongings an attractive little son of the age of seven —
attractive but not practicably companionable with me, because
he knew no English. He had played from his birth with the
little Kanakas on his father's plantation, and had preferred
their lanffuaffe and would learn no other. The familv removed
to America a month after I arrived in the islands, and straight-

SOMETHINQ TOUCHED HIS SHOULDEB.

THE DIVER. 57

way the boy began to lose his Kanaka and pick up English.
By the time he was twelve he hadn't a word of Kanaka left ;
the language had wholly departed from his tongue and from his
comprehension. Mne years later, when he was twenty-one, I
came upon the family in one of the lake towns of New York,
and the mother told me about an adventure which her son had
been having. By trade he was now a professional diver, A
passenger boat had been caught in a storm on the lake, and had
gone down, carrying her people with her. A few days later
the young diver descended, with his armor on, and entered the
berth-saloon of the boat, and stood at the foot of the com-
panionway, with his hand on the rail, peering through the dim
water. Presently something touched him on the shoulder, and
he turned aftd found a dead man swaying and bobbing about
him and seemingly inspecting him inquiringly. He was par-
alyzed with fright. His entry had disturbed the water, and
now he discerned a number of dim corpses making for him and
wagging their heads and swaying their bodies like sleepy peo-
ple trying to dance. His senses forsook him, and in that con-
dition he was drawn to the surface. He was put to bed at
home, and was soon very ill. During some days he had sea-
sons of delirium which lasted several hours at a time ; and
while they lasted he talked Kanaka incessantly and glibly ; and
Kanaka only. He was still very ill, and he talked to me in
that tongue ; but I did not understand it, of course. The
doctor-books tell us that cases like this are not uncommon.
Then the doctors ought to study the cases and find out how
to multiply them. Many languages and things get mislaid in
a person's head, and stay mislaid for lack of this reme dy.

Many memories of my former visit to the islands came up
in my mind while we lay at anchor in front of Honolulu that
night. And pictures — pictures — pictures — an enchanting
procession of them ! I was impatient for the morning to come

58 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

When it came it brought disappointment, of course.
Cholera had broken out in the town, and we were not allowed
to have any communication with the shore. Thus suddenly
did my dream of twenty-nine years go to ruin. Messages came
from friends, but the friends themselves I was not to have any
sight of. My lecture-hall was ready, but I was not to see that,
either.

Several of our passengers belonged in Honolulu, and these
were sent ashore'; but nobody could go ashore and return.
There were people on shore who were booked to go with us to
Australia, but we could not receive them ; to do it would cost
us a quarantine-term in Sydney. They could have escaped the
day before, by ship to San Francisco ; but the bars had been
put up, now, and they might have to wait weeks before any
ship could venture to give them a passage any whither. And
there were hardships for others. An elderly lady and her son,
recreation-seekers from Massachusetts, had wandered westward,
further and further from home, always intending to take the
return track, but always concluding to go still a little further ;
and now here they were at anchor before Honolulu — positively
their last westward-bound indulgence — they had made up
their minds to that — but where is the use in making up your
mind in this world ? It is usually a waste of time to do it.
These two would have to stay with us as far as Australia.
Then they could go on around the world, or go back the way
they had come ; the distance and the accommodations and out-
lay of time would be just the same, whichever of the two
routes they might elect to take. Think of it : a projected ex-
cursion of five hundred miles gradually enlarged, without any
elaborate degree of intention, to a possible twenty-four thou-
sand. However, they were used to extentions by this time, and
did not mind this new one much.

And we had with us a lawyer from Victoria, who had been

HONOLULU OF THE PAST. 59

sent out by the Government on an international matter, and he
had brought his wife with him and left the children at home
with the servants — and now what was to be done ? Go ashore
amongst the cholera and take the risks ? Most certainly not.
They decided to go on, to the Fiji islands, wait there a fort-
night for the next ship, and then sail for home. They couldn't
foresee that they wouldn't see a homeward-bound ship again
for six weeks, and that no word could come to them from the
children, and no word go from them to the children in all that
time. It is easy to make plans in this world ; even a cat can
do it; and when one is out in those remote oceans it is notice-
able that a cat's plans and a man's are worth about the same.
There is much the same shrinkage in both, in the matter of
values.

There was nothing for us to do but sit about the decks in
the shade of the awnings and look at the distant shore. We
lay in luminous blue water ; shoreward the water was green —
green and brilliant ; at the shore itself it broke in a long white
ruffle, and with no crash, no sound that we could hear. The
town was buried under a mat of foliage that looked like a
cushion of moss. The silky mountains were clothed in soft,
rich splendors of melting color, and some of the cliffs were
veiled in slanting mists. I recognized it all. It was just as I
had seen it long before, with nothing of its beauty lost, noth-
ing of its charm wanting.

A change had come, but that was political, and not visible
from the ship. The monarchy of my day was gone, and a
republic was sitting in its seat. It was not a material change.
The old imitation pomps, the fuss and feathers, have departed,
and the royal trademark — that is about all that one could
miss, I suppose. That imitation monarchy was grotesque
enough, in my time ; if it had held on another thirty years it
would have been a monarchy without subjects of the king's race.

60 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

We had a sunset of a very fine sort. The vast plain of the
sea was marked olf in bands of sharply-contrasted colors:
great stretches of dark blue, others of purple, others of polished
bronze; the billowy mountains showed all sorts of dainty
browns and greens, blues and purples and blacks, and the
rounded velvety backs of certain of them made one want to
stroke them, as one would the sleek back of a cat. The long,
sloping promontory projecting into the sea at the west turned
dim and leaden and spectral, then became suffused with pink
— dissolved itself in a pink dream, so to speak, it seemed so
airy and unreal. Presently the cloud-rack was flooded with
fiery splendors, and these were copied on the surface of the
sea, and it made one drunk with delight to look upon it.

From talks with certain of our passengers whose home was
Honolulu, and from a sketch by Mrs. Mary H. Krout, I was
able to perceive what the Honolulu of to-day is, as compared
with the Honolulu of my time. In my time it was a beautiful
little town, made up of snow-white wooden cottages deliciously
smothered in tropical vines and flowers and trees and shrubs ;
and its coral roads and streets were hard and smooth, and as
white as the houses. The outside aspects of the place sug-
gested the presence of a modest and comfortable prosperity —
a general prosperity ^- perhaps one might strengthen the term
and say universal. There were no fine houses, no fine furni-
ture. There were no decorations. Tallow candles furnished
the light for the bedrooms, a whale-oil lamp furnished it for
the parlor. Native matting served as carpeting. In the parlor
one would find two or three lithographs on the walls — portraits
as ^ rule : Kamehameha IV., Louis Kossuth, Jenny Lind ; and
may be an engraving or two : Rebecca at the Well, Moses
smiting the rock, Joseph's servants finding the cup in Ben-
jamin's sack. There woUld be a center table, with books of a
tranquil sort on it : The Whole Duty of Man, Baxter's Saints'

HONOLULU OF TO-DAY. HI

Kest, Fox's Martyrs, Tupper's Proverbial Philosophy, bound
copies of The Missionary Herald and of Father Damon's
Seaman's Friend. A melodeon; a music stand, with Willie,
We have Missed You, Star of the Evening, KoU on Silver
Moon, Are We Most There, I Would not Live Alway, and
other songs of love and sentiment, together with an assort-
ment of hymns. A what-not with semi-globular glass paper-
weights, enclosing miniature pictures of ships, New England
rural snowstorms, and the like ; sea-shells with Bible texts
carved on them in cameo style ; native curios ; whale's tooth
with full-rigged ship carved on it. There was nothing remin-
iscent of foreign parts, for nobody had been abroad. Trips
were made to San Francisco, but that could not be called going
abroad. Comprehensively speaking, nobody traveled.

But Honolulu has grown wealthy since then, and of course
wealth has introduced changes; some of the old simplicities
have disappeared. Here is a modern house, as pictured by
Mrs. Krout :

" Almost every house is surFounded by extensive lawns and gardens en-
closed by walls of volcanic stone or by thick hedges of the brilliant hibiscus.

" The houses are most tastefully and comfortably furnished ; the floors
are either of hard wood covered with rugs or with fine Indian matting, while
there is a preference, as in most warm countries, for rattan or bamboo furni-
ture ; there are the usual accessories of bric-a-brac, pictures, books, and
curios from all parts of the world, for these island dwellers are indefatigable
travelers.

" Nearly every house has what )g, called a lanai. It is a large apartment,
roofed, floored, open on three sides, with a door or a draped archway opening
into the drawing-room. Frequently the roof is formed by the thick inter-
lacing boughs of the 7iou tree, impervious to the sun and even to the rain, ex-
cept in violent storms. Vines are trained about the sides — the stephanotis or
some one of the countless fragrant and blossoming trailers which abound in
the islands. There are also curtains of matting that may be drawn to ex-
clude the sun or rain. The floor is bare for coolness, or partially covered
with rugs, and the lanai is prettily furnished with comfortable chairs, sofas,
and tables loaded with flowers, or wonderful ferns in pots.

" The lanai is the favorite reception room, and here at any social function
the musical program is given and cakes and ices are served ; here morning
callers are received, or gay riding parlies, the ladies in pretty divided skirts,

62 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

worn for convenience in riding astride, — the universal mode adopted by
Europeans and Americans, as well as by the natives.

"The comfort and luxury of such an apartment, especially at a seashore
villa, can hardly be imagined. The soft breezes sweep across it, heavy with
the fragrance of jasmine and gardenia, and through the swaying boughs of
palm and mimosa there are glimpses of rugged mountains, their summits
veiled in clouds, of purple sea with the white surf beating eternally against
the reefs,— whiter still in the yellow sunlight or the magical moonlight of
the tropics."

There: rugs, ices, pictures, lanais, worldly books, sinful
bric-a-brac fetched from everywhere. And the ladies riding
astride. These are changes, indeed. In my time the native
women rode astride, but the white ones lacked the courage to
adopt their wise custom. In my time ice was seldom seen in
Honolulu. It sometimes came in sailing vessels from New
England as ballast ; and then, if there happened to be a man-
of-war in port and balls and suppers raging by consequence,
the ballast was worth six hundred dollars a ton, as is evidenced
by reputable tradition. But the ice-machine has traveled all
over the world, now, and brought ice within everybody's
reach. In Lapland and Spitzbergen no one uses native ice in
our day, except the bears and the walruses.

The bicycle is not mentioned. It was not necessary. We
know that it is there, without inquiring. It is everywhere.
But for it, people could never have had summer homes on the
summit of Mont Blanc ; before its day, property up there had
but a nominal value. The laddies of the Hawaiian capital
learned too late the right way to occupy a horse — too late to
get much benefit from it. The riding-horse is retiring from
business everywhere in the world. In Honolulu a few years
from now he will be only a tradition.

We all know about Father Damien, the French priest
who voluntarily forsook the world and went to the leper
island of Molokai to labor among its population of sorrowful
exiles who wait there, in slow -consuming misery, for death

THE LEPERS OF HAWAII. 63 -

to come and release them from their troubles ; and we know
that the thing which he knew beforehand would happen, did
happen : that he became a leper himself, and died of that
horrible disease. There was still another case of self-sacrifice,
it appears. I asked after " Billy " Ragsdale, interpreter to the -
Parliament in my time — a half- white. He was a brilliant
young fellow, and very popular. As an interpreter he would
have been hard to match anywhere. He used to stand up in
the Parliament and turn the English speeches into Hawaiian
and the Hawaiian speeches into English with a readiness
and a volubility that were astonishing. I asked after him,
and was told that his prosperous career was cut short in a
sudden and unexpected way, just as he was about to marry
a beautiful half-caste girl. He discovered, by some nearly
invisible sign about his skin, that the poison of leprosy was in
him. The secret was his own, and might be kept concealed
for years ; but he would not be treacherous to the girl that
loved him ; he would not marry her to a doom like his. And
so he put his affairs in order, and went around to all his friends
and bade them good-bye, and sailed in the leper ship to
Molokai. There he died the loathsome and lingering death
that all lepers die.

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

"Poor lepers ! It is easy for those who have no relatives or friends
among them to enforce the decree of segregation to the letter, but who can
write of the terrible, the heart-breaking scenes which that enforcement has
brought about ?

" A man upon Hawaii was suddenly taken away after a summary arrest,
leaving behind him a helpless wife about to give birth to a babe. The
devoted wife with great pain and risk came the whole journey to Honolulu,
and pleaded until the authorities were unable to resist her entreaty that she
might go and live like a leper with her leper husband.

"A woman in the prime of life and activity is condemned as an incipient
leper, suddenly removed from her home, and her husband returns to find his
two helpless babes moaning for their lost mother.

64 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

" Imagine it ! The case of the babies is hard, but its bitterness is a trifle
— less than a trifle — less than nothing — compared to what the mother must
suffer ; and suffer minute by minute, hour by hour, day by day, month by
month, year by year, without respite, relief, or any abatement of her pain till
she dies.

" One woman, Luka Kaaukau, has been living with her leper husband in
the settlement for twelve years. The man has scarcely a joint left, his limbs
are only distorted ulcerated stumps, for four years his wife has put every
particle of food into his mouth. He wanted his wife to abandon his wretched
carcass long ago, as she herself was sound and well, but Luka said that she
was content to remain and wait on the man she loved till the spirit should be
freed from its burden.

" I myself have known hard cases enough : — of a girl, apparently in full
health, decorating the church with me at Easter, who before Christmas is
taken away as a confirmed leper ; of a mother hiding her child in the
mountains for years so that not even her dearest friends knew that she had a
child alive, that he might not be taken away ; of a respectable white man
taken away from his wife and family, and compelled to become a dweller in
the Leper Settlement, where he is counted dead, even by the insurance
companies."

And one great pity of it all is, that these poor sufferers
are innocent. The leprosy does not come of sins which they
committed, but of sins committed by their ancestors, who
esGwped the curse of leprosy !

Mr. Gowan has made record of a certain very striking
circumstance. Would you expect to find in that awful Leper
Settlement a custom worthy to be transplanted to your own
country ? They have one such, and it is inexpressibly touching
and beautiful. When death sets open the prison-door of life
there, the band salutes the freed soul with a burst of glad
music !

CHAPTER IV.

A dozen direct censures are easier to bear than one morganatic compliment.

— Pudcfn/iead Wilson^s New Calendar.

SAILED from Honolulu. From diary:
Sept. 2. Flocks of flying fish — slim, shapely, grace-
ful, and intensely white. With the sun on them they
look like a flight of silver fruit-knives. They are able to fly a
hundred yards.

Sej)t. 3. In 9° 50' north latitude, at breakfast. Approach-
ing the equator on a long slant. Those of us who have never
seen the equator are a good deal excited. I think I would
rather see it than any other thing in the world. We entered
the "doldrums" last night — variable winds, bursts of rain,
intervals of calm, with chopping seas and a wobbly and
drunken motion to the ship — a condition of things findable
in other regions sometimes, but present in the doldrums
always. The globe-girdling belt called the doldrums is 20 de-
grees wide, and the thread called the equator lies along the
middle of it.

Sept. Jj.. Total eclipse of the moon last night. At'Y.30 it
began to go off. At total — or about that — it was like a rich
rosy cloud with a tumbled surface framed in the circle and
projecting from it — a bulge of strawberry-ice, so to speak. At
half-eclipse the moon was like a gilded acorn in its cup.

Sept. 5. Closing in on the equator this noon. A sailor ex-
plained to a young girl that the ship's speed is poor because we
af e climbing up the bulge toward the center of the globe ; but
that when we should once get over, at the equator, and start
5 (65)

FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

WATCHING FOK THE BLUE RIBBON.

down-hill, we should fly. When she asked him the other day
what the fore-yard was, he said it was the front yard, the open
area in the front end of the ship. That man has a good deal of
learning stored up, and the girl is likely to get it all.

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

kodak'd it. We had no fool cer-
emonies, no fantastics, no horse-
play. All that sort of thing
has gone out. In old times a
sailor, dressed as Neptune, used
to come in over the bows, with
his suite, and lather up and
shave everybody Avho was cross-
ing the equator for the first
time, and then cleanse these
unfortunates by swinging them
from the yard-arm and ducking them three times in the sea.
This was considered funny. Nobody knows why. No, that
is not true. We do know why. Such a thing could never be
funny on land ; no part of the old-time grotesque performances
gotten up on shipboard to celebrate the passage of the line
could ever be funny on shore — they would seem dreary and
witless to shore people. But the shore people w^ould change
their minds about it at sea, on a long voyage. On such a
voyage, with its eternal monotonies, people's intellects dete-
riorate ; the owners of the intellects soon reach a point Avhere
they almost seem to prefer childish things to things of a ma-
turer degree. One is often surprised at the juvenilities which
grown people indulge in at sea, and the interest they take in
them, and the consuming enjoyment they get out of them.
This is on long voyages only. The mind gradually becomes
inert, dull, blunted ; it loses its accustomed interest in intellec-

HOKSE IJUil.IAKUS.

to off

DIAGBAM.

(68)

SHOVEL-BOARD. 69

tual things ; nothing but horse-play can rouse it, nothing but
wild and foolish grotesqueries can entertain it. On short voy-
ages it makes no such exposure of itself ; it hasn't time to slump
down to this sorrowful level.

The short-voyage passenger gets his chief physical exercise
out of "horse-billiards" — shovel-board. It is a good game.
We play it in this ship. A quartermaster chalks off a diagram
like this — on the deck.

The player uses a cue that is like a broom-handle with a
quarter-moon of wood fastened to the end of it. With this he
shoves wooden disks the size of a saucer — he gives the disk a
vigorous shove and sends it fifteen or twenty feet along the
deck and lands it in one of the squares if he can. If it stays
there till the inning is played out, it will count as many points
in the game as the figure in the square it has stopped in rep-
resents. The adversary plays to knock that disk out and leave
his own in its place — particularly if it rests upon the 9 or 10
or some other of the high numbers ; but if it rests in the " 10-
o:^ " he backs it up — lands his disk behind it a foot or two, to
make it difficult for its owner to knock it out of that damag-
ing place and improve his record. When the inning is played
out it may be found that each adversary has placed his four
disks where they count ; it may be found that some of them
are touching chalk lines and not counting ; and very often it
will be found that there lias been a general wreckage, and
that not a disk has been left within the diagram. Anyway,
the result is recorded, whatever it is, and the game goes on.
The game is 100 points, and it takes from twenty minutes to
forty to play it, according to luck and the condition of the sea.
It is an exciting game, and the crowd of spectators furnish
abundance of applause for fortunate shots and plenty of laugh-
ter for the other kind. It is a game of skill, but at the same
time the uneasy motion of the ship is constantly interfering

TO FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

with skill ; this makes it a chancy game, and the element of
luck comes largely in.

We had a couple of grand tournaments, to determine who
should be "Champion of the Pacific"; they included among
the participants nearly all the passengers, of both sexes, and
the officers of the ship, and they afforded many days of stu-
pendous interest and excitement, and murderous exercise — for
horse- billiards is a physically violent game.

The figures iti the following record of some of the closing

games in the first tournament will show, better than any

description, how very chancy the game is. The losers here

represented had all been winners in the previous games of the

series, some of them by fine majorities :

Chase, 102 Mrs. D., 57 Mortimer, 105 The Surgeon, 92

MissC, 105 Mrs. T., 9 Clemens, 101 Taylor, 92

Taylor, 109 Davies, 95 MissC, 108 Mortimer, 55

Thomas, 102 Roper, 76 Clemens, 111 Miss C, 89

Coomber, 106 Chase, 98

And so on ; until but three couples of winners were left.
Then I beat my man, young Smith beat his man, and Thomas
beat his. This reduced the combatants to three. Smith and I
took the deck, and I led off. . At the close of the first inning I
was 10 worse than nothing and Smith had scored 7. The luck
continued against me. When I was 57, Smith was 97 —
within 3 of out. The luck changed then. He picked up a
10-off or so, and couldn't recover. I beat him.

The next game would end tournament No. 1.

Mr. Thomas and I were the contestants. He won the lead
and went to the bat — so to speak. And there he stood, with
the crotch of his cue resting against his disk while the ship
rose slowly up, sank slowly down, rose again, sank again. She
never seemed to rise to suit him exactly. She started up once
more; and when she was nearly ready for the turn, he let
drive and landed his disk just within the left-hand end of the

CHAMPION OF THE PACIFIC. 71

10. (Applause). The umpire proclaimed "a good 10," and
the game-keeper set it down. I played : my disk grazed the
edge of Mr. Thomas's disk, and went out of the diagram. (No
applause.)

Mr. Thomas played again — and landed his second disk
alongside of the first, and almost touching its right-hand side.
" Good 10." (Great applause.)

I played, and missed both of them. (No applause.)

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

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

Mr. Thomas played his last disk. It seems incredible, but
he actually landed that disk alongside of the others, and just
to the right of them — a straight solid row of 4 disks. (Tu-
multuous and long-continued applause.)

Then I played my last disk. Again it did not seem possible
that anybody could miss that row — a row which would have
been 14 inches long if the disks had been clamped together ;
whereas, with the spaces separating them they made a longer
row than that. But I did it. It may be that I was getting
nervous.

I think it unlikely that that innings has ever had its
parallel in the history of horse-billiards. To place the four
disks side by side in the 10 was an extraordinary feat ; indeed,
it was a kind of miracle. To miss them was another miracle.
It will take a century to produce another man who can place
the four disks in the 10 ; and longer than that to find a man
who can't knock them out. I was ashamed of my performance
at the time, but now that I reflect upon it I see that it was
rather fine and difiicult.

FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

Mr. Thomas kept his luck, and won the game, and later the
championship.

In a minor tournament I won the prize, which was a
Waterbury watch. I put it in my trunk. In Pretoria, South
Africa, nine months afterward, my proper watch broke down
and I took the Waterbury out, ^vound it, set it by the great
clock on the Parliament House (8.05), then went back to my
room and went to bed, tired from a long railway journey.
The parliamentary clock had a peculiarity which I was not
aware of at the time — a peculiarity which exists in no other
clock, and would not exist in that one if it had been made
by a sane person ; on the half-hour it strikes the succeeding
houT^ then strikes the hour again at the proper time. I
lay reading and smoking awhile ; then, when I could hold my
eyes open no longer and was about to put out the light, the
great clock began to
boom, and I counted —

I BEAT HER BUAINS OUT.

ten. I reached for the Waterbury to see how it was getting
along. It was marking 9.30. It seemed rather poor speed for
a three-dollar watch, but I supposed that the climate was

MY PRIZE WATCH. 73

affecting it. I shoved it half an hour ahead, and took to my
book and waited to see what would happen. At 10 the great
clock struck ten again. I looked — the Waterbury was mark-
ing half -past 10. This was too much speed for the money, and
it troubled me. I pushed the hands back a half hour, and
waited once more ; I had to, for I was vexed and restless
now, and my sleepiness was gone. By and by the great clock
struck 11. The Waterbury was marking 10.30. I pushed it
ahead half an hour, with some show of temper. By and by
the great clock struck 11 again. The Waterbury showed
up 11.30, now, and I beat her brains out against the bedstead.
I was sorry next day, when I found out.

To return to the ship.

The average human being is a perverse creature ; and when
he isn't that, he is a practical joker. The result to the other
person concerned is about the sam3: that is, he is made to suf-
fer. The washing down of the decks begins at a very early
hour in all ships ; in but few ships are any measures taken to
protect the passengers, either by waking or warning them, or
by sendmg a steward to close their ports. And so the deck-
washers have their opportunity, and they use it. They send a
bucket of water slashing along the side of the ship and into
the ports, drenching the passenger's clothes, and often the pas-
senger himself. This good old custom prevailed in this ship,
and under unusually favorable circumstances, for in the blazing
tropical regions a removable zinc thing like a sugar-shovel pro-
jects from the port to catch the wind and bring it in; this
thing catches the wash- water and brings it in, too — and in
flooding abundance. Mrs. I., an invalid, had to sleep on the
locker-sofa under her port, and every time she over-slept and
thus failed to take care of herself, the deck-washers drowned
her out.

And the painters, what a good time they had ! This ship

FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

would be going into dock for a month in Sydney for repairs ;
but no matter, painting was going on all the time somewhere
or other. The ladies' dresses were constantly getting ruined,
nevertheless protests and supplications went for nothing..
Sometimes a lady, taking an afternoon nap on deck near a
ventilator or some other thing that didn't need painting,
w^ould wake up by and by and find that the humorous painter
had been noiselessly daubing that thing and had splattered her
white gown all over with little greasy yellow^ spots.

The blame for this untimely painting did not lie with the
ship's officers, but with custom. As far back as Noah's time
it became law that ships must be constantly painted and fussed
at when at sea ; custom grew out of the law, and at sea custom
know^s no death ; this custom will continue until the sea goes

A DAY OKF.

Sept. 8. — Sunday. We are moving so nearly south that
we cross only about two meridians of longitude a day. This
morning we w^ere in longitude 178 west from Greenwich, and
57 degrees west from San Francisco. To-morrow w^e shall be

A DAY LOST. 'To

close to the center of the globe — the ISuth degree of west
longitude and 180th degree of east longitude.

And then we must drop out a day — lose a day out of our
lives, a day never to be found again. We shall all die one day
earlier than from the beginning of time we were foreordained
to die. We shall be a day behindhand all through eternity.
We shall always be saying to the other angels, " Fine day to-
day," and they will be always retorting, " But it isn't to-day,
it's to-morrow." We shall be in a state of confusion all the
time and shall never know what true happiness is.

Next Day. Sure enough, it has happened. Yesterday it
was September 8, Sunday; to-day, per the bulletin-board at
the head of the companion way, it is September 10, Tnesday.
There is something uncanny about it. And uncomfortable.
In fact, nearly unthinkable, and wholly unrealizable, when
one comes to consider it. While we were crossing the 180th
meridian it was Sunday in the stern of the ship where my
family were, and Tuesday in the bow where I was. They
were there eating the half of a fresh apple on the 8th, and
I was at the same time eating the other half of it on the
10th — and I could notice how stale it was, already. The
family were the same age that they were when I had left
them five minutes before, but I was a day older now than
I was then. The day they were living in stretched behind
them half way round the globe, across the Pacific Ocean
and America and Europe ; the day I was living in stretched
in front of me around the other half to meet it. They were
stupendous days for bulk and stretch ; apparently much larger
days than we had ever been in before. All previous days had
been but shrunk-up little things by comparison. The differ-
ence in temperature between the two days was very marked,
their day being hotter than mine because it was closer to the
equator.

Y6 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

Along about the moment that we were crossing the Great
Meridiaij a child was born in the steerage, and now there is
no way to tell which day it was born on. The nurse thinks
it was Sunday, the surgeon thinks it was Tuesday. The child
will never know its own birthday. It will always be choosing
first one and then the other, and will never be able to make
up its mind permanently. This will breed vacillation and un-
certainty in its opinions about religion, and politics, and busi-
ness, and sweethearts, and everything, and will undermine its
principles, and rot them away, and make the poor thing
characterless, and its success in life impossible. Every one
in the ship says so. And this is not all — in fact, not the
worst. For there is an enormously rich brewer in the ship
who said as much as ten days ago, that if the child was born
on his birthday he would give it ten thousand dollars to
start its little life with. His birthday was Monday, the 9th
of September.

If the ships all moved in the one direction — westward,
I mean — the world would suffer a prodigious loss in the
matter of valuable time, through the dumping overboard on
the Great Meridian of such multitudes of days by ships' crews
and passengers. But fortunately the ships do not all sail
west^ half of them sail east. So there is no real loss. These
latter pick up all the discarded days and add them to the
world's stock again ; and about as good as new, too ; for of
course the salt water preserves them. •

CHAPTER y. .

Noise proves nothing. Often a hen who has merely laid an egg cackles as if
she had laid an asteroid. — Pudd^tihead Wilso7i^s New Calendar.

WEDNESDAY, Sept. 11. In this world we often make
mistakes of judgment. We do not as a rule get out
of them sound and whole, but sometimes we do. At
dinner yesterday evening — present, a mixture of Scotch, Eng-
lish, American, Canadian, and Australasian folk — a discussion
broke out about the pronunciation of certain Scottish words.
This was private ground, and the non-Scotch nationalities,
with one exception, discreetly kept still. But I am not
discreet, and I took a hand. I didn't know anything about
the subject, but I took a hand just to have something to do.
At that moment the word in dispute was the word three.
One Scotchman was claiming that the peasantry of Scotland
pronounced it three, his adversaries claimed that they didn't —
that they pronounced it thraw. The solitary Scot was having
a sultry time of it, so I thought I would enrich him with my
help. In my position I was necessarily quite impartial, and was
equally as well and as ill equipped to fight on the one side as on
the other. So I spoke up and said the peasantry pronounced
the word three.^ not thraw. It was an error of judgment.
There was a moment of astonished and ominous silence, then
weather ensued. The storm rose and spread in a surprising
way, and I was snowed under in a very few minutes. It was
a bad defeat for me — a kind of Waterloo. It promised to
remain so, and I wished I had had better sense than to enter
upon such a forlorn enterprise. But just then I had a saving

(77)

78 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

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

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

"A Scotch poet ! O come ! Kame him."

'"''Robert BurnsP

It is wonderful the power of that name. These men looked
doubtful — but paralyzed, all the same. They were quite
silent for a moment ; then one of them said — with the rever-
ence in his voice which is always present in a Scotchman's tone
when he utters the name :

" Does Eobbie Burns say — what does he say ? "

" This is what he says :

' " There were nae bairns but only three —
Ane at the breast, twa at the knee." '

It ended the discussion. There was no man there profane
enough, disloyal enough, to say any word against a thing
which Kobert Burns had settled. I shall always honor that
great name for the salvation it brought me in this time of my
sore need.

It is my belief that nearly any invented quotation, played
with confidence, stands a good chance to deceive. There are
people who think that honesty is always the best policy. This
is a superstition ; there are times when the appearance of it is
worth six of it.

We are moving steadily southward — getting further and
further down under the projecting paunch of the globe. Yes-
terday evening we saw the Big Dipper and the north star sink
below the horizon and disappear from our world. No, not
"we," but they. They saw it — somebody saw it — and told
me about it. But it is no matter, I was not caring for those

SOUTHERN CROSS. 79

things, I am tired of them, any way. I think they are well
enough, but one doesn't want them always hanging around.
My interest was all in the Southern Cross. I had never seen
that. I had heard about it all my life, and it was but natural
that I should be burning to see it. JSTo other constellation
makes so much talk. I had nothing against the Big Dipper —
and naturally couldn't have anything against it, since it is a
citizen of our own sky, and the property of the United States —
but I did want it to move out of the way and give this
foreigner a chance. Judging by the size of the talk which the
Southern Cross had made, I supposed it would need a sky all
to itself.

But that was a mistake. We saw the Cross to-night, and it
is not large. Kot large, and not strikingly bright. But it was
low down toward the horizon, and it may improve when it gets
up higher in the sky. It is ingeniously named, for it looks just
as a cross would look if it looked like something: else. But
that description does not describe ; it is too vague, too general,
too indefinite. It does after a fashion suggest a cross — a cross
that is out of repair — or out of drawing ; not correctly shaped.
It is long, with a short cross-bar, and the cross-bar is canted
out of the straight line.

It consists of four large stars and
one little one. The little one is out
of line and further damages the shape.
It should have been placed at the inter- *

section of the stem and the cross-bar.

If you do not draw an imaginary line from star to star it does
not suggest a cross — nor anything in particular.

One must ignore the little star, and leave it out of the com-
bination — it confuses everything. If you leave it out, then you
can make out of the four stars a sort of cross — out of true ; or
a sort of kite — out of true ; or a sort of coffin — out of true.

FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

Constellations have always been troublesome things to
name. If you give one of them a fanciful name, it will always
refuse to live up to it ; it will always persist in not resembling

the thing it has been named
for. Ultimately, to satisfy
the public, the fanciful name
has to be discarded for a com-
mon-sense one, a manifestly
descriptive one. The Great
Bear remained the Great Bear

— and unrecognizable as such

— for thousands of years ; and
people complained about it all
the time, and quite properly ;
but as soon as it became the
property of the United States,
Congress changed it to the
Big Dipper, and now every-
body is satisfied, and there is no more talk about riots. I
would not change the Southern Cross to the Southern Coffin,
I would change it to the Southern Kite ; for up there in the
general emptiness is the proper home of a kite, but not for
coffins and crosses and dippers. In a little while, now — I
cannot tell exactly how long it will be — the globe will belong
to the English-speaking race ; and of course the skies also.
Then the constellations will be re-organized, and polished up,
and re-named — the most of them " Victoria," I reckon, but
this one will sail thereafter as the Southern Kite, or go out of
business. Several towns and things, here and there, have been
named for Her Majesty already.

In these past few days we are plowing through a mighty
Milky "Way of islands. They are so thick on the map that one
would hardly expect to find room between them for a canoe ;

SOUTHERN CROSS.

QUEENSLAND RECRUITING GROUND. 81

yet we seldom glimpse one. Once we saw the dim bulk of a
couple of them, far away, spectral and dreamy things ; mem-
bers of the Home — Alofa and Fortuna. On the larger one
are two rival native kings — and they have a time together.
They are Catholics; so are their people. The missionaries
there are French priests.

From the multitudinous islands in these regions the " re-
cruits " for the Queensland plantations were formerly drawn ;
are still drawn from them, I believe. Vessels fitted up like
old-time slavers came here and carried off the natives to serve
as laborers in the great Australian province. In the beginning
it was plain, simple manstealing, as per testimony of the mis-
sionaries. This has been denied, but not disproven. After-
ward it was forbidden by law to " recruit " a native without
his consent, and governmental agents were sent in all recruiting
vessels to see that the law was obeyed — which they did,
according to the recruiting people ; and which they sometimes
didn't, according to the missionaries. A man could be lawfully
recruited for a three-years term of service ; he could volunteer
for another term if he so chose; when his time was up he
could return to his island. And would also have the means to
do it ; for the government required the employer to put money
in its hands for this purpose before the recruit was delivered to
him.

Captain "Wawn was a recruiting shipmaster during many
years. From his pleasant book one gets the idea that the
recruiting business was quite popular with the islanders, as a
rule. And yet that did not make the business wholly dull and
uninteresting ; for one finds rather frequent little breaks in the
monotony of it — like this, for instance :

"The afternoon of our arrival at Leper Island the schooner was lying
almost becalmed under the lee of the lofty central portion of the island, about
three-quarters of a mile from the shore. The boats were in sight at some dis
6

82 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

tance. The recruiter-boat had run into a small nook on the rocky coast, under
a high bank, above which stood a solitary hut backed by dense forest. The
government agent and mate in the second boat lay about 400 yards to the
■westward.

"Suddenly we heard the sound of firing, followed by yells from the
natives on shore, and then we saw the recruiter-boat push out with a seem-
ingly diminished crew. The mate's boat pulled quickly up, took her in tow,
and presently brought her alongside, all her own crew being more or less hurt.
It seems the natives had called them into the place on pretence of friendship.
A crowd gathered about the stern of the boat, and several fellows even got
into her. All of a sudden our men were attacked with clubs and tomahawks.
The recruiter escaped the first blows aimed at him, making play with his fists
until he had an opportunity to draw his revolver. ' Tom Sayers,' a Mare
man, received a tomahawk blow on the head which laid the scalp open but
did not penetrate his skull, fortunately. ' Bobby Towns,' another Mare boat-
man, had both his thumbs cut in warding off blows, one of them being so
nearly severed from the hand that the doctors had to finish the operation.
Lihu, a Lifu boy, the recruiter's special attendant, was cut and pricked in
various places, but nowhere seriously. Jack, an unlucky Tanna recruit, who
had been engaged to act as boatman, received an arrow through his forearm,
the head of which — a piece of bone seven or eight inches long — was still
in the limb, protruding from both sides, when the boats returned. The re-
cruiter himself would have got off scot-free had not an arrow pinned one of
his fingers to the loom of the steering-oar just as they were getting off. The
fight had been short but sharp. The enemy lost two men, both shot dead."

The truth is, Captain Wawn furnishes such a crowd of
instances of fatal encounters between natives and French and
English recruiting-crews (for the French are in the business for
the plantations of New Caledonia), that one is almost per-
suaded that recruiting is not thoroughly popular among the
islanders ; else why this bristling string of attacks and blood-
curdling slaughter ? The captain lays it all to " Exeter Hall
influence." But for the meddling philanthropists, the native
fathers and mothers would be fond of seeing their children
carted into exile and now and then the grave, instead of weep-
ing about it and trying to kill the kind recruiters.

CHAPTER YL

He was as shy as a newspaper is when referring to its own merits.

— Puddn^fwad Wilson^s New Calendar.

GAPTAIN Wawn is crystal-clear on one point: He
does not approve of missionaries. They obstruct his
business. They make "Recruiting," as he calls it
(" Slave-Catching," as they call it in their frank way) a trouble
when it ought to be just a picnic and a pleasure excursion.
The missionaries have their opinion about the manner in which
the Labor Traffic is conducted, and about the recruiter's
evasions of the law of the Traffic, and about the traffic itself :
and it is distinctly uncomplimentary to the Traffic and to
everything connected with it, including the law for its regula-
tion. Captain Wawn's book is of very recent date ; I have by
me a pamphlet of still later date — hot from the press, in fact
— by Rev, Wm. Gray, a missionary ; and the book and the
pamphlet taken together make exceedingly interesting reading,
to my mind.

Interesting, and easy to understand — except in one detail,
which I will mention presently. It is easy to understand why
the Queensland sugar planter should want the Kanaka recruit :
he is cheap. Yery cheap, in fact. These are the figures paid
by the planter : £20 to the recruiter for getting the Kanaka —
or " catching " him, as the missionary phrase goes ; £3 to the
Queensland government for " superintending " the importation ;
£5 deposited with the Government for the Kanaka's passage
home when his three years are up, in case he shall live that
long ; about £25 to the Kanaka himself for three years' wages

(83)

FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

and clothing ; total payment for the use of a man three years,
£53 ; or, including diet, £60. Altogether, a hundred dollars a
year. One can understand why the recruiter is fond of the
business ; the recruit
cheap presents
cruit's relatives, not
self), and the re-

costs him a few
L (given to the re-

to the recruit him-
cruit is worth £20
to the recruiter
when delivered in
Queensland. All
this is clear enough ;
but the thing that
is not clear is, what
there is about it all
to persuade the re-
cruit. He is young
and brisk; life at
home in his beauti-
ful island is one
lazy, long holiday
to him ; or if he
wants to work he
can turn out a couple of bags of copra per week and sell it for
four or five shillings a bag. In Queensland he must get up
at dawn and work from eight to twelve hours a day in the
canefields — in a much hotter climate than he is used to — and
get less than four shillings a week for it.

I cannot understand his willingness to go to Queensland.
It is a deep puzzle to me. Here is the explanation, from the
planter's point of view ; at least I gather from the missionary's
pamphlet that it is the planter's :

"When he comes from his home he is a savage, pure and simple. He
feels no shame at his nakedness and want of adornment. When he returns
home he does so well dressed, sporting a Waterbury watch, collars, cuffs.

THE KANAKA 8 DEPARTURE,

THE KANAKA'S OPPORTUNITY.

boots, and jewelry. He takes with him one or more boxes* well filled with
clothing, a musical instrument or two, and perfumery and other articles of
luxury he has learned to appreciate."

For just one moment we have a seeming flash of com-
prehension of the
Kanaka's reason for
exiling himself : he
goes away to acquire
civilization. Yes, he
was naked and not
ashamed, now he is
clothed and knows
how to be ashamed ;
he was unenlightened,
now he has a Water-
bury watch; he was
unrefined, now he has
jewelry, and some-
thing to make him
smell good ; he was a
nobody, a provincial, now he has been to far countries and
can show off.

It all looks plausible — for a moment. Then the mission-
ary takes hold of this explanation and pulls it to pieces, and
dances on it, and damages it beyond recognition.

"Admitting that the foregoing description is the average one, the
average sequel is this : The cuffs and collars, if used at all, are carried
off by youngsters, who fasten them round the leg, just below the
knee, as ornaments. The Waterbury, broken and dirty, finds its way to the
trader, who gives a trifle for it ; or the inside is taken out, the wheels strung
on a thread and hung round the neck. Knives, axes, calico, and handker-
chiefs are divided among friends, and there is hardly one of these apiece.
The boxes, the keys often lost on the road home, can be bought for 2s. 6d.
They are to be seen rotting outside in almost any shore village on Tanna. (I
speak of what I have seen.) A returned Kanaka has been furiously angry

THE KANAKA 8 RETURN.

♦ " Box " is English for trunk.

86 . FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

with me because I would not buy his trousers, which he declared were just
my lit. He sold them afterwards to one of my Aniwan teachers for 9d. worth
of tobacco — a pair of trousers that probably cost him 8s. or 10s. in Queens-
land. A coat or shirt is handy for cold weather. The white handkerchiefs,
the ' senet ' (perfumery), the umbrella, and perhaps the hat, are kept. The
boots have to take their chance, if they do not happen to fit the copra trader.
' Senet ' on the hair, streaks of paint on the face, a dirty white handkerchief
round the neck, strips of turtle shell in the ears, a belt, a sheath and knife,
and an umbrella constitute the rig of returned Kanaka at home the day after
landing."

A hat, an umbrella, a belt, a neckerchief. Otherwise
stark naked. All in a day the hard-earned "civilization"
has melted away to this. And even these perishable things
must presently go. Indeed, there is but a single detail of his
civilization that can be depended on to stay by him : according
to the missionary, he has learned to swear. This is art, and
art is long, as the poet says.

In all countries the laws throw light upon the past. The
Queensland law for the regulation of the Labor Traffic is a
confession. It is a confession that the evils charged by the
missionaries upon the traffic had existed in the past, and that
they still existed when the law was made. The missionaries
make a further charge: that the law is evaded by the re-
cruiters, and that the Government Agent sometimes helps them
to do it. Regulation 31 reveals two things : that sometimes a
young fool of a recruit gets his senses back, after being per-
suaded to sign away his liberty for three years, and dearly
wants to get out of the engagement and stay at home with his
own people ; and that threats, intimidation, and force are used
to keep him on board the recruiting-ship, and to hold him to
his contract. Regulation 31 forbids these coercions. The law
requires that he shall be allowed to go free; and another
clause of it requires the recruiter to set him ashore — per boat,
because of the prevalence of sharks. Testimony from Rev.
Mr. Gray :

"There are ' wrinkles ' for taking the penitent Kanaka. My first ex-

y^RINKLES." 87

perience of the Traffic was a case of this kind in 1884. A vessel anchored
just out of sight of our station, word was brought to me that some boys were
stolen, and the relatives wished me to go and get them back. The facts were,
as I found, that six boys had recruited, had ruahed into the boat, the Govern-
ment Agent informed me. They had all ' signed ' ; and, said the Government
Agent, 'on board they shall remain.' I was assured that the six boys were
of age and willing to go. Yet on getting ready to leave the ship I found four
of the lads ready to come ashore in the boat ! This I forbade. One of them
jumped into the water and persisted in coming ashore in my boat. When
appealed to, the Government Agent suggested that we go and leave him to
be picked up by the ship's boat, a quarter mile distant at the time ! "

The law and the missionaries feel for the repentant recruit
— and properly, one may be permitted to think, for he is only
a youth and ignorant and persuadable to his hurt — but sym-
pathy for him is not kept in stock by the recruiter. Kev. Mr.
Gray says:

" A captain many years in the traffic explained to me how a penitent could
be taken. ' When a boy jumps overboard we just take a boat and pull ahead
of him, then lie between him and the shore. If he has not tired himself
swimming, and passes the boat, keep on heading him in this way. The dodge
rarely fails. The boy generally tires of swimming, gets into the boat of his
own accord, and goes quietly on board."

Yes, exhaustion is likely to make a boy quiet. If the dis-
tressed boy had been the speaker's son, and the captors savages,
the speaker would have been surprised to see how differently
the thing looked from the new point of view ; however, it is
not our custom to put ourselves in the other person's place.
Somehow there is something pathetic about that disappointed
young savage's resignation. I must explain, here, that in the
traffic dialect, " boy " does not always mean boy ; it means a
youth above sixteen years of age. That is by Queensland law
the age of consent, though it is held that recruiters allow them-
selves some latitude in guessing at ages.

Captain Wawn of the free spirit chafes under the annoy-
ance of "cast-iron regulations." They and the missionaries
have poisoned his life. He grieves for the good old days, van-
ished to come no more. See him weep ; hear him cuss between
the lines I ^

88 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

" For a long time we were allowed to apprehend and detain all deserters
who had signed the agreement on board ship, but the ' cast-iron ' regulations
of the Act of 1884 put a stop to that, allowing the Kanaka to sign the agree-
ment for three years' service, travel about in the ship in receipt of the regular
rations, cadge all he could, and leave when he thought fit, so long as he did
not extend his pleasure trip to Queensland."

Kev. Mr. Gray calls this same restrictive cast-iron law a
"farce." "There is as much cruelty and injustice done to
natives by acts that are legal as by deeds unlawful. The regu-
lations that exist are unjust and inadequate — unjust and in-
adequate they must ever be." He furnishes his reasons for his
position, but they are too long for reproduction here.

However, if the most a Kanaka advantages himself by a
three-years course in civilization in Queensland, is a necklace
and an umbrella and a showy imperfection in the art of swear-
ing, it must be that all the profit of the traific goes to the white
man. This could be twisted into a plausible argument that the
traffic ought to be squarely abolished.

However, there is reason for hope that that can be left alone
to achieve itself. It is claimed that the traffic will depopulate
its sources of supply within the next twenty or thirty years.
Queensland is a very healthy place for white people — death-
rate 12 in 1,000 of the population — but the Kanaka death-rate
is away above that. The vital statistics for 1893 place it at 52 ;
for 1894 (Mackay district), 68. The first six months of the
Kanaka's exile are peculiarly perilous for him because of the
rigors of the new climate. The death-rate among the new men
has reached as high as 180 in the 1,000. In the Kanaka's
native home his death-rate is 12 in time of peace, and 15 in time
of war. Thus exile to Queensland — with the opportunity to
acquire civilization, an umbrella, and a pretty poor quality of
profanity — is twelve times as deadly for him as war. Com-
mon Christian charity, common humanity, does seem to require,
not only that these people be returned to their homes, but that

PROPHECY A RISKY BUSINESS. 89

war, pestilence, and famine be introduced among them for their
preservation.

Concerning these Pacific isles and their peoples an eloquent
prophet spoke long years ago — five and fifty years ago. In
fact, he spoke a little too early. Prophecy is a good line of
business, but it is full of risks. This prophet was the Right
Rev. M. Russell, LL.D., D.C.L., of Edinburgh :

" Is the tide of civilization to roll oaly to the foot of the Rocky Mountains,
and is the sun of knowledge to set at last in the waves of the Pacific ? No ;
the mighty day of four thousand years is drawing to its close ; the sun of
humanity has performed its destined course ; but long ere its setting rays are
extinguished in the west, its ascending beams have glittered on the isles of
the eastern seas. . . . And now we see the race of Japhet setting forth
to people the isles, and the seeds of another Europe and a second England
sown in the regions of the sun. But mark the words of the prophecy : ' He
shall dwell in the tents of Shem, and Canaan shall be his servant.' It is not
said Canaan shall be his slave. To the Anglo-Saxon race is given the scepter of
the globe, but there is not given either the lash of the slave-driver or the rack
of the executioner. The East will not be stained with the same atrocities
as the West ; the frightful gangrene of an enthralled race is not to mar the
destinies of the family of Japhet in the Oriental world ; humanizing, not
destroying, as they advance ; uniting with, not enslaving, the inhabitants
with whom they dwell, the British race may," etc., etc.

And he closes his vision with an invocation from Thomson :

" Come, bright Improvement ! on the car of Time,
And rule the spacious world from clime to clime."

Yery well, Bright Improvement has arrived, you see, with
her civilization, and her Waterbury, and her umbrella, and her
third-quality profanity, and her humanizing-not-destroying ma-
chinery, and her hundred-and-eighty-death-rate, and everything
is going along just as handsome !

But the prophet that speaks last has an advantage over the
pioneer in the business. Rev. Mr. Gray says :

" What I am concerned about is that we as a Christian nation should wipe
out these races to enrich ourselves."

And he closes his pamphlet with a grim Indictment which
is as eloquent in its flowerless straightforward English as is the
hand-painted rhapsody of the early prophet :

" My indictment of the Queensland-Kanaka Labor Traffic is this :

FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

"1. It generally demoralizes and always impoverishes the Kanaka, de-
prives him of his citizenship, and depopulates the islands fitted to his home.

"2. It is felt to lower the dignity of the white agricultural laborer in
Queensland, and beyond a doubt it lowers his wages there.

" 3. The whole system is fraught with danger to Australia and the islands
on the score of health.

"4. On social and political grounds the continuance of the Queensland
Kanaka Labor Traffic must be a barrier to the true federation of the Aus-
tralian colonies.

"5. The Regulations under which the Traffic exists in Queensland are
inadequate to prevent abuses, and in the nature of things they must re-
main so.

" 6. The whole system is contrary to the spirit and doctrine of the Gospel
of Jesus Christ. The Gospel requires us to help the weak, but the Kanaka is
fleeced and trodden down.

"7. The bed-rock of this Traffic is that the life and liberty of a black
man are of less value than those of a white man. And a Traffic that has
grown out of ' slave-hunting ' will certainly remain to the end not unlike its
origin."

CHAPTEK YIL

Truth is the most valuable thing we have. Let us economize it.

— Pudd^nhead WUson^s New Calendar.

rROM Diary : — For a day or two we have been plow-
ing among an invisible vast wilderness of islands,
catching now and then a shadowy glimpse of a mem-
ber of it. There does seem to be a prodigious lot of islands
this year ; the map of this region is freckled and fly -specked
all over with them. Their number would seem to be un-
countable. We are moving among the Fijis now — 224 islands
and islets in the group. In front of us, to the west, the wilder-
ness stretches toward Australia, then curves upward to Kew
Guinea, and still up and up to Japan ; behind us, to the east,
the wilderness stretches sixty degrees across the wastes of the
Pacific; south of us is New Zealand. Somewhere or other
among these myriads Samoa is concealed, and not discoverable
on the map. Still, if you wish to go there, you will have no
trouble about finding it if you follow the directions given by
Robert Louis Stevenson to Dr. Conan Doyle and to Mr. J. M.
Barrie. " You go to America, cross the continent to San
Francisco, and then it's the second turning to the left." To
get the full flavor of the joke one must take a glance at
the map.

Wednesday, September 11. — Yesterday we passed close to
an island or so, and recognized the published Fiji character-
istics: a broad belt of clean white coral sand around the
island; back of it a graceful fringe of leaning palms, with
native huts nestling cosily among the shrubbery at their

(91)

FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

bases ; back of these a stretch of level land clothed in tropic
vegetation; back of that, rugged and picturesque mountains.
A detail of the immediate foreground : a mouldering ship
perched high up on a reef -bench. This completes the com-
position, and makes the picture artistically perfect.

In the afternoon we sighted Suva, the capital of the group,
and threaded our way into the secluded little harbor — a placid
basin of brilliant blue and green water tucked snugly in
among the sheltering hills, A few ships rode at anchor in
it — one of them a sailing vessel flying the American flag;

and they said she came from Duluth! There's a journey!
Duluth is several thousand miles from the sea, and yet she
is entitled to the proud name of Mistress of the Commercial
Marine of the United States of America. There is only one
free, independent, unsubsidized American ship sailing the for-
eign seas, and Duluth owns it. All by itself that ship is
the American fleet. All by itself it causes the American name
and power to be respected in the far regions of the globe. All
by itself it certifies to the world that the most populous civil-
ized nation in the earth has a just pride in her stupendous

THE FIJIANS.

stretch of sea-front, and is determined to assert and maintain
her rightful place as one of the Great Maritime Powers of the
Planet. All by itself it is making foreign eyes familiar with a
Flag which they have not seen before for forty years, outside
of the museum. For what Duluth has done, in building,
equipping, and maintaining at her sole expense the American
Foreign Commercial Fleet, and in thus rescuing the American
name from shame and lifting it high for the homage of the
nations, we owe her a debt of gratitude which our hearts shall
confess with quickened beats whenever her name is named
henceforth. Many national toasts will die in the lapse of time,
but while the flag flies and the Kepublic survives, they who
live under their shelter will still drink this one, standing and
uncovered : Health and prosperity to Thee, O Duluth, Ameri-
can Queen of the Alien Seas !

Row-boats began to flock from the shore ; their crews
were the first natives we had seen. These men carried no
overplus of
clothing, and
this was
wise, for the
weather was
hot. Hand-
some, great
dusky men
they were,
muscular,
c 1 e a n-limb-
ed, and with
faces full of

character and intelligence. It would be hard to find their
superiors anywhere among the dark races, I should think.

Everybody went ashore to look around, and spy out the

BOATS CAME FROM THE SHORE.

FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

land, and have that luxury of luxuries to sea- voyagers — a
land-dinner. And there we saw more
natives : Wrinkled old women, with their
flat mammals flung over their shoulders,
or hanging down in front like the cold-
weather drip from the molasses-faucet;
plump and smily young girls, blithe and
content, easy and graceful, a pleasure to
look at; young matrons, tall, straight,
comely, nobly built, sweeping by with
IN TOWN. chin up, and a gait incomparable for

unconscious "
stateliness
and dignity ;
majestic
young men —
athletes for
build and
muscle —
clothed in a
loose arrange-
ment of daZ- NATIVES.

zling white, with bronze breast and bronze legs
naked, and the head a cannon-swab of solid hair
combed straight out from the skull and dyed a rich
brick-red. Only sixty years ago they were sunk
in darkness ; now they have the bicycle.

We strolled about the streets of the white folks'
little town, and around over the hills by paths and
roads among European dwellings and gardens and
plantations, and past clumps of hibiscus that made
a body blink, the great blossoms were so intensely
red; and by and by we stopped to ask an elderly English

DECEPTIVE WEATHER.

colonist a question or two, and to sympathize with him con-
concerning the torrid weather ; but he was surprised, and said :

"This? This is not hot. You ought to be here in the
summer time once."

" We supposed that this was summer ; it has the ear-marks
of it. You could take it to almost any country and deceive
people with it. But if it isn't summer, what does it lack ? "

"It lacks half a year. This is mid-winter."

I had been suffering from colds for several months, and a
sudden change of season, like this, could hardly fail to do
me hurt. It brought on an-
other cold. It is odd, these
sudden jumps from season to
season. A fortnight ago we
left America in mid-summer,
now it is mid-winter ; about a
week hence we shall arrive
in Australia in the spring.

After dinner I found in
the billiard-room a resident
whom I had known some-
where else in the world, and
presently made some new
friends and drove with them
out into the country to visit
his Excellency the head of the State, who was occupying his
country residence, to escape the rigors of the winter weather,
I suppose, for it was on breezy high ground and much more
comfortable than the lower regions, where the town is, and
where the winter has full swing, and often sets a person's
hair afire when he takes off his hat to bow. There is a
noble and beautiful view of ocean and islands and castellated
peaks from the governor's high-placed house, and its immediate

THE RIGORS OF WINTER.

96 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

surroundings lie drowsing in that dreamy repose and serenity
which are the charm of life in the Pacific Islands.

One of the new friends who went out there with me was
a large man, and I had been admiring his size all the way. I
was still admiring it as he stood by the governor on the
veranda, talking ; then the Fijian butler stepped out there to
announce tea, and dwarfed him. Maybe he did not quite
dwarf him, but at any rate the contrast was quite striking.
Perhaps that dark giant was a king in a condition of political
suspension. I think that in the talk there on the veranda it
was said that in Fiji, as in the Sandwich Islands, native kings
and chiefs are of much grander size and build than the com-
moners. This man was clothed in flowing white vestments,
and they were just the thing for him ; they comported weU
with his great stature and his kingly port and dignity.
European clothes would have degraded him and made him
commonplace. I know that, because they do that with every-
body that wears them.

It was said that the old-time devotion to chiefs and rever-
ence for their persons still survive in the native commoner, and
in great force. The educated young gentleman who is chief of
the tribe that live in the region about the capital dresses in the
fashion of high-class European gentlemen, but even his clothes
cannot damn him in the reverence of his people. Their pride
in his lofty rank and ancient lineage lives on, in spite of his lost
authority and the evil magic of his tailor. He has no need to
defile himself with work, or trouble his heart with the sordid
cares of life ; the tribe will see to it that he shall not want,
and that he shall hold up his head and live like a gentleman.
I had a glimpse of him down in the town. Perhaps he is a
descendant of the last king — the king with the difficult name
whose memory is preserved by a notable monument of cut-
stone which one sees in the enclosure in the middle of the town.

A FORMALITY WITH A DIFFERENCE. 97

Thakombau — I remember, now; that is the name. It is
easier to preserve it on a granite block than in your head.

Fiji was ceded to England by this king in 1858. One of the
gentlemen present at the governor's quoted a remark made by
the king at the time of the session — a neat retort, and with
a touch of pathos in it, too. The English Commissioner had
offered a crumb of comfort to Thakombau by saying that the
transfer of the kingdom to Great Britain was merely " a sort
of hermit-crab formality, you know." " Yes," said poor
Thakombau, " but with this difference — the crab moves into
an unoccupied shell, but mine isn't."

However, as far as I can make out from the books, the
King was between the devil and the deep sea at the time, and
hadn't much choice. He owed the United States a large debt
— a debt which he could pay if allowed time, but time was de-
nied him. He must pay up right away or the warships would
be upon him. To protect his people from this disaster he
ceded his country to Britain, with a clause in the contract
providing for the ultimate payment of the American debt.

In old times the Fijians were fierce fighters ; they were
very religious, and worshiped idols ; the big chiefs were proud
and haughty, and they were men of great style in many waj^s ;
all chiefs had several wives, the biggest chiefs sometimes had
as many as fifty ; when a chief was dead and ready for burial,
four or five of his wives wer'e strangled and put into the grave
with him. In 1804 twenty-seven British convicts escaped
from Australia to Fiji, and brought guns and ammunition with
them. Consider what a power they Avere, armed like that, and
what an opportunity they had. If they had been energetic
men and sober, and had had brains and known how to use them,
they could have achieved the sovereignty of the archipelago —
twenty-seven kings and each with eight or nine islands under
7

98 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

his scepter. But nothing came of this chance. They lived
worthless lives of sin and luxury, and died without honor — in
most cases by violence. Only one of them had any ambition ; he
was an Irishman named Connor. He tried to raise a family of
fifty children, and scored forty-eight. He died lamenting his
failure. It was a foolish sort of avarice. Many a father would
have been rich enough with forty.

It is a fine race, the Fijians, with brains in their heads,
and an inquiring, turn of mind. It appears that their savage
ancestors had a doctrine of immortality in their scheme of
religion — with limitations. That is to say, their dead friend
would go to a happy hereafter if he could be accumulated,
but not otherwise. They drew the line; they thought that
the missionary's doctrine was too sweeping, too comprehensive.
They called his attention to certain facts. For instance,
many of their friends had been devoured by sharks; the
sharks, in their turn, were caught and eaten by other men;
later, these men were captured in war, and eaten by the enemy.
The original persons had entered into the composition of the
sharks ; next, they and the sharks had become part of the
flesh and blood and bone of the cannibals. How, then, could
the particles of the original men be searched out from the
final conglomerate and put together again? The inquirers
were full of doubts, and considered that the missionary had
not examined the matter with the gravity and attention which
so serious a thing deserved.

The missionary taught these exacting savages many valu-
able things, and got from them one — a very dainty and poetical
idea : Those wild and ignorant poor children of Nature believed
that the flowers, after they perish, rise on the winds and float
away to the fair fields of heaven, and flourish there forever in
immortal beauty 1

CHAPTEK VIII.

It could probably be shown by facts and figures that there is no distinctly
native American criminal class except Congress.

— Pudd^nhead Wilson^s New Calendar.

WHEN one glances at the map the members of the stu-
pendous island wilderness of the Pacific seem to
crowd upon each other ; but no, there is no crowd-
ing, even in the center of a group ; and between groups there
are lonely wide deserts of sea. JSTot everything is known
about the islands, their peoples and their languages. A start-
ling reminder of this is furnished by the fact that in Fiji,
twenty years ago, were living two strange and solitary beings
Vvho came from an unknown country and spoke an unknown
language. " They were picked up by a passing vessel many
hundreds of miles from any known land., floating in the same
tiny canoe in which they had been blown out to sea. When
found they were but skin and bone. No one could understand
what they said, and they have never named their country ; or,
if they have, the name does not correspond with that of any
island on any chart. They are now fat and sleek, and as
happy as the day is long. In the ship's log there is an entry
of the latitude and longitude in which they were found, and
this is probably all the clue they will ever have to their lost
homes." *

"What a strange and romantic episode it is ; and how one is
tortured with curiosity to know whence those mysterious
creatures came, those Men Without a Country, errant waifs

* Forbes's " Two Years in Fiji."

(99)

■ft

100 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

who cannot name their lost home, wandering Children of
Nowhere.

Indeed, the Island Wilderness is the very home of romance
and dreams and mystery. The loneliness, the solemnity, the
beauty, and the deep repose of this wilderness have a charm
which is all their own for the bruised spirit of men who have
fought and failed in the struggle for life in the great world ;
and for men who have been hunted out of the great world for
crime ; and for other men who love an easy and indolent ex-
istence ; and for others who love a roving free life, and stir
and change and adventure ; and for yet others who love an
easy and comfortable career of trading and money-getting,
mixed with plenty of loose matrimony by purchase, divorce
without trial or expense, and limitless spreeing thrown in to
make life ideally perfect.

We sailed again, refreshed.

The most cultivated person in the ship was a young English,
man whose home was in New Zealand. He was a naturalist.
His learning in his specialty was deep and thorough, his inter-
est in his subject amounted to a passion, he had an easy gift of
speech ; and so, when he talked about animals it was a pleasure
to listen to him. And profitable, too, though he was some-
times difficult to understand because now and then he used
scientific technicalities which were above the reach of some of
us. They were pretty sure to be above my reach, but as he
was quite willing to explain them I always made it a point to
get him to do it. I had a fair knowledge of his subject — lay-
man's knowledge — to begin with, but it was his teachings
which crystalized it into scientific form and clarity — in a word,
gave it value.

His special interest was the fauna of Australasia, and his
knowledge of the matter was as exhaustive as it was accurate.
I already knew a good deal about the rabbits in Australasia

THE FAUNA OF AUSTRALIA. 101

and their marvelous fecundity, but in my talks with him I
found that my estimate of the great hindrance and obstruction
inflicted by the rabbit pest upon traffic and travel was far
short of the facts. He told me that the first pair of rabbits
imported into Australasia bred so wonderfully that within six
months rabbits were so thick in the land that people had to
dig trenches through them to get from town to town.

He told me a great deal about worms, and the kangaroo,
and other coleoptera, and said he knew the history and ways
of all such pachydermata. He said the kangaroo had pockets,
and carried its young in them when it couldn't get apples.
And he said that the emu was as big as an ostrich, and looked
like one, and had an amorphous appetite and would eat bricks.
Also, that the dingo was not a dingo at all, but just a wild
dog ; and that the only difference between a dingo and a dodo
was that neither of them barked ; otherwise they were just
the same.

He said that the only game-bird in Australia was the wom-
bat, and the only song-bird the larrikin, and that both were
protected by government. The most beautiful of the native
birds was the bird of Paradise. Next came the two kinds of
lyres ; not spelt the same. He said the one kind was dying
out, the other thickening up. He explained that the " Sun-
downer " was not a bird^ it was a man ; sundowner was
merely the Australian equivalent of our word, tramp. He is
a loafer, a hard drinker, and a sponge. He tramps across the
country in the sheep-shearing season, pretending to look for
work ; but he always times himself to arrive at a sheep-run
just at sundown, when the day's labor ends ; all he wants is
whisky and supper and bed and breakfast ; he gets them and
then disappears. The naturalist spoke of the bell bird, the
creature that at short intervals all day rings out its mellow and
exquisite peal from the deeps of the forest. It is the favorite

102 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

and best friend of the weary and thirsty sundowner ; for he
knows that wherever the bell bird is, there is water ; and he
goes somewhere else. The naturalist said that the oddest bird
in Australasia was the Laughing Jackass, and the biggest the
now extinct Great Moa.

The Moa stood thirteen feet high, and could step over an
ordinary man's head or kick his hat ojff ; and his head, too, for
that matter. He said it was wingless, but a swift runner.
The natives used to ride it. It could make forty miles an
hour, and keep it up for four hundred miles and come out
reasonably fresh. It was still in existence when the railway
was introduced into New Zealand ; still in existence, and
carrying the mails. The railroad began with the same schedule
it has now : two expresses a week — time, twenty miles an
hour. The company exterminated the moa to get the mails.

Speaking of the indigenous coneys and bactrian camels, the
naturalist said that the coniferous and bacteriological output of
Australasia was remarkable for its many and curious depart-
ures from the accepted laws governing these species of tuber-
cles, but that in his opinion Nature's fondness for dabbling in
the erratic was most notably exhibited in that curious combina-
tion of bird, fish, amphibian, burrower, crawler, quadruped, and
Christian called the Ornithorhyncus — grotesquest of animals,
king of the animalculae of the world for versatility of character
and make-up. Said he —

"You can call it anything you want to, and be right. It is a fish, for it
lives in the river half the time ; it is a land animal, for it resides on the land
half the time ; it is an amphibian, since it likes both and does not know which
it prefers ; it is a hybernian, for when times are dull and nothing much going
on it buries itself under the mud at the bottom of a puddle and hybernates
there a couple of weeks at a time ; it is a kind of duck, for it has a duck-bill
and four webbed paddles ; it is a fish and quadrliped together, for in the
water it swims with the paddles and on shore it paws itself across country with
them ; it is a kind of seal, for it has a seal's fur ; it is carnivorous, herbivorous,
insectivorous, and vermifuginous, for it eats fish and grass and butterflies,
and in the season digs worms out of the mud and devours them ; it is clearly

OFF GOES HIS HEAD-

THE ORNITHORHYNCUS.

105

a bird, for it lays eggs,
and hatches them ; it is
clearly a mammal, for it
nurses its young ; and it
is manifestly a kind of
Christian, for it keeps the
Sabbath when there is
anybody around, and
when there isn't, doesn't.
It has all the tastes there
are except refined ones,
it has all the habits there
are except good ones.

"It is a survival — a
survival of the fittest.
Mr. Darwin invented the
theory that goes by that
name, but the Ornitho-
rhyncus was the first to
put it to actual experi-
ment and prove that it
could be done. Hence it
should have as much of
the credit as Mr. Darwin
It was never in the Ark ;
you will find no mention
of it there ; it nobly
stayed out and worked the
theory. Of all creatures
in the world it w^as the
only one properly equip-
ped for the test. The
Ark was thirteen months
afloat, and all the globe
submerged ; no land visi-
ble above the flood, no
vegetation, no food for a
mammal to eat, nor water
for a mammal to drink ;
for all mammal food was
destroyed, and when the
pure floods from heaven
and the salt oceans of the
earth mingled theirwaters
and rose above the moun-
tain tops, the result was
a drink which no bird or

WAS NEVER IN THE AKK.

106 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

beast of ordinary construction could use and live. But this combination was
nuts for the Ornithorhyncus, if I may use a term like that without offense. Its
river home had always been salted by the flood tides of the sea. On the face of
the Noachian deluge innumerable forest trees were floating. Upon these the
Ornithorhyncus voyaged in peace ; voyaged from clime to clime, from hemis-
phere to hemisphere, in contentment and comfort, in virile interest in the con-
stant change of scene, in humble thankfulness for its privileges, in ever-in-
creasing entlmsiam in the development of the great theory upon whose
validity it liad staked its life, its fortunes, and its sacred honor, if I may use
such expressions without impropriety in connection with an episode of this
nature.

"It lived the tranquil and luxurious life of a creature of independent
means. Of things actually necessary to its existence and its happiness not a
detail was wanting. "When it wished to walk, it scrambled along the tree-
trunk ; it mused in the shade of the leaves by day, it slept in their shelter by
night ; when it wanted the refreshment of a swim, it had it ; it ate leaves
when it wanted a vegetable diet, it dug under the bark for worms and grubs;
when it wanted tish it caught them, when it wanted eggs it laid them. If the
grubs gave out in one tree it swam to another ; and as for fish, the very opu
lence of the supply was an embarrassment. And finally, when it was thirsty it
smacked its chops in gratitude over a blend that would have slain a crocodile.

"When at last, after thirteen months of travel and research in all the
Zones it went aground on a mountain-summit, it strode ashore, saying in its
heart, ' Let them that come after me invent theories and dream dreams about
the Survival of the Fittest if they like, but I am the first that has done it !

" This wonderful creature dates back like the kangaroo and many other
Australian hydrocephalous invertebrates, to an age long anterior to the advent
of man upon the earth ; they date back, indeed, to a time when a causeway
hundreds of miles wide, and thousands of miles long, joined Australia to
Africa, and the animals of the two countries were alike, and all belonged to
that remote geological epoch known to science as the Old Red Grindstone
Post-Pleosaurian. Later the causeway sank under the sea ; subterranean con-
vulsions lifted the African continent a thousand feet higher than it was before,
but Australia kept her old level In Africa's new climate the animals neces-
sarily began to develop and shade off into new forms and families and species,
but the animals of Australia as necessarily remained stationary, and have so
remained until this day. In the course of some millions of years the African
Ornithorhyncus developed and developed and developed, and sluffed off
detail after detail of its make-up until at last the creature became wholly dis-
integrated and scattered. Whenever you see a bird or a beast or a seal or an
otter in Africa you know that he is merely a sorry surviving fragment of that
sublime original of whom I have been speaking — that creature which was
everything in general and nothing in particular — the opulently endowed e
pluribus unum of the animal world.

" Such is the history of the most hoary, the most ancient, the most vener-
able creature that exists in the earth today — Ornithorhyncus Platypus Ex-
traordinariensis — whom God preserve ! "

BEAUTIFUL VERSES. 107

When he was strongly moved he could rise and soar like
that with ease. And not only in the prose form, but in the
poetical as well. He had written many pieces of poetry in his
time, and these manuscripts he lent around among the passen-
gers, and was willing to let them be copied. It seemed to me
that the least technical one in the series, and the one which
reached the loftiest note, perhaps, was his

INVOCATION.

"Gome forth from thy oozy couch,
O Ornithorhyncus dear !
And greet with a cordial claw
The stranger that longs to hear

"From thy own own lips the tale
Of thy origin all unknown:
Tliy misplaced bone where flesh should be
And flesh where should be bone ;

" And fishy fin where should be paw,
And beaver-trowel tail,
And snout of beast equip'd with teeth
"Where gills ought to prevail.

"Come, Kangaroo, the good and true !
Foreshortened as to legs,
And body tapered like a churn,
And sack marsupial, i' fegs,

"And tells us why you linger here.
Thou relic of a vanished time,
When all your friends as fossils sleep, ■
Immortalized in lime ! "

Perhaps no poet is a conscious plagiarist ; but there seems
to be warrant for suspecting that there is no poet who is not
at one time or another an unconscious one. The above verses
are indeed beautiful, and, in a way, touching; but there is a
haunting something about them which unavoidably suggests
the Sweet Singer of Michigan. It can hardly be doubted that
the author had read the works of that poet and been im-
pressed by them. It is not apparent that he has borrowed
from them any word or yet any phrase, but the style and swing

108

FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

and mastery and melody of the Sweet Singer all are there.
Compare this Invocation with " Frank Dutton " — particularly
stanzas first and seventeenth — and I think the reader will feel
convinced that he who wrote the one had read the other : *

'Frank Dutton was as fine a lad

As ever you wish to see,
And he was drowned in Pine Island Lake

On earth no more will he be.
His age was near fifteen years,

And he was a motherless boy,
He was living with his grandmother

When he was drowned, poor boy.

XVII.

" He was drowned on Tuesday afternoon,

On Sunday he was found,
And the tidings of that drowned boy

Was heard for miles around.
His form was laid by his mother's side,

Beneath the cold, cold ground.
His friends for him will drop a tear

When they view his little mound."

* The Sentimental Song Book. By Mrs. Julia Moore, p. 36.

THE NATURALIST.

CHAPTEK IX.

It is your human environment that makes climate.

— Pudd^nhead Wihwi's New Calendar.

SEPT. 15 — Night. Close to Australia now, Sydney 50
miles distant.
That note recalls an experience. The passengers
were sent for, to come up in the bow and see a fine sight. It
was very dark. One could not follow with the eye the surface
of the sea more than fifty yards in any direction — it dimmed
away and became lost to sight at about that distance from us.
But if you patiently gazed into the darkness a little while,
there was a sure reward for you. Presently, a quarter of a
mile away you would see a blinding splash or explosion of
light on the water — a flash so sudden and so astonishingly bril-
liant that it would make you catch your breath ; then that
blotch of light would instantly extend itself and take the cork-
screw shape and imposing length of the fabled sea-serpent,
with every curve of its body and the " break " spreading away
from its head, and the wake following behind its tail clothed
in a fierce splendor of living fire. And my, but it was coming
at a lightning gait ! Almost before you could think, this mon-
ster of light, fifty feet long, would go flaming and storming
by, and suddenly disappear. And out in the distance whence
he came you would see another flash ; and another and
another and another, and see them turn into sea-serpents on
the instant ; and once sixteen flashed up at the same time and
came tearing towards us, a swarm of wiggling curves, a mov-
ing conflagration, a vision of bewildering beauty, a spectacle

(109)

110 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

of fire and energy whose equal the most of those people will
not see again until after they are dead.

It was porpoises — porpoises aglow with phosphorescent
light. They presently collected in a wild and magnificent
jumble under the bows, and there they played for an hour,
leaping and froUicking and carrying on, turning summersaults
in front of the stem or across it and never getting hit, never
making a miscalculation, though the stem missed them only
about an inch, as a rule. They were porpoises of the ordinary
length — eight or ten feet — but every twist of their bodies
sent a long procession of united and glowing curves astern.
That fiery jumble was an enchanting thing to look at, and we
stayed out the performance ; one cannot have such a show as
that twice in a lifetime. The porpoise is the kitten of the
sea ; he never has a serious thought, he cares for nothing but
fun and play. But I think I never saw him at his winsomest
until that night. It was near a center of civilization, and he
could have been drinking.

By and by, when we had approached to somewhere within
thirty miles of Sydney Heads the great electric light that is
posted on one of those lofty ramparts began to show, and in
time the little spark grew to a great sun and pierced the firm-
ament of darkness with a far-reaching sword of light.

Sydney Harbor is shut in behind a precipice that extends
some miles like a wall, and exhibits no break to the ignorant
stranger. It has a break in the middle, but it makes so little
show that even Captain Cook sailed by it without seeing it.
Near by that break is a false break which resembles it, and
which used to make trouble for the mariner at night, in the
early days before the place was lighted. It caused the memo-
rable disaster to the Duncan Dunbar ^ one of the most pathetic
tragedies in the history of that pitiless ruffian, the sea. The
ship was a sailing vessel ; a fine and favorite passenger packet,

FATE OF THE DUNCAN DUNBAR. HI

commanded by a popular captain of high reputation. She was
due from England, and Sydney was Waiting, and counting the
hours ; counting the hours, and making ready to give her a
heart-stirring welcome; for she was bringing back a great
company of mothers and daughters, the long-missed light and
bloom of life of Sydney homes; daughters that had been
years absent at school, and mothers that had been with them
all that time watching over them. Of all the world only India
and Australasia have by custom freighted ships and fleets with
their hearts, and know the tremendous meaning of that
phrase ; only they know what the waiting is like when this
freightage is entrusted to the fickle winds, not steam, and
what the joy is like when the ship that is returning this treas-
ure comes safe to port and the long dread is over.

On board the Duncan Dunbar, flying toward Sydney Heads
in the waning afternoon, the happy home-comers made busy
preparation, for it was not doubted that they would be in the
arms of their friends before the day was done ; they put away
their sea-going clothes and pu^ on clothes meeter for the meet-
ing, their richest and their loveliest, these poor brides of the
grave. But the wind lost fon e, or there was a miscalculation,
and before the Heads were si^^'^hted the darkness came on. It
was said that ordinarily the captain would have made a safe
offing and waited for th-^ morning ; but this was no ordinary
occasion ; all about him were appealing faces, faces pathetic
with disappointment. So his sympathy moved him to try the
dangerous passage in the dark. He had entered the Heads
seventeen times, and believed he knew the ground. So he
steered straight for the false opening, mistaking it for the true
one. He did not find out that he was wrong until it was too
late. There was no saving the ship. The great seas swept
her in and crushed her to splinters and rubbish upon the rock
tushes at the base of tlie precipice. Not one of all that fair

112 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

and gracious company was ever seen again alive. The tale
is told to every stranger that passes the spot, and it will con-
tinue to be told to all that come, for generations ; but it will
never grow old, custom cannot stale it, the heart-break that
is in it can never perish out of it.

There were two hundred persons in the ship, and but one
survived the disaster. He was a sailor. A huge sea flung him
up the face of the precipice and stretched him on a narrow
shelf of rock midway between the top and the bottom, and
there he lay all night. At any other time he would have lain
there for the rest of his life, without chance of discovery ; but
the next morning the ghastly news swept through Sydney that
the Duncan Dunbar had gone down in sight of home, and
straightway the walls of the Heads were black with mourners ;
and one of these, stretching himself out over the precipice to
spy out what might be seen below, discovered this miraculously
preserved relic of the wreck. Ropes were brought and the
nearly impossible feat of rescuing the man was accomplished.
He was a person with a practical turn of mind, and he hired a
hall in Sydney and exhibited himself at sixpence a head till he
exhausted the output of the gold fields for that year.

"We entered and cast anchor, and in the morning went
oh-ing and ah-ing in admiration up through the crooks and
turns of the spacious and beautiful harbor — a harbor which
is the darling of Sydney and the wonder of the world.
It is not surprising that the people are proud of it, nor that
they put their enthusiasm into eloquent words. A returning
citizen asked me what I thought of it, and 1 testified with
a cordiality which I judged wou] J be up to the market rate.
I said it was beautiful — superbly beautiful. Then by a
natural impulse I gave God the praise. The citizen did not
seem altogether satisfied* He said:

"It is beautiful, of course it's beautiful — the Harbor;

SYDNEY HARBOR.

113

but that isn't all of it, it's only half of it; Sydney's the
other half, and it takes both of them together to ring the
supremacy -bell. God made the Harbor, and that's all right;
but Satan made Sydney."

Of course I made an apology ; and asked him to convey
it to his friend. He was right about Sydney being half
of it. It would be beautiful without Sydney, but not above
half as beautiful as it is now, with Sydney added. It is shaped
somewhat like an oak-leaf — a roomy sheet of lovely blue
water, with narrow off-shoots of water running up into the
country on both sides between long fingers of land, high
wooden ridges with sides sloped like graves. Handsome
villas are perched here and there on these ridges, snuggling
amongst the foliage, and one catches alluring glimpses of them
as the ship swims by toward the city. The city clothes a cluster
of hills and a ruffle of neighboring ridges with its undulating-
masses of masonry, and out of these masses spring towers

and spires and
other archi-
tectural digni-
ties and grand-
eurs that break
the flowing
lines and give
picturesque-
ness to the
general effect.
The narrow
^"^ - - " inlets which I

VIEW IN SYDNEY HARBOR. haVC mCU-

tioned go wandering out into the land everywhere and hiding
themselves in it, and pleasure-launches are always exploring
8

114 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

them with picnic parties on board. It is said by trustworthy
people that if you explore them all you will find that you
have covered TOO miles of water passage. But there are liars
everywhere this year, and they will double that when their
works are in good going order.

Octol)er was close at hand, spring was come. It was really
spring — everybody said so; but you could have sold it for
summer in Canada, and nobody would have suspected. It was
the very Aveather that makes our home summers the perfection
of climatic luxury ; I mean, Avhen you are out in the wood or
by the sea. But these people said it was cool, now — a person
ought to see Sydney in the summer time if he wanted to know
what warm weather is ; and he ought to go north ten or fifteen
hundred miles if he wanted to know what hot weather is.
They said that aAvay up there toward the equator the hens
laid fried eggs. Sydney is the place to go to get information
about other people's climates. It seems to me that the occupa-
tion of Unbiased Traveler Seeking Information is the pleas-
antest and most irresponsible trade there is. The traveler can
always find out anything he wants to, merely by asking. He
can get at all the facts, and more. Everybody helps him, no-
body hinders him. Anybody who has an old fact in stock that
is no longer negotiable in the domestic market will let him
have it at his own price. An accumulation of such goods is
easily and quickly made. They cost almost nothing and they
bring par in the foreign market. Travelers who come to
America always freight up with the same old nursery tales
that their predecessors selected, and they carry them back and
always work them off without any trouble in the home market.

If the climates of the world were determined by parallels
of latitude, then we could know a place's climate by its posi-
tion on the map ; and so we should know that the climate of
Sydney was the counterpart of the climate of Columbia, S. C,

A SYDNEY WINTER. 115

and of Little Rock, Arkansas, since Sydney is about the same
distance south of the equator that those other towns are north
of it — thirty-four degrees. But no, climate disregards the
parallels of latitude. In Arkansas they have a winter; in
Sydney they have the name of it, but not the thing itself, I
have seen the ice in the Mississippi floating past the mouth of
the Arkansas river ; and at Memphis, but a little way above,
the Mississippi has been frozen over, from bank to bank. But
they have never had a cold spell in Sydney which brought the
mercury down to freezing point. Once in a mid- winter day
there, in the month of July, the mercury went down to 36°,
and that remains the memorable "cold day" in the history of
the town. No doubt Little Rock has seen it below zero. Once,
in Sydney, in mid-summer, about l^ew Year's Day, the mer-
cury went up to 106° in the shade, and that is Sydney's memo-
rable hot day. That would about tally with Little Rock's
hottest day also, I imagine. My Sydney figures are taken
from a government report, and are trustworthy. In the mat-
ter of summer weather Arkansas has no advantage over Syd-
ney, perhaps, but when it comes to winter weather, that is
another affair. You could cut up an Arkansas winter into a
hundred Sydney winters and have enough left for Arkansas
and the poor.

The whole narrow, hilly belt of the Pacific side of New
South Wales has the climate of its capital — a mean winter tem-
perature of 54° and a mean summer one of 71°. It is a climate
which cannot be improved upon for healthfulness. But the
experts say that 90° in New South Wales is harder to bear
than 112° in the neighboring colony of Victoria, because the
atmosphere of the former is humid, and of the latter dry.

The mean temperature of the southernmost point of New
South Wales is the same as that of Nice — 60° — yet Nice is
further from the equator by 460 miles than is the former.

116

FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

But Nature is always stingy of perfect climates ; stingier
in the case of Australia than usual. Apparently this vast
continent has a really good climate nowhere but around the
edges.

If we look at a map of the world we are surprised to see
how big Australia is. It is about two-thirds as large as the
United States was before we added Alaska.

But where as one finds a sufficiently good climate and fer-
tile land almost everywhere in the United States, it seems set-
tled that inside of the Australian border-belt one finds many
deserts and in spots a climate which nothing can stand except a
few of the hardier kinds of rocks. In effect, Australia is as
yet unoccupied. If you take a map of the United States and

leave the Atlantic sea-board States in their places; also the
fringe of Southern States from Florida west to the Mouth of
the Mississippi ; also a narrow, inhabited streak up the Mis-
sissippi half-way to its head waters ; also a narrow, inhabited
border along the Pacific coast : then take a brushful of paint
and obliterate the whole remaining mighty stretch of country
that lies between the Atlantic States and the Pacific-coast
strip, your map will look like the latest map of Australia.

This stupendous blank is hot, not to say torrid ; a part of it
is fertile, the rest is desert ; it is not liberally watered ; it has
no towns. One has only to cross the mountains of New South
Wales and descend into the westward-lying regions to find
that he has left the choice climate behind him, and found a

A DUST-STORM. 117

new one of a quite different character. In fact, he would not
know by the thermometer that he was not in the blistering
Plains of India. Captain Sturt, the great explorer, gives us a
sample of the heat.

"The wind, which had been blowing all the morning from the N.E., in-
creased to a heavy gale, and I shall never forget its withering effect. I
sought shelter behind a large gum-tree, but the blasts of heat were so terrific
that I wondered the very grass did not take fire. This really was nothing ideal:
everything both animate and inanimate gave way before it ; the horses stood
with their backs to the wind and their noses to the ground, without the mus-
cular strength to raise their heads ; the birds were mute, and the leaves of the
trees under which we were sitting fell like a snow shower around us. At noon
I took a thermometer graded to 127°, out of my box, and observed that the
mercury was up to 135°. Thinking that it had been unduly influenced, I put
it in the fork of a tree close to me, sheltered alike from the wind and the sun.
I went to examine it about an hour afterwards, when I found the mercury
had risen to the top of the instrument and had burst the bulb, a circumstance
that I believe no traveler has ever before had to record. I cannot find lan-
guage to convey to the reader's mind an idea of the intense and oppressive
nature of the heat that prevailed."

That hot wind sweeps over Sydney sometimes, and brings

with it what is called a "dust-storm." It is said that most

Australian towns are acquainted with the dust-storm. I think I

know what it is like, for the following description by Mr. Gane

tallies very well with the alkali dust-storm of Nevada, if you

leave out the " shovel " part. Still the shovel part is a pretty

important part, and seems to indicate that my Kevada storm

is but a poor thing, after all.

"As we proceeded the altitude became less, and the heat proportionately
greater until we reached Dubbo, which is only 600 feet above sea-level. It is
a pretty town, built on an extensive plain. . . . After the effects of a
shower of rain have passed away the surface of the ground crumbles into a
thick layer of dust, and occasionally, when the wind is in a particular quarter,
it is lifted bodily from the ground in one long opaque cloud. In the midst of such
a storm nothing can be seen a few yards ahead, and the unlucky person who
happens to be out at the time is compelled to seek the nearest retreat at hand.
When the thrifty housewife sees in the distance the dark column advancing in
a steady whirl towards her house, she closes the doors and windows with all
expedition. A drawing-room, the window of which has been carelessly left
open during a dust-storm, is indeed an extraordinary sight. A lady who has
resided in Dubbo for some years says that the dust lies so thick on the carpel
that it is necessary to use a shovel to remove it."

118

FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

And probably a wagon. I was mistaken ; I have not seen
a proper dust-storm. To ray mind the exterior aspects and
character of Australia are fascinating things to look at and
think about, they are so strange, so weird, so new, so uncom-
monplace, such a startling and interesting contrast to the other
sections of the planet, the sections that are known to us all,
familiar to us all. In the matter of particulars — a detail here,
a detail there — we have had the choice climate of Kew South
"Wales' sea-coast ; we have had the Australian heat as furnished
by Captain Sturt ; we have had the wonderful dust-storm ; and
we have considered the phenomenon of an almost empty hot
wilderness half as big as the United States, with a narrow belt
of civilization, population, and good climate around it.

A DU8T bXORM.

CHAPTER X.

Everything human is pathetic. The secret source of Humor itself is not joy but
sorrow. There is no humor io heaven. — Pudd^nhead Wilson'' s New Calendar.

GAPTAIN Cook found Australia in 17Y0, and eighteen
years later the British Government began to transport
convicts to it. Altogether, New South Wales received
83,000 in 53 years. The convicts wore heavy chains; they
were ill-fed and badly treated by the officers set over them ;
they were heavily punished for even slight infractions of the
rules; " the crudest discipline ever known" is one historian's
description of their life.*

English law was hard-hearted in those days. For trifling
offenses which in our day would be punished by a small fine or
a few days' confinement, men, women, and boys were sent to
this other end of the earth to serve terms of seven and fourteen
years; and for serious crimes they were transported for life.
Children were sent to the penal colonies for seven years for
stealing a rabbit !

When I was in London twenty-three years ago there was
a new penalty in force for diminishing garroting and wife-
beating — 25 lashes on the bare back with the cat-o'-nine-tails.
It was said that this terrible punishment was able to bring the
stubbornest ruffians to terms ; and that no man had been found
with grit enough to keep his emotions to himself beyond the
ninth blow ; as a rule the man shrieked earlier. That penalty
had a great and wholesome effect upon the garroters and wife-
beaters ; but humane modern London could not endure it ; it

* The Story of Australasia. J. S. Laurie.

(119)

120 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

got its law rescinded. Many a bruised and battered English
wife has since had occasion to deplore that cruel achievement
of sentimental " humanity."

Twenty-five lashes ! In Australia and Tasmania they gave
a convict fifty for almost any little offense; and sometimes
a brutal oiiicer would add fifty, and then another fifty, and so
on, as long as the sufferer could endure the torture and live.
In Tasmania I read the entry, in an old manuscript official
record, of a case where a convict was given three hundred
lashes — for stealing some silver spoons. And men got more
than that, sometimes. Who handled the cat? Often it was
another convict; sometimes it was the culprit's dearest com-
rade ; and he had to lay on with all his might ; otherwise he
would get a flogging himself for his mercy — for he was under
watch — and yet not do his friend any good : the friend would
be attended to by another hand and suffer no lack in the
matter of full punishment.

The convict life in Tasmania was so unendurable, and sui-
cide so difficult to accomplish that once or twice despairing
men got together and drew straws to determine which of them
should kill another of the group — this murder to secure death
to the perpetrator and to the witnesses of it by the hand of the
hangman !

The incidents quoted above are mere hints, mere sugges-
tions of what convict life was like — they are but a couple of
details tossed into view out of a shoreless sea of such ; or, to
change the figure, they are but a pair of flaming steeples
photographed from a point which hides from sight the burning
city which stretches away from their bases on every hand.

Some of the contacts — indeed, a good many of them —
were very bad people, even for that day ; but the most of them
were probably not noticeably worse tlian the average of the
people they left behind them at home. We must believe this ;

CONVICTS IN AUSTRALIA. 121

we cannot avoid it. We are obliged to believe that a nation
that could look on, unmoved, and see starving or freezing
women hanged for stealing twenty-six cents' worth of bacon or
rags, and boys snatched from their mothers, and men from
their families, and sent to the other side of the world for long
terms of years for similar trifling offenses, was a nation to
whom the term " civilized " could not in any large way be ap-
plied. And we must also believe that a nation that knew, dur-
ing more than forty years, what was happening to those exiles
and was still content vdih it, was not advancing in any showy
way toward a higher grade of civilization.

If we look into the characters and conduct of the officers
and gentlemen who had charge of the convicts and attended
to their backs and stomachs, we must grant again that as be-
tween the convict and his masters, and between both and
the nation at home, there was a quite noticeable monotony of
sameness.

Four years had gone by, and many convicts had come.
Kespectable settlers were beginning to arrive. These two
classes of colonists had to be protected, in case of trouble
among themselves or with the natives. It is proper to mention
the natives, though they could hardly count they were so
scarce. At a time when they had not as yet begun to be much
disturbed — not as yet being in the way — it was estimated
that in Kew South "Wales there was but one native to 45,000
acres of territory.

People had to be protected. Officers of the regular army
did not want this service — away off there where neither honor
nor distinction was to be gained. So England recruited and
officered a kind of militia force of 1,000 uniformed civilians
called the " ]SI"ew South Wales Corps " and shipped it.

This was the worst blow of all. The colony fairly staggered
under it. The Corps was an object-lesson of the moral condi-

122 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

tion of England outside of the jails. The colonists trembled.
It was feared that next there would be an importation of the
nobility.

In those early days the colony was non-supporting. All
the necessaries of life — food, clothing, and all — were sent out
from England, and kept in great government store-houses, and
given to the convicts and sold to the settlers — sold at a trifling
advance upon cost. The Corps saw its opportunity. Its
officers went into commerce, and in a most lawless way. They
went to importing rum, and also to manufacturing it in private
stills, in defiance of the government's commands and protests.
They leagued themselves together and ruled the market ; they
boycotted the government and the other dealers ; they estab-
lished a close monopoly and kept it strictly in their own hands.
When a vessel arrived with spirits, they allowed nobody to buy
but themselves, and they forced the owner to sell to them at a
price named by themselves — and it was always low enough.
They bought rum at an average of two dollars a gallon and
sold it at an average of ten. They made rum the currency of
the country — for there was little or no money — and they
maintained their devastating hold and kept the colony under
their heel for eighteen or twenty years before they were finally
conquered and routed by the government.

Meantime, they had spread intemperance everywhere. And
they had squeezed farm after farm out of the settlers' hands
for rum, and thus had bountifully enriched themselves. When
a farmer was caught in the last agonies of thirst they took
advantage of him and sweated him for a drink.

In one instance they sold a man a gallon of rum worth two
dollars for a piece of property which was sold some years later
for $100,000.

When the colony was about eighteen or twenty years old it
was discovered that the land was specially fitted for the wool

PROSPERITY WITH HOSPITALITY.

123

culture. Prosperity followed, commerce with the world began,
by and by rich mines of the noble metals were opened, immi-
grants flowed in, capital likewise. The result is the great and
wealthy and enlightened commonwealth of New South "Wales.
It is a country that is rich in mines, wool ranches, trams,
railways, steamship lines, schools, newspapers, botanical gar-
dens, art galleries, libraries, museums, hospitals, learned socie-
ties ; it is the hospitable home of every species of culture and of
every species of material enterprise, and there is a church at
every man's door, and a race-track over the way.

NEW SOUTH WALES CORPS.

CHAPTER XL

We should be careful to get out of an experience only the wisdom that is in it —
and stop there ; lest we be like the cat that sits down on a hot stove-lid. She will
never sit down on a hot stove-lid again — and that is well ; but also she will never
sit down on a cold one any more. — Pudd^nhead Wilaon's New Calendar.

ALL English-speaking colonies are made up of lavishly
hospitable people, and New South Wales and its capi-
tal are like the rest in this. The English-speaking
colony of the United States of America is always called lav-
ishly hospitable by the English traveler. As to the other
English-speaking colonies throughout the world from Canada
all around, I know by experience that the description fits them.
I will not go more particularly into this matter, for I find that
when writers try to distribute their gratitude here and there
and yonder by detail they run across difficulties and do some
ungraceful stumbling.

Mr. Gane (" New South Wales and Victoria in 1885 "),
tried to distribute his gratitude, and was not lucky :

"The inhabitants of Sydney are renovpned for their hospitality. The
treatment which we experienced at the hands of this generous-hearted people
will help more than anything else to make us recollect with pleasure our stay
amongst them. In the character of hosts and hostesses they excel. The
' new chum ' needs only the acquaintanceship of one of their number, and he
becomes at once the happy recipient of numerous complimentary invitations
and thoughtful kindnesses. Of the towns it has been our good fortune to
visit, none have portrayed home so faithfully as Sydney."

Nobody could say it finer than that. If he had put in his

cork then, and stayed away from Dubbo — but no; heedless

man, he pulled it again. Pulled it when he was away along

in his book, and his memory of what he had said about Sydney

had grown dim :

(124)

AN AMERICAN TRIMMED CITY.

125

"We cannot quit the promising town of Dubbo without testifying, in
warm praise, to the kind-hearted and hospitable usages of its inhabitants.
Sydney, though well deserving the character it bears of its kindly treatment
of strangers, possesses a little formality and reserve. In Dubbo, on the con-
trary, though the same congenial manners prevail, there is a pleasing degree
of respectful familiarity which gives the town a homely comfort not often met
with elsewhere. In laying on one side our pen we feel contented in having
been able, though so late in this work, to bestow a panegyric, however un-
pretentious, on a town which, though possessing no picturesque natural sur-
roundings, nor interesting architectural productions, has yet a body of citi-
zens whose hearts cannot but obtain for their town a reputation for benevo-
lence and kind-heartedness."

I wonder what soured him on Sydney. It seems strange
that a pleasing degree of three or four
fingers of respectful familiarity should fill
a man up and give him the panegyrics so
bad. For he has them, the worst way —
any one can see that. A man who is
perfectly at himself does not throw cold
detraction at people's architectural pro-
ductions and picturesque surroundings,
and let on that what he prefers is a Dub-
bonese dust-storm and a pleasing degree
of respectful familiarity No, these are
old, old symptoms; and when they ap-
pear we know that the man has got the panegyrics.

Sydney has a population of 400,000. When a stranger
from America steps ashore there, the first thing that strikes
him is that the place is eight or nine times as large as he was
expecting it to be ; and the next thing that strikes him is that
it is an English city with American trimmings. Later on, in
Melbourne, he will find the American trimmings still more in
evidence; there, even the architecture will often suggest
America ; a photograph of its stateliest business street might
be passed upon him for a picture of the finest street in a large
American city. I was told that the most of the fine residences

HEEDLESS MAN.

126 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

were the city residences of squatters. The name seemed out
of focus somehow. When the explanation came, it offered a
new instance of the curious changes which words, as well as ani-
mals, undergo through, change of habitat and climate. "With
us, when you speak of a squatter you are always supposed to
be speaking of a poor man, but in Australia when you speak
of a squatter you are supposed to be speaking of a millionaire ;
in America the word indicates the possessor of a fe^w acres and
a doubtful title, in Australia it indicates a man whose land-
front is as long as a railroad, and whose title has been per-
fected in one way or another ; in America the word indicates
a man who owns a dozen head of live stock, in Australia a
man who owns anywhere from fifty thousand up to half a
million head ; in America the word indicates a man who is
obscure and not important, in Australia a man who is promi-
nent and of the first importance ; in America you take off
your hat to no squatter, in Australia you do ; in America if
your uncle is a squatter you keep it dark, in Australia you ad-
vertise it ; in America if your friend is a squatter nothing
comes of it, but with a squatter for your friend in Australia
you may sup with kings if there are any around.

In Australia it takes about two acres and a half of pasture-
land (some people say twice as many), to support a sheep ; and
when the squatter has half a million sheep his private domain
is about as large as Rhode Island, to speak in general terms.
His annual wool crop may be worth a quarter or a half million
dollars.

He will live in a palace in Melbourne or Sydney or some
other of the large cities, and make occasional trips to his
sheep-kingdom several hundred miles away in the great plains
to look after his battalions of riders and shepherds and other
hands. He has a commodious dwelling out there, and if he
approve of you lie will invite you to spend a week in it, and

SQUATTER LIFE.

THE AUSTRALIAN SQUATTER. 129

will make you at home and comfortable, and let you see the
great industry in all its details, and feed you and slake you
and smoke you with the best that money can buy.

On at least one of these vast estates there is a considerable
town, with all the various businesses and occupations that go
to make an important town; and the town and the land it
stands upon are the property of the squatters. I have seen
that town, and it is not unlikely that there are other squatter-
owned towns in Australia.

Australia supplies the world not only with tine wool, but
with mutton also. The modern invention of cold storage and
its application in ships has created this great trade. In Syd-
ney I visited a huge establishment where they kill and clean
and solidly freeze a thousand sheep a day, for shipment to
England.

The Australians did not seem to me to differ noticeably
from Americans, either in dress, carriage, ways, pronunciation,
inflections, or general appearance. There were fleeting and
subtle suggestions of their English origin, but these were not
pronounced enough, as a rule, to catch one's attention. The
people have easy and cordial manners from the beginning —
from the moment that the introduction is completed. This is
American. To put it in another way, it is English friendliness
with the English shyness and self-consciousness left out.

Kow and then — but this is rare — one hears such words as
piper for paper, lydy for lady, and tyhle for table fall from
lips whence one would not expect such pronunciations to come.
There is a superstition prevalent in Sydney that this pronunci-
ation is an Australianism, but people who have been "home"
— as the native reverently and lovingly calls England — know
better. It is " costermonger." All over Australasia this pro-
nunciation is nearly as common among servants as it is in Lon-
don among the uneducated and the partially educated of all

130 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

sorts and conditions of people. That mislaid y is rather strik-
ing when a person gets enough of it into a short sentence to
enable it to show up. In the hotel in Sydney the chamber-
maid said, one morning —

"The tyble is set, and here is the piper; and if the lydy is
ready I'll tell the wyter to bring up the breakfast."

I have made passing mention, a moment ago, of the native
Australasian's custom of speaking of England as " home." It
was always pretty to hear it, and often it was said in an un-
consciously caressing way that made it touching; in a way
which transmuted a sentiment into an embodiment, and made
one seem to see Australasia as a young girl stroking mother
England's old gray head.

In the Australasian home the table-talk, is vivacious and
unembarrassed ; it is without stiffness or restraint. This does
not remind one of England so much as it does of America.
But Australasia is strictly democratic, and reserves and re-
straints are things that are bred by differences of rank.

English and colonial audiences are phenomenally alert and
responsive. Where masses of people are gathered together in
England, caste is submerged, and Avith it the English reserve ;
equality exists for the moment, and every individual is free;
so free from any consciousness of fetters, indeed, that the Eng-
lishman's habit of watching himself and guarding himself
against any injudicious exposure of his feelings is forgotten,
and falls into abeyance — and to such a degree indeed, that he
will bravely applaud all by himself if he wants to — an exhi-
bition of daring which is unusual elsewhere in the world.

But it is hard to move a new English acquaintance when he
is by himself, or when the company present is small, and new
to him. He is on his guard then, and his natural reserve is to
the fore. This has given him the false reputation of being
without humor and without the appreciation of humor.

ENGLISH AND AMERICAN HUMOR.

131

Americans are not Englishmen, and American humor is not
English humor; but both the American and his humor had
their origin in England, and have merely undergone changes
brought about by changed conditions and a new environment.
About the best humorous speeches I have yet heard were a
couple that were made in Australia at club suppers — one of
them by an Englishman, the other by an Australian,

CHAPTER XII.

There are those who scoff at the schoolboy, calling him frivolous and shallow,
Yet it was the schoolboy who said " Faith is believing what you know ain't so."

— Pudd^n?iead Wilson^s New Calendar.

IN Sydney I had a large dream, and in the course of talk I
told it to a missionary from India who was on his way to
visit some relatives in New Zealand. I dreamed that the
visible universe is the physical person of God ; that the vast
worlds that we see twinkling millions of miles apart in the fields
of space are the blood corpuscles in His veins; and that we
and the other creatures are the microbes that charge with
multitudinous life the corpuscles.

Mr. X., the missionary, considered the dream awhile, then
said:

" It is not surpassable for magnitude, since its metes and bounds are the
metes and bounds of the universe itself ; and it seems to me that it almost' ac-
counts for a thing which is otherwise nearly unaccountable — the origin of
the sacred legends of the Hindoos. Perhaps they dream them, and then hon-
estly believe them to be divine revelations of fact. It looks like that, for the
legends are built on so vast a scale that it does not seem reasonable that
plodding priests would happen upon such colossal fancies when awake."

He told some of the legends, and said that they were im-
plicitly believed by all classes of Hindoos, including those of
high social position and intelligence; and he said that this
universal credulity was a great hindrance to the missionary in
his work. Then he said something like this :

"At home, people wonder why Christianity does not make faster progress
in India. They hear that the Indians believe easily, and that they have a
natural trust in miracles and give them a hospitable reception. Then they
argue like this : since the Indian believes easily, place Christianity before them
and they must believe ; confirm its truths by the biblical miracles, and they
will no longer doubt. The natural deduction is, that as Christianity makes

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WHY CHRISTIANITY MAKES SLOW PROGRESS. 133

but indifferent progress in India, the fault is with us : we are not fortunate in
presenting the doctrines and the miracles.

" But the truth is, we are not by any means so well equipped as they think.
We have not the easy task that they imagine. To use a military figure, we
are sent against the enemy with good powder in our guns, but only wads for
bullets ; that is to say, our miracles are not eilective ; the Hindoos do not care
for them ; they have more extraordinary ones of their own. All the details of
their own religion are proven and established by miracles ; the details of ours
must be proven in the same way. When I first began my work in India I
greatly underestimated the difficulties thus put upon my task. A correction
was not long in coming. I thought as our friends think at home — that to
prepare my childlike wonder-lovers to listen with favor to my grave message
I only needed to charm the way to it with wonders, marvels, miracles. With
full confidence I told the wonders performed by Samson, the strongest man
that had ever lived — for so I called him.

" At first I saw lively anticipation and strong interest in the faces of my
people, but as I moved along from incident to incident of the great story, I
was distressed to see that I was steadily losing the sympathy of my audience.
I could not understand it. It was a surprise to me, and a disappointment.
Before I was through, the fading sympathy had paled to indifference.
Thence to the end the indifference remained ; I was not able to make any im-
pression upon it.

" A good old Hindoo gentleman told me where my trouble lay. He
said ' We Hindoos recognize a god by the work of his hands — we accept no
other testimony. Apparently, this is also the rule with you Christians. And
we know when a man has his power from a god by the fact that he does
things which he could not do, as a man, with the mere powers of a man.
Plainly, this is the Christian's way also, of knowing when a man is working
by a god's power and not by his own. You saw that there was a supernatural
property in the hair of Samson ; for you perceived that when his hair was
gone he was as other men. It is our way, as I have said. There are many
nations in the world, and each group of nations has its own gods, and will pay
no worship to the gods of the others. Each group believes its own gods to
be strongest, and it will not exchange them except for gods that shall be proven
to be their superiors in power. Man is but a weak creature, and needs the
help of gods — he cannot do without it. Shall he place his fate in the hands
of weak gods when there may be stronger ones to be found ? That would be
foolish. No, if he hear of gods that are stronger than his own, he should not
turn a deaf ear, for it is not a light matter that is at stake. How then shall
he determine which gods are the stronger, his own or those that preside over
the concerns of other nations ? By comparing the known works of his own
gods with the works of those others ; there is no other way. Now, when we
make this comparison, we are not drawn towards the gods of any other nation.
Our gods are shown by their works to be the strongest, the most powerful.
The Christians have but few gods, and they are new — new, and not strong,
as it seems to us. They will increase in number, it is true, for this has hap-
pened with all gods, but that time is far away, many ages and decades of

134 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

agea away, for gods multiply slowly, as is meet for beings to whom a thou-
sand years is but a single moment. Our own gods have been born millions
of years apart. The process is slow, the gathering of strength and power is
similarly slow. In the slow lapse of the ages the steadily accumulating power
of our gods has at last become prodigious. We have a thousand proofs of
this in the colossal character of their personal acts and the acts of ordinary men
to whom they have given supernatural qualities. To your Samson was given
supernatural power, and when he broke the withes, and slew the thousands
with the jawbone of an ass, and carried away the gates of the city upon his
shoulders, you were amazed — and also awed, for you recognized the divine
source of his strength. But it could not profit to place these things before
your Hindoo congregation and invite their wonder ; for they would compare
them with the deed done by Hanuman, when our gods infused their divine
strength into his muscles ; and they would be indififerent to them — as you
saw. In the old, old times, ages and ages gone by, when our god Rama was
warring with the demon god of Ceylon, Rama bethought him to bridge the
sea and connect Ceylon with India, so that his armies might pass easily
over ; and he sent his general, Hanuman, inspired like your own Samson with
divine strength, to bring the materials for the bridge. In two days Hanuman
strode fifteen hundred miles, to the Himalayas, and took upon his shoulder a
range of those lofty mountains two hundred miles long, and started with it
toward Ceylon. It was in the night ; and, as he passed along the plain, the
people of Govardhun heard the thunder of his tread and felt the earth rocking
under it, and they ran out, and there, with their snowy summits piled to
heaven, they saw the Himalayas passing by. And as this huge continent swept
along overshadowing the earth, upon its slopes they discerned the twinkling
lights of a thousand sleeping villages, and it was as if the constellations were
filing in procession through the sky. While they were looking, Hanuman
stumbled, and a small ridge of red sandstone twenty miles long was jolted
loose and fell. Half of its length has wasted away in the course of the ages,
but the other ten miles of it remain in the plain by Govardhun to this day as
proof of the might of the inspiration of our gods. You must know, your-
self, that Hanuman could not have carried those mountains to Ceylon except
by the strength of the gods. You know that it was not done by his own
strength, therefore, you know that it was done by the strength of the gods,
just as you know that Samson carried the gates by the divine strength and not by
his own. I think you must concede two things : First, That in carrying the
gates of the city upon his shoulders, Samson did not establish the supe-
riority of his gods over ours ; secondly, That his feat is not supported by any
but verbal evidence, while Hanuman's is not only supported by verbal evi-
dence, but this evidence is confirmed, established, proven, by visible, tangi-
ble evidence, which is the strongest of all testimony. We have the sandstone
ridge, and while it remains we cannot doubt, and shall not. Have you the
gates ? '"

HANUMAN MOVING TUB MOUNTAINS.

CHAPTER XIII.

The timid man j'earns for full value and asks a tenth. The bold man strikes
for double value and compromises on par. — PuddnUiead Wihmi^s New Calendar.

NE is sure to be struck by the liberal way in which
Australasia spends money upon public works — such
as legislative buildings, town halls, hospitals, asylums,
parks, and botanical gardens. I should say that where minor
towns in America spend a hundred dollars on the town hall
and on public parks and gardens, the like towns in Australasia
spend a thousand. And I think that this ratio will hold good
in the matter of hospitals, also. I have seen a costly and well-
equipped, and architecturally, handsome hospital in an Aus-
tralian village of fifteen hundred inhabitants. It was built by
private funds furnished by the villagers and the neighboring
planters, and its running expenses were drawn from the same
sources. I suppose it would be hard to match this in any
country. This village was about to close a contract for light-
ing its streets with the electric light, when I Avas there. That
is ahead of London. London is still obscured by gas — gas
pretty widely scattered, too, in some of the districts ; so widely
indeed, that except on moonlight nights it is difficult to find
the gas lamps.

The botanical garden of Sydney covers thirty-eight acres,
beautifully laid out and rich with the spoil of all the lands and
all the climes of the world. The garden is on high ground in
the middle of the town, overlooking the great harbor, and it
adjoins the spacious grounds of Government House — fifty-six

acres ; and at hand also, is a recreation ground containing

(137)

138 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

eighty-two acres. In addition, there are the zoological gardens,
the race-course, and the great cricket-grounds where the inter-
national matches are played. Therefore there is plenty of
room for reposeful lazying and lounging, and for exercise too,
for such as like that kind of work.

There are four specialties attainable in the way of social
pleasure. If you enter your name on the Visitor's Book at
Government House you will receive an invitation to the next
ball that takes place there, if nothing can be proven against
you. And it will be very pleasant ; for you will see everybody
except the Governor, and add a number of acquaintances and
several friends to your list. The Governor Avill be in England.
He always is. The continent has four or five governors, and I
do not know how many it takes to govern the outlying
archipelago ; but anyway you will not see them. When they
are appointed they come put from England and get inaugurated,
and give a ball, and help pray for rain, and get aboard ship
and go back home. And so the Lieutenant-Governor has to
do all the work. I was in Australasia three months and a half,
and saw only one Governor. The others were at home.

The Australasian Governor would not be so restless, per-
haps, if he had a war, or a veto, or something like that to call
for his reserve-energies, but he hasn't. There isn't any war,
and there isn't any veto in his hands. And so there is really
little or nothing doing in his line. The country governs itself,
and prefers to do it ; and is so strenuous about it and so jealous
of its independence that it grows restive if even the Imperial
Government at home proposes to help ; and so the Imperial
veto, while a fact, is yet mainly a name.

Thus the Governor's functions are much more limited than
are a Governor's functions with us. And therefore more
fatiguing. He is the apparent head of the State, he is the real
head of Society. He represents culture, refinement, elevated

SYDNEV'S bold KMTtUl Al.NMENTS.

THE SIGHTS IN SYDNEY. 141

sentiment, polite life, religion ; and by his example he propa-
gates these, and they spread and flourish and bear good fruit.
He creates the fashion, and leads it. His ball is the ball of
balls, and his countenance makes the horse-race thrive.

He is usually a lord, and this is well ; for his position com-
pels him to lead an expensive life, and an English lord is
generally well equipped for that.

Another of Sydney's social pleasures is the visit to the
Admiralty House ; which is nobly situated on high ground
overlooking the water. The trim boats of the service convey
the guests thither ; and there, or on board the flag-ship, they
have the duplicate of the hospitalities of Government House.
The Admiral commanding a station in British waters is a
magnate of the first degree, and he is sumptuously housed, as
becomes the dignity of his office.

Third in the list of special pleasures is the tour of the
harbor in a fine steam pleasure-launch. Your richer friends
own boats of this kind, and they will invite you, and the joys
of the trip will make a long day seem short.

And finally comes the shark-fishing. Sydney Harbor is
populous with the finest breeds of man-eating sharks in the
world. Some people make their living catching them ; for the
Government pays a cash bounty on them. The larger the
shark the larger the bounty, and some of the sharks are twenty
feet long. You not only get the bount}^, but everything that
is in the shark belongs to you. Sometimes the contents are
quite valuable.

The shark is the swiftest fish that swims. The speed of
the fastest steamer afloat is poor compared to his. And he is
a great gad-about, and roams far and wide in the oceans, and
visits the shores of all of them, ultimately, in the course of his
restless excursions. I have a tale to tell now, which has not
as yet been in print. In 1870 a young stranger arrived in

142 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

Sydney, and set about finding something to do ; but he knew
no one, and brought no recommendations, and the result was
that he got no employment. He had aimed high, at first, but
as time and his money wasted away he grew less and less
exacting, until at last he was willing to serve in the humblest
capacities if so he might get bread and shelter. But luck was
still against him ; he could find no opening of any sort.
Finally his money was all gone. He walked the streets all day,
thinking ; he walked them all night, thinking, thinking, and
growing hungrier and hungrier. At dawn he found himself
well away from the town and drifting aimlessly along the
harbor shore. As he was passing by a nodding shark-fisher
the man looked up and said —

" Say, young fellow, take my line a spell, and change my
luck for me."

" How do you know I won't make it worse ? "
" Because you can't. It has been at its worst all night.
If you can't change it, no harm's done ; if you do change it,
it's for the better, of course. Come."
" All right, what will you give ? "
" I'll give you the shark, if you catch one."
" And I wiU eat it, bones and all. Give me the line."
" Here you are. I will get away, now, for awhile, so that
my luck won't spoil yours ; for many and many a time I've
noticed that if — there, pull in, pull in, man, you've got a bite!
/ knew how it would be. Why, I knew you for a born son of
luck the minute I saw you. All right — he's landed."

It was an unusually large shark — "a full nineteen-footer,"
the fisherman said, as he laid the creature open with his knife.
" Now you rob him, young man, while I step to my hamper
for a fresh bait. There's generally something in them worth
going for. You've changed my luck, you see. But my good-
ness, I hope you haven't changed your own."

NO USE FOR THE SHARK. 143

" Oh, it wouldn't matter ; don't worry about that. Get
your bait. I'll rob him."

When the fisherman got back the young man had just
finished washing his hands in the bay, and was starting away.

" What, you are not going ? "

"Yes. Good-bye."

" But what about your shark ? "

" The shark ? Why, what use is he to me ? "

" What use is he ? I like that. Don't you know that we
can go and report him to Government, and you'll get a clean
solid eighty shillings bounty ? Hard cash, you know. What
do you think about it noio ? "

" Oh, well, you can collect it."

" And kee^ it ? Is that what you mean ? "

" Yes."

" Well, this is odd. You're one of those sort they call
eccentrics, I judge. The saying is, you mustn't judge a man
by his clothes, and I'm believing it now. Why yours are look-
ing just ratty, don't- you know ; and yet you must be rich."

" I am."

The young man walked slowly back to the town, deeply
musing as he went. He halted a moment in front of the best
restaurant, then glanced at his clothes and passed on, and got
his breakfast at a " stand-up." There was a good deal of it,
and it cost five shillings. He tendered a sovereign, got his
change, glanced at his silver, muttered to himself, " There isn't
enough to buy clothes with," and went his way.

At half -past nine the richest wool-broker in Sydney was sit-
ting in his morning-room at home, settling his breakfast with
the morning paper. A servant put his head in and said :

" There's a sundowner at the door wants to see you, sir."

"What do you bring that kind of a message here for?
Send him about his business."

144 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

" He won't go, sir. I've tried."

" He won't go ? That's — why, that's unusual. He's one
of two things, then : he's a remarkable person, or he's crazy.
Is he crazy ? "

" No, sir. He don't look it."

" Then he's remarkable. "What does he say he wants ? "

" He won't tell, sir ; only says it's very important."

" And won't go. Does he say he won't go ? "

" Says he'll stand there till he sees you, sir, if it's all day."

" And yet isn't crazy. Show him up."

The sundowner was shown in. The broker said to himself,
" No, he's not crazy ; that is easy to see ; so he must be the
other thing."

Then aloud, " Well, my good fellow, be quick about it ;
don't waste any words ; what is it you want ? "

" I want to borrow a hundred thousand pounds."

" Scott ! (It's a mistake ; he is crazy. . . . No — he
canH be — not with that eye.) Why, you take my breath
away. Come, who are you ? "

" Nobody that you know."

" What is your name ? "

" Cecil Khodes."

"No, I don't remember hearing the name before. Now
then — just for curiosity's sake — what has sent you to me on
this extraordinary errand ? "

" The intention to make a hundred thousand pounds for
you and as much for myself within the next sixty days."

" Well, well, well. It is the most extraordinary idea that ^
— sit down — you interest me. And somehow you — well,
you fascinate me ; I think that that is about the word. And it
isn't your proposition — no, that doesn't fascinate me; it's
something else, I don't quite know what ; something that's
born in you and oozes out of you, I suppose. Now then —

THE SCHEME. 145

just for curiosity's sake again, nothing more : as I understand
it, it is your desire to bor — "

" I said intention.''^

" Pardon, so you did. I thought it was an unheedful use of
the word — an unheedful valuing of its strength, you know."

" I knew its strength."

" "Well, I must say — but look here, let me walk the floor a
little, my mind is getting into a sort of whirl, though you
don't seem disturbed any. (Plainly this young fellow isn't
crazy ; but as to his being remarkable — well, really he amounts
to that, and something over.) ]^ow then, I believe I am be-
yond the reach of further astonishment. Strike, and spare
not. What is your scheme ? "

" To buy the wool crop — deliverable in sixty days."

" What, the wJiole of it ? "

" The whole of it."

" No, I was not quite out of the reach of surprises, after
all. Why, how you talk ! Do you know what our crop is
going to foot up ? "

"Two and a half million sterling — maybe a little more."

" Well, you've got your statistics right, any way. Now,
then, do you know what the margins would foot up, to buy it
at sixty days ? "

" The hundred thousand pounds I came here to get."

" Right, once more. Well, dear me, just to see what would
happen, I wish you had the money. And if you had it, what
would you do with it ? "

" I shall make two hundred thousand pounds out of it in
sixty days."

" You mean, of course, that you might make it if — "

"I said 'shall'."

" Yes, by George, you did say ' shall ' ! You are the most

definite devil I ever saw, in the matter of language. Dear,
10

146 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

dear, dear, look here ! Definite speech means clarity of mind.
Upon my word I believe you've got what you believe to be a
rational reason for venturing into this house, an entire stranger,
on this wild scheme of buying the wool crop of an entire
colony on speculation. Bring it out — I am prepared — accli-
matized, if I may use the word. Why would you buy the
crop, and lohy would you make that sum out of it ? That is to
say, what makes you think you — "

" I don't think — I know."

" Definite again. How do you know ? "

" Because France has declared war against Germany, and
wool has gone up fourteen per cent, in London and is still rising."

" Oh, in-deed ? Now then, I've got you ! Such a thunder-
bolt as you have just let fly ought to have made me jump out
of my chair, but it didn't stir me the least little bit, you see.
And for a very simple reason: I have read the morning
paper. You can look at it if you want to. The fastest ship
in the service arrived at eleven o'clock last night, fifty days out
from London. All her news is printed here. There are no
war-clouds anywhere; and as for wool, why, it is the low-
spiritedest commodity in the English market. It is your turn
to jump, now. . . . "Well, why don't you jump ? Why do you
sit there in that placid fashion, when — "

" Because I have later news."

" Later news ? Oh, come — later news than fifty days,
brought steaming hot from London by the — "

" My news is only ten days old."

" Oh, M-WOrGhausen, hear the maniac talk ! Where did you
get it?"

" Got it out of a shark."

"Oh, oh, oh, this is too much! Front! call the police —
bring the gun — raise th^ town ! All the asylums in Christen-
dom have broken loose in the single person of — "

'GOT IT OUT OF A SHARK.

CECIL RHODES' FlliST FORTUNE. 149

" Sit down ! And collect yourself. Where is the use in
getting excited? Am I excited? There is nothing to get
excited about. When I make a statement which I cannot
prove, it will be time enough for you to begin to oifer hospi-
tality to damaging fancies about me and my sanity."

"Oh, a thousand, thousand pardons! I ought to be
ashamed of myself, and I am ashamed of myself for thinking
that a little bit of a circumstance like sending a shark to Eng-
land to fetch back a market report — "

" What does your middle initial stand for, sir ? "

" Andrew. What are you writing ? "

" Wait a moment. Proof about the shark — and another
matter. Only ten lines. There — now it is done. Sign it."

"Many thanks — many. Let me see; it says — it says —
oh, come, this is interesting! Why — why — look here!
prove what you say here, and I'll put up the money, and
double as much, if necessary, and divide the winnings with
you, half and half. There, now — I've signed; make your
promise good if you can. Show me a copy of the London
Times only ten days old."

" Here it is — and with it these buttons and a memorandum
book that belonged to the man the shark swallowed. Swal-
lowed him in the Thames, without a doubt ; for you will notice
that the last entry in the book is dated ' London,' and is of the
same date as the Times, and says, '^er confequen| ber ^riegegs
erflarung, reife id^ {>eute nad^ 3)eutd^Ianb ah, auf ba^ id^ mein '>i^bzx^ auf
bem Slltar meine§ 2anbe§ legen mag' — as clean native German as
anybody can put upon paper, and means that in consequence
of the declaration of war, this loyal soul is leaving for home
to-day, to fight. And he did leave, too, but the shark had him
before the day was done, poor fellow."

" And a pity, too. But there are times for mourning, and
we will attend to this case further on ; other matters are

150 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

pressing, now. I will go down and set the machinery in
motion in a quiet way and buy the crop. It will cheer the
drooping spirits of the boys, in a transitory way. Everything
is transitory in this world. Sixty days hence, when they are
called to deliver the goods, they will think they've been struck
by lightning. But there is a time for mourning, and we will
attend to that case along with the other one. Come along, I'll
take you to my tailor. What did you say your name is ? "

" Cecil Khodes."

" It is hard to remember. However, I think you will make
it easier by and by, if you live. There are three kinds of peo-
ple — Commonplace Men, Remarkable Men, and Lunatics. I'll
classify you with the Remarkables, and take the chances."

The deal went through, and secured to the young stranger
the first fortune he ever pocketed.

The people of Sydney ought to be afraid of the sharks, but
for some reason they do not seem to be. On Saturdays the
young men go out in their boats, and sometimes the water is
fairly covered with the little sails. A boat upsets now and
then, by accident, a result of tumultuous skylarking; some-
times the boys upset their boat for fun — such as it is — with
sharks visibly waiting around for just such an occurrence.
The young fellows scramble aboard whole — sometimes — not
always. Tragedies have happened more than once. AVhile I
was in Sydney it was reported that a boy fell out of a boat in
the mouth of the Paramatta river and screamed for help and
a boy jumped overboard from another boat to save him from
the assembling sharks ; but the sharks made swift work with
the lives of both.

The government pays a bounty for the shark ; to get the
bounty the fishermen bait the hook or the seine with agreeable
mutton ; the news spreads and the sharks come from all over
the Pacific Ocean to get the free board. In time the shark
culture will be one of the most successful things in the colony.

CHAPTER XIV.

We can secure other people's approval, if we do right and try hard ; but our
own is worth a hundred of it, and no way has been found out of securing that.

— Pudd^nhead Wilson^s New Calendar.

R Jl Y health had broken down in New York in May ; it
I \ had remained in a doubtful but fairish condition dur-
■* * ing a succeeding period of 82 days ; it broke again
on the Pacific. It broke again in Sydney, but not until after
I had had a good outing, and had also filled my lecture en-
gagements. This latest break lost me the chance of seeing
Queensland. In the circumstances, to go north toward hotter
weather was not advisable.

So we moved south with a westward slant, 17 hours by rail
to the capital of the colony of Victoria, Melbourne — that
juvenile city of sixty years, and half a million inhabitants.
On the map the distance looked small ; but that is a trouble
with all divisions of distance in such a vast country as Aus-
tralia. The colony of Victoria itself looks small on the map —
looks like a county, in fact — yet it is about as large as Eng-
land, Scotland, and Wales combined. Or, to get another focus
upon it, it is just 80 times as large as the state of Rhode Island,
and one-third as large as the State of Texas.

Outside of Melbourne, Victoria seems to be owned by a
handful of squatters, each with a Rhode Island for a sheep farm.
That is the impression which one gathers from common talk,
yet the wool industry of Victoria is by no means so great as
that of New South Wales. The climate of Victoria is favor-
able to other great industries — among others, wheat-growing

and the making of wine.

(151)

152

FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

"We took the train at Sydney at about four in the afternoon.
It was American in one way, for we had a most rational sleep-
ing car ; also the car was clean and fine and new — nothing
about it to suggest the rolling stock of the continent of Europe.
But our baggage was weighed, and extra weight charged for.
That was continental. Continental and troublesome. Any
detail of railroading that is not troublesome cannot honorably
be described as continental.

The tickets were round- trip ones — to Melbourne, and clear
to Adelaide in South Australia, and then all the way back
to Sydney. Twelve hundred more miles than we really ex-
pected to make ; but then as the round trip wouldn't cost much
more than the single trip, it seemed well enough to buy as
many miles as one could afford, even if one w^as not likely to
need them. A human being has a natural desire to have more
of a good thing than he needs.

THE ODDEST THING IN AUSTRALASIA.

Now comes a singular thing : the oddest thing, the strangest
thing, the most baffling and unaccountable marvel that Aus-
tralasia can show. At the frontier between New South "Wales
and Victoria our multitude of passengers were routed out of
their snug beds by lantern-light in the morning in the biting

A PARALYTIC SCHEME. 153

cold of a high altitude to change cars on a road that has no
break in it from Sydney to Melbourne ! Think of the paraly-
sis of intellect that gave that idea birth ; imagine the boulder
it emerged from on some petrified legislator's shoulders.

It is a narrow-gauge road to the frontier, and a broader
gauge thence to Melbourne. The two governments were the
builders of the^road and are the owners of it. One or two
reasons are given for this curious state of things. One is, that
it represents the jealousy existing between the colonies —
the two most important colonies of Australasia. "What the
other one is, I have forgotten. But it is of no consequence.
It could be but another effort to explain the inexplicable.

All passengers fret at the double-gauge; all shippers of
freight must of course fret at it ; unnecessary expense, delay,
and annoyance are imposed upon everybody concerned, and no
one is benefited.

Each Australian colony fences itself off from its neighbor
with a custom-house. Personally, I have no objection, but it
must be a good deal of inconvenience to the people. We have
something resembling it here and there in America, but it goes
by another name. The large empire of the Pacific coast requires
a world of iron machinery, and could manufacture it economic-
ally on the spot if the imposts on foreign iron were removed.
But they are not. Protection to Pennsylvania and Alabama
forbids it. The result to the Pacific coast is the same as if
there were several rows of custom-fences between the coast
and the East. Iron carted across the American continent at
luxurious railway rates would be valuable enough to be coined
when it arrived.

We changed cars. This was at Albury. And it was there,
I think, that the growing day and the early sun exposed the
distant range called the Blue Mountains. Accurately named.
" My word ! " as the Australians say, but it was a stunning

154 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

color, that blue. Deep, strong, rich, exquisite ; towering and
majestic masses of blue — a softly luminous blue, a smouldering
blue, as if vaguely lit by fires within. It extinguished the blue
of the sky — made it pallid and unwholesome, whitey and
washed-out. A wonderful color — just divine.

A resident told me that those were not mountains ; he said
they were rabbit-piles. And explained that long exposure and
the over-ripe condition of the rabbits was what madei them
look so blue. This man may have been right, but much read-
ing of books of travel has made me distrustful of gratis infor-
mation furnished by unofficial residents of a country. The
facts which such people give to travelers are usually erroneous,
and often intemperately so. The rabbit-plague has indeed
been very bad in Australia, and it could account for one moun-
tain, but not for a mountain range, it seems to me. It is too
large an order.

We breakfasted at the station. A good breakfast, except
the coffee ; and cheap. The Government establishes the prices
and placards them. The waiters were men, I think ; but that
is not usual in Australasia. The usual thing is to have girls.
No, not girls, young ladies — generally duchesses. Dress?
They would attract attention at any royal levee in Europe.
Even empresses and queens do not dress as they do. Not that
they could not afford it, perhaps, but they would not know how.

All the pleasant morning we slid smoothly along over the
plains, through thin — not thick — forests of great melancholy
gum trees, with trunks rugged with curled sheets of flaking bark
— erysipelas convalescents, so to speak, shedding their dead
skins. And all along were tiny cabins, built sometimes of
wood, sometimes of gray-blue corrugated iron ; and the door-
steps and fences were clogged with children — rugged little
simply-clad chaps that looked as if they had been imported
from the banks of the Mississippi without breaking bulk.

SHEEP-DIP AND RAILROAD COFFEE.

155

And there were little villages, with neat stations well pla-
carded with showy advertisements — mainly of almost too
self-righteous brands of "sheep-dip." If that is the name —
and I think it is. It is a stuff like tar, and is dabbed on to
places where the shearer clips a piece out of the sheep. It
bars out the flies, and has healing properties, and a nip to it
which makes the sheep skip like the cattle on a thousand hills.
It is not good to eat. That is, it is not good to eat except
when mixed with railroad coffee. It improves railroad coffee.
Without it railroad coffee is too vague. But with it, it is quite
assertive and enthusiastic. By itself, railroad coffee is too pas-
sive ; but sheep-dip makes it wake up and get down to business.
I wonder where they get railroad coffee ?

THINGS NOT SEEN.

We saw birds, but not a kangaroo, not an emu, not an
ornithorhyncus, not a lecturer, not a native. Indeed, the land
seemed quite destitute of game. But I have misused the word
native. In Australia it is applied to Australian-born whites
only. I should have said that we saw no Aboriginals — no
" blackfellows." And to this day I have never seen one. In
the great museums you will find all the other curiosities, but in
the curio of chiefest interest to the stranger all of them are
lacking. We have at home an abundance of museums, and
not an American Indian in them. It is clearly an absurdity,
but it never struck me before.

CHAPTER XV.

Truth is stranger than fiction — to some people, but I am measurably familiar
with it. — PadcVnhead Wilson'' s New Calendar.

Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to
possibilities ; Truth isn't. — Padd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.

THE air was balmy and delicious, the sunshine radiant ;
it Avas a charming excursion. In the course of it we
came to a town whose odd name was famous all over
the world a quarter of a century ago — Wagga-Wagga. This
was because the Tichborne Claimant had kept a butcher-shop
there. It was, out of the midst of his humble collection of
sausages and tripe that he soared up into the zenith of notoriety
and hung there in the wastes of space a time, with the tele-
scopes of all nations leveled at him in unappeasable curiosity —
curiosity as to which of the two long-missing persons he was :
Arthur Orton, the mislaid roustabout of Wapping, or Sir Roger
Tichborne, the lost heir of a name and estates as old as English
history. We all know now, but not a dozen people knew then ;
and the dozen kept the mystery to themselves and allowed the
most intricate and fascinating and marvelous real-life romance
that has ever been played upon the world's stage to unfold it-
self serenely, act by act, in a British court by the long and
laborious processes of judicial development.

When we recall the details of that great romance we mar-
vel to see what daring chances truth may freely take in con-
structing a tale, as compared with the poor little conservative
risks permitted to fiction. The fiction-artist could achieve no
success with the materials of this splendid Tichborne romance.

(156)

AT WAGGA-WAGGA. 157

He would have to drop out the chief characters ; the public
would say such people are impossible. He would have to drop
out a number of the most picturesque incidents; the public
would say such things could never happen. And yet the chief
characters did exist, and the incidents did happen.

It cost the Tichborne estates $400,000 to unmask the Claim-
ant and drive him out ; and even after the exposure multitudes
of Englishmen still believed in him. It cost the British Gov-
ernment another $400,000 to convict him of perjury ; and after
the conviction the same old multitudes still believed in him ; and
among these believers were many educated and intelligent men ;
and some of them had personally known the real Sir Koger.
The Claimant was sentenced to 14 years' imprisonment. When
he got out of prison he went to New York and kept a whisky
saloon in the Bowery for a time, then disappeared from view.

He always claimed to be Sir Roger Tichborne until death
called for him. This was but a few months ago — not very
much short of a generation since he left Wagga-Wagga to go
and possess himself of his estates. On his death-bed he yielded
up his secret, and confessed in writing that he was only Arthur
Orton of Wapping, able seaman and butcher — that and noth-
ing more. But it is scarcely to be doubted that there are
people whom even his dying confession will not convince. The
old habit of assimilating incredibilities must have made strong
food a necessity in their case ; a weaker article would probably
disagree with them.

I was in London when the Claimant stood his trial for per-
jury. I attended one of his showy evenings in the sumptuous
quarters provided for him from the purses of his adherents and
well-wishers. He was in evening dress, and I thought him a
rather fine and stately creature. There were about twenty-
five gentlemen present ; educated men, men moving in good
society, none of them commonplace ; some of them were men

158 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

of distinction, none of them were obscurities. They were his
cordial friends and admirers. It was " S'r Roger," always
" S'r Roger," on all hands ; no one withheld the title, all turned
it from the tongue with unction, and as if it tasted good.

For many years I had had a mystery in stock. Melbourne,
and only Melbourne, could unriddle it for me. In 1873 I
arrived in London with my wife and young child, and presently
received a note from Naples signed by a name not familiar to
me. It was not Bascom, and it was not Henry ; but I will
call it Henry Bascom for convenience's sake. This note, of
about six lines, was written on a strip of white paper whose
end-edges were ragged. I came to be familiar with those
strips in later years. Their size and pattern were always the
same. Their contents were usually to the same effect : would
I and mine come to the writer's country-place in England on
such and such a date, by such and such a train, and stay twelve
days and depart by such and such a train at the end of the
specified time ? A carriage would meet us at the station.

These invitations were always for a long time ahead ; if we
were in Europe, three months ahead ; if we were in America,
six to twelve months ahead. They always named the exact
date and train for the beginning and also for the end of the
visit.

This first note invited us for a date three months in the
future. It asked us to arrive by the 4.10 p. m. train from Lon-
don, August 6th. The carriage would be waiting. The car-
riage would take us away seven days later — train specified.
And there were these words : " Speak to Tom Hughes."

I showed the note to the author of "Tom Brown at
Rugby," and he said : —

" Accept, and be thankful."

He described Mr. Bascom as being a man of genius, a man
of fine attainments, a choice man in every way, a rare and

MY STOCK MYSTERY. 159

beautiful character. He said that Bascom Hall was a particu-
larly fine example of the stately manorial mansion of Eliza-
beth's days, and that it was a house worth going a long way
to see — like Knowle ; that Mr. B. was of a social disposition,
liked the company of agreeable people, and always had samples
of the sort coming and going.

We paid the visit. We paid others, in later years — the last
one in 1879. Soon after that Mr. Bascom started on a voyage
around the world in a steam yacht — a long and leisurely trip,
for he was making collections, in all lands, of birds, butter-
flies, and such things.

The day that President Garfield was shot by the assassin
Guiteau, we were at a little watering place on Long Island
Sound ; and in the mail matter of that day came a letter with
the Melbourne post-mark on it. It was for my wife, but I
recognized Mr. Bascom's handwriting on the envelope, and
opened it. It was the usual note — as to paucity of lines
— and was written on the customary strip of paper ; but there
was nothing usual about the contents. The note informed my
wife that if it would be any assuagement of her grief to know
that her husband's lecture-tour in Australia was a satisfactory
venture from the beginning to the end, he, the writer, could
testify that such was the case; also, that her husband's un-
timely death had been mourned by all classes, as she would
already know by the press telegrams, long before the reception
of this note ; that the funeral was attended by \h.e officials of
the colonial and city governments ; and that while he, the
writer, her friend and mine, had not reached Melbourne in time
to see the body, he had at least had the sad privilege of acting
as one of the pall-bearers. Signed, " Henry Bascom."

My first thought was, why didn't he have the coffin opened ?
He would have seen that the corpse was an imposter, and he
could have gone right ahead and dried up the most of those

160 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

tears, and comforted those sorrowing governments, and sold the
remains and sent me the money.

I did nothing about the matter. I had set the law after
living lecture-doubles of mine a couple of times in America,
and the law had not been able to catch them ; others in my
trade had tried to catch their impostor-doubles and had failed.
Then where was the use in harrying a ghost ? None — and so
I did not disturb it. I had a curiosity to know about that
man's lecture-tour and last moments, but that could wait.
When I should see Mr. Bascom he vfould tell me all about it.
But he passed from life, and I never saw him again. My
curiosity faded away.

However, when I found that I was going to Australia it re-
vived. And naturally : for if the people should say that I was
a dull, poor thing compared to w^hat I was before I died, it
would have a bad effect on business. Well, to my surprise the
Sydney journalists had never heard of that impostor! I
pressed them, but they were firm — they had never heard of
him, and didn't believe in him.

I could not understand it ; still, I thought it would all
come right in Melbourne. The government would remember ;
and the other mourners. At the supper of the Institute of
Journalists I should find out all about the matter. But no —
it turned out that they had never heard of it.

So my mystery was a mystery still. It was a great disap-
pointment. I believed it would never be cleared up — in this
life — so I dropped it out of my mind.

But at last ! just when I was least expecting it —

However, this is not the place for the rest of it ; I shall
come to the matter again, in a far-distant chapter.

CHAPTER XVL

There is a Moral Sense, and there is an Immoral Sense. History shows us that
the Moral Sense enables us to perceive morality and how to avoid it, and that the
Immoral Sense enables us to perceive immorality and how to enjoy it.

— Fudd'tiJiead Wilson^ s Mew Calendar.

^J\ ELBOURNE spreads around over an immense area of
/ \ gi'ound. It is a stately city architecturally as well
as in magnitude. It has an elaborate system of
cable-car service ; it has museums, and colleges, and schools,
and public gardens, and electricity, and gas, and libraries, and
theaters, and mining centers, and wool centers, and centers of
the arts and sciences, and boards of trade, and ships, and rail-
roads, and a harbor, and social clubs, and journalistic clubs,
and racing clubs, and a squatter club sumptuously housed and
appointed, and as many churches and banks as can make a
living. In a word, it is equipped ^^dth everything that goes to
make the modern great city. It is the largest city of Austra-
lasia, and fills the post with honor and credit. It has one spe-
cialty ; this must not be jumbled in with those other things.
It is the mitred Metropolitan of the Horse-Racing Cult. Its
raceground is the Mecca of Australasia. On the great annual
day of sacrifice — the 5th of November, Guy Fawkes's Day —
business is suspended over a stretch of land and sea as wide as
from New York to San Francisco, and deeper than from the
northern lakes to the Gulf of Mexico; and every man and
woman, of high degree or low, who can afford the expense,
put away their other duties and come. They begin to swarm
in by ship and rail a fortnight before the day, and they swarm
thicker and thicker day after day, until all the vehicles of
11 ( 161 )

162 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

transportation are taxed to their uttermost to meet the de-
mands of the occasion, and all hotels and lodgings are bulging
outward because of the pressure from within. They come a
hundred thousand strong, as all the best authorities say, and
they pack the spacious grounds and grand-stands and make a
spectacle such as is never to be seen in Australasia elsewhere.

It is the "Melbourne Cup" th^ brings this multitude
together. Their clothes have been ordered long ago, at unlim-
ited cost, and without bounds as to beauty and magnificence,
and have been kept in concealment until now, for unto this
day are they consecrate. I am speaking of the ladies' clothes ;
but one might know that.

And so the grand-stands make a brilliant and wonderful
spectacle, a delirium of color, a vision of beauty. The cham-
pagne flows, everybody is vivacious, excited, happy ; every-
body bets, and gloves and fortunes change hands right along,
all the time. Day after day the races go on, and the fun and
the excitement are kept at white heat ; and when each day is
done, the people dance all night so as to be fresh for the race
in the morning. And at the end of the great week the swarms
secure lodgings and transportation for next year, then flock
away to their remote homes and count their gains and losses,
and order next year's Cup-clothes, and then lie down and sleep
two weeks, and get up sorry to reflect that a whole year must
be put in somehow or other before they can be wholly happy
again.

The Melbourne Cup is the Australasian National Day. It
would be difficult to overstate its importance. It overshadows
all other holidays and specialized days of whatever sort in that
congeries of colonies. Overshadows them ? I might almost
say it blots them out. Each of them gets attention, but not
everybody's; each of them evokes interest, but not every-
body's ; each of them rouses enthusiasm, but not everybody's ;

AUSTRALASIA'S NATIONAL DAY. 163

in each case a part of the attention, interest, and enthusiasm is
a matter of liabit and custom, and another part of it is official
and perfunctory. Cup Day, and Cup Day only, commands an
attention, an interest, and an enthusiasm which are universal

— and spontaneous, not perfunctory. Cup Day is supreme —
it has no rival. I can call to mind no specialized annual day,
in any country, which can be named by that large name —
Supreme. I can call to mind no specialized annual day, in any
country, whose approach fires the whole land with a confla-
gration of conversation and preparation and anticipation and
jubilation. No day save this one ; but this one does it.

In America we have no annual supreme day ; no day whose
approach makes the whole nation glad. We have the Fourth
of July, and Christmas, and Thanksgiving. Neither of them
can claim the primacy ; neither of them can arouse an enthu-
siasm which comes near to being universal. Eight grown
Americans out of ten dread the coming of the Fourth, with its
pandemonium and its perils, and they rejoice when it is gone

— if still alive. The approach of Christmas brings harrass-
ment and dread to many excellent people. They have to buy
a cart-load of presents, and they never know what to buy to
hit the various tastes ; they put in three weeks of hard and
anxious work, and when Christmas morning comes they are so
dissatisfied with the result, and so disappointed that they want
to sit down and cry. Then they give thanks that Christmas
comes but once a year. The observance of Thanksgiving Day

— as a function — has become general of late years. The
Thankfulness is not so general. This is natural. Two-thirds
of the nation have always had hard luck and a hard time
during the year, and this has a calming effect upon their en-
thusiasm.

We ham a supreme day — a sweeping and tremendous and
tumultuous day, a day Avhich commands an absolute univer-

164 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

sality of interest and excitement; but it is not annual. It
conies but once in four years ; tlierefore it cannot count as a
rival of the Melbourne Cup.

In Great Britain and Ireland they have two great days —
Christmas and the Queen's birthday. But they are equally
popular ; there is no supremacy.

I think it must be conceded that the position of the Aus-
tralasian Day is unique, solitary, unfellowed ; and likely to
hold that high place a long time.

The next things which interest us when we travel are, first,
the people ; next, the novelties ; and finally the history of the
places and countries visited. Novelties are rare in cities which
represent the most advanced civilization of the modern day.
"When one is familiar with such cities in the other parts of the
world he is in effect familiar with the cities of Australasia. The
outside aspects will furnish little that is new. There will be
new names, but the things which they represent will some-
times be found to be less new than their names. There may
be shades of difference, but these can easily be too fine for
detection by the incompetent eye of the passing stranger. In
the larrikin he will not be able to discover a new species, but
only an old one met elsewhere, and variously called loafer,
rough, tough, bummer, or blatherskite, according to his geo-
graphical distribution. The larrikin differs by a shade from
those others, in that he is more sociable toward the stranger
than they, more kindly disposed, more hospitable, more hearty,
more friendly. At least it seemed so to me, and I had op-
portunity to observe. In Sydney, at least. In Melbourne I
had to drive to and from the lecture-theater, but in Sydney I
was able to walk both ways, and did it. Every night, on my
way home at ten, or a quarter past, I found the larrikin grouped
in considerable force at several of the street corners, and he
always gave me this pleasant salutation :

"HELLO, MAKKJ

A PLEASANT GREETING. 167

"Hello, Mark!"

" Here's to you, old chap ! "

" Say — Mark ! — is he dead ? — a reference to a passage in
some book of mine, though I did not detect, at that time, that
that was its source. And I didn't detect it afterward in Mel-
bourne, when I came on the stage for the first time, and the
same question was dropped down upon me from the dizzy
height of the gallery. It -is always difficult to answer a sud-
den inquiry like that, when you have come unprepared and
don't know what it means. I will remark here — if it is not
an indecorum — that the welcome which an American lecturer
gets from a British colonial audience is a thing which will
move him to his deepest deeps, and veil his sight and break his
voice. And from Winnipeg to Africa, experience will teach
him nothing ; he will never learn to expect it, it will catch him
as a surprise each time. The war-cloud hanging black over
England and America made no trouble for me. I was a
prospective prisoner of war, but at dinners, suppers, on the
platform, and elsewhere, there was never anything to remind
me of it. This was hospitality of the right metal, and would
have been prominently lacking in some countries, in the cir-
cumstances.

And speaking of the war-flurry, it seemed to me to bring
to light the unexpected, in a detail or two. It seemed to rele-
gate the war-talk to the politicians on both sides of the water ;
whereas whenever a prospective war between two nations had
been in the air theretofore, the public had done most of the
talking and the bitterest. The attitude of the newspapers was
new also. I speak of those of Australasia and India, for I
had access to those only. They treated the subject argumenta-
tively and with dignity, not with spite and anger. That was
a new spirit, too, and not learned of the French and German
press, either before Sedan or since. I heard many public

168 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

speeches, and they reflected the moderation of the journals.
The outlook is that the English-speaking race will dominate
the earth a hundred years from now, if its sections do not get
to fighting each other. It would be a pity to spoil that pras-
pect by baffling and retarding wars when arbitration would
settle their differences so much better and also so much more
definitely.

No, as I have suggested, novelties are rare in the great cap-
itals of modern times. Even the wool exchange in Melbourne
could not be told from the familiar stock exchange of other
countries. Wool brokers are just like stockbrokers ; they all
bounce from their seats and put up their hands and yell in
unison — no stranger can tell what — and the president calmly
says — " Sold to Smith & Co., threppence farthing — next ! " —
when probably nothing of the kind happened ; for how should
he know^ ?

In the museums you will find acres of the most strange and
fascinating things ; but all museums are fascinating, and they
do so tire your eyes, and break your back, and burn out your
vitalities with their consuming interest. You always say you
will never go again, but you do go. The palaces of the rich,
in Melbourne, are much like the palaces of the rich in America,
and the life in them is the same; but there the resemblance
ends. The grounds surrounding the American palace are not
often large, and not often beautiful, but in the Melbourne case
the grounds are often ducally spacious, and the climate and
the gardeners together make them as beautiful as a dream. It
is said that some of the country seats have grounds — domains
— about them which rival in charm and magnitude those which
surround the country mansion of an English lord ; but I was
not out in the country ; I had my hands full in town.

And what was the origin of this majestic city and its
efflorescence of palatial town houses and country seats ? Its

THE ORIGIN OF MELBOURNE.

169-

first brick was laid and its first house built by a passing convict.
Australian history is almost always picturesque ; indeed, it
is so curious and strange, that it is itself the chiefest novelty the
country has to offer, and so it pushes the other novelties into
second and third place. It does not read like history, but like
the most beautiful lies. And all of a fresh new sort, no mouldy
old stale ones. It is full of surprises, and adventures, and
incongruities, and contradictions, and incredibilities ; but they
are all true, they all happened.

SUNKISE HLUE MOUNTAINS.

CHAPTER XVIL

The English are mentioned in the Bible : Blessed are the meek, for they shall
inherit the earth. — Puddri'Tiead Wilson's New Calendar.

WHEN we consider the immensity of the British Empire
in territory, population, and trade, it requires a stern
exercise of faith to believe in the figures which
represent Australasia's contribution to the Empire's commercial
grandeur. As compared with the landed estate of the British
Empire, the landed estate dominated by any other Power
except one — Russia — is not very impressive for size. My
authorities make the British Empire not much short of a
fourth larger than the Russian Empire. Roughly pro-
portioned, if you will allow your entire hand to represent
the British Empire, you may then cut off the fingers a trifle
above the middle joint of the middle finger, and what is left
of the hand will represent Russia. The populations ruled by
Great Britain and China are about the same — 400,000,000
each. No other Power approaches these figures. Even
Russia is left far behind.

The population of Australasia — 4,000,000 — sinks into
nothingness, and is lost from sight in that British ocean of
400,000,000. Yet the statistics indicate that it rises again and
shows up very conspicuously when its share of the Empire's
commerce is the matter under consideration. The value of
England's annual exports and imports is stated at three
billions of dollars,* and it is claimed that more than one-tenth
of this great aggregate is represented by Australasia's exports

•New South Wales Blue Book.

(170)

THE BRITISH EMPIRE.

171

3-rcZJu. £1

172 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

to England and imports from England.* In addition to this,
Australasia does a trade with countries other than England,
amounting to a hundred million dollars a year, and a domestic
intercolonial trade amounting to a hundred and fifty millions.*

In round numbers the 4,000,000 buy and sell about $600,-
000,000 worth of goods a year. It is claimed that about half
of this represents commodities of Australasian production.
The products exported annually by India are worth a trifle over
$500,000,000. t Now, here are some faith-straining figures:

Indian production (300,000,000 population), $500,000,000.

Australasian production (4,000,000 population), $300,000,000.

That is to say, the product of the individual Indian,
annually (for export some whither), is worth $1.75 ; that of the
individual Australasian (for export some whither), $75 ! Or,
to put it in another way, the Indian family of man and wife
and three children sends away an annual result worth $8.75,
while the Australasian family sends away $375 worth.

There are trustworthy statistics furnished by Sir Eichard
Temple and others, which show that the individual Indian's
whole annual product, both for export and home use, is worth
in gold only $7.50 ; or, $37.50 for the family -aggregate.
Ciphered out on a like ratio of multiplication, the Australasian
family's aggregate production would be nearly $1,600. Truly,
nothing is so astonishing as figures, if they once get started.

We left Melbourne by rail for Adelaide, the capital of the
vast Province of South Australia — a seventeen-hour ex-
cursion. On the train we found several Sydney friends ; among
them a Judge who was going out on circuit, and was going to
hold court at Broken Hill, where the celebrated silver mine is.
It seemed a curious road to take to get to that region. Broken
Hill is close to the western border of New South "Wales, and
Sydney is on the eastei-n border. A fairly straight line, 700

*D. M. Luckle. tNew South Wales Blue Book.

ADELAIDE TAKES THE DIVIDENDS. 173

miles long, drawn westward from Sydney, would strike Broken
Hill, just as a somewhat shorter one drawn west from Boston
would strike Buffalo. The way the Judge was traveling would
carry him over 2,000 miles by rail, he said ; southwest from
Sydney down to Melbourne, then northward up to Adelaide,
then a cant back northeastward and over the border into New
South Wales once more — to Broken Hill. It was like going
from Boston southwest to Richmond, Virginia, then northwest
up to Erie, Pennsylvania, then a cant back northeast and over
the border — to Buffalo, New York.

But the explanation was simple. Years ago the fabulously
rich silver discovery at Broken Hill burst suddenly upon an
unexpectant world. Its stocks started at shillings, and went
by leaps and bounds to the most fanciful figures. It was one of
those cases where the cook puts a month's wages into shares,
and comes next month and buys your house at your own
price, and moves into it herself ; where the coachman takes a
few shares, and next month sets up a bank ; and where the
common sailor invests the price of a spree, and next month
buys out the steamship company and goes into business on
his own hook. In a word, it was one of those excitements
which bring multitudes of people to a common center with a
rush, and whose needs must be supplied, and at once, Adelaide
was close by, Sydney was far away. Adelaide threw a short
railway across the border before Sydney had time to arrange
for a long one ; it was not worth while for Sydney to arrange
at all. The whole vast trade-profit of Broken Hill fell into
Adelaide's hands, irrevocably. New South Wales furnishes
law for Broken Hill and sends her Judges 2,000 miles — mainly
through alien countries — to administer it, but Adelaide takes
the dividends and makes no moan.

We started at 4.20 in the afternoon, and moved across level
plains until night. In the morning we had a stretch of

174 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

" scrub " country — the kind of thing which is so useful to the
Australian novelist. In the scrub the hostile aboriginal lurks,
and flits mysteriously about, slipping out from time to time
to surprise and slaughter the settler ; then slipping back again,
and leaving no track that the white man can follow. In the
scrub "^the novelist's heroine gets lost, search fails of result ;
she wanders here and there, and finally sinks down exhausted
and unconscious, and the searchers pass within a yard or two
of her, not suspecting that she is near, and by and by some
rambler finds her bones and the pathetic diary which she had
scribbled with her failing hand and left behind. Nobody can
find a lost heroine in the scrub but the aboriginal " tracker,"
and he will not lend himself to the scheme if it will interfere
with the novelist's plot. The scrub stretches miles and miles
in all directions, and looks like a level roof of bush-tops with-
out a break or a crack in it — as seamless as a blanket, to all
appearance. One might as well walk under water and hope
to guess out a route and stick to it, I should think. Yet it is
claimed that the aboriginal " tracker " was able to hunt out
people lost in the scrub. Also in the " bush " ; also in the
desert ; and even follow them over patches of bare rocks and
over alluvial ground which had to all appearance been washed
clear of footprints.

From reading Australian books and talking with the peo-
ple, I became convinced that the aboriginal tracker's perform-
ances evince a craft, a penetration, a luminous sagacity, and a
minuteness and accuracy of observation in the matter of de-
tective-work not found in nearly so remarkable a degree in
any other people, white or colored. In an oificial account of
the blacks of Australia published by the government of Vic-
toria, one reads that the aboriginal not only notices the faint
marks left on the bark of a tree by the claws of a climbing

THE AUSTRALIAN TRACKER.

1Y6 -

opossum, but knows in some way or other whether the marks
were made to-day or yesterday.

And there is the case, on record, where A., a settler, makes
a bet with B., that B. may lose a cow as effectually as he can,
and A. will produce an aboriginal who will find her. B.
selects a cow and lets the tracker see the
cow's footprint, then be put under guard. B-
then drives the cow a few miles over a course
which drifts in all directions, and frequently
doubles back upon itself ; and he selects diffi-
cult ground all the time, and once or twice
even drives the cow through herds of other
cows, and mingles her tracks in the wide
confusion of theirs. He finally brings his
cow home ; the aboriginal is set at liberty,
and at once moves around in a great circle,
examining all cow-tracks until he finds the
one he is after ; then sets off and follows it
throughout its erratic
course, and ultimately
tracks it to the stable
where B, has hidden the
cow. N'ow wherein
does one cow-track dif-
fer from another? There
must be a difference, or
the tracker could not have performed the feat; a differ"
ence minute, shadowy, and not detectible by you or me, or
by the late Sherlock Holmes, and yet discernible by a mem.
ber of a race charged by some people with occupying the
bottom place in the gradations of human intelligence.

\'%

I 1-:

A TEST CASE.

CHAPTEK XVIIL

It is easier to stay out than get out. — Pndd''nhead Wilson's New Calendar.

THE train was now exploring a beautiful hill country,
and went twisting in and out through lovely little
green valleys. There were several varieties of gum-
trees ; among them many giants. Some of them were bodied
and barked like the sycamore ; some were of fantastic aspect,
and reminded one of the quaint apple trees in Japanese pict-
ures. And there was one peculiarly beautiful tree whose name
and breed I did not know. The foliage seemed to consist of
big bunches of pine-spines, the lower half of each bunch a rich
brown or old-gold color, the upper half a most vivid and
strenuous and shouting green, Tlie effect was altogether be-
witching. The tree was apparently rare. I should say that
the first and last samples of it seen by us were not more than
half an hour apart. There was another tree of striking aspect,
a kind of pins, Ave were told. Its foliage was as line as hair,
apparently, and its mass sphered itself above the naked
straight stem like an explosion of misty smoke. It was not a
sociable sort ; it did not gather in groups or couples, but each
individual stood far away from its nearest neighbor. It scat-
tered itself in this spacious and exclusive fashion about the
slopes of swelling grassy great knolls, and stood in the full
flood of the wonderful sunshine ; and as far as you could see
the tree itself you could also see the ink-black blot of its
shadow on the shining green carpet at its feet.

On some part of this railway journey we saw gorse and

(176)

A HALF CENTURY OF EXILE. 177

broom — importations from England — and a gentleman who
came into our compartment on a visit tried to tell me which
was which ; but as he didn't know, he had difficulty. He said
he was ashamed of his ignorance, but that he had never been
confronted with the question before during the fifty years and
more that he had spent in Australia, and so he had never hap-
pened to get interested in the matter. But there was no need
to -be ashamed. The most of us have his defect. We take a
natural interest in novelties, but it is against nature to take an
interest in familiar things. The gorse and the broom were a
fine accent in the landscape. Here and there they burst out in
sudden conflagrations of vivid yellow against a background of
sober or sombre color, with a so startling effect as to make a
body catch his breath with the happy surprise of it. And
then there was the wattle, a native bush or tree, an inspiring
cloud of sumptuous yellow bloom. It is a favorite with the
Australians, and has a fine fragrJtnce, a quality usually wanting
in Australian blossoms.

The gentleman who enriched me with the poverty of his
information about the gorse and the broom told me that he
came out from England a youth of twenty and entered the
Province of South Australia with thirty-six shillings in his
pocket — an adventurer without trade, profession, or friends,
but with a clearly-defined purpose in his head : he would stay
until he was worth £200, th6n go back home. He would allow
himself five years for the accumulation of this fortune.

" That was more than fifty years ago," said he. "And here
I am, yet."

As he went out at the door he met a friend, and turned and

introduced him to me, and the friend and I had a talk and a

smoke. I spoke of the previous conversation and said there

was something very pathetic about this half century of exile,

and that I wished the £200 scheme had succeeded.
13

178

FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

" With him ? Oh, it did. It's not so sad a case. He is mod-
est, and he left out some of the particulars. The lad reached
South Australia just in time to help discover the Burra-Burra
copper mines. They turned out £700,000 in the first three
years. Up to now they have yielded £20,000,000. He has had
his share. Before that boy had been in the country two years
he could have gone home and bought a village ; he could go
now and buy a city, I think. No,
there is nothing very pathetic about
his case. He and his copper arrived
at just a handy time to save South
Australia. It had got mashed pretty
flat under the collapse of a
land boom a while before."

There it is again; pictur-
esque history — Australia's
specialty. In 1829 South
hadn't a white man in it.
the British Parliament erected it — still
a solitude — into a Province, and gave
it a governor and other governmental
machinery. Speculators took hold, now,
and inaugurated a vast land scheme,
and invited immigration, encouraging
it with lurid promises of sudden wealth,
in London; and bishops, statesmen, and all sorts of people made
a rush for the land company's shares. Immigrants soon began
to pour into the region of Adelaide and select town lots and
farms in the sand and the mangrove swamps by the sea. The
crowds continued to come, prices of land rose high, then higher
and still higher, everybody was prosperous and happy, the
boom swelled into gigantic proportions. A village of sheet^
iron huts and clapboard sheds sprang up in the sand, and in

Australia
In 1836

"here I AM YET.'

It was well worked

A CORPSE THAT DANCED. 179

these wigwams fashion made display; richly-dressed ladies
played on costly pianos, London swells in evening dress and
patent-leather boots were abundant, and this fine society drank
champagne, and in other ways conducted itself in this capital
of humble sheds as it had been accustomed to do in the aristo-
cratic quarters of the metropolis of the world. The provincial
government put up expensive buildings for its own use, and a
palace with gardens for the use of its governor. The governor
had a guard, and maintained a court. Roads, wharves, and
hospitals were built. All this on credit, on paper, on wind, on
inflated and fictitious values — on the boom's moonshine, in fact.

This went on handsomely during four or five years. Then
all of a sudden came a smash. Bills for a huge amount drawn
by the governor upon the Treasury were dishonored, the land
company's credit went up in smoke, a panic followed, values
fell with a rush, the frightened immigrants seized their grip-
sacks and fled to other lands, leaving behind them a good im-
itation of a solitude, where lately had been a buzzing and
populous hive of men.

Adelaide was indeed almost empty ; its population had
fallen to 3,000. During two years or more the death-trance
continued. Prospect of revival there was none; hope of it
ceased. Then, as suddenly as the paralysis had come, came the
resurrection from it. Those astonishingly rich copper mines
were discovered, and the corpse got up and danced.

The wool production began to grow ; grain-raising followed
■ — followed so vigorously, too, that four or five years after the
copper discovery, this little colony, which had had to import
its breadstuff s formerly, and pay hard prices for them — once
$50 a barrel for flour — had become an exporter of grain.
The prosperities continued. After many years Providence, de-
siring to show especial regard for New South Wales and ex-
hibit a loving interest in its welfare which should certify to all

180 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

nations the recognition of that colony's conspicuous righteous-
ness and distinguished ■\vell-deserving, conferred upon it that
treasury of inconceivable riches, Broken Hill ; and South
Australia went over the border and took it, giving thanks.

Among our passengers was an American with a unique
vocation. Unique is a strong word, but I use it justifiably if I
did not misconceive what the American told me ; for I under-
stood him to say that in the world there was not another man
engaged in the business which he was following. He was buy-
ing the kangaroo-skin crop ; buying all of it, both the Austra-
lian crop and the Tasmanian ; and buying it for an American
house in New York. The prices were not high, as there was
no competition, but the year's aggregate of skins would cost
him £30,000. I had had the idea that the kangaroo was about
extinct in Tasmania and well thinned out on the continent.
In America the skins are tanned and made into shoes. After
the tanning, the leather takes a new name — which I have for-
gotten — I only remember that the new name does not indicate
that the kangaroo furnishes the leather. There was a German
competition for a while, some years ago, but that has ceased.
The Germans failed to arrive at the secret of tanning the skins
successfully, and they withdrew from the business. Now then,
I suppose that I have seen a man whose occupation is really en-
titled to bear that high epithet — unique. And I suppose that
there is not another occupation in the world that is restricted
to the hands of a sole person. I can think of no instance of it.
There is more than one Pope, there is more than one Emperor,
there is even more than one living god, walking upon the earth
and worshiped in all sincerity by large populations of men.
I have seen and talked with two of these Beings myself in
India, and I have the autograph of one of them. It can come
good, by and by, I reckon, if I attach it to a " permit."

Approaching Adelaide we dismounted from the train, as

A HOME FOR EVERY ALIEN. 181

the French say, and were driven in an open carriage over the
hills and along their slopes to the city. It was an excursion of
an hour or two, and the charm of it could not be overstated, I
think. The road wound around gaps and gorges, and offered
all varieties of scenery and prospect — mountains, crags,
country homes, gardens, forests — color, color, color every-
where, and the air fine and fresh, the skies blue, and not a
shred of cloud to mar the downpour of the brilliant sunshine.
And finally the mountain gateway opened, and the immense
plain lay spread out below and stretching away into dim dis-
tances on every hand, soft and delicate and dainty and beauti-
ful. On its near edge reposed the city.

We descended and entered. There was nothing to remind
one of the humble capital of huts and sheds of the long-van-
ished day of the land-boom. Ko, this was a modern city, with
wide streets, compactly built ; with fine homes everywhere,
embowered in foliage and flowers, and with imposing masses of
public buildings nobly grouped and architecturally beautiful.

There was prosperity in the air ; for another boom was on.
Providence, desiring to show especial regard for the neighbor-
ing colony on the west — called Western Australia — and ex-
hibit a loving interest in its welfare which should certify to all
nations the recognition of that colony's conspicuous righteous-
ness and distinguished well-deserving, had recently conferred
upon it that majestic treasury of golden riches, Coolgardie ;
and pow South Australia had gone around the corner and
taken it, giving thanks. Everything comes to him who is
patient and good, and waits.

But South Australia deserves much, for apparently she is a
hospitable home fpr every alien who chooses to come ; and for
his religion, too. She has a population, as per the latest census,
of only 320,000-odd, and yet her varieties of religion indicate
the presence within her borders of samples of people from

182

FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

pretty nearly every part of the globe you can think of. Tabu-
lated, these varieties of religion make a remarkable show. One
would have to go far to find its match. I copy here this cos-
mopolitan curiosity, and it comes from the published census :

Church of England,

Roman Catholic, .

Wesleyan,

Lutheran,

Presbyterian,

Con gregationalist,

Bible Christian,

Primitive Methodist, .

Baptist,

Christian Brethren,

Methodist New Connexion,

Unitarian,

Church of Christ,

89,271
47,179
49,159
23,328
18,206
11,882
15,762
11,654
17,547

465
39

688
3,367

Society of Friends,

100

Salvation Army, .

4,356

New Jerusalem Church,

168

Jews, ....

840

Protestants (undefined).

6,532

Mohammedans,

299

Confucians, etc., . '

3,884

Other religions, .

1,719

Object

6,940

Not stated, .

8,046

Total.

320.431

The item in the above list " Other religions " includes the
following as returned :

Agnostics, .

Memnonists, .

Atheists

Moravians, .

139

Believers in Christ,

Mormons, ...

Buddhists, .

Naturalists, .

Calvinists,

Orthodox,

Christadelphians, .

134

Others (indefinite),

Christians

308

Pagans,

Christ's Chapel, .

Pantheists, .

Christian Israelites,

Plymouth Brethren,

111

Christian Socialists,

Rationalists, .

Church of God, .

Reformers, .

Cosmopolitans,

Seculariiits, .

Deists

Seventh -day Adventists,

203

Evangelists, .

' 60

Shaker,

Exclusive Brethren,

ShintoistS, .

Free Church,

Spiritualists,

Free Methodists, .

Theosophists,

Freethinkers,

258

Town (City) Mission, .

Followers of Christ,

Welsh Church, .

Gospel Meetings, .

Huguenot, .

Greek Church,

Hussite,

Infidels,

. , 9

Zoroastrians,

Maronites,

Zwinglian, .

A HEALTHY llELiaiOtS ATMOSPHeHE.

183

About 64 roads to the other world. You see how healthy the
religious atmosphere is. Anything can live in it. Agnostics,
Atheists, Freethinkers, Infidels, Mormons, Pagans, Indefinites :
they are all there. And all the big sects of the world can do
more than merely live in it : they can spread, flourish, prosper.
All except the Spiritualists and the Theosophists. That is the
most curious feature of this curious table. What is the matter
with the specter? Why do they puff him away? He is a
welcome toy everywhere else in the world.

J''r

"NOT WANTED HERE.

CHAPTER XIX.

Pity is for the living, envy is for the dead. — Fudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar,

rHE successor of the sheet-iron hamlet of the mangrove
marshes has that other Australian specialty, the Bo-
tanical Gardens. We cannot have these paradises.
The best we could do would be to cover a vast acreage under
glass and apply steam heat. But it Avould be inadequate, the
lacks would still be so great : the confined sense, the sense of
suffocation, the atmospheric dimness, the sweaty heat — these
would all be there, in place of the Australian openness to the
sky, the sunshine and the breeze. Whatever will grow under
glass with us will flourish rampantly out of doors in Australia.''^
When the white man came the continent was nearly as poor, in
variety ot vegetation, as the desert of Sahara; now it has
everything that grows on the earth. In fact, not Australia
only, but all Australasia has levied tribute upon the flora of
the rest of the world ; and wherever one goes the results ap-
pear, in gardens private and public, in the woodsy walls of the
highways, and in even the forests. If you see a curious or
beautiful tree or bush or flower, and ask about it, the people,
answering, usually name a foreign country as the place of its
origin — India, Africa, Japan, China, England, America, Java,
Sumatra, New Guinea, Polynesia, and so on.

In the Zoological Gardens of Adelaide I saw the only laugh-
ing jackass that ever showed any disposition to be courteous

* The greatest heat in Victoria, that there is an authoritative record of, was at
Sandhurst, in January, 1862. The thermometer then registered 117 degrees in the
shade. In January, 1880, the heat at Adelaide, South Australia, was 172 degrees in
the sun.

(184)

THE DINGO.

185

to me. This one opened his head wide and laughed like a
demon ; or like a maniac who was consumed with humorous
scorn over a cheap and degraded pun. It was a very human
laugh. If he had been out of sight I could have believed
that the laughter came from a man. It is an odd-looking bird,
with a head and beak that are much too large for its body.
In time man
will extermi-
nate the rest of
the wild crea-
tures of Aus-
tralia, but this
one will prob-
ably survive,
for man is his
friend and lets
him alone.
Man always
has a good
reason for his
charities to-
wards wild
things, human
or animal —
when he has
any. In this
case the bird is

spared because he kills snakes. If L. J. will take my advice
he will not kill all of them.

In that garden I also saw the wild Australian dog — the
dingo. He was a beautiful creature — shapely, graceful, a
little wolfish in some of his aspects, but with a most friendly
eye and sociable disposition. The dingo is not an importation ;
he was present in great force when the whites first came to the

LAUGHING JACKASS.

186 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

continent. It may be that he is the oldest dog in the universe ;
his origin, his descent, the place where his ancestors tirst ap-
peared, are as unknown and as untraceable as are the camel's.
He is the most precious dog in the world, for he does not bark.
But in an evil hour he got to raiding the sheep-runs to appease
his hunger, and that sealed his doom. He is hunted, now, just
as if he were a wolf. He has been sentenced to extermination,
and the sentence will be carried out. This is all right, and not
objectionable. The world was made for man — the white man.

South Australia is confusingly named. All of the colonies
have a southern exposure except one — Queensland. Properly
speaking. South Australia is middle Australia. It extends
straight up through the center of the continent like the middle
board in a center-table. It is 2,000 miles high, from south to
north, and about a third as wide. A wee little spot down in
its southeastern corner contains eight or nine-tenths of its
population ; the other one or two-tenths are elscAvhere — as
elsewhere as they could be in the United States with all the
country between Denver and Chicago, and Canada and the
Gulf of Mexico to scatter over. There is plenty of room.

A telegraph line stretches straight up north through that
2,000 miles of wilderness and desert from Adelaide to Port
Darwin on the edge of the upper ocean. South Australia
built the line ; and did it in 1871-2 when her population num-
bered only 185,000. It was a great work ; for there were no
roads, no paths ; 1,300 miles of the route had been traversed
but once before by white men ; provisions, wire, and poles had
to be carried over immense stretches of desert ; wells had to be
dug along the route to supply the men and cattle with water.

A cable had been previously laid from Port Darwin to
Java and thence to India, and there was telegraphic communi-
cation with England from India. And so, if Adelaide could
make connection with Port Darwin it meant connection with
the whole world. The enterprise succeeded. One could watch

THE WHITE MAN'S WORLD.

HOW THE TELEGRAPH WAS PUT UP.

189

Miles.

Madras — Bombay,

650

Bombay — Aden, .

1,662

Aden — Suez,

1,346

Suez — Alexandria,

224

Alexandria — Malta,

828

Malta — Gibraltar,

1,008

Gibraltar — Falmouth, .

1,061

Falmouth — London, .

350

London — New York, .

2,500

New York — San Francisco

3,500

the London markets daily, now ; the profit to the wool-growers
of Australia was instant and enormous.

A telegram from Melbourne to San Francisco covers ap-
proximately 20,000 miles — the equivalent of five-sixths of the
way around the globe. It has to halt along the way a good
many times and be repeated ; still, but little time is lost. These
halts, and the distances between them, are here tabulated.*

Miles.
Melbourne — Mount Gambler, 300
Mount Gambler — Adelaide, . 270
Adelaide — Port Augusta, . 200

Port Augusta — Alice Springs, 1,036
Alice Springs — Port Darwin, 898
Port Darwin — Banjoewangie, 1,150
Banjoewangie — Batavia, . 480

Batavia — Singapore, . . 553

Singapore — Penang, . . 399

Penang— Madras, . . 1,280

I was in Adelaide again, some months later, and saw the
multitudes gather in the neighboring city of Glenelg to com-
memorate the Reading of the Proclamation — in 1836 — which
founded the Province. If I have at any time called it a
Colony, I withdraw the discourtesy. It is not a Colony, it is a
Province; and officially so. Moreover, it is the only one so
named in Australasia. There was great enthusiasm ; it was
the Province's national holiday, its Fourth of July, so to
speak. It is the pre-eminent holiday ; and that is saying
much, in a country where they seem to have a most un-English
mania for holidays. Mainly they are workingmen's holidays ;
for in South Australia the workingman is sovereign ; his vote
is the desire of the politician — indeed, it is the very breath of
the politician's being ; the parliament exists to deliver the will
of the workingman, and the government exists to execute it.
The workingman is a great power everywhere in Australia,
but South Australia is his paradise. He has had a hard time
in this world, and has earned a paradise. I am glad he has
found it. The holidays there are frequent enough to be bewil-

♦Frora " Round the Empire." (George R. Parkin), all but the last two.

190 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

dering to the stranger. I tried to get the hang of the system,
but was not able to do it.

You have seen that the Province is tolerant, religious-wise.
It is so politically, also. One of the speakers at the Commem-
oration banquet — the Minister of Public Works — was an
American, born and reared in New England. There is nothing
narrow about the Province, politically, or in any other way
that I know of. Sixty-four religions and a Yankee cabinet
minister. No amount of horse-racing can damn this community.

The mean temperature of the Province is 62°. The death-
rate is 13 in the 1,000 — about half what it is in the city of
New York, I should think, and New York is a healthy city.
Thirteen is the death-rate for the average citizen of the Prov-
ince, but there seems to be no death-rate for the old people.
There were people at the Commemoration banquet who could
remember Cromwell. There were six of them. These Old
Settlers had all been present at the original Reading of the
Proclamation, in 1836. They showed signs of the blightings
and blastings of time, in their outward aspect, but they were
young within ; young and cheerful, and ready to talk ; ready
to talk, and talk all you wanted ; in their turn, and out of it.
They were down for six speeches, and they made 42. The
governor and the cabinet and the mayor were down for 42
speeches, and they made 6. They have splendid grit, the Old
Settlers, splendid staying power. But they do not hear well,
and when they see the mayor going through motions which
they recognize as the introducing of a speaker, they think they
are the one, and they all get up together, and begin to respond,
in the most animated way ; and the more the mayor gesticu-
lates, and shouts " Sit down ! Sit down ! " the more they take
it for applause, and the more excited and reminiscent and en-
thusiastic they get ; arid next, when they see the whole house
laughing and crying, three of them think it is about the bitter
old-time hardships they are describing, and the other three

** "

*♦-»•

Pll

-■■■ ' , • »>

m If^'mm

^ci

r 5^, 0\.Z~-.

THE OLD SETTLERS.

THE COMMEMORATION BANQUET. 193

think the laughter is caused by the jokes they have been un-
corking— jokes of the vintage of 1836 — and then the way
they do go on ! And finally when ushers come and plead, and
beg, and gently and reverently crowd them down into their
seats, they say, " Oh, I'm not tired — I could bang along a
week ! " and they sit there looking simple and childlike, and
gentle, and proud of their oratory, and wholly unconscious of
what is going on at the other end of the room. And so one
of the great dignitaries gets a chance, and begins his carefully-
prepared speech, impressively and with solemnity — •

"When we, now great and prosperous and powerful, bow our heads in
reverent wonder in the contemplation of those sublimities of energy, of wis-
dom, of forethought, of — "

Up come the immortal six again, in a body, with a joyous
" Hey, I've thought of another one ! " and at it they go, with
might and main, hearing not a whisper of the pandemonium
that salutes them, but taking all the visible violences for
applause, as before, and hammering joyously away till the im-
ploring ushers pray them into their seats again. And a pity,
too ; for those lovely old boys did so enjoy living their heroic
youth over, in these days of their honored antiquity ; and cer-
tainly the things they had to tell were usually worth the tell-
ing and the hearing.

It was a stirring spectacle ; stirring in more ways than one,
for it was amazingly funny, and at the same time deeply
pathetic ; for they had seen so much, these time-worn veterans,
and had suffered so much ; and had built so strongly and well,
and laid the foundations of their commonwealth so deep, in
liberty and tolerance ; and had lived to see the structure rise
to such state and dignity and hear themselves so praised for
their honorable work.

One of these old gentlemen told me some things of interest

afterward ; things about the aboriginals, mainly. He thought

them intelligent — remarkably so in some directions — and he
13

194

FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

said that along with their unpleasant qualities they had some
exceedingly good ones ; and he considered it a greai pity that
the race had died out. He instanced their invention of the
boomerang and the " weet-weet" as evidences of their bright-
ness ; and as another evidence of it he said he had never seen
a white man who had cleverness enough to learn to do the
miracles with those two toys that the aboriginals achieved.
He said that even the smartest whites had been obliged to con-
fess that they could not learn the trick of the boomerang in
perfection ; that it had possibilities which they could not
master. The white man could not control its motions, could
not make it obey him ; but the aboriginal could. He told me
some wonderful things — some almost incredible things —
which he had seen the blacks do with the boomerang and the
weet-weet. They have been confirmed to me since by other
early settlers and by trustworthy books.

It is contended — and may be said to be conceded — that
the boomerang was known to certain savage tribes in Europe
in Eoman times. In support of this, Virgil and two other
Roman poets are quoted. It is also contended that it was
known to the ancient Egyptians.

One of two things
either some one with

is then apparent:
a boomerang arrived
in Australia in the
days of antiquity be-
fore European knowl-
edge of the thing had
been lost, or the Aus-
tralian aboriginal re-
invented it. It will

take some time to find out which of these two propositions is

the fact. But there is no hurry.

ADAM AT PRACTICE.

CHAPTER XX.

It is by the gooduess of God that in our country we have those three un-
speakably precious things : freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the pru-
dence never to practice either of them. — Pudd'nhead WUson^s New Calendar.

rROM diary :
Mr. G. called. I had not seen him since N^auheim,
Germany — several years ago ; the time that the cholera
broke out at Hamburg. We talked of the people we had
known there, or had casually met ; and G. said :

" Do you remember my introducing you to an earl — the
Earl of C. ? "

"Yes. That was the last time I saw you. You and he
were in a carriage, just starting — belated — for the train. I
remember it."

"I remember it too, because of a thing which happened
then which I was not looking for. He had told me a while be-
fore, about a remarkable and interesting Californian whom he
had met and who was a friend of yours, and said that if he
should ever meet you he would ask you for some particulars
about that Californian. The subject was not mentioned that
day at Nauheim, for we were hurrying away, and there was
no time ; but the thing that surprised me was this : when I in-
troduced you, you said, ' I am glad to meet your lordship —
again.' The ' again ' was the surprise. He is a little hard of
hearing, and didn't catch that word, and I thought you hadn't
intended that he should. As we drove off I had only time to
say, ' Why, what do you know about him ? ' and I understood
you to say, ' Oh, nothing, except that he is the quickest judge

(195)

196 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

of — ' Then we were gone, and I didn't get the rest. I won
dered what it was that he was such a quick judge of. I have
thought of it many times since, and still wondered what it
could be. He and I talked it over, but could not guess it out.
He thought it must be fox-hounds or horses, for he is a
good judge of those — no one is a better. But you couldn't
know that, because you didn't know Mm', you had mistaken him
for some one else ; it must be that, he said, because he knew
you had never met him before. And of course you hadn't —
had you % "

" Yes, I had." >

"Is that so? Where?"

" At a fox-hunt, in England."

" How curious that is. Why, he hadn't the least recollec-
tion of it. Had you any conversation with him ? "

" Some — yes."

"Well, it left not the least impression upon him. What
did you talk about ? "

" About the fox. I think that was all."

" Why, that would interest him ; that ought to have left an
impression. What did he talk about \ "

" The fox."

"It's very curious. I don't understand it. Did what he
said leave an impression upon you % "

" Yes. It showed me that he was a quick judge of — how-
ever, I will tell you all about it, then you will understand. It
was a quarter of a century ago — 1873 or '74. I had an Amer-
ican friend in London named F., who was fond of hunting, and
his friends the Blanks invited him and me to come out to a
hunt and be their guests at their country place. In the morn-
ing the mounts were provided, but when I saw the horses I
changed my mind and asked permission to walk. I had never
seen an English hunter before, and it seemed to me that I

THE FOX HUNT. l90

could hunt a fox safer on tlie ground. I had always been diffi-
dent about horses, anyway, even those of the common alti-
tudes, and I did not feel competent to hunt on a horse that
went on stilts. So then Mrs. Blank came to my help and said
I could go with her in the dog- cart and we would drive to a
place she knew of, and there we should have a good glimpse of
the hunt as it went by.

" When we got to that place I got out and went and leaned
my elbows on a low stone wall which enclosed a turfy and
beautiful great field with heavy wood on all its sides except
ours. Mrs. Blank sat in the dog-cart fifty yards away, which
was as near as she could get with the vehicle. I was full of
interest, for I had never seen a fox-hunt. I waited, dreaming
and imagining, in the deep stillness and impressive tranquility
which reigned in that retired spot. Presently, from away off
in the forest on the left, a mellow bugle-note came floating;
then all of a sudden a multitude of dogs burst out of that forest
and went tearing by and disappeared in the forest on the right;
there was a pause, and then a cloud of horsemen in black caps
and crimson coats plunged out of the left-hand forest and went
flaming across the field like a prairie-fire, a stirring sight to
see. There was one man ahead of the rest, and he came spur-
ring straight at me. lie Avas fiercely excited. It was fine to
see him ride ; he was a master horseman. He came like a
storm till he was within seven feet of me, where I was leaning
on the wall, then he stood his horse straight up in the air on
his hind toe-nails, and shouted like a demon :

" ' Which way'd the fox go ? '

" I didn't much like the tone, but I did not let on ; for he
was excited, you know. But I was calm ; so I said softly, and
without acrimony :

''' Which toxV

200 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

" It seemed to anger him. I don't know why ; and he
thundered out :

" ' Which fox ? Why, the fox ? Which way did the fox go ? *

" I said, with great gentleness — even argumentatively :

" ' If you could be a little more definite — a little less vague
— because I am a stranger, and there are many foxes, as you
will know even better than I, and unless I know which one it
is that you desire to identify, and — '

" 'You're certainly the damdest idiot that has escaped in a
thousand years ! ' and he snatched his great horse around as
easily as I would snatch a cat, and was away like a hurricane.
A very excitable man.

" I went back to Mrs. Blank, and she was excited, too — oh,
all alive. She said :

" ' He spoke to you ! — didn't he ? '

" ' Yes, it is what happened.'

" ' I knew it ! I couldn't hear what he said, but I knew he
spoke to you ! Do you know who it was ? It was Lord C, —
and he is Master of the Buckhounds ! Tell me — what do you
think of him?'

" ' Him ? Well, for sizing-up a stranger, he's got the most
sudden and accurate judgment of any man I ever saw.'

" It pleased her. I thought it would."

G. got away from Kauheim just in time to escape being
shut in by the quarantine-bars on the frontiers ; and so did we,
for we left the next day. But G. had a great deal of trouble
in getting by the Italian custom-house, and we should have
fared likewise but for the thoughtf ulness of our consul-general
in Frankfort. He introduced me to the Italian consul-general,
and I brought away from that consulate a letter which made
our Avay smooth. It was a dozen lines merely commending me
in a general way to the courtesies of servants in his Italian
Majesty's service, but it was more powerful than it looked. In

PASSING ITALIAN CUSTOMS. 201

addition to a raft of ordinary baggage, we had six or eight
trunks which were filled exclusively with dutiable stuff — house-
hold goods purchased in Frankfort for use in Florence, where
we had taken a liouse. I was going to ship these through by
express ; but at the last moment an order went throughout Ger-
many forbidding the moving of any parcels by train unless the
owner went w^ith them. This was a bad outlook. We must
take these things along, and the delay sure to be caused by the
examination of them in the custom-house might lose us our
train. I imagined all sorts of terrors, and enlarged them
steadily as we approached the Italian frontier. We were six
in number, clogged with all that baggage, and I w^as courier
for the party — the most incapable one they ever employed.

We arrived, and pressed with the crowd into the immense
custom-house, and the usual worries began ; everybody crowd-
ing to the counter and begging to have his baggage examined
first, and all hands clattering and chattering at once. It seemed j
to me that I could do nothing ; it would be better to give it all
up and go away and leave the baggage. I couldn't speak the
liinguage ; I should never accomplish anything. Just then a
tall handsome man in a fine uniform was passing by and I
knew he must be the station-master — and that reminded me of
my letter. I ran to him and put it into his hands. He took it
out of the envelope, and the moment his eye caught the royal
coat of arms printed at its top, he took off his cap and made a
beautiful bow to me, and said in English —

" Which is your baggage ? Please show it to me."

I showed him the mountain. Nobody was disturbing it ;
nobody w^as interested in it ; all the family's attempts to get
attention to it had failed — except in the case of one of the trunks
containing the dutiable goods. It was just being opened. My
officer said —

" There, let that alone ! Lock it. Now chalk it. Chalk

202 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

all of the lot. Now please come and show me the hand-bag-
gage."

He plowed through the waiting crowd, I following, to the
counter, and he gave orders again, in his emphatic military
way —

" Chalk these. Chalk all of them."

Then he took off his cap and made that beautiful bow again,
and went his way. By this time these attentions had attracted
the wonder of that acre of passengers, and the whisper had
gone around that the royal family were present getting their
baggage chalked ; and as we passed down in review on our way
to the door, I was conscious of a pervading atmosphere of envy
which gave me deep satisfaction.

But soon there was an accident. My overcoat pockets were
stuffed with German cigars and linen packages of American
smoking tobacco, and a porter was following us around with
this overcoat on his arm, and gradually getting it upside down.
Just as I, in the rear of my family, moved by the sentinels at
the door, about three hatf uls of the tobacco tumbled out on the
floor. One of the soldiers pounced upon it, gathered it up in
his arms, pointed back whence I had come, and marched me
ahead of him past that long wall of passengers again — he
chattering and exulting like a devil, they smiling in peaceful
joy, and I trying to look as if my pride was not hurt, and as if
I did not mind being brought to shame before these pleased
people who had so lately envied me. But at heart I was
cruelly humbled.

"When I had been marched two-thirds of the Ions: distance
and the misery of it was at the worst, the stately station-mas-
ter stepped out from somewhere, and the soldier left me and
darted after him and overtook him ; and I could see by the
soldier's excited gestures that he was betraying to him the
whole shabby business. The station-master was plainly very

THE HONORS OF WAR.

205

angry. He came striding down toward me, and when he was
come near he began to pour out a stream of indignant Italian ;
then suddenly took off his hat and made that beautiful bow
and said —

" Oh, it is you ! I beg a thousands pardons ! This idiot
here — " lie turned to the exulting soldier and burst out with
a flood of white-hot Italian lava, and the next moment he was
bowing, and the soldier and I were moving in procession again
— he in the lead and ashamed, this time, I with my chin up.
And so we marched by the crowd of fascinated passengers, and
I went forth to the train with the honors of war. Tobacco and
all.

CHAPTEK XXI.

Man will do many things to get himself loved, he will do all things to get
himself envied. — Paddti'head Wilsori's New Calendar.

EFORE I saw Australia I had never heard of the

" weet-weet " at all. I met but few men who had seen

it thrown — at least I met but few who mentioned

having seen it thrown. Roughly described, it is a fat wooden

cigar with its butt-end fastened to a flexible twig. The whole

thing is only a couple of feet long, and weighs less than two

ounces. This feather — so to call it — is not thrown through

the air, but is flung with an underhanded throw and made to

strike the ground a little way in front of the thrower ; then it

glances and makes a long skip ; glances again, skips again, and

again and again, like the flat stone which a boy sends skating

over the water. The water is smooth, and the stone has a

good chance; so a strong man may make it travel fifty or

seventy-five yards ; but the weet-weet has no such good chance,

for it strikes sand, grass, and earth in its course. Yet an

expert aboriginal has sent it a measured distance of two

hundred and twenty yards. It would have gone even further

but it encountered rank ferns and underwood on its passage

and they damaged its speed. Two hundred and twenty yards ;

and so weightless a toy — a mouse on the end of a bit of wire,

in effect ; and not sailing through the accomodating air, but

encountering grass and sand and stuff at every jump. It looks

wholly impossible ; but Mr. Brough Smyth saw the feat and

did the measuring, and set down the facts in his book about

aboriginal life, which he wrote by command of the Victorian

Government.

(206)

ABORIGINAL SCIENCE. 207

"What is the secret of the feat? No one explains. It
cannot be physical sti-ength, for that could not drive such a
feather-weight any distance. It must be art. But no one ex-
plains what the art of it is; nor how it gets around that law
of nature Avhich says you shall not throw any two-ounce thing
220 yards, either through the air or bumping along the ground.
Eev. J. G. Woods says :

"The distance to which the weet-weet or kangaroo-rat can be thrown is
truly astonishing. I have seen an Australian stand at one side of Kennington
Oval and throw the kangaroo rut completely across it." (Width of Kenning-
ton Oval not stated.) " It darts through the air with the sharp and menac-
ing hiss of a rifle-ball, its greatest height from the ground being some seven

or eight feet When properly thrown it looks just like a living

animal leaping along Its movements have a wonderful

resemblance to the long leaps of a kangaroo-rat fleeing in alarm, with its long
tail trailing behind it."

The Old Settler said that he had seen distances made by the
weet-weet, in the early days, which almost convinced him that
it was as extraordinary an instrument as the boomerang.

There must have been a large distribution of acuteness
among those naked skinny aboriginals, or they couldn't have
been such unapproachable trackers and boomerangers and
weet-weeters. It mast have been race-aversion that put upon
them a good deal of the low-rate intellectual reputation which
they bear and have borne this long time in the world's estimate
of them.

They were lazy — alwaJT's lazy. Perhaps that was their
trouble. It is a killing defect. Surely they could have in-
vented and built a competent house, but they didn't. And
they could have invented and developed the agricultural arts,
but they didn't. They went naked and houseless, and lived
on fish and grubs and worms and wild fruits, and were just
plain savages, for all their smartness.

With a country as big as the United States to live and
multiply in, and with no epidemic diseases among them till the

208

FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

THE WHITE man's APPLIANCES.

white man came with those and his other appliances of
civilization, it is quite probable that there was never a day in
his history when he could muster 100,000 of his race in all
Australia. He diligently and deliberately kept popu-
lation down by infanticide — largely; but mainly by

certain other methods. He
did not need to practise
these artificialities any more
after the white man came.
The white man knew ways
of keeping down population
which were worth
several of his. The
white man knew ways
of reducing a native
population 80 per
cent, in 20 years. The
native had never seen anything as fine as that before.

For example, there is the case of the country noAV called
Victoria — a country eighty times as large as Rhode Island, as
I have already said. By the best official guess there were
4,500 aboriginals in it when the whites came along in the
middle of the ' Thirties. Of these, 1,000 lived in Gippsland,
a patch of territory the size of fifteen or sixteen Rhode Islands :
they did not diminish as fast as some of the other communities;
indeed, at the end of forty years there were still 200 of them
left. The Geelong tribe diminished more satisfactorily : from
173 persons it faded to 34 in twenty years ; at the end of
another twenty the tribe numbered one person altogether.
The two Melbourne tribes could muster almost 300 when the
white man came ; they could muster but twenty, thirty-seven
years later, in 1875. In that year there were still odds and
ends of tribes scattered about the colony of "Victoria, but I

THE PROPER MEDICINE. 209

was told that natives of full blood are very scarce now. It is
said that the aboriginals continue in some force in the huge
territory called Queensland.

The early whites were not used to savages. They could
not understand the primary law of savage life : that if a man
do you a wrong, his whole tribe is responsible — each individual
of it — and you may take your change out of any individual
of it, without bothering to seek out the guilty one. When a
white killed an aboriginal, the tribe applied the ancient law,
and killed the first white ^they came across. To the whites
this was a monstrous thing. Extermination seemed to be the
proper medicine for such creatures as this. They did not kill
all the blacks, but they promptly killed enough of them to
make their own persons safe. From the dawn of civilization
down to this day the white man has always used that very
precaution. Mrs. Campbell Praed lived in Queensland, as a
child, in the early days, and in her " Sketches of Australian
life," we get informing pictures of the early struggles of the
white and the black to reform each other.

Speaking of pioneer days in the mighty wilderness of
Queensland, Mrs. Praed says :

"At first the natives retreated before the whites; and, except that they
every now and then speared a beast in one of the herds, gave little cause for
uneasiness. But, as the number of squatters increased, each one taking up
miles of country and bringing two or three men in his train, so that shepherds'
huts and stockmen's camps lay far apart, and defenseless in the midst of
hostile tribes, the Blacks' depredations became more frequent and murder
was no unusual event.

"Tlie loneliness of the Australian bush can hardly be painted in words.
Here extends mile after mile of primeval forest where perhaps foot of white
man has never trod — interminable vistas where the eucalyptus trees rear their
lofty trunks and spread forth their lanky limbs, from which the red gum
oozes and hangs in fantastic pendants like crimson stalactites ; ravines along
the sides of which the long-bladed grass grows rankly ; level untimbered
plains alternating with undulating tracts of pasture, here and there broken
by a stony ridge, steep gully, or dried-up creek. All wild, vast and desolate ;
all the same monotonous gray coloring, except where the wattle, when in
14

210 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

blossom, shows patches of feathery gold, or a belt of scrub lies green, glossy,
and impenetrable as Indian jungle.

"The solitude seems intensified by the strange sounds of reptiles, birds,
and insects, and by the absence of larger creatures ; of which in the day-
time, the only audible signs are the stampede of a herd of kangaroo, or the
rustle of a wallabi, or a dingo stirring the grass as it creeps to its lair. But
there are the whirring of locusts, the demoniac chuckle of the laughing jack-
ass, the screeching of cockatoos and parrots, the hissing of the frilled lizard,
and the buzzing of innumerable insects hidden under the dense undergrowth.
And then at night, the melancholy wailing of the curlews, the dismal howling
of dingoes, the discordant croaking of tree-frogs, might well shake the
nerves of the solitary watcher."

That is the theater for the drama. When you comprehend
one or two other details, you will perceive how well suited for
trouble it was, and how loudly it invited it. The cattlemen's
stations were scattered over that profound wilderness miles
and miles apart — at each station half a dozen persons. There
was a plenty of cattle, the black natives were always ill-
nourished and hungry. The land belonged to them. The
whites had not bought it, and couldn't buy it ; for the tribes
had no chiefs, nobody in authority, nobody competent to sell
and convey ; and the tribes themselves had no comprehension
of the idea of transferable ownership of land. The ousted
owners were despised by the white interlopers, and this opinion
was not hidden under a bushel. More promising materials for
a tragedy could not have been collated. Let Mrs. Praed speak :

"At Nie Nie station, one dark night, the unsuspecting hut-keeper, having,
as he believed, secured himself against assault, was lying wrapped in his
blankets sleeping profoundly. The Blacks crept stealthily down the chimney
and battered in his skull while he slept."

One could guess the whole drama from that little text.

The curtain was up. It would not fall until the mastership of

one party or the other was determined — and permanently :

" There was treachery on both sides. The Blacks killed the Whites when

they found them defenseless, and the Whites slew the Blacks in a wholesale

and promiscuous fashion which offended against my childish sense of justice.

. . . They were regarded as little above the level of brutes, and in some

cases were destroyed like termirt.

A CHRISTMAS PUDDING.

211

" Here is an instance. A squatter, whose station was surrounded by Blacks,
whom he suspected to be hostile and from whom he feared an attack, parleyed
with them from his house-door. He told them it was Christmas-time — a time
at which all men, black or white, feasted ; that there were flour, sugar-plums,
good things in plenty in the store, and that he would make for them such a
pudding as they had never dreamed of — a great pudding of which all might
eat and be iilled. The Blacks listened and were lost. The pudding was
made and distributed. Next morning there was howling in the camp, for it
had been sweetened with sugar and arsenic ! "

The white man's spirit was right, but his method was
wrong. His spirit was the spirit which the civilized white has
always exhibited toward the savage, but the use of poison was
a departure from custom. True, it was merely a technical
departure, not a real one ; still, it was a departure, and there-
fore a mistake, in my opinion. It was better, kinder, swifter.

THE USUAL SPIRIT.

and much more humane than a number of tlie methods which
have been sanctified by custom, but that does not justify its
employment. That is, it does not wholly justify it. Its un-
usual nature makes it stand out and attract an amount of
attention which it is not entitled to. It takes hold upon
morbid imaginations and they work it up into a sort of exhibi-
tion of cruelty, and this smirches the good name of our civiliz-
ation, whereas one of the old harsher methods would have had

212 J'OLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

no such effect because usage has made those methods familiar
to us and innocent. In many countries we have chained the
savage and starved him to death ; and this we do not care for,
because custom has inured us to it ; yet a quick death by
poison is lovingkindness to it. In many countries we have
burned the savage at the stake ; and this we do not care
for, because custom has inured us to it ; yet a quick death
is lovingkindness to it. In more than one country we have
hunted the savage and his little children and their mother
with dogs and guns through the woods and swamps for an
afternoon's sport, and filled the region with happy laughter
over their sprawling and stumbling flight, and their wild sup-
plications for mercy ; but this method we do not mind, because
custom has inured us to it ; yet a quick death by poison is
lovingkindness to it. In many countries we have taken the
savage's land from him, and made him our slave, and lashed
him every day, and broken his pride, and made death his only
friend, and overworked him till he dropped in his tracks ; and
this we do not care for, because custom has inured us to it ;
yet a quick death by poison is lovingkindness to it. In the
Matabeleland to-day — why, there we are confining ourselves
to sanctified custom, we Rhodes-Beit millionaires in South
Africa and Dukes in London ; and nobody cares, because we
are used to the old holy customs, and all we ask is that no
notice-inviting new ones shall ba intruded upon the attention of
our comfortable consciences. Mrs. Praed says of the poisoner,
" That squatter deserves to have his name handed down to the
contempt of posterity."

I am sorry to hear her say that. I myself blame him for
one thing, and severely, but I stop there. I blame him for
the indiscretion of introducing a novelty which was calculated
to attract attention to our civilization. There was no occasion
to do that. It was his duty, and it is every loyal man's duty

ONE HUMOROUS THING. 213

to protect that heritage in every way he can ; and the best
way to do that is to attract attention elsewhere. The squat-
ter's judgment was bad — that is plain; but his heart was
right. He is almost the only pioneering representative of
civilization in history who has ri^en above the prejudices of his
caste and his heredity and tried to introduce the element of
mercy into the superior race's dealings with the savage. His
name is lost, and it is a pity ; for it deserves to be handed
down to posterity with homage and reverence.
This paragraph is from a London journal :

"To learn what France is doing to spread the blessings of civilization in
her distant dependencies we may turn with advantage to New Caledonia.
AVitli a view to attracting free settlers to that penal colony, M. Feillet, the
Governor, forcibly expropriated the Kanaka cultivators from the best of their
plantations, with a derisory compensation, in spite of the protests of the
Council General of the island. Such immigrants as could be induced to cross
the seas thus found themselves in possession of thousands of coffee, cocoa,
banana, and bread-fruit trees, the raising of which had cost the wretched
natives years of toil, whilst the latter had a few five-franc pieces to spend in
the liquor stores of Noumea."

You observe the combination ? It is robbery, humiliation,
and slow, slow murder, through poverty and the white man's
whisky. The savage's gentle friend, the savage's noble friend,
the only magnanimous and unselfish friend the savage has ever
had, was not there with the merciful swift release of his poi-
soned pudding.

There are many humorous things in the world; among
them the white man's notion that he is less savage than the
other savages.*

* See Chapter on Tasmania, post.

CHAPTER XXII.

Nothing is so ignorant as a man's left hand, except a lady's watch.

— PadiVnhead Wil.fOH\s New Calendar,

YOU notice that Mrs. Praed knows her art. She can
place a thing before you so that you can see it. She
is not alone in that. Australia is fertile in writers
whose books are faithful mirrors of the life of the country and
of its history. The materials were surprisingly rich, both in
quality and in mass, and Marcus Clarke, Ralph Boldrewood, Gor-
don, Kendall, and the others, have built out of them a brilliant
and vigorous literature, and one which must endure. Mate-
rials — there is no end to them ! Why, a literature might be
made out of the aboriginal all by himself, his character and
ways are so freckled with varieties — varieties not staled by
familiarity, but new to us. You do not need to invent any
picturesquenesses ; whatever you want in that line he can fur-
nish you ; and they will not be fancies and doubtful, but real-
ities and authentic. In his history, as preserved by the white
man's official records, he is everything — everything that a hu-
man creature can be. He covers the entire ground. He is a
coward — there are a thousand fact to prove it. He is brave
— there are a thousand facts to prove it. He is treacherous —
oh, beyond imagination ! he is faithful, loyal, true — the white
man's records supply you with a harvest of instances of it that
are noble, worshipful, and pathetically beautiful. He kills the
starving stranger who comes begging for food and shelter —
there is proof of it. He succors, and feeds, and guides to

safety, to-day, the lost stranger who fired on him only yester-

(214)

TRAITS OF CHARACTER. 215

day — there is proof of it. He takes his reluctant bride by
force, he courts her with a club, then loves her faithfully
through a long life — it is of record. He gathers to himself
another wife by the same processes, beats and bangs her
as a daily diversion, and by and by lays down his life in
defending her from some outside harm — it is of record.
He will face a hundred hostiles to rescue one of his children,
and will kill another of his children because the family is large
enough without it. His delicate stomach turns, at certain de-
tails of the white man's food ; but he likes over-ripe fish, and
brazed dog, and cat, and rat, and will eat his own uncle with
relish. He is a sociable animal, yet he turns aside and hides
behind his shield when his mother-in-law goes by. He is
childishly afraid of ghosts and other trivialities that menace
his soul, but dread of physical pain is a weakness which he is
not acquainted with. He knows all the great and many of the
little constellations, and has names for them ; he has a symbol-
writing by means of which he can convey messages far and
wide among the tribes ; he has a correct eye for form and ex-
pression, and draws a good picture ; he can track a fugitive by
delicate traces which the white man's eye cannot discern, and
by methods which the finest white intelligence cannot mas-
ter ; he makes a missile which science itself cannot duplicate
without the model — if with it ; a missile whose secret baffled
and defeated the searchings and theorizings of the white
mathematicians for seventy years ; and by an art all his own
he performs miracles with it which the white man cannot ap-
proach untaught, nor parallel after teaching. Within certain
limits this savage's intellect is the alertest and the brightest
known to history or tradition ; and yet the poor creature was
never able to invent a counting system that would reach above
five, nor a vessel that he could boil water in. He is the prize-
curiosity of all the races. To all intents and purposes he is

216 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

dead — in the body ; but he has features that will live in
literature.

Mr. Philip Chauncy, an oificer of the Victorian Govern-
ment, contributed to its archives a report of his personal ob-
servations of the aboriginals which has in it some things which
I wish to condense slightly and insert here. He speaks of the
quickness of their eyes and the accuracy of their judgment of
the direction of approaching missiles as being quite extraor-
dinary, and of the answering suppleness and accuracy of limb
and muscle in avoiding the missile as being extraordinary also.
He has seen an aboriginal stand as a target for cricket-balls
thrown with great force ten or fifteen yards, by professional
bowlers, and successfully dodge them or parry them with his
shield during about half an hour. One of those balls, properly
placed, could have killed him ; " Yet he depended, with the
utmost self-possession, on the quickness of his eye and his
agility."

The shield was the customary war-shield of his race, and
would not be a protection to you or to me. It is no broader
than a stovepipe, and is about as long as a man's arm. The
opposing surface is not flat, but slopes away from the center-
line like a boat's bow. The difficulty about a cricket-ball that
has been thrown with a scientific "twist" is, that it suddenly
changes it course when it is close to its targ^et and comes
straight for the mark when apparently it was gding overhead
or to one side. I should not be able to protect "Inyself from
such balls for half-an-hour, or less.

Mr. Chauncy once saw " a little native man " throw a cricket-
ball 119 yards. This is said to beat the English professional
record by thirteen yards.

"We have all seen the circus-man bound into the air from a
spring-board and make a somersault over eight horses standing
side by side. Mr. Chauncy saw an aboriginal do it over eleven ;

EXPERT NATIVES. 217

and was assured that he had sometimes done it over fourteen.
But what is that to this :

" I saw the same man leap from the ground, and in going over he dipped
his head, unaided by his liands, into a hat placed in an inverted position on the
top of the head of another man sitting upright on liorseback — both man and
horse being of the average size. The native landed on the other side of the
horse with the hat fairly on his head. The prodigious height of the leap, and
the precision with which it was taken so as to enable him to dip his head into
the hat, exceeded any feat of the kind I have ever beheld."

I should think so ! On board a ship lately I saw a young
Oxford athlete run four steps and spring into the air and
squirm his hips by a side-twist over a bar that was five and
one-half feet high ; but he could not have stood still and
cleared a bar that wd^four feet high. I know this, because I
tried it myself.

One can see now where the kangaroo learned its art.

Sir George Grey and Mr. Eyre testify that the natives dug
wells fourteen or fifteen feet deep and two feet in diameter at
the bore — dug them in the sand — - wells that were " quite cir-
cular, carried straight down, and the work beautifully exe-
cuted."

Their tools were their hands and feet. How did they
throw sand out from such a depth ? How could they stoop
down and get it, with only two feet of space to stoop in?
How did they keep that sand-pipe from caving in on them ?
I do not know. Still, they did manage those seeming impossi-
bilities. Swallowed the sand, may be. '

Mr. Chauncy speaks highly of the patience and skill and
alert intelligence of the native huntsman when he is stalking
the emu, the kangaroo, and other game :

" As he walks through the bush his step is light, elastic, and noiseless ;
every track on the earth catches his keen eye ; a leaf, or fragment of a stick
turned, or a blade of grass recently bent by the tread of one of the lower ani-
mals, instantly arrests his attention ; in fact, nothing escapes his quick and
powerful sight on the ground, in the trees, or in the distance, which may
supply him with a meal or warn him of danger. A little examination of the

218

FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

trunk of a tree which may be nearly covered with the scratches of opossums
ascending and descending is sufficient to inform Jiim whether one went up the
night before tcithoict coming dmcn again or not."

Fennimore Cooper lost his chance. He would have known
how to value these people. He wouldn't have traded the dull-
est of them for the brightest Mohawk he ever invented.

All savages draw outline pictures upon bark ; but the re-
semblances are not close, and expression is usually lacking.
But the Australian aboriginal's pictures of animals were nicely
accurate in form^ attitude, carriage ; and he put spirit into

them, and expres-
sion. And his pic-
tures of white peo-
ple and natives
were pretty nearly
as good as his pic-
tures of the other
animals. He
dressed his whites
in the fashion of
their day, both the
ladies and the gen-
tlemen. As an untaught wielder of the pencil it is not likely
that he has had his equal among savage people.

His place in art — as to drawing, not color- work — is well
up, all things considered. His art is not to be classified with
savage art at all, but on a plane two degrees above it and one
degree above the lowest plane of civilized art. To be exact,
his place in art is between Botticelli and De Maurier. Tliat is
to say, he could not draw as well as De Maurier but better
than Boticelli. In feeling, he resembles both ; also in group-
ing and in his preferences in the matter of subjects. His
" corrobboree " of the Australian wilds reappears in De Mau-

HIS PI,ACK IN ART.

SURGERY AND STOLIDITY. 219

rier's Belgravian ballrooms, with clothes and the smirk of
civilization added ; Botticelli's " Spring " is the corrobboree
further idealized, but with fewer clothes and more smirk.
And well enough as to intention, hut — my word !

The aboriginal can make a fire by friction. I have tried
that.

All savages are able to stand a good deal of physical pain.
The Australian aboriginal has this quality in a well-developed
degree. Do not read the following instances if horrors are not
pleasant to you. They were recorded by the Rev. Henry K.
Wolloston, of Melbourne, who had been a surgeon before he
became a clergyman :

1. "In the summer of 1852 I started on horseback from Albany, King
George's Sound, to visit at Cape Riche, accompanied by a native on foot.
We traveled about forty miles the first day, then camped by a water-hole for
the night. After cooking and eating our supper, I observed the native, who
had said nothing to me on the subject, collect the hot embers of the fire to-
gether, and deliberately place his right foot in the glowing mass for a moment,
then suddenly withdraw it, stamping on the ground and uttering a long-
drawn guttural sound of mingled pain and satisfaction. This operation he
repeated several times. On my inquiring the meaning of his strange conduct,
he only said, ' Me carpenter-make 'em ' ( ' I am mending my foot ' ), and then
showed me his charred great toe, the nail of which had been torn off by a tea-
tree stump, in which it had been caught during the journey, and the pain of
which he had borne with stoical composure until the evening, when he had an
opportunity of cauterizing the wound in the primitive manner above de-
scribed."

And he proceeded on the journey the next day, "as if

nothing had happened " — and walked thirty miles. It was a

strange idea, to keep a surgeon and then do his own surgery.

2. "A native about twenty-five years of age once applied to me, as a
doctor, to extract the wooden barb of a spear, which, during a tight in the
bush some four months previously, had entered his chest, just missing the
heart, and penetrated the viscera to a considerable depth. The spear had
been cut off, leaving the barb behind, which continued to force its way by
muscular action gradually toward the back ; and when I examined him I
could feel a hard substance between the ribs below the left blade-bone. I
made a deep incision, and with a pair of forceps extracted the barb, which
was made, as usual, of hard wood about four inches long and from half an inch
to an inch thick. It was very smooth, and partly digested, so to speak, by

220 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

the maceration to which it liad been exposed during its four montlis' journey
through tlie body. Tlie wound made by the spear had long since healed,
leaving only a small cicatrix ; and after the operation, which the native bore
without flinching, he appeared to suffer no pain. Indeed, judging from his
good state of health, the presence of the foreign matter did not materially an-
noy him. He was perfectly well in a few days."

But No. 3 is my favorite. Whenever I read it I seem to

enjoy all that the patient enjoyed — whatever it was :

3. " Once at King George's Sound a native presented himself to me with
one leg only, and requested me to supply him with a wooden leg. He had
traveled in this maimed state about ninety-six miles, for this purpose. I ex-
amined the limb, which had been severed just below the knee, and found that
it had been charred by fire, while about two inches of the partially calcined

NO FEELING IN IT.

bone protruded through the flesh. I at once removed this with the saw ;
and having made as presentable a stump of it as I could, covered the ampu-
tated end of the bone with a surrounding of muscle, and kept the patient a
few days under my care to allow the wound to heal. On inquiring, the na-
tive told me that in a fight with other blackfellows a spear had struck his leg
and penetrated the bone below the knee. Finding it was serious, he had re-
course to the following crude and barbarous operation, which it appears is not
uncommon among these people in their native state. He made afire, and dug
a hole in the earth only sufficiently large to admit his leg, and deep enough to
allow the wounded part to be on a level with the surface of the ground. He
then surrounded the limb with the live coals or charcoal, which was replenished
until the leg was literally burnt off. The cauterization thus applied com-
pletely checked the hemorrhage, and he was able in a day or two to hobble
down to the Sound, with the aid of a long stout stick, although he was more
than a week on the road."

AUSTRALIAN SLANG. 221

But he was a fastidious native. He soon discarded the
wooden leg made for him by the doctor, because " it had no
feeling in it." It must have had as much as the one he burnt
off, I should think.

So much for the Aboriginals. It is difficult for me to let
them alone. They are marvelously interesting creatures. For
a quarter of a century, now, the several colonial governments
have housed their remnants in comfortable stations, and fed
them well and taken good care of them in every way. If I
had found this out while I was in Australia I could have seen
some of those people — but I didn't. I would walk thirty miles
to see a stuffed one.

Australia has a slang of its own. This is a matter of
course. The vast cattle and sheep industries, the strange
aspects of the country, and the strange native animals, brute
and human, are matters which would naturally breed a local
slang. I have notes of this slang somewhere, but at the mo-
ment I can call to mind only a few of the words and phrases.
They are expressive ones. The wide, sterile, unpeopled deserts
have created eloquent phrases like "No Man's Land" and the
" Never-never Country." Also this felicitous form : " She lives
in the Never-never Country " — that is, she is an old maid. And
this one is not without merit: "heifer-paddock" — young
ladies' seminary. "Bail up" and "stick up" — equivalent of
our highwayman-term to " hold up " a stage-coach or a train.
" New-chum " is the equivalent of our " tenderfoot " — new
arrival.
^ And then there is the immortal "My word!" We must

import it. " M-y word I " In cold print it is the equivalent of
our " (jQX-reat Ccesar ! " but spoken with the proper Australian
unction and fervency, it is worth six of it for grace and charm
and expressiveness. Our form is rude and explosive ; it is not
suited to the drawing-room or the heifer-paddock ; but " M-y

222

FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

word ! ''"' is, and is music to the ear, too, when the utterer
knows how to say it. I saw it in print several times on the
Pacific Ocean, but it struck me coldly, it aroused no sympathy.
That was because it was the dead corpse of the thing, the soul
was not there — the tones were lacking — the informing spirit
— the deep feeling — the eloquence. But the first time I heard
an Australian say it, it was positively thrilling.

CHAPTEK XXIII.

Be careless in your dress if j'ou must, but keep a ticl}- soul.

— PudcCnhead Wilnon's New Calendar.

VE left Adelaide in due course, and went to Horsham,
in the colony of Victoria ; a good deal of a journey,
if I remember rightly, but pleasant. Horsham sits
in a plain which is as level as a floor — one of those famous
dead levels which Australian books describe so often; gray,
bare, sombre, melancholy, baked, cracked, in the tedious long
drouths, but a horizonless ocean of vivid green grass the day
after a rain. A country town, peaceful, reposeful, inviting,
full of snug homes, with garden plots, and plenty of shrubbery
and flowers.

" Horsham, October 17. At the hotel. The weather divine.
Across the way, in front of the London Bank of Australia, is a
very handsome cotton wood. It is in opulent leaf, and every
leaf perfect. The full power of the on-rushing spring is upon
it, and I imagine I can see it grow. Alongside the bank and a
little way back in the garden there is a row of soaring fountain-
sprays of delicate feathery foliage quivering in the breeze, and
mottled with flashes of light that shift and play through the
mass like flash-lights through an opal — a mofst beautiful tree,
and a striking contrast to the cotton wood. Every leaf of the
Cottonwood is distinctly defined — it is a kodak for faithful,
hard, unsentimental detail ; the other an impressionist picture,
delicious to look upon, full of a subtle and exquisite charm, but
all details fused in a swoon of vague and soft loveliness."

It turned out, upon inquiry, to be a pepper tree — an im-

(333)

224

FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

portation from China. It has a silky sheen, soft and rich.
I saw some that had long red bunches of currant-like berries
ambushed among the foliage. At a distance, in certain lights,
they give the tree a pinkish tint and a new charm.

There is an agricultural college eight miles from Horsham.
We were driven out to it by its chief. The conveyance was
an open wagon ; the time, noonday ; no wind ; the sky with-
out a cloud, the sunshine brilliant — and the mercury at 92° in
the shade. In some countries an indolent unsheltered drive of
an hour and a half under such conditions would have been a

sweltering and prostrating experi-
ence ; but there was nothing of that
in this case. It is a climate that
is perfect. There was no sense of
heat; indeed, there was no heat;
the air was fine and pure and exhil-
arating ; if the drive had lasted half
a day I think we should not have
felt any discomfort, or grown silent
or droopy or tired. Of course, the
secret of it was the exceeding dry-
ness of the atmosphere. In that
plain 112° in the shade is without
doubt no harder upon a man than is
88° or 90° in New York.

The road lay through the middle
of an empty space which seemed to me to be a hundred yards
wide between the fences. I was not given the width in yards,
but only in chains and perches — and furlongs, I think. I
would have given a good deal to know what the width was,
but I did not pursue the matter. I think it is best to put
up with information the way you get it ; and seem satisfied
with it, and surprised at it, and grateful for it, and say, " My

A WIDE SPACE.

THE AUSTRALIAN MAGPIE. 225"

word ! " and never let on. It was a wide space ; I could tell
you how wide, in chains and perches and furlongs and things,
but that would not help you any. Those things sound well,
but they are shadowy and indefinite, like troy weight and
avoirdupois; nobody knows what they mean. When you
l?uy a pound of a drug and the man asks you which you
want, troy or avoirdupois, it is best to say "Yes," and shift
the subject.

They said that the wide space dates from the earliest sheep
and cattle-raising days. People had to drive their stock long
distances — immense journeys— from worn-out places to new
ones where were water and fresh pasturage; and this wide
space had to be left in grass and unfenced, or the stock would
have starved to death in the transit.

On the way we saw the usual birds — the beautiful little
green parrots, the magpie, and some others ; and also the
slender native bird of modest plumage and the eternally-for-
getable name — the bird that is the smartest among birds, and
can give a parrot 30 to 1 in the game and then talk him to
death. I cannot recall that bird's name. I think it begins
with M. I wish it began with G. or something that a person
can remember.

The magpie was out in great force, in the fields and on the
fences. He is a handsome large creature, with snowy white
decorations, and is a singer; he has a murmurous rich note that
is lovely. He was once modest, even diifident ; but he lost all
that when he found out that he was Australia's sole musical
bird. He has talent, and cuteness, and impudence ; and in his
tame state he is a most satisfactory pet — never coming when
he is called, always coming when he isn't, and studying dis-
obedience as an accomplishment. He is not confined, but loafs
all over the house and grounds, like the laughing jackass. I
15

226 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

think he learns to talk, I know he learns to sing tunes, and his
friends say that he knows how to steal without learning. I
was acquainted with a tame magpie in Melbourne. He had
lived in a lady's house several years, and believed he owned it.
The lady had tamed him, and in return he had tamed the lady.
He was always on deck when not wanted, always having his
own way, always tyrannizing over the dog, and always making
the cat's life a slow sorrow and a martyrdom. He knew a
number of tunes and could sing them in perfect time and
tune ; and would do it, too, at any time that silence was wanted ;
and then encore himself and do it again ; but if he was asked
to sing he would go out and take a walk.

It was long believed that fruit trees would not grow in that
baked and waterless plain around Horsham, but the agricul-
tural college has dissipated that idea. Its ample nurseries were
producing oranges, apricots, lemons, almonds, peaches, cherries,
48 varieties of apples — in fact, all manner of fruits, and in
abundance. The trees did not seem to miss the water ; they
were in vigorous and flourishing condition.

Experiments are made with different soils, to see what
things thrive best in them and what climates are best for
them. A man who is ignorantly trying to produce upon his
farm things not suited to its soil and its other conditions can
make a journey to the college from anywhere in Australia,
and go back with a change of scheme which will make his farm
productive and profitable.

There were forty pupils there — a few of them farmers, re-
learning their trade, the rest young men mainly from the
cities — novices. It seemed a strange thing that an agricul-
tural college should have an attraction for city-bred youths,
but such is the fact. They are good stuff, too ; they are above
the agricultural average of intelligence, and they come without

SHEEP SHEARING. 227

any inherited prejudices in favor of hoary ignorances made
sacred by long descent.

The students work all day in the fields, the nurseries, and
the shearing-sheds, learning and doing all the practical work of
the business — three days in a week. On the other three they
study and hear lectures. They are taught the beginnings of
such sciences as bear upon agriculture — like chemistry, for
instance. We saw the sophomore class in sheep-shearing shear
a dozen sheep. They did it by hand, not with the machine.
The sheep was seized and flung down on his side and held
there ; and the students took off his coat with great celerity
and adroitness. Sometimes they clipped off a sample of the
sheep, but that is customary with shearers, and they don't mind
it; they don't even mind it as much as the sheep. They dab a
splotch of sheep-dip on the place and go right ahead.

The coat of wool was unbelievably thick. Before the shear-
ing the sheep looked like the fat woman in the circus ; after it
he looked like a bench. He was clipped to the skin ; and
smoothly and uniformly. The fleece comes from him all in
one piece and has the spread of a blanket.

The college was flying the Australian flag — the gridiron of
England smuggled up in the northwest corner of a big red
field that had the random stars of the Southern Cross wander-
ing around over it.

From Horsham we went to Stawell. By rail. Still in the
colony of Victoria. Stawell is in the gold-mining country.
In the bank-safe was half a peck of surface-gold — gold dust,
grain gold; rich; pure in fact, and pleasant to sift through
one's fingers ; and would be pleasanter if it would stick. And
there were a couple of gold bricks, very heavy to handle,
and worth $7,500 a piece. They ^ere from a very valuable
quartz mine ; a lady owns two-thirds of it ; she has an income
of $75,000 a month from it, and is able to keep house.

228

FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

The Stawell region is not productive of gold only ; it has
great vineyards, and produces exceptionally fine wines. One
of these vineyards — the Great Western, owned by Mr. Irving
— is regarded as a model. Its product has reputation abroad.
It yields a choice champagne and a fine claret, and its hock
took a prize in France two or three years ago. The champagne
is kept in a maze of passages under ground, cut in the rock, to
secure it an even temperature during the three-year term re-
quired to perfect it. In those vaults I saw 120,000 bottles of
champagne. The colony of Yictoria has a population of 1,000,-
000, and those people are said to drink 25,000,000 bottles of

THE THREE SISTERS.

champagne per year. The dryest community on the earth.
The government has lately reduced the duty upon foreign
wines. That is one of the unkindnesses of Protection. A man
invests years of work and a vast sum of money in a worthy
enterprise, upon the faith of existing laws ; then the law is
changed, and the man is robbed by his own government.

On the way back to Stawell we had a chance to see a group
of boulders called the Th'ree Sisters — a curiosity oddly located ;
for it was upon high ground, with the land sloping away from

SAD BUT INTELLIGENT GUM-TREES. 229

it, and no height above it from, whence the boulders could have
rolled down. Relics of an early ice-drift, perhaps. They are
noble boulders. One of them has the size and smoothness and
plump sphericity of a balloon of the biggest pattern.

The road led through a forest of great gum-trees, lean and
scraggy and sorrowful. The road was cream-white — a clayey
kind of earth, apparently. Along it toiled occasional freight
wagons, drawn by long double files of oxen. Those wagons
were going a journey of two hundred miles, I was told, and .
were running a successful opposition to the raihvay ! The rail-
ways are owned and run by the government.

Those sad gums stood up out of the dry white clay, pictures
of patience and resignation. It is a tree that can get along
without water ; still it is fond of it — ravenously so. It is a
very intelligent tree and will detect the presence of hidden
water at a distance of fif tv feet, and send out slender long: root-
fibres to prospect it. They will find it ; and will also get at it
— even through a cement wall six inches thick. Once a
cement water-pipe under ground at Stawell began to gradually
reduce its output, and finally ceased altogether to deliver
water. Upon examining into the matter it was found stopped
up, wadded compactly with a mass of root-fibres, delicate and
hair-like. How this stuff had gotten into the pij)e was a puz-
zle for some little time ; finally it was found that it had crept
in through a crack that wats almost invisible to the eye. A
gum tree forty feet away had tapped the pipe and was drink-
ing the water.

CHAPTER XXiy.

There is no such thing as "the Queen's English." The property has gone into
the hands of a joint stock company and we own the bulli of the shares !

— Fudd^nhead WUson^s New Calendar.

rREQUENTLY, in Australia, one has cloud-effects of an
unfamiliar sort. We had this kind of scenery, finely
staged, all the way to Ballarat. Consequently we saw
more sky than country on that journey. At one time a great
stretch of the vault was densely flecked with wee ragged-edged
flakes of painfully white cloud-stuff, all of one shape and size,
and equidistant apart, with narrow cracks of adorable blue
showing between. The whole was suggestive of a hurricane of
snow-flakes drifting across the skies. By and by these flakes
fused themselves together in interminable lines, with shady
faint hollows between the lines, the long satin-surfaced
rollers following each other in simulated movement, and en-
chantingly counterfeiting the majestic march of a flowing sea.
Later, the sea solidified itself ; then gradually broke up its
mass into innumerable lofty white pillars of about one size, and
ranged these across the firmament, in receding and fading per-
spective, in the similitude of a stupendous colonnade — a mirage
without a doubt flung from the far Gates of the Hereafter.

The approaches to Ballarat Avere beautiful. The features,
great green expanses of rolling pasture-land, bisected by eye-
contenting hedges of commingled new-gold and old-gold gorse
— and a lovely lake. One must put in the pause, there, to
fetch the reader up with a slight jolt, and keep him from glid-
ing by without noticing the lake. One must notice it ; for a
lovely lake is not as common a thing along the railways of

(230) "

BALLARAT. 231

Australia as are the dry places. Ninety-two in the shade again,
but balmy and comfortable, fresh and bracing. A perfect
climate.

Forty-five years ago the site now occupied by the City of
Ballarat was a sylvan solitude as quiet as Eden and as lovely.
Nobody had ever heard of it. On the 25th of August, 1851,
the first great gold-strike made in Australia was made here.
The wandering prospectors who made it scraped up two pounds
and a half of gold the first day — worth $600. A few days
later the place was a hive — a town. The news of the strike
spread everywhere in a sort of instantaneous way — spread
like a flash to the very ends of the earth. A celebrity so
prompt and so universal has hardly been paralleled in history,
perhaps. It was as if the name BALLARAT had suddenly
been written on the sky, where all the world could read it at
once.

The smaller discoveries made in the colony of New South
Wales three months before had already started emigrants
toward Australia ; they had been coming as a stream, but they
came as a flood, now. A hundred thousand people poured into
Melbourne from England and other countries in a single
month, and flocked away to the mines. The crews of the ships
that brought them flocked with them ; the clerks in the gov-
ernment offices followed ; so did the cooks, the maids, the
coachmen, the butlers, and the other domestic servants ; so did
the carpenters, the smiths, the plumbers, the painters, the re-
porters, the editors, the lawyers, the clients, the barkeepers,
the bummers, the blacklegs, the thieves, the loose women, the
grocers, the butchers, the bakers, the doctors, the druggists,
the nurses ; so did the police ; even officials of high and
hitherto envied place threw up their positions and joined the
procession. This roaring avalanche swept out of Melbourne
and left it desolate, Sunday-like, paralyzed, everything at a

232 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

stand-still, the ships lying idle at anchor, all signs of life de-
parted, all sounds stilled save the rasping of the cloud-shadows
as they scraped across the vacant streets.

That grassy and leafy paradise at Ballarat was soon ripped
open, and lacerated and scarified and gutted, in the feverish
search for its hidden riches. There is nothing like surface-
mining to snatch the graces and beauties and benignities out of
a paradise, and make an odious and repulsive spectacle of it.

What fortunes were made ! Immigrants got rich while the
ship unloaded and reloaded — and went back home for good in
the same cabin they had come out in ! Not all of them. Only
some. I saw the others in Ballarat myself, forty-five years
later — what were left of them by time and death and the dis-
position to rove. They were young and gay, then ; they are
patriarchal and grave, now ; and they do not get excited any
more. They talk of the Past. They live in it. Their life is a
dream, a retrospection.

Ballarat Avas a great region for " nuggets." No such nug-
gets were found in California as Ballarat produced. In fact,
the Ballarat region has yielded the largest ones known to
history. Two of them Aveighed about 180 pounds each, and
together were worth $90,000. They were offered to any poor
person who would shoulder them and carry them away. Gold
was so plentiful that it made people liberal like that.

Ballarat was a swarming city of tents in the early days.
Everybody was happy, for a time, and apparently prosperous.
Then came trouble. The government swooped down with a
mining tax. And in its worst form, too ; for it was not a tax
upon what the miner had taken out, but upon what he was
going to take out — if he could find it. It was a license-tax —
license to work his claim — and it had to be paid before he
could begin digging.

Consider the situation. No business is so uncertain as

THE EUREKA STOCKADE. 233

surface-raining. Your claim may be good, and it may be
worthless. It may make you well otf in a month ; and then
again you may have to dig and slave for half a year, at heavy
expense, only to find out at last that the gold is not there in
cost-paying quantity, and that your time and your hard work
have been thrown away. It might be wise policy to advance
the miner a monthly sum to encourage him to develop the
country's riches ; but to tax him monthly in advance instead —
why, such a thing was never dreamed of in America. There,
neither the claim itself nor its products, howsoever rich or
poor, were taxed.

The Ballarat miners protested, petitioned, complained — it
was of no use ; the government held its ground, and went on
collecting the tax. And not by pleasant methods, but by ways
which must have been very galling to free people. The
rumblings of a coming storm began to be audible.

By and by there was a result ; and I think it may be called
the finest thing in Australasian history. It was a revolution —
small in size, but great politically ; it was a strike for liberty, a
struggle for a principle, a stand against injustice and oppres-
sion. It was the Barons and John, over again ; it was Hamp-
den and Ship-Money ; it was Concord and Lexington; small
beginnings, all of them, but all of them great in political
results, all of them epoch-making. It is another instance of a
victory won by a lost battle. It adds an honorable page to
history ; the people know it and are proud of it. They keep
green the memory of the men who fell at the Eureka Stockade,
and Peter Lalor has his monument.

The surface-soil of Ballarat was full of gold. This soil the
miners ripped and tore and trenched and harried and disem-
bowled, and made it yield up its immense treasure. Then they
went down into the earth with deep shafts, seeking the gravelly
beds of ancient rivers and brooks — and found them. They

234 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

followed the courses of these streams, and gutted them, send-
ing the gravel up in buckets to the upper world, and washing
out of it its enormous deposits of gold. The next biggest of
the two monster nuggets mentioned above came from an old
river-channel 180 feet under ground. .

Finally the quartz lodes were attacked. That is not poor-
man's mining. Quartz-mining and milling require capital, and
staying-power, and patience. Big companies were formed,
and for several decades, now, the lodes have been successfully
worked, and have yielded great wealth. Since the gold dis-
covery in 1853 the Ballarat mines — taking the three kinds of
mining together — have contributed to the world's pocket
something over three hundred millions of dollars^ which is to
say that this nearly invisible little spot on the earth's surface
has yielded about one-fourth as much gold in forty-four years
as all California has yielded in forty-seven. The Californian
aggregate, from 1848 to 1895, inclusive, as reported by the
Statistician of the United States Mint, is $1,265,217,217.

A citizen told me a curious thing about those mines. With
all my experience of mining I had never heard of anything of
the sort before. The main gold reef runs about north and
south — of course — for that is the custom of a rich gold reef.
At Ballarat its course is between walls of slate. Now the
citizen told me that throughout a stretch of twelve miles along
the reef, the reef is crossed at intervals by a straight black
streak of a carbonaceous nature — a streak in the slate ; a
streak no thicker than a pencil — and that wherever it crosses
the reef you will certainly find gold at the junction. It is
called the Indicator. Thirty feet on each side of the Indicator
(and down in the slate, of course) is a still finer streak — a
streak as fine as a pencil mark ; and indeed, that is its name —
Pencil Mark. Whenever you find the Pencil Mark you know
that thirty feet from it is the Indicator ; you measure the dis-

BALLARAT STATUARY.

BALLARAT ENGLISH. 237

tance, excavate, find the Indicator, trace it straight to the
reef, and sink your shaft ; your fortune is made, for certain.
If that is true, it is curious. And it is curious any way.

Ballarat is a town of only 40,000 population ; and yet, since
it is in Australia, it has every essential of an advanced and
enlightened big city. This is pure matter of course. I must
stop dwelling upon these things. It is hard to keep from
dwelling upon them, though ; for it is difficult to^et away from
the surprise of it. I will let the other details go, this time, but
I must allow myself to mention that this little town has a park
of 326 acres ; a flower garden of 83 acres, with an elaborate
and expensive fernery in it and some costly and unusually fine
statuary; and an artificial lake covering 600 acres, equipped
with a fleet of 200 shells, small sail boats, and little steam
yachts.

At this point I strike out some other praiseful things which
I was tempted to add. I do not strike them out because they
were not true or not well said, but because I find them better
said by another man — and a man more competent to testify,
too, because he belongs on the ground, and knows. I clip them
from a chatty speech delivered some years ago by Mr. William
Little, who was at that time mayor of Ballarat :

" The language of our citizens, in this as in other parts of Australasia, is
mostly healthy Anglo-Saxon, free from Americanisms, vulgarisms, and the
conflicting dialects of our Fatherland, and is pure enough to suit a Trench or
a Latham. Our youth, aided by climatic influence, are in point of physique
and comeliness unsurpassed in the Sunny South. Our young men are well
ordered ; and our maidens, ' not stepping over the bounds of modesty,' are as
fair as Psyches, dispensing smiles as charming as November flowers."

The closing clause has the seeming of a rather frosty com-
pliment, but that is apparent only, not real. ]^ovember is
summer-time there.

His compliment to the local purity of the language is war-
ranted. It is quite free from impurities ; this is acknowledged

238 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

far and wide. As in the German Empire all cultivated people
claim to speak Hanovarian German, so in Australasia all culti-
vated people claim to speak Ballarat English. Even in Eng-
land this cult has made considerable progress, and now that it
is favored by the two great Universities, the time is not far
away when Ballarat English will come into general use among
the educated classes of Great Britain at large. Its great merit
is, that it is shorter than ordinary English — that is, it is more
compressed. At first you have some difficulty in understand-
ing it when it is spoken as rapidly as the orator whom I have
quoted speaks it. An illustration will show what I mean.
When he called and I handed him a chair, he bowed and said :

" Q."

Presently, when we were lighting our cigars, he held a
match to mine and I said :

" Thank you," and he said :

" Km."

Then I saw. Q is the end of the phrase " I thank you "
Km is the end of the phrase " You are welcome." Mr. Little
puts no emphasis upon either of them, but delivers them so
reduced that they hardly have a sound. All Ballarat English
is like that, and the effect is very soft and pleasant ; it takes
all the hardness and harshness out of our tongue and gives to
it a delicate whispery and vanishing cadence which charms the
ear like the faint rustling of the forest leaves.

:4£-:&- ,

"DO YOU REMEMBER THAT TRIPT

CHAPTEK XXV.

" Clas^ic.^^ A book which people praise and don't read.

— Padd^nhead Wilson's New Calendar.

ON the rail again — bound for Bendigo. From diary :
October '23. Got up at 6, left at 7.30 ; soon reached
Castlemaine, one of the rich gold-fields of the early
days ; waited several hours for a train ; left at 3.40 and reached
Bendigo in an hour. For comrade, a Catholic priest who was
better than I was, but didn't seem to know it — a man full of
graces of the heart, the mind, and the spirit ; a lovable man.
He will rise. He will be a bishop some day. Later an Arch-
bishop. Later a Cardinal. Finally an Archangel, I hope.
And then he will recall me when I say, " Do you remember
that trip we made from Ballarat to Bendigo, when you were
nothing but Father C, and I was nothing to what I am now?"
It has actually taken nine hours to come from Ballarat to
Bendigo. We could have saved seven by walking. However,
there was no hurry.

Bendigo was another of the rich strikes of the early days.
It does a great quartz-mining business, now — that business
which, more than any other that I know of, teaches patience,
and requires grit and a steady nerv^e. The town is full of
towering chimney-stacks, and hoisting-works, and looks like a
petroleum-city. Speaking of patience ; for example, one of
the local companies went steadily on with its deep borings and
searchings without show of gold or a penny of reward for
eleven years — then struck it, and became suddenly rich. The
eleven years' work had cost $55,000, and the first gold found
16 (241) . .

242 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

was a grain the size of a pin's head. It is kept under locks
and bars, as a precious thing, and is reverently shown to the
visitor, " hats off." "When I saw it I had not heard its history.

" It is gold. Examine it — take the glass. Now how much
should you say it is worth 'i "

I said —

" I should say about two cents ; or in your English dialect,
four farthings."

" Well, it cost £11,000."

" Oh, come ! "

" Yes, it did. Ballarat and Bendigo have produced the
three monumental nuggets of the world, and this one is the
monumentalest one of the tliree. The other two represent
£9,000 a piece ; this one a couple of thousand more. It is
small, and not much to look at, but it is entitled to it name —
Adam. It is the Adam-nugget of this mine, and its children
run up into the millions."

Speaking of patience again, another of the mines was
worked, under heavy expenses, during lY years before pay
was struck, and still another one compelled a wait of 21 years
before pay was struck ; then, in both instances, the outlay was
all back in a year or two, with compound interest.

Bendigo has turned out even more gold than Ballarat.
The two together have produced $650,000,000 worth — which
is half as much as California has produced.

It was through Mr. Blank — not to go into particulars
about his name — it was mainly through Mr, Blank that my
stay in Bendigo was made memorably pleasant and interesting.
He explained this to me himself. He told me that it was
through his influence that the city government invited me to
the town-hall to hear complimentary speeches and respond to
them ; that it was through his influence that I had been taken
on a long pleasure-drive through the city and shown its nota-

INFLUENTIAL MR. BLANK.

243

ble features; that it was through his influence that I was
invited to visit the great mines ; that it was through his in-
fluence that I was taken to the hospital and allowed to see the

convalescent Chinaman who had been
attacked at midnight in his lonely hut
eight weeks before by robbers, and
stabbed forty-six times and scalped be-
sides ; that it was through his influ-
ence that when I arrived this awful
spectacle of piecings and patchings and
bandagings was sitting up in his cot
letting on to read one of my books ;
that it Avas through his influence that

efforts had been made
Catholic Archbishop of

to get the
Bendiffo to

ALL THROUGH HIS INFLUENCE.

invite me to dinner; that it was through his influence that
efforts had been made to get the Anglican Bishop of Bendigo

2W FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

to ask me to supper ; that it was through his influence that
the dean of the editorial fraternity had driven me through the
woodsy outlying country and shown me, from the summit of
Lone Tree Hill, the mightiest and loveliest expanse of forest-
clad mountain and valley that I had seen in all Australia.
And when he asked me what had most impressed me in
Bendigo and I answered and said it was the taste and the
public spirit which had adorned the streets with 105 miles
of shade trees, he said that it was through his influence that it
had been done.

But I am not representing him quite correctly. He did not
say it was through his influence that all these things had
happened — for that would have been coarse ; he merely con-
veyed that idea ; conveyed it so subtly that I only caught it
fleetingly, as one catches vagrant faint breaths of perfume
when one traverses the meadows in summer; conveyed it
without offense and without any suggestion of egoism or
ostentation — but conveyed it, nevertheless.

He was an Irishman ; an educated gentleman ; grave, and
kindly, and courteous; a bachelor, and about forty-five or
possibly fifty years old, apparently. He called upon me at the
hotel, and it was there that we had this talk. He made me like
him, and did it ^vithout trouble. This was partly through his
winning and gentle ways, but mainly through the amazing
familiarity with my books which his conversation showed.
He was down to date with them, too ; and if he had made
them the study of his life he could hardly have been better
posted as to their contents than he was. He made me better
satisfied with myself than I had ever been before. It was
plain that he had a deep fondness for humor, yet he never
laughed ; he never even chuckled ; in fact, humor could not
win to outward expression on his face at all. No, he
was always grave — tenderly, pensively grave ; but he made me

CORRIGAN CASTLE. 245

laugh, all along ; and this was very trying — and ver}^ pleasant
at the same time — for it was at quotations from my own books.

When he was going, he turned and said —

" You don't remember me ? "

" I ? Why, no. Have we met before ? "

" No, it was a matter of correspondence."

" Correspondence ? "

"Yes, many years ago. Twelve or fifteen. Oh, longer
than that. But of course you — " A musing pause. Then
he said — -

" Do you remember Corrigan Castle ? "

"IS" - no, I believe I don't. I don't seem to recall the name."

He waited a moment, pondering, with the door-knob in his
hand, then started out ; but turned back and said that I had
once been interested in Corrigan Castle, and asked me if I
would go with him to his quarters in the evening and take a
hot Scotch and ' talk it over. I was a teetotaler and liked
relaxation, so I said I would.

We drove from the lecture-hall together about half -past
ten. He had a most comfortably and tastefully furnished
parlor, with good pictures on the walls, Indian and Japanese
ornaments on the mantel, and here and there, and books every-
where — largely mine ; which made me proud. The light was
brilliant, the easy chairs were deep-cushioned, the arrangements
for brewing and smoking were all there. We brewed and
lit up ; then he passed a sheet of note-paper to me and said —

" Do you remember that ? "

" Oh, yes, indeed ! "

The paper was of a sumptuous quality. At the top was a
twisted and interlaced monogram printed from steel dies in
gold and blue and red, in the ornate English fashion of long
years ago ; and under it, in neat gothic capitals was this —
printed in blue :

24:6 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

The Mark Twain Club
corkigan castle

187..

" My ! " said I, " how did you come by this ? "

" I was President of it."

" No ! — you don't mean it."

" It is true. I was its first President. I was re-elected
annually as long as its meetings were held in my castle —
Corrigan — which was five years."

Then he showed me an album with twenty-three photo-
graphs of me in it. Five of them were of old dates, the
others of various later crops ; the list closed with a picture
taken by Falk in Sydney a month before.

" You sent us the first five ; the rest were bought."

This was paradise ! We ran late, and talked, talked, talked —
subject, the Mark Twain Club of Corrigan Castle, Ireland.

My first knowledge of that Club dates away back ; all of
twenty years, I should say. It came to me in the form of a
courteous letter, Avritten on the note-paper which I have
described, and signed " By order of the President ; C. Pembroke,
Secretary." It conveyed the fact that the Club had been cre-
ated in my honor, and added the hope that this token of
appreciation of my work would meet with my approval.

I answered, with thanks ; and did Avhat I could to keep my
gratification from over-exposure.

It was then that the long correspondence began. A letter
came back, by order of the President, furnishing me the names
of the members — thirty-two in number. With it came a copy
of the Constitution and By-Laws, in pamphlet form, and artis-
tically printed. The initiation fee and dues were in their
proper place ; also, schedule of meetings — monthly — for essays
upon works of mine, followed by discussions ; quarterly for busi-
ness and a supper, without essays, but with after-supper speeches

MEMBERS OF THE MARK TWAIN CLUB. 247

also, there was a list of the officers : President, Yice-President,
Secretary, Treasurer, etc. The letter was brief, but it was
pleasant reading, for it told me about the strong interest which
the membership took in their new venture, etc., etc. It also
asked me for a photograph — a special one. I went down and
sat for it and sent it — with a letter, of course.

Presently came the badge of the Club, and very dainty and
and pretty it was; and very artistic. It was a frog peep-
ing out from a graceful tangle of grass-sprays and rushes,
and was done in enamels on a gold basis, and had a gold
pin back of it. After I had petted it, and
played with it, and caressed it, and enjoyed
it a couple of hours, the light happened to
fall upon it at a new angle, and revealed to
me a cunning new detail; with the light just
right, certain delicate shadings of the grass-
blades and rush-stems wove themselves into

THE CLUB BADGE.

a monogram — mine ! You can see that that
jewel was a work of art. And when you come to consider
the intrinsic value of it, you must concede that it is not every
literary club that could afford a badge like that. It was
easily worth $75, in the opinion of Messrs. Marcus and Ward
of New York. They said they could not duplicate it for that
and make a profit.

By this time the Club \i^as well under way ; and from that
time forth its secretary kept my off-hours well supplied with
business. He reported the Club's discussions of my books with
laborious fullness, and did his work with great spirit and ability.
As a rule, he synopsized ; but when a speech was especially
brilliant, he short-handed it and gave me the best passages
from it, written out. There were five speakers whom he par-
ticularly favored in that way : Palmer, Forbes, Naylor, Norris,
and Calder. Palmer and Forbes could never get through a

248 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

speech without attacking each other, and each in his own way
was formidably effective — Palmer in virile and eloquent abuse,
Forbes in courtly and elegant but scalding satire. I could
always tell which of them was talking without looking for his
name. Naylor had a polished style and a happy knack at
felicitous metaphor ; Norris's style was wholly without orna-
ment, but enviably compact, lucid, and strong. But after all,
Calder was the gem. He never spoke when sober, he spoke
continuously when he wasn't. And certainly they were the
drunkest speeches that a man ever uttered. They were full of
good things, but so incredibly mixed up and wandering that it
made one's head swim to follow him. They were not intended
to be funny, but they were, — funny for the very gravity
which the speaker put into his flowing miracles of incongruity.
In the course of five years I came to know the styles of the
five orators as well as I knew the style of any speaker in my
o vn club ^t home.

These reports came every month. They were written on
foolscap, 600 words to the page, and usually about twenty-five
pages in a report — a good 15,000 words, I should say, — a solid
week's work. The reports were absorbingly entertaining, long
as they were; but, unfortunately for me, they did not come
alone. They were always accompanied by a lot of questions
about passages and purposes in my books, which the Club
wanted answered ; and additionally accompanied every quarter
by the Treasurer's report, and the Auditor's report, and the
Committee's report, and the President's review, and my opinion
of these was always desired ; also suggestions for the good of
the Club, if any occurred to me.

By and by I came to dread those things ; and this dread
grew and grew and grew ; grew until I got to anticipating
them with a cold horror. For I was an indolent man, and not
fond of letter-writing, and whenever these things came I had

MEMBERS OF THE CLUB. 2^1)

to put everything by and sit down — for my own peace of
mind — and dig and dig until I got something out of my head
which would answer for a reply. I got along fairly well the
first year ; but for the succeeding four years the Mark Twain
Club of Corrigan Castle was my curse, my nightmare, the
grief and misery of my life. And I got so, so sick of sitting
for photographs. I sat every year for five years, trying to
satisfy that insatiable organization. Then at last I rose in
revolt. I could endure my oppressions no longer. I pulled
my fortitude together and tore off my chains, and was a free
man again, and happy. From that day I burned the secreta-
ry's fat envelopes the moment they arrived, and by and by they
ceased to come.

Well, in the sociable frankness of that night in Bendigo
I brought this all out in full confession. Then Mr. Blank
came out in the same frank way, and with a preliminary word
of gentle apology said that he was the Mark Twain Club, and
the only member it had ever had !

"Why, it was matter for anger, but I didn't feel any. He
said he never had to work for a living, and that by the time
he was thirty life had become a bore and a weariness to him.
He had no interests left ; they had paled and perished, one by
one, and left him desolate. He had begun to think of suicide.
Then all of a sudden he thought of that happy idea of starting
an imaginary club, and went straightway to work at it, with
enthusiasm and love. He was charmed with it ; it gave him
something to do. It elaborated itself on his hands ; it became
twenty times more complex and formidable than was his first
rude draft of it. Every new addition to his original plan
which cropped up in his mind gave him a fresh interest and a
new pleasure. Pie designed the Club badge himself, and
worked over it, altering and improving it, a number of days
and nights ; then sent to London and had it made. It was the

250 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

only one that was made. It was made for me ; the " rest of
the Club " went without.

He invented the thirty-two members and their names. He
invented the five favorite speakers and their five separate styles.
He invented their speeches, and reported them himself. He
would have kept that Club going until now, if I hadn't desert-
ed, he said. He said he worked like a slave over those reports;
each of them cost him from a week to a fortnight's work, and
the work gave him pleasure and kept him alive and willing to
be alive. It was a bitter blow to him when the Club died.

Finally, there wasn't any Corrigan Castle. He had invent-
ed that, too.

It was wonderful — the whole thing; and altogether the
most ingenious and laborious and cheerful and painstaking
practical joke I have ever heard of. And I liked it ; liked to
hear him tell about it ; yet I have been a hater of practical
jokes from as long back as I can remember. Finally he said —

" Do you remember a note from Melbourne fourteen or fif-
teen years ago, telling about your lecture tour in Australia,
and your death and burial in Melbourne? — a note from Henry
Bascomb, of Bascomb Hall, Upper Holywell Hants."

" Yes."

" I wrote it."

" M-y — word ! "

" Yes, I did it. I don't know why. I just took the notion,
and carried it out without stopping to think. It was wrong.
It could have done harm. I was always sorry about it after-
ward. You must forgive me. I was Mr. Bascom's guest
on his yacht, on his voyage around the world. He often spoke
of you, and of the pleasant times you had had together in his
home; and the notion took me, there in Melbourne, and I
imitated his hand, and wrote the letter."

So the mystery was cleared up, after so many, many years.

CHAPTER XXVI.

There are people who can do all fine and heroic things but one ! keep from telling
their happinesses to the unhappy. — Pudd^nhead Wilson\s New Calendar.

AFTER visits to Maryborough and some other Australian
towns, we presently took passage for New Zealand,
If it would not look too much like showing off, I would
tell the reader where Xew Zealand is ; for he is as I was ; he
thinks he knows. And he thinks he knows where Hertzegovina
is ; and how to pronounce pariah / and how to use the word
unique without exposing himself to the derision of the dictionary.
But in truth, he knows none of these things. There are but four
or five people in the world who possess this knowledge, and
these make their living out of it. They travel from place to
place, visiting literary assemblages, geographical societies, and
seats of learning, and springing sudden bets that these people
do not know these things. Since all people think they know
them, they are an easy prey to these adventurers. Or rather
they were an easy prey until' the law interfered three months
ago, and a New York court decided that this kind of gambling
is illegal, " because it traverses Article TV, Section 9, of the
Constitution of the United States, which forbids betting on a
sure thing." This decision was rendered by the full Bench of
the New York Supreme Court, after a test sprung upon the
court by counsel for the prosecution, which showed that none of
the nine Judges was able to answer any of the four questions.
All people think that New Zealand is close to Australia or

(251)

252 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

Asia, or somewhere, and that you cross to it on a bridge. But
that is not so. It is not close to anything, but lies by itself,
out in the water. It is nearest to Australia, but still not near.
The gap between is very wide. It will be a surprise to the
reader, as it was to me, to learn that the distance from Aus-
tralia to New Zealand is really twelve or thirteen hundred
miles, and that there is no bridge. I learned this from Profes-
sor X., of Yale University, whom I met in the steamer on the
great lakes when I was crossing the continent to sail across the
Pacific. I asked him about New Zealand, in order to make
conversation. I supposed he would generalize a little without
compromising himself, and then turn the subject to something
he was acquainted with, and my object would then be attained;
the ice would be broken, and we could go smoothly on, and get
acquainted, and have a pleasant time. But, to my surprise, he
was not only not embarrassed by my question, but seemed to
welcome it, and to take a distinct interest in it. He began to
talk — fluently, confidently, comfortably ; and as he talked, my
admiration grew and grew ; for as the subject developed under
his hands, I saw that he not only knew where New Zealand
was, but that he was minutely familiar with every detail of its
history, politics, religions, and commerce, its fauna, flora, geol-
ogy, products, and climatic peculiarities. When he was done,
I was lost in wonder and admiration, and said to myself, he
knows everything ; in the domain of human knowledge he is king.

I wanted to see him do more miracles ; and so, just for the
pleasure of hearing him answer, I asked him about Hertze-
govina, and pariah, and unique. But he began to generalize
then, and show distress. I saw that with New Zealand gone,
he was a Samson shorn of his locks; he was as other men.
This was a curious and interesting mystery, and I was frank
with him, and asked him to explain it.

He tried to avoid it at first; but then lauo^hed and snid

A NEW ZEALANDER AT YALE.

253

that after all, the matter was not worth concealment, so he
would let rae into the secret. In substance, this is his story :

"Last autumn I was at work one morning at home, when a card came
up — the card of a stranger. Under the name was printed a line which
showed that this visitor was Professor of Theological Engineering in Welling-
ton University, New Zealand. I was troubled — troubled, I mean, by the
shortness of the notice. College etiquette required that he be at once invite4
to dinner by some member of the Faculty — invited to dine on that day — not
put oflf till a subsequent day. I did not quite know what to do. College
etiquette requires, in the case of a foreign guest, that the dinner-talk shall
begin with complimentary
references to his country,
its great men, its services
to civilization, its seats of
learning, and things like
that ; and of course the
host is responsible, and
must either begin this talk
himself or see that it is
done by some one else. I
was in great difficulty; and
the more I searched my
memory, the more my
trouble grew. I found
that I knew nothing about
New Zealand. I thought
I knew where it was, and
that was all. I had an
impression that it was
close to Australia, or Asia,
or somewhere, and that
one went over to it on a
bridge. This might turn
out to be incorrect ; and
even if correct, it would
not furnish matter enough
for the purpose at the dinner, and I should expose my College to shame
before my guest ; he would see that I, a member of the Faculty of the first
University in America, was wholly ignorant of his country, and he would go
away and tell this, and laugh at it. The thought of it made my face burn.

"I sent for my wife and told her how I was situated, and asked for her
help, and she thought of a thing which I might have thought of myself, if I
had not been excited and worried. She said she would go and tell the visitor
that I was out but would be in in a few minutes ; and she would talk, and
keep him busy while I got out the back way and hurried over and make
Professor Lawson give the dinner. For Lawson knew everything, and
could meet the guest in a creditable way and save the reputation of the

THE SCHEME WORKED.

254

FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

'what do tou?"

University. I ran to Lawson, but was disappointed. He did not know any-
thing about New Zealand. He said that, as far as his recollection went
it was close to Australia, or Asia, or somewhere, and you
go over to it on a bridge ; but that was all lie knew. It
was too bad. Lawson was a perfect encyclopedia of
abstruse learning ; but now in this hour of our need,
it turned out that he did not know any useful thing.

"We consulted. He saw that the reputation of the
University was in very real peril, and he walked the floor
in anxiety, talking, and trying to think out some way
to meet the difficulty. Presently he decided that we
must try the rest of the Faculty — some of them might
know about New Zealand. So we went to the telephone
and called up the professor of astronomy and asked him,
and he said that all he knew was, that it was close to
Australia, or^ Asia, or somewhere, and you went over to
it on —

" We shut him off and called up the professor of
biology, and he said that all he knew was that it was
close to Aus — .

"We shut him off, and sat down, worried and dis-
heartened, to see if we could think up some other scheme. We shortly hit
upon one which promised well, and this one we adopted, and set its ma-
chinery going at once. It was this. Lawson must give the dinner. The
Faculty must be notified by telephone to prepare. We must all get to work
diligently, and at the end of eight hours and a half we must come to dinner
acquainted with New Zealand ; at least well enough in-
formed to appear without discredit before this native. To
seem properly intelligent we should have to know about
New Zealand's population, and politics, and form of govern-
ment, and commerce, and taxes, and products, and ancient
history, and modern history, and varieties of religion, and
nature of the laws, and their codification, and amount of
revenue, and whence drawn, and methods of collection, and
percentage of loss, and character of climate, and — well, a
lot of things like that ; we must suck the maps and cyclo-
pedias dry. And while we posted up in this way, the
Faculty's wives must flock over, one after the other, in a
studiedly casual way, and help my wife keep the New
Zealander quiet, and not let him get out and come interfer-
ing with our studies. The scheme worked admirably; but
it stopped business, stopped it entirely.

"It is in the official log-book of Yale, to be read and
wondered at by future generations — the account of the
Great Blank Day — the memorable Blank Day — the day
wherein the wheels of culture were stopped, a Sunday silence prevailed
all about, and the whole University stood still while the Faculty read-up

"CLOSE TO AUS-.'

RECEIVING HIS EDUCATION.

255

and qualified itself to sit at meat, without shame, in the presence of the

Professor of Theological Engineering from New Zealand.

" When we assembled at the dinner we were miserably tired and worn —

but we were posted. Yes, it is fair to claim that. In fact, erudition is a

pale name for it. New Zealand was the only subject ; and it was just beauti-
ful to liear us ripple it out. And with such an air of unembarrassed ease,

and unostentatious familiarity with detail, and trained and seasoned mastery

of the subject — and oh, the grace and fluency of it !

"Well, finally somebody happened to notice that the guest was looking

dazed, and wasn't saying anything. So they stirred him up, of course. Then

that man came out with a good,

honest, eloquent compliment

that made the Faculty blush.

He said he was not worthy to

sit in the company of men like

these ; that he had been silent

from admiration ; that he had

been silent from another cause

also — silent from shame —
silent from ignorance! 'For,'
said he, 'I, who have lived eigh-
teen years in New Zealand and
have served five in a professor-
ship, and ought to know much
about that country, perceive,
now, that I know almost nothing
about it. I say it with shame,
that I have learned fifty times,
yes, a hundred times more about
New Zealand in these two hours
at this table than I ever knew
before in all the eighteen years
put together. I was silent be-
cause I could not help myself.
What I knew about taxes, and
policies, and laws, and revenue,

and products, and history, and all that multitude of things, was but general,
and ordinary, and vague — unscientific, in a word — and it would have been
insanity to expose it here to the searching glare of your amazingly accurate
and all-comprehensive knowledge of those matters, gentlemen. I beg you to
let me sit silent — as becomes me. But do not change the subject ; I can at
least follow you, in this one ; whereas if you change to one which shall call
out the full strength of your mighty erudition, I shall be as one lost. If
you know all this about a remote little inconsequent patch like New Zealand,
ah, what wouldn't you know about any other subject ! ' '

HE LOOKED DAZED.

CHAPTER XXYII.

Mau is the Ouly Auiiual that Blushes. Or needs to.

— P(uhVnhead Wilsun''x New Calendar.

The universal brotherhood of mau is our most precious possession, what there
is of it. — Padd''nhead Wilson's New Calendar.

From Diary :

NOVEMBER 1 — noo7i. A fine day, a brilliant sun.
Warm in the sun, cold in the shade — an icy breeze
blowing out of the south. A solemn long swell
rolling up northward. It comes from the South Pole, with
nothing in the way to obstruct its march and tone its energy
down, I have read somewhere that an acute observer among
the early explorers — Cook? or Tasman? — ^ accepted this
majestic swell as trustworthy circumstantial evidence that no
important land lay to the southward, and so did not Avaste
time on a useless quest in that direction, but changed his
course and went searching elsewhere.

Afternoon. Passing between Tasmania (formerly Yan
Diemen's Land) and neighboring islands — islands whence the
poor exiled Tasmanian savages used to gaze at their lost home-
land and cry ; and die of broken hearts. How glad I am that
all these native races are dead and gone, or nearly so. The
work was mercifully swift and horrible in some portions of
Australia. As far as Tasmania is concerned, the extermination
was complete : not a native is left. It was a strife of years, and
decades of years. The "Whites and the Blacks hunted each
other, ambushed each other, butchered each other. The Blacks

were not numerous. But they were wary, alert, cunning, and

(256)

GO V t.RM p'K~ DAve>ryw*Wf.

PROCLA MAT4eW h

'^.

"YSThy— Massa Gubernor "— said Black Jack— "You Proflamaticta
all gammon, how blackfellow read him P— eh ! He no read him
Xk.". "Rpad that then," said the Qovernor, pointing to a picture^

OOVEKNUliS PKUCLAMATION.

THE GOVERNOR'S PROCLAMATION". 259

they knew their country well. They lasted a long time, few
as they were, and inflicted much slaughter upon the Whites.

The Grovernment wanted to save the Blacks from ultimate
extermination, if possible. One of its schemes was to capture
them and coop them up, on a neighboring island, under guard.
Bodies of Whites volunteered for the hunt, for the pay was
good — £5 for each Black captured and delivered, but the
success achieved was not very satisfactory. The Black was
naked, and his body was greased. It was hard to get a grip
on him that would hold. The Whites moved about in armed
bodies, and surprised little families of natives, and did make
captures ; but it was suspected that in these surprises half a
dozen natives were killed to one caught — and that was not
what the Government desired.

Another scheme was to drive the natives into a corner of
the island and fence them in by a cordon of men placed in line
across the country ; but the natives managed to slip through,
constantly, and continue their murders and arsons.

The governor warned these unlettered savages hy printed
proclamation that they must stay in the desolate region
officially appointed for them ! The proclamation Avas a dead
letter ; the savages could not read it. Afterward a jpicture-
proclamation was issued. It was painted up on boards, and these
were nailed to trees in the forest. Herewith is a photographic
reproduction of this fashion-plate. Substantially it means :

1. The Governor wishes the Whites and the Blacks to love each other;

2. He loves his black subjects ;

3. Blacks who kill Whites will be hanged ;

4. Whites who kill Blacks will be hanged.

Upon its several schemes the Government spent £30,000
and employed the labors and ingenuities of several thousand
Whites for a long time — with failure as a result. Then, at
last, a quarter of a century after the beginning of the troubles
between the two races, the right man was found. ]^o, he

260 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

found himself. This was George Augustus Kobinson, called
in history " The Conciliator." He was not educated, and not
conspicuous in any way. He was a working bricklayer, in
Hobart Town. But he must have been an amazing personality;
a man worth traveling far to see. It may be his counterpart
appears in history, but I do not know where to look for it.

He set himself this incredible task: to go out into the
wilderness, tlie jungle, and the mountain-retreats where the
hunted and implacable savages were hidden, and appear among
them unarmed, speak the language of love and of kindness to
them, and persuade them to forsake their homes and the wild
free life that was so dear to them, and go with him and
surrender to the hated Whites and live under their watch and
ward, and upon their charity the rest of their lives ! On its
face it was the dream of a madman.

In the beginning, his moral-suasion project was sarcasti-
cally dubbed the sugar-plum, speculation. If the scheme was
striking, and new to the world's experience, the situation was
not less so. It was this. The White population numbered
40,000 in 1831 ; the Black population numbered three hundred.
Not 300 warriors, but 300 men, women, and children. The
Whites were armed with guns, the Blacks with clubs and
spears. The Whites had fought the Blacks for a quarter of a
century, and had tried every thinkable Avay to capture, kill, or
subdue them; and could not do it. If white men of any
race could have done it, these would have accomplished it.
But every scheme had failed, the splendid 300, the matchless
300 were unconquered, and manifestly unconquerable. They
would not yield, they would listen to no terms, they would
fight to the bitter end. Yet they had no poet to keep up their
heart, and sing the marvel of their magnificent patriotism.

At the end of five-and-twenty years of hard fighting, the
surviving 300 naked patriots were still defiant, still persistent,

ROBINSON "THE CONCILIATOR." 261

still efficacious with their rude weapons, and the Governor and
the 40,000 knew not which way to turn, nor what to do.

Then the Bricklayer — that wonderful man — proposed to
go out into the wilderness, with no weapon but his tongue,
and no protection but his honest eye and his humane heart ;
and track those embittered savages to their lairs in the gloomy
forests and among the mountain snows. I^aturally, he was
considered a crank. But he was not quite that. In fact, he
was a good way short of that. He was building upon his long
and intimate knowledge of the native character. The deriders
of his project were right — from their standpoint — for they
believed the natives to be mere wild beasts ; and Robinson was
right, from his standpoint — for he believed ^be natives to be
human beings. The truth did really lie between the two.
The event proved that Robinson's judgment was soundest ;
but about once a month for four years the event came near
to giving the verdict to the deriders, for about that frequently
Robinson barely escaped falling under the native spears.

But history shows that he had a thinking head, and was
not a mere wild sentimentalist. For instance, he wanted the
war parties call in before he started unarmed upon his mission
of peace. He wanted the best chance of success — not a half-
chance. And he was very willing to have help ; and so, high
rewards were advertised, for any who would go unarmed with
him. This opportunity was declined. Robinson persuaded
some tamed natives of both sexes to go with him — a strong
evidence of his persuasive powers, for those natives well knew
that thsir destruction would be al)nost certain. As it turned
out, they had to face death over and over again.

Robinson and his little party had a difficult undertaking upon
their hands. They could not ride off, horseback, comfortably
into the woods and call Leonidas and his 300 together for a
talk and a treaty the following day ; for the wild men were

262 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

not in a body ; they were scattered, immense distances apart,
over regions so desolate that even the birds could not make a
living with the chances offered — scattered in groups of twenty,
a dozen, half a dozen, even in groups of three. And the mis-
sion must go on foot. Mr. Bonwick furnishes a description of
those horrible regions, whereby it will be seen that even
fugitive gangs of the hardiest and choicest human devils the
world has seen — the convicts set apart to people the " Hell of
Macquarrie Harbor Station" — were never able, but once, to sur-
vive the horrors of a march through them, but starving and
struggling, and fainting and failing, ate each other, and died :

" Onward, still onward, was the order of the indomitable Robinson. No
one ignorant of the western country of Tasmania can form a correct idea of the
traveling difficulties. While I was resident in Hobart Town, the Governor,
Sir John Franklin, and his lady, undertook the western journey to Macquarrie
Harbor, and suffered terribly. One man who assisted to carry her ladyship
through the swamps, gave me his bitter experience of its miseries. Several
were disabled for life. No wonder that but one party, escaping from Mac-
quarrie Harbor convict settlement, arrived at the civilized region in safety.
Men perished in the scrub, were lost in snow, or were devoured by their com-
panions. This was the territory traversed by Mr. Robinson and his Black
guides. All honor to his intrepidity, and their wonderful fidelity ! When
they had, in the depth of winter, to cross deep and rapid rivers, pass among
mountains six thousand feet high, pierce dangerous thickets, and find food in
a country forsaken even by birds, we can realize their hardships.

" After a frightful journey by Cradle Mountain, and over the lofty plateau
of Middlesex Plains, the travelers experienced unwonted misery, and the
circumstances called forth the best qualities of the noble little band. Mr.
Robinson wrote afterwards to Mr. Secretary Burnett some details of this pas-
sage of horrors. In that letter, of Oct 2, 1834, he states that his Natives
were very reluctant to go over the dreadful mountain passes ; that ' for seven
successive days we continued traveling over one solid body of snow ; ' that
' the snows were of incredible depth ; ' that ' the Natives were frequently up
to their middle in snow.' But still the ill-clad, ill-fed, diseased, and wayworn
men and women were sustained by the cheerful voice of their unconquerable
friend, and responded most nobly to his call."

Mr. Bonwick says that Kobinson's friendly capture of the
Big Kiver tribe — remember, it was a whole tribe — " was by
far the grandest feature of the war, and the crowning glory
of his efforts." The word " war " was not well chosen, and is

A SERIOUS MOMENT. 263

misleading. There was war still, but only the Blacks were
conducting it — the Whites were holding off until Eobinson
could give bis scheme a fair trial. I think that we are to
understand that the friendly capture of that tribe was by far
the most important thing, the highest in value, that happened
during the whole thirty years of truceless hostilities ; that it
was a decisive thing, a peaceful Waterloo, the surrender of the
native Napoleon and his dreaded forces, the happy ending of
the long strife. For " that tribe was the terror of the colony,"
its chief " the Black Douglas of Bush households."

Robinson knew that these formidable people were lurking
somewhere, in some remote corner of the hideous regions just
described, and he and his unarmed little party started on a
tedious and perilous hunt for them. At last, " there, under
the shadows of the Frenchman's Cap, whose grim cone rose
five thousand feet in the uninhabited westward interior," they
were found. It was a serious moment. Robinson himself
believed, for once, that his mission, successful until now, was
to end here in failure, and that his own death-hour had struck.

The redoubtable chief stood in menacing attitude, with
his eighteen-foot spear poised ; his warriors stood massed at
his back, armed for battle, their faces eloquent with their long-
cherished loathing for white men. " They rattled their spears
and shouted their war-cry." Their women were back of them,
laden with supplies of weapons, and keeping their 150 eager
dogs quiet until the chief should give the signal to fall on.

" I think we shall soon be in the resurrection," whispered a
member of Robinson's little party.

" I think we shall," answered Robinson ; then plucked up
heart and began his persuasions — in the tribe's own dialect,
which surprised and pleased the chief. Presently there was
an interruption by the chief :

" Who are you ? "

264 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

" We are gentlemen."

" Where are your guns ? "

" "We have none."

The warrior was astonished.

" Where your little guns ? " (pistols).

" We have none."

A few minutes passed — in by-play — suspense — discussion
among the tribesmen — Robinson's tamed squaws ventured to
cross the line and begin persuasions upon the wild squaws.
Then the chief stepped back " to confer with the old women —
the real arbiters of savage war." Mr. Bon wick continues:

" As the fallen gladiator in the arena looks for the signal of life or death
from the president of the amphitheatre, so waited our friends in anxious sus-
pense while the conference continued. In a few minutes, before a word was
uttered, the women of the tribe threw up their arms three times. This was
the inviolable sign of peace ! Down fell the spears. Forward, with a heavy
sigh of relief, and upward glance of gratitude, came the friends of peace.
The impulsive natives rushed forth with tears and cries, as each saw in the
other's rank a loved one of the past. . . .

"It was a jubilee of joy. A festival followed. And, while tears flowed
at the recital of woe, a corrobory of pleasant laughter closed the eventful day."

In four years, without the spilling of a drop of blood,
Robinson brought them all in, willing captives, and delivered
them to the white governor, and ended the war which powder
and bullets, and thousands of men to use them, had prosecuted
without result since 1804.

Marsyas charming the wild beasts with his music — that is
fable; but the miracle wrought by Robinson is fact. It is
history — and authentic ; and surely, there is nothing greater,
nothing more reverence-compelling in the history of any
country, ancient or modern.

And in memory of the greatest man Australasia ever
developed or ever will develop, there is a stately monument
to George Augustus Robinson, the Conciliator in — no, it is to
another man, I forget his name.

However, Robertson's own generation honored him, and in
manifesting it honored themselves. The Government gave

WONDERFUL PEOPLE. 265

him a money-reward and a thousand acres of land ; and the

people held mass-meetings and praised him and emphasized

their praise with a large subscription of money.

A good dramatic situation ; but the curtain fell on another :

"When this desperate tribe was thus captured, there was much surprise
to find that the £30,000 of a little earlier day had been spent, and the whole
population of the colony placed under arms, in contention with an opposing
force of sixteen men with wooden spears ! Yet such was the fact. The cele-
brated Big River tribe, that had been raised by European fears to a host, con-
sisted of sixteen men, nine women, and one child. With a knowledge of the
mischief done by these few, their wonderful marches and their widespread
aggressions, their enemies cannot deny to them the attributes of courage and
military tact. A Wallace might harass a large army with a small and
determined band ; but the contending parties were at least equal in arms and
civilization. The Zulus who fought us in Africa, the Maories in New
Zealand, the Arabs in the Soudan, were far better provided with weapons,
more advanced in the science of war, and considerably more numerous, than
the naked Tasmanians. Governor Arthur rightly termed them a noble race."

These were indeed wonderful people, the natives. They
ought not to have been wasted. They should have been
crossed with the Whites, It would have improved the Whites
and done the Natives no harm.

But the Natives were wasted, poor heroic wild creatures.
They were gathered together in little settlements on neigh-
boring islands, and paternally cared for by the Government,
and instructed in religion, and deprived of tobacco, because the
superintendent of the Sunday-school was not a smoker, and so
considered smoking immoral.

The Natives were not used to clothes, and houses, and regular
hours, and church, and school, and Sunday-school, and work, and
the other misplaced persecutions of civilization, and they pined
for their lost home and their wild free life. Too late they
repented that they had traded that heaven for this hell. They
sat homesick on their alien crags, and day by day gazed out
through their tears over the sea with unappeasable longing
toward the hazy bulk which was the specter of what had been
their paradise ; one by one their hearts broke and they died.

In a very few years nothing but a scant remnant remained

:*i^

THE LAST OF HER RACE.

THE BEST INTENTIONS. 267

alive. A handful lingered along into age. In 1864 the last
man died, in 1876 the last woman died, and the Spartans of
Australasia were extinct.

The Whites always mean well when they take human fish
out of the ocean and try to make them dry and warm and
happy and comfortable in a chicken coop; but the kindest-
hearted white man can always be depended on to prove himself
inadequate when he deals with savages. He cannot turn the
situation around and imagine how he would like it to have a
well-meaning savage transfer him from his house and his church
and his clothes and his books and his choice food to a hideous
wilderness of sand and rocks and snow, and ice and sleet and
storm and blistering sun, with no shelter, no bed, no covering
for his and his family's naked bodies, and nothing to eat but
snakes and grubs and offal. This would be a hell to him ; and
if he had any wisdom he would know that his own civilization
is a hell to the savage — but he hasn't any, and has never had
any ; and for lack of it he shut up those poor natives in the
unimaginable perdition of his civilization, committing his crime
with the very best intentions, and saw those poor creatures
waste away under his tortures; and gazed at it, vaguely
troubled and sorrowful, and wondered what could be the mat-
ter with them. One is almost betrayed into respecting those
criminals, they were so sincerely kind, and tender, and humane,
and well-meaning.

They didn't know why those exiled savages faded away,
and they did their honest best to reason it out. And one man,
in a like case in New South Wales, did reason it out and arrive
at a solution :

" It is from the wrath of God, which is revealed from heaven
against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men^

That settles it.

CHAPTER XXYIII.

Let us be thankful for the fools. But for them the rest of us could not succeed.

— Padd^nhead Wilson'' s New Calendar.

rHE aphorism does really seem true: "Given the Cir-
cumstances, the Man will appear." But the man
musn't appear ahead of time, or it will spoil everything.
In Robinson's case the Moment had been approaching for a
quarter of a century — and meantime the future Conciliator was
tranquilly laying bricks in Hobart. When all other means
had failed, the Moment had arrived, and the Bricklayer put
down his trowel and came forward. Earlier he would have
been jeered back to his trowel again. It reminds me of a tale
that was told me by a Kentuckian on the train when we were
crossinof Montana. He said the tale was current in Louisville
years ago. He thought it had been in print, but could not
remember. At any rate, in substance it was this, as nearly as I
can call it back to mind.

A few years before the outbreak of the Ci\al War it began
to appear that Memphis, Tennessee, was going to be a great
tobacco entrepot — the wise could see the signs of it. At that
time Memphis had a wharf boat, of course. There was a paved
sloping wharf, for the accommodation of freight, but the
steamers landed on the outside of the wharfboat, and all load-
ing and unloading was done across it, between steamer and
shore. A number of wharfboat clerks were needed, and part
of the time, every day, they were very busy, and part of the
time tediously idle. They were boiling over with youth and

spirits, and they had to make the intervals of idleness endurable

(268)

ED JACKSON'S VACATION. 269

in some way ; and as a rule, they did it by contriving practical
jokes and playing them upon each other.

The favorite butt for the jokes was Ed Jackson, because
he played none himself, and was easy game for other people's
— for he always believed whatever was told him.

One day he told the others his scheme for his holiday. He
was not going fishing or hunting this time — no, he had
thought out a better plan. Out of his $40 a month he had
saved enough for his purpose, in an economical way, and he
was going to have a look at New York.

It was a great and surprising idea. It meant travel —
immense travel — in those days it meant seeing the world ; it
was the equivalent of a voyage around it in ours. At first the
other youths thought his mind was affected, but when they
found that he was in earnest, the next thing to be thought of
was, what sort of opportunity this venture might afford for a
practical joke.

The young men studied over the matter, then held a secret
consultation and made a plan. The idea was, that one of the
conspirators should offer Ed a letter of introduction to Com-
modore Yanderbilt, and trick him into delivering it. It would
be easy to do this. But what would Ed do when he got back
to Memphis ? That Avas a serious matter. He was good-
hearted, and had always taken the jokes patiently ; but they
had been jokes which did not humiliate him, did not bring him
to shame ; whereas, this would be a cruel one in that way, and
to play it was to meddle with fire ; for with all his good nature,
Ed was a Southerner — and the English of that was, that
when he came back he would kill as many of the conspirators
as he could before falling himself. However, the chances must
be taken — it wouldn't do to waste such a joke as that.

So the letter was prepared with great care and elaboration.
It w^as signed Alfred Fairchild, and was written in an easy

270 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

and friendly spirit. It stated that the bearer was the bosom
friend of the writer's son, and was of good parts and sterling
character, and it begged the Commodore to be kind to the
young stranger for the writer's sake. It went on to say, " You
may have forgotten me, in this long stretch of time, but you
will easily call me back out of your boyhood memories when I
remind you of how we robbed old Stevenson's orchard that
night ; and how, while he was chasing down the road after us,
we cut across the field and doubled back and sold his own
apples to his own cook for a hatfull of doughnuts; and the
time that we — " and so forth and so on, bringing in names of
imaginary comrades, and detailing all sorts of' wild and absurd
and, of course, wholly imaginary schoolboy pranks and ad-
ventures, but putting them into lively and telling shape.

With all gravity Ed -was asked if he would like to have
a letter to Commodore Yanderbilt, the great millionaire. It
was expected that the question would astonish Ed, and it did.

" What ? Do yoio know that extraordinary man ? "

" No ; but my father does. They were schoolboys together.
And if you like, I'll write and ask father. I know he'll be
glad to give it to you for my sake."

Ed could not find words capable of expressing his grati-
tude and delight. The three days passed, and the letter was
put into his hands. He started on his trip, still pouring out his
thanks while he shook good-bye all around. And when he
was out of sight his comrades let fly their laughter in a storm
of happy satisfaction — and then quieted down, and were less
happy, less satisfied. For the old doubts as to the wisdom of
this deception began to intrude again.

Arrived in New York, Ed found his way to Commodore
Yanderbilt's business quarters, and was ushered into a large
anteroom, where a score of people were patiently awaiting
their turn for a two-minute interview with the millionaire in

HOW THE JOKE WORKED. 271

his private office. A servant asked for Ed's card, and got the
letter instead. Ed was sent for a moment later, and found
Mr. Vanderbilt alone, with the letter — open — in his hand.

" Pray sit down, Mr. — er — "

" Jackson."

" Ah — sit down, Mr. Jackson. By the opening sentences

it seems to be a letter from an old friend. Allow me — I will

run my eye through it. He says — he says — why, who is

t
it ? " He turned the sheet and found the signature. " Alfred

Fairchild — hm — Fairchild — I don't recall the name. But

that is nothing — a thousand names have gone from me. He says

— he says — hm — hm — oh, dear, but it's good! Oh, it's rare!

I don't quite remember it, but I seem to — it'll all come back to

me presently. He says — he says — hm — hm — oh, but that was

a game ! Oh, spl-endid ! How it carries me back ! It's all

dim, of course — it's a long time ago — and the names — some

of the names are wavery and indistinct — but sho', I know it

happened — I can feel it ! and lord, how it warms my heart,

and brings back my lost youth ! Well, well, well, I've got to

come back into this work-a-day world now — business presses

and people are waiting — I'll keep the rest for bed to-night,

and live my youth over again. And you'll thank Fairchild for

me when you see him — I used to call him Alf, I think — and

you'll give him my gratitude for what this letter has done for

the tired spirit of a hard- worked man ; and tell him there

isn't anything that I can do for him or any friend of his that

I won't do. And as for you, my lad, you are my guest ; you

can't stop at any hotel in New York. Sit where you are a

little while, till I get through with these people, then we'll go

home. I'll take care of you, my boy — make yourself easy as

to that."

Ed stayed a week, and had an immense time — and never

suspected that the Commodore's shrewd eye was on him, and

272 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

that he was daily being weighed and measured and analyzed
and tried and tested.

Yes, he had an immense time ; and never wrote home, but
saved it all up to tell when he should get back. Twice, with
proper modesty and decency, he proposed to end his visit, but
the Commodore said, " No — wait ; leave it to me ; I'll tell
you when to go."

In those days the Commodore was making some of those
vast combinations of his — consolidations of warring odds and
ends of railroads into harmonious systems, and concentrations
of floating and rudderless commerce in effective centers — and
among other things his far-seeing eye had detected the coi>-
vergence of that huge tobacco-commerce, already spoken of,
toward Memphis, and he had resolved to set his grasp upon it
and make it his own.

The week came to an end. Then the Commodore said :

"Now you can start home. But first we will have some
more talk about that tobacco matter. I know you now. I
know your abilities as well as you know, them yourself — per-
haps better. You understand that tobacco matter ; you un-
derstand that I am going to take possession of it, and you also
understand the plans which I have matured for doing it.
"What I want is a man who knows my mind, and is qualified
to represent me in Memphis, and be in supreme command of
that important business — and I appoint you."

" Me ! "

" Yes. Your salary will be high — of course — for you are
representing me. Later you will earn increases of it, and
will get them. You will need a small army of assistants;
choose them yourself — and carefully. Take no man for
friendship's sake ; but, all things being equal, take the man
you know, take your friend, in preference to the stranger."
After some further talk under this head, the Commodore said :

THE DAY OF RECKONING. 273

" Good-bye, my boy, and thank Alf for me, for sending you
to me."

When Ed reached Memphis he rushed down to the wharf
in a fever to tell his great news and thank the boys over and
over again for thmking to give him the letter to Mr. Vander-
bilt. It happened to be one of those idle times. Blazing hot
noonday, and no sign of life on the wharf. But as Ed
threaded his way among the freight piles, he saw a white linen
figure stretched in slumber upon a pile of grain-sacks under an
awning, and said to himself, " That's one of them," and has-
tened his step; next, he said, " It's Charley — it's Fairchild —
good " ; and the next moment laid an affectionate hand on the
sleeper's shoulder. The eyes opened lazily, took one glance,
the face blanched, the form whirled itself from the sack-pile,
and in an instant Ed was alone and Fairchild was flying for
the wharf boat like the wind !

Ed was dazed, stupefied. Was Fairchild crazy? What
could be the meaning of this ? He started slow and dreamily
down toward the wharf boat ; turned the corner of a freight-
pile and came suddenly upon two of the boys. They were
lightly laughing over some pleasant matter ; they heard his
step, and glanced up just as he discovered them ; the laugh
died abruptly ; and before Ed could speak they were off, and
sailmg over barrels and bales like hunted deer. Again Ed was
paralyzed. Had the boys all gone mad ? What could be the
explanation of this extraordinary conduct ? And so, dream-
ing along, he reached the wharf boat, and stepped aboard —
nothing but silence there, and vacancy. He crossed the deck,
turned the corner to go down the outer guard, heard a fervent —

" O lord ! " and saw a white linen form plunge overboard.

The youth came up coughing and strangling, and cried out —

" Go 'way from here ! You let me alone. / didn't do it, I
swear I didn't ! "
18

274

FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

" Didn't do what ? "
" Give you the — "
"Never mind what you didn't do
"What makes you all act
so ? What have /done?"

"You? Why you
haven't done anything.
But — "

" Well, then, what have
you got against me?
What do you all treat me
so for ? "

"I — er — but haven't
you got anything against
usf'

" Of course not. What

come out of that !

' ' GO 'way from heke !

put such a thing into yovir head?"
" Honor bright — you haven't ? "
" Honor bright."

A TACK IN THE CHAIR SEAT. 275

" Swear it ! "

" I don't know what in the world you mean, but I swear it,
anyway."

" And you'll shake hands with me ? "

" Goodness knows I'll be glad to ! Why, I'm just starving
to shake hands Avith somebody / " ,

The swimmer muttered, " Hang him, he smelt a rat and
never delivered the letter ! — but it's all right, I'm not going
to fetch up the subject." And he crawled out and came drip-
ping and draining to shake hands. First one and then another
of the conspirators showed up cautiously — armed to the teeth
— took in the amicable situation, then ventured warily for-
ward and joined the love-feast.

And to Ed's eager inquiry as to what made them act as
they had been acting, they answered evasively, and pretended
that they had put it up as a joke, to see what he would do. It
was the best explanation they could invent at such short notice.
And each said to himself, " He never delivered that letter, and
the joke is on us^ if he only knew it or we were dull enough to
come out and tell."

Then, of course, they wanted to know all about the trip ;
and he said —

" Come right up on the boiler deck and order the drinks —
it's my treat. I'm going to tell you all about it. And to-night
it's my treat again — and we'll have oysters and a time ! "

When the drinks were brought and cigars lighted, Ed said —

" Well, when I delivered the letter to Mr. Vanderbilt — "

" Great Scott ! "

" Gracious, how you scared me. What's the matter ? "

"Oh — er — 'nothing. N^othing — it was a tack in the
^hair-seat," said one.

"But you aZZ said it. However, no matter. When I deliv-
ered the letter — "

276 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

" Did you deliver it % " And they looked at each other as
people might who thought that maybe they were dreaming.

Then they settled to listening ; and as the story deepened
and its marvels grew, the amazement of it made them dumb,
and the interest of it took their breath. They hardly uttered
a whisper during two hours, but sat like petrifactions and
drank in the immortal romance. At last the tale was ended,
and Ed said —

" And it's all owing to you^ boys, and you'll never find rne
ungrateful — bless your hearts, the best friends a fellow "fever
had ! You'll all have places ; I want every one of you. I
Icnow you — I know you ' by the hack^ as the gamblers say.
You're jokers, and all that, but you're sterling^ with the hall-
mark on. And Charley Fairchild, you shall be my first assist-
ant and right hand, because of your first-class ability, and be-
cause you got me the letter, and for your father's sake who
wrote it for me, and to please Mr. Vanderbilt, who said it
would ! And here's to that great man — drink hearty ! "

Yes, when the Moment comes, the Man appears — even if
he is a thousand miles away, and has to be discovered by a
practical joke.

RELICS OF CONVICT DISCIPLINE,

CHAPTER XXIX.

When people do not respect us we are sharply offended ; j'et deep down in his
private heart no man much respects himself. — Pudd^nhead Wilso7i''s New Calendar.

^ECESSARILY, the human interest is the first interest
in the log-book of any country. The annals of Tas-
mania, in whose shadow we were sailing, are lurid
with that feature. Tasmania was a convict-dump, in old
times ; this has been indicated in the account of the Concil-"
iator, where reference is made to vain attempts of desperate
convicts to win to permanent freedom, after escaping from
Macquarrie Harbor and the "Gates of Hell." In the early
days Tasmania had a great population of convicts, of both
sexes and all ages, and a bitter hard life they had. In one spot
there was a settlement of juvenile convicts — children — who
had been sent thither from their home and their friends on
the other side of the globe to expiate their " crimes."

In due course our ship entered the estuary called the Der-
went, at whose head stands Hobart, the capital of Tasmania.
The Derwent's shores furnish scenery of an interesting sort.
The historian Laurie, whose book, " The Story of Australasia,"
is just out, invoices its features with considerable truth and in-
temperance : " The marvelous picturesqueness of every point
of view, combined with the clear balmy atmosphere and the
transparency of the ocean depths, must have delighted and
deeply impressed " the early explorers. " If the rock-bound
coasts, sullen, defiant, and lowering, seemed uninviting,
these were occasionally broken into charmingly alluring coves
floored with golden sand, clad with evergreen shrubbery, and

(279)

280 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

adorned with every variety of indigenous wattle, she-oak, wild
flower, and fern, from the delicately graceful ' maiden-hair ' to
the palm-like ' old man ' ; while the majestic gum-tree, clean
and smooth as the mast of 'some tall ammiral' pierces the
clear air to the height of 230 feet or more."

It looked so to me. " Coasting along Tasman's Peninsula,
what a shock of pleasant wonder must have struck the early
mariner on suddenly sighting Cape Pillar, with its cluster of
black-ribbed basaltic columns rising to a height of 900 feet, the
hydra head wreathed in a turban of fleecy cloud, the base
lashed by jealous waves spouting angry fountains of foam."

That is Avell enough, but I did not suppose those snags
were 900 feet high. Still they were a very fine show. They
stood boldly out by themselves, and made a fascinatingly odd
spectacle. But there was nothing about their appearance to
suggest the heads of a hydra. They looked like a row of lofty
slabs with their upper ends tapered to the shape of a carving-
knife point ; in fact, the early voyager, ignorant of their great
height, might have mistaken them for a rusty old rank of piles
that had sagged this way and that out of the perpendicular.

The Peninsula is lofty, rocky, and densely clothed with
scrub, or brush, or both. It is joined to the main by a low
neck. At this junction was formerly a convict station called
Port Arthur — a place hard to escape from. Behind it was
the wilderness of scrub, in which a fugitive would soon starve ;
in front was the narrow neck, with a cordon of chained dogs
across it, and a line of lanterns, and a fence of living guards,
armed. "We saw the place as we swept by — that is, we had a
glimpse of what we were told was the entrance to Port
Arthur. The glimpse was worth something, as a remem-
brancer, but that was all. i

" The voyage thence up the Derwent Frith displays a
grand succession of fairy visions, in its entire length elsewhere

TOWN OF HOBART. 281

unequaled. In gliding over the deep blue sea studded with
lovely islets luxuriant to the water's edge, one is at a loss
which scene to choose for contemplation and to admire most.
When the Huon and Bruni have been passed, there seems no
possible chance of a rival ; but suddenly Mount Wellington,
massive and noble like his brother Etna, literally heaves in sight,
sternly guarded on either hand by Mounts Nelson and E-umney ;
presently we arrive at Sullivan's Cove — Hobart I "

It is an attractive town. It sits on low hills that slope to
the harbor — a harbor that looks like a river, and is as smooth
as one. Its still surface is pictured with dainty reflections of
boats and grassy banks and luxuriant foliage. Back of the
town rise highlands that are clothed in woodland loveliness,
and over the way is that noble mountain, Wellington, a
stately bulk, a most majestic pile. How beautiful is the whole
region, for form, and grouping, and opulence, and freshness of
foliage, and variety of color, and grace and shapeliness of the
hills, the capes, the promontories ; and then, the splendor of
the sunlight, the dim rich distances, the charm of the water-
glimpses ! And it was in this paradise that the yellow-liveried
convicts were landed, and the Corps-bandits quartered, and the
wanton slaughter of the kangaroo-chasing black innocents con-
summated on that autumn day in May, in the brutish old
time. It was all out of keeping with the place, a sort of bring-
ing of heaven and hell together.

The remembrance of this paradise reminds me that it was
at Hobart that we struck the head of the procession of Junior
Englands. We were to encounter other sections of it in New
Zealand, presently, and others later in Natal. Wherever the.
exiled Englishman can find in his new home resemblances to his
old one, he is touched to the marrow of his being ; the love that
is in his heart inspires his imagination, and these allied forces
transfigure those resemblances into authentic duplicates of the

282 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

revered originals. It is beautiful, the feeling which works
this enchantment, and it compels one's homage ; compels it,
and also compels one's assent — compels it always — even
when, as happens sometimes, one does not see the resemblances
as clearly as does the exile who is pointing them out.

The resemblances do exist, it is quite true ; and often they
cunningly approximate the originals — but after all, in the
matter of certain physical patent rights there is only one
England. Now that I have sampled the globe, I am not in
doubt. There is a beauty of Switzerland, and it is repeated
in the glaciers and snowy ranges of many parts of the earth ;
there is a beauty of the fiord, and it is repeated in New Zealand
and Alaska ; there is a beauty of Hawaii, and it is repeated in
ten thousand islands of the Southern seas ; there is a beauty of
the prairie and the plain, and it is repeated here and there in
the earth ; each of these is worshipful, each is perfect in its
way, yet holds no monopoly of its beauty ; but that beauty
which is England is alone — it has no duplicate.

It is made up of very simple details — just grass, and trees,
and shrubs, and roads, and hedges, and gardens, and houses,
and vines, and churches, and castles, and here and there a ruin
— and over it all a mellow dream-haze of history. But its
beauty is incomparable, and all its own.

Hobart has a peculiarity — it is the neatest town that the
sun shines on ; and I incline to believe that it is also the
cleanest. However that may be, its supremacy in neatness is
not to be questioned. There cannot be another town in the
world that has no shabby exteriors ; no rickety gates and
fences, no neglected houses crumbling to ruin, no crazy and
unsightly sheds, no weed-grown front-yards of the poor, no
back-yards littered with tin cans and old boots and empty
bottles, no rubbish in th& gutters, no clutter on the sidewalks,
no outer-borders fraying out into dirty lanes and tin-patched

CURIOUS CREATURES. ^83

huts. No, in Hobart all the aspects are tidy, and all a comfort
to the eye ; the modestest cottage looks combed and brushed,
and has its vines, its flowers, its neat fence, its neat gate, its
comely cat asleep on the window ledge.

We had a glimpse of the museum, by courtesy of the
American gentleman who is curator of it. It has samples of
half-a-dozen different kinds of marsupials* — one, the " Tas-
manian devil ; " that is, I think he was one of them. And
there was a fish with lungs. When the water dries up it can
live in the mud. Most curious of all was a parrot that kills
sheep. On one great sheep-run this bird killed a thousand
sheep in a whole year. He doesn't want the whole sheep, but
only the kidney-fat. This restricted taste makes him an ex-
pensive bird to support. To get the fat he drives his beak in
and rips it out ; the wound is mortal. This parrot furnishes a
notable example of evolution brought about by changed con
ditions. When the sheep culture was introduced, it presently
brought famine to the parrot by exterminating a kind of grub
which had always thitherto been the parrot's diet. The miseries
of hunger made the bird Avilling to eat raw flesh, since it could
get no other food, and it began to pick remnants of meat from
sheep skins hung out on the fences to dry. It soon came to prefer
sheep meat to any other food, and by and by it came to prefer
the kidney-fat to any other detail of the sheep. The parrot's bill
was not well shaped for digging out the fat, but Kature fixed
that matter ; she altered the bill's shape, and now the parrot can
dig out kidney-fat better than the Chief Justice of the Supreme
Court, or anybody else, for that matter — even an Admiral.

And there was another curiosity — quite a stunning one, 1

* A marsupial is a plantigrade vertebrate whose specialty is its pocket. In some
countries it is extinct, in the others it is rare. The first American marsupials were
Stephen Girard, Mr. Astor, and the opossum ; the principal marsupials of the
Southern Hemisphere are Mr. Rhodes, and the kangaroo. I, myself, am the latest
marsuipal. Also, I might boast that I have the largest pocket of them all. But
there is nothing in that.

284 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

thought : Arrow-heads and knives just like those which
Primeval Man made out of flint, and thought he had done such
a wonderful thing — yes, and has been humored and coddled
in that superstition by tliis age of admiring scientists until
there is probably no living with him in the other world by
now. Yet here is his finest and nicest work exactly duplicated
in our day; and by people who have never heard of him or
his works : by aborigines who lived in the islands of these seas,
within our time. And they not only duplicated those works of
art but did it in the brittlest and most treacherous of substances
— glass : made them out of old brandy bottles flung out of
the British camps ; millions of tons of them. It is time for
Primeval Man to make a little less noise, now. He has had
his day. He is not what he used to be.

"We had a drive through a bloomy and odorous fairy-land,
to the Refuge for the Indigent — a spacious and comfortable
home, with hospitals, etc., for both sexes. There was a crowd
there, of the oldest people I have ever seen. It was like being
suddenly set down in a new world — a weird world Avhere
Youth has never been, a world sacred to Age, and bowed
forms, and wrinkles. Out of the 359 persons present, 223
were ex-convicts, and could have told stirring tales, no doubt,
if they had been minded to talk ; 42 of the 359 were past 80,
and several were close upon 90 ; the average age at death
there is Y6 years. As for rae, I have no use for that place ;
it is too healthy. Seventy is old enough — after that, there is
too much risk. Youth and gaiety might vanish, any day — and
then, what is left ? Death in life ; death without its privileges,
death Avithout its benefits. There were 185 women in that
Refuge, and 81 of them were ex-convicts.

The steamer disappointed us. Instead of making a long
visit at Hobart, as usual, she made a short one. So we got but
a glimpse of Tasmania, and then moved on.

CHAPTER XXX.

Nature makes the locust with an appetite for crops ; man would have made him
with an appetite for saud. — Padd'nkead WilsonH New Calendar.

VE spent part of an afternoon and a night at sea, and
reached Bluff, in Kew Zealand, early in the morning.
Bluff is at the bottom of the middle island, and is
away down south, nearly forty-seven degrees below the equa-
tor. It lies as far south of the line as Quebec lies north of it,
and the climates of the two should be alike ; but for some
reason or other it has not been so arranged. Quebec is hot in
the summer and cold in the winter, but Bluff's climate is less
intense ; the cold weather is not very cold, the hot weather is
not very hot; and the difference between the hottest month
and the coldest is but 17 degrees Fahrenheit.

In New Zealand the rabbit plague began at Bluff. The
man who introduced the rabbit there was banqueted and
lauded ; but they would hang him, now, if they could get him.
In England the natural enemy of the rabbit is detested and
persecuted ; in the Bluff region the natural enemy of the
rabbit is honored, and his person is sacred. The rabbit's
natural enemy in England is the poacher, in Bluff its natural
enemy is the stoat, the weasel, the ferret, the cat, and the
mongoose. In England any person below the Heir who is
caught with a rabbit in his possession must satisfactorily ex-
plain how it got there, or he will suffer fine and imprisonment,
together with extinction of his peerage ; in Bluff, the cat
found with a rabbit in its possession does not have to explain
— everybody looks the other way ; the person caught noticing

( 285 )

286 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

would suffer fine and imprisonment, with extinction of peer-
age. This is a sure way to undermine the moral fabric of a
cat. Thirty years from now there will not be a moral cat in
New Zealand. Some think there is none there now. In Eng-
land the poacher is watched, tracked, hunted — he dare not
show his face ; in Bluff the cat, the weasel, the stoat, and the
mongoose go up and down, whither they will, unmolested.
By a law of the legislature, posted where all may read, it is
decreed that any person found in possession of one of these
creatures (dead) must satisfactorily explain the circumstances
or pay a fine of not less than £5, nor more than £20. The
revenue from this source is not large. Persons who want to
pay a hundred dollars for a dead cat are getting rarer and
rarer every day. This is bad, for the revenue was to go to the
endowment of a University. All governments are more or
less short-sighted : in England they fine the poacher, whereas
he ouofht to be banished to New Zealand. New Zealand
would pay his way, and give him wages.

LAKE MANAPOUUI.

It was from Bluff that we ought to have cut across to the
west coast and visited the New Zealand Switzerland, a land of
superb scenery, made up of snowy grandeurs, and mighty
glaciers, and beautiful lakes; and over there, also, are the
wonderful rivals of the Norwegian and Alaskan fiords ; and
for neighbor, a waterfall of 1,900 feet ; but we were obliged
to postpone the trip to some later and indefinite time.

November 6. A lovely summer morning; brilliant blue

DUNEDIN, NEW ZEALAND.

287

sky. A few miles out from Invercargill, passed through vast
level green expanses snowed over with sheep. Fine to see.
The green, deep and very vivid sometimes ; at other times less
so, but delicate and lovely. A passenger reminds me that I
am in " the England of the Far South."

Dunedin^ same date. The town justifies Michael Davitt's
praises. The people are Scotch.
They stopped here on their way
from home to heaven — thinking
they had arrived. The population
is stated at 40,000, by Malcolm
Koss, journalist ; stated by an M. P.
at 60,000. A journalist cannot lie.

To the residence of Dr. Hockin.
He has a fine collection of books
relating to New Zealand ; and his
house is a museum of Maori art
and antiquities. He has pictures
and prints in color of many native
chiefs of the past — some of them
of note in history. There is noth-
ing of the savage in the faces ;
nothing could be finer than these
men's features, nothing more intel-
lectual than these faces, nothing
more masculine, nothing nobler
than their aspect. The aborigi-
nals of Australia and Tasmania
looked the savage, but these chiefs
looked like Koman patricians. The tattooing in these portraits
ought to suggest the savage, of course, but it does not. The
designs are so flowing and graceful and beautiful that they are
a most satisfactory decoration. It takes but fifteen minutes
to get reconciled to the tattooing, and but fifteen more to

Monument to a Maori robber wtio
went about on stilts ; thus avoiding de-
tection for a long lime. So great was
the public admiration of his shrewdness
that this monument was erected. It is
supposed to be a portrait of the man
and the stilts

288 FOIXOWING THE EQUATOR.

perceive that it is just the thing. After that, the undecorated
European face is unpleasant and ignoble.

Dr. Ilockin gave us a ghastly curiosity — a lignified cater-
pillar with a plant growing out of the back of its neck — a
plant with a slender stem 4 inches high. It happened not by
accident, but by design — Nature's design. This caterpillar
was in the act of loyally carrying out a law inflicted upon
him by Nature — a law purposely inflicted upon him to get
him into trouble — a law which was a trap ; in pursuance of
this law he made the proper preparations for turning himself
into a night-moth ; that is to say, he dug a little trench, a little
grave, and then stretched himself out in it on his stomach and
partially buried himself — then Nature was ready for him.
She blew the spores of a peculiar fungus through the air —
with a purpose. Some of them fell into a crease in the back
of the caterpillar's neck, and began to sprout and grow — for
there was soil there — he had not washed his neck. The
roots forced themselves down into the worm's person, and
rearward along through its body, sucking up the creature's
juices for sap; the worm slowly died, and turned to wood.
And here he was now, a wooden caterpillar, with every detail
of his former physique delicately and exactly preserved and
perpetuated, and with that stem standing up out of him for
his monument — monument commemorative of his own loyalty
and of Nature's unfair return for it.

Nature is always acting like that. Mrs. X. said (of
course) that the caterpillar was not conscious and didn't
suffer. She should have known better. No caterpillar can
deceive Nature. If this one couldn't suffer, Nature would
have known it and would have hunted up another caterpillar.
Not that she would have let this one go, merely because it
was defective. No. She would have waited and let him turn
into a night-moth ; and then fried him in the candle.

Nature cakes a fish's eyes over with parasites, so that it

KATURE AND PARASITES. ^8d

shan't be able to avoid its enemies or find its food. She sends
parasites into a star-fish's system, which clog up its prongs
and swell them and make them so uncomfortable that the
poor creature delivers itself from the prong to ease its misery ;
and presently it has to part with another prong for the sake
of comfort, and finally with a third. If it re-grows the
prongs, the parasite returns and the same thing is repeated.
And finally, when the ability to reproduce prongs is lost
through age, that poor old star-fish can't get around any more,
and so it dies of starvation.

In Australia is prevalent a horrible disease due to an
" unperfected tape-worm." Unperfected — that is what they
call it, I do not know Avhy, for it transacts business just as
well as if it were finished and frescoed and gilded, and all that.

November 9. To the museum and public picture gallery
with the president of the Society of Artists. Some fine pictures
there, lent by the S. of A. — several of them they bought, the
others came to them by gift. Next, to the gallery of the
S. of A. — annual exhibition — just opened. Fine. Think of
a town like this having two such collections as this, and a
Society of Artists. It is so all over Australasia. If it were a
monarchy one might understand it. I mean an absolute
monarchy, where it isn't necessary to vote money, but take it.
Then art flourishes. But these colonies are republics — repub-
lics with a wide suffrage ; ' voters of both sexes, this one of
New Zealand. In republics, neither the government nor the
rich private citizen is much given to propagating art. All
over Australasia pictures by famous European artists are
bought for the public galleries by the State and by societies of
citizens. Living citizens — not dead ones. They rob them-
selves to give, not their heirs. This S. of A. here owns its
buildings — built it by subscription.
19

CHAPTER XXXI.

The spirit of wrath — not tlie words — is the sin; and the spirit of wrath is
cursing. We begin to swear before we can talk.

— PudiVnhead Wilson'' s New Calendar.

NOVEMBER 11. On tJie road. This train— express—
goes twenty and one-half miles an hour, schedule
time ; but it is fast enough, the outlook upon sea and
land is so interesting, and the cars so comfortable. They
are not English, and not American ; they are the Swiss com-
bination of the two. A narrow and railed porch along the
side, where a person can walk up and down. A lavatory in
each car. This is progress ; this is nineteenth-century spirit.
In New Zealand, these fast expresses run twice a week. It is
well to know this if you want to be a bird and fly through the
country at a 20-mile gait ; otherwise you may start on one of
the five wrong days, and then you will get a train that can't
overtake its own shadow.

By contrast, these pleasant cars call to mind the branch-
road cars at Maryborough, Australia, and the passengers' talk
about the branch-road and the hotel.

Somewhere on the road to Maryborough I changed for a
while to a smoking-carriage. There were two gentlemen there ;
both riding backward, one at each end of the compartment.
They were acquaintances of each other. I sat down facing the
one that sat at the starboard window. He had a good face,
and a friendly look, and I judged from his dress that he was a
dissenting minister. He was along toward fifty. Of his own
motion he struck a match, and shaded it with his hand for me

to light my cigar. I take the rest from my diary :

(290)

THE HOTEL AT MARYBOROUGH. 291.

In order to start conversation I asked him something about
Maryborough, He said, in a most pleasant — even musical —
voice, but with quiet and cultured decision :

" It's a charming town, with a hell of a hotel."

I was astonished. It seemed so odd to hear a minister
swear out loud. He went placidly on :

"It's the worst hotel in Australia. Well, one may go
further, and say in Australasia."

"Bad beds?"

" No — none at all. Just sand-bags."

"The pillows, too?"

" Yes, the pillows, too. Just sand. And not a good quality
of sand. It packs too hard, and has never been screened.
There is too much gravel in it. It is like sleeping on nuts."

" Isn't there any good sand ? "

" Plenty of it. There is as good bed-sand in this region as
the world can furnish. Aerated sand — and loose; but they
won't buy it. They want something that will pack solid,
and petrify."

" How are the rooms ?"

"Eight feet square; and a sheet of iced oil-cloth to step
on in the morning when you get out of the sand-quarry."

" As to lights ? "

" Coal-oil lamp."

" A good one ? "

" No. It's the kind that sheds a gloom."

" I like a lamp that burns all night."

" This one won't. Yoii must blow it out early."

" That is bad. One might want it again in the night.
Can't find it in the dark."

" There's no trouble ; you can find it by the stench."

"Wardrobe?"

292

FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

" Two nails on the door to hang seven suits of clothes on —
if you've got them."
"Bells?"

" There aren't any."

" What do you do when you want service ? "
" Shout. But it won't fetch anybod3^"
" Suppose you want the chambermaid to empty the slop-
jar?"

"There isn't any slop-jar. The hotels don't keep them.
That is, outside of Sydney and Melbourne."

" Yes, I knew that, I was only talking. It's the oddest
thing in Australia. Another thing : I've got to get up in the

dark, in the morning, to take
the 5 o'clock train. Kow
if the boots — "

" There isn't any."
" Well, the porter."
" There isn't any."
" But who will call
me?"

"Nobody. You'll call
yourself. And you'll light
yourself, too. There'll not
be a light burning
in the halls or any-
where. And if you
don't carry a light,
you'll break your
neck."

"But who will
help me down with
my baggage ? "
" Nobody. However, I will tell you what to do. In Mary-

A THKOI.OGICAI, STUDENT.

GOVERNMENT RAILWAYS. 293

borough there's an American who has lived there half a life-
time ; a fine man, and prosperous and popular. He will be on
the lookout for you ; you won't have any trouble. Sleep in
peace ; he will rout you out, and you will make your train.
Where is your manager ? "

" I left him at Ballarat, studying the language. And
besides, he had to go to Melbourne and get us ready for 'New
Zealand. I've not tried to pilot myself before, and it doesn't
look easy."

" Easy ! You've selected the very most difficult piece of
railroad in Australia for your experiment. There are twelve
miles of this road which no man without good executive ability
can ever hope — tell me, have you good executive ability ? —
first-rate executive ability ? "

"I — well, I think so, but — "

"That settles it. The tone of — oh, you wouldn't ever
make it in the world. However, that American will point
you right, and you'll go. You've got tickets ? "

" Yes — round trip ; all the way to Sydney."

" Ah, there it is, you see ! You are going in the 5 o'clock
by Castlemaine — twelve miles — instead of the 7.15 by Bal-
larat — in order to save two hours of fooling along the road.
Kow then,*^don't interrupt — let me have the floor. You're
going to save the government a deal of hauling, but that's
nothing ; your ticket is by Ballarat, and it isn't good over that
twelve miles, and so — "

" But why should the government care which way I go ? "

" Goodness knows ! Ask of the winds that far away with
fragments strewed the sea, as the boy that stood on the burn-
ing deck used to say. The government chooses to do its rail-
way business in its own way, and it doesn't know as much
about it as the French. In the beginning they tried idiots ;
then they imported the French — which was going backwards,

294 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

you see ; now it runs the roads itself — which is going back-
wards again, you see. Why, do you know, in order to curry
favor with the voters, the government puts down a road
wherever anybody wants it — anybody that owns two sheep
and a dog ; and by consequence we've got, in the colony of
Victoria, 800 railway stations, and the business done at eighty
of them doesn't foot up twenty shillings a week."

" Five dollars ? Oh, come ! "

" It's true. It's the absolute truth."

" Why, there are three or four men on wages at every sta-
tion."

" I know it. And the station-business doesn't pay for the
sheep-dip to sanctify their coffee with. It's just as I say. And
accommodating ? Why, if you shake a rag the train wiU stop
in the midst of the wilderness to pick you up. All that kind
of politics costs, you see. And then, besides, any town that
has a good many votes and wants a fine station, gets it. Don't
you overlook that Maryborough station, if you take an inter-
est in governmental curiosities. Why, you can put the whole
population of Maryborough into it, and give them a sofa apiece,
and have room for more. You haven't fifteen stations in
America that are as big, and you probably haven't five that
are half as fine. Why, it's per-fectly elegant. And the clock !
Everybody will show you the clock. There isn't a station in
Europe that's got such a clock. It doesn't strike — and that's
one mercy. It hasn't any bell ; and as you'll have cause to
remember, if you keep your reason, all Australia is simply be-
damned with bells. On every quarter-hour, night and day,
they jingle a tiresome chime of half a dozen notes — all the
clocks in town at once, all the clocks in Australasia at once,
and all the very same notes ; first, downward scale : rai^ re, do,
sol — then upward scale :, sol, si, re, do — down again : mi, re,
do, sol — up again : sol, si, re, do — then the clock — say at

RAILROAD ECONOMIES.

295

midnight:
clang — clang —
clang — clang !
hello, what's
Oh, I see —
ed by the
wouldn't
could scare
of course,
and run
at a loss,
stations
like Mary-
at another
the govern-
has got to econ
somewhere,
it ? Very well —
the rolling stock !
where they save the
Why, that train from
ough will consist of
freight-cars and
senger-kennels ;
cheap, poor,
shabby, slovenly ;
no drinking water,
no sanitary arrange-
ments, every imaginable
inconvenience ; and slow ? —
oh, the gait of cold molasses ;
no air-brake, no springs, and they'll
jolt your head oif every time they start or

dang — clang — clang — clang —
clang — clang — clang — clang —
— and^ by that time you're —
all this excitement about ?
a runaway — scar-
train ; why, you
think this train
anything. Well,
when they build
eighty stations
and a lot of palace-
and clocks
borough's
loss,
ment
omize
hasn't
look at
That's
money.
Marybor-
eighteen
two pas-

AUSTRALIAN BELLS.

296 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

stop. That's where they make their little economies, you see.
They spend tons of money to house you palatially while you
wait fifteen minutes for a train, then degrade you to six hours'
convict-transportation to get the foolish outlay back. What
a rational man really needs is discomfort while he's waiting,
then his journey in a nice train w^ould be a grateful change.
But no, that would be common sense — and out of place in a
government. And then, besides, they save in that other little
detail, you know -— repudiate their own tickets, and collect a
poor little illegitimate extra shilling out of you for that
twelve miles, and — "

" Well, in any case — "

" Wait — there's more. Leave that American out of the
account and see what would happen. There's nobody on hand
to examine your ticket when you arrive. But the conductor
will come and examine it when the train is ready to start. It
is too late to buy your extra ticket now ; the train can't wait,
and won't. You must climb out."

" But can't I pay the conductor ? "

" No, he is not authorized to receive the money, and he
won't. You must climb out. There's no other way. I tell
you, the railway management is about the only thoroughly
European thing here — continen tally European I mean, not
English. It's the continental business in perfection ; down^we.
Oh, yes, even to the peanut-commerce of weighing baggage."

The train slowed up at his place. As he stepped out he said :

" Yes, you'll like Maryborough. Plenty of intelligence
there. It's a charming place — with a hell of a hotel."

Then he was gone. I turned to the other gentleman :

" Is your friend in the ministry ? "

" No — studying for it."

CEIAPTER XXXIL

The man with a new idea is a Crank until the idea succeeds.

— Pudcrnhead Wilson'' s JVew Calendar.

IT was Junior -England all the way to Christchurch — in
fact, just a garden. And Christchurch is an English
town, with an English-park annex, and a winding English
brook just like the Avon — and named the Avon ; but from a
man, not from Shakespeare's river. Its grassy banks are
bordered by the stateliest and most impressive wee|)ing wil-
lows to be found in the world, I suppose. They continue the
line of a great ancestor ; they were grown from sprouts of the
willow that sheltered Napoleon's grave in St. Helena. It is a
settled old community, with all the serenities, the graces, the
conveniences, and the comforts of the ideal home-life. If it
had an established Church and social inequality it would be
England over again with hardly a lack.

In the museum we saw many curious and interesting
things ; among others a fine native house of the olden time,
with all the details true to the facts, and the showy colors
right and in their proper places. All the details: the fine
mats and rugs and things ; the elaborate and wonderful wood
carvings — wonderful, surely, considering who did them —
wonderful in design and particularly in execution, for they
were done with admirable sharpness and exactness, and yet
with no better tools than flint and jade and shell could furnish ;
and the totem-posts were there, ancestor above ancestor, with
tongues protruded and hands clasped comfortably over bellies
containing other people's ancestors — grotesque and ugly devils,

(297)

298 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

every one, but lovingly carved, and ably; and the stuffed
natives were present, in their proper places, and looking as
natural as life ; and the housekeeping utensils were there, too,
and close at hand the carved and finely ornamented war canoe.
And we saw little jade gods, to hang around the neck —
not everybody's, but sacred to the necks of natives of rank.
Also jade weapons, and many kinds of jade trinkets — all
made out of that excessively hard stone without the help of
any tool of iron. And some of these things
had small round holes bored through them —
nobody knows how it was done ; a mystery,
a lost art. I think it was said that if you want
such a hole bored in a piece of jade now, you
must send it to London or Amsterdam where
the lapidaries are.

Also we saw a complete skeleton
of the giant Moa. It stood ten feet
high, and must have been a sight
to look at when it was a living
bird. It was a kicker, like the
ostrich ; in fight it did not use its
beak, but its foot. It must have
been a convincing kind of kick.
If a person had his back to the bird and did not see who it
was that did it, he would think he had been kicked by a
wind-mill.

There must have been a sufficiency of moas in the old
forgotten days when his breed Avalked the earth. His bones
are found in vast masses, all crammed together in huge graves.
They are not in caves, but in the ground. Nobody knows how
they happened to get concentrated there. Mind, they are
bones, not fossils. This means that the moa has not been
extinct very long. Still, this is the only iN'ew Zealand creature

CARVED CAxNOE PROW,

THE FIRST MAORI. 299

which has no mention in that otherwise comprehensive litera-
ture, the native legends. This is a significant detail, and is
good circumstantial evidence that the moa has been extinct
500 years, since the Maori has himself — by tradition — been
in New Zealand since the end of the fifteenth century. He
came from an unknow^n land — the first Maori did — then
sailed back in his canoe and brought his tribe, and they re-
moved the aboriginal peoples into the sea and into the ground
and took the land. That is the tradition. That that first
Maori could come, is understandable, for anybody can come to
a place when he isn't trying to ; but how that discoverer found
his way back home again without a compass is his secret, and
he died with it in him. His language indicates that he came
from Polynesia. He told where he came from, but he couldn't
spell well, so one can't find the place on the map, because
people who could spell better than he could, spelt the resem-
blance all out of it when they made the map. How^ever, it is
better to have a map that is spelt right than one that has
information in it.

In New Zealand women have the right to vote for mem-
bers of the legislature, but they cannot be members them-
selves. The law extending the suffrage to them went into
effect in 1893. The population of Christchurch (census of
1891) was 31,454. The first election under the law was held
in November of that year. Number of men who voted, 6,313;
number of women who voted, 5,989. These figures ought to
convince us that women are not as indifferent about politics as
some people would have us believe. In New Zealand as a
whole, the estimated adult female population was 139,915 ; of
these 109,461 qualified and registered their names on the rolls
— Y8.23 per cent, of the whole. Of these, 90,290 went to the
polls and voted — 85.18 per cent. Do men ever turn out
better than that — in America or elsewhere? Here is a re-

300 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

mark to the other sex's credit, too — I take it from the oflBcial
report :

" A feature of the election was the orderliness and sobriety
of the people. Women were in no way molested."

At home, a standing argument against woman suffrage has
always been that women could not go to the polls without being
insulted. The arguments against woman suffrage have always
taken the easy form of prophecy. The prophets have been
prophesying ever since the woman's rights movement began in
1848 — and in forty-seven years they have never scored a hit.

Men ought to begin to feel a sort of respect for their
mothers and wives and sisters by this time. The women
deserve a change of attitude like that, for they have wrought
well. In forty-seven years they have swept an imposingly
large number of unfair laws from the statute books of America.
In that brief time these serfs have set themselves free —
essentially. Men could not have done so much for themselves
in that time without bloodshed — at least they never have;
and that is argument that they didn't know how. The women
have accomplished a peaceful revolution, and a very beneficent
one; and yet that has not convinced the average man that
they are intelligent, and have courage and energy and perse-
verance and fortitude. It takes much to convince the average
man of anything; and perhaps nothing can ever make him
realize that he is the e-verage woman's inferior — yet in several
important details the evidences seems to show that that is
what he is. Man has ruled the human race from the begin-
ning — but he should remember that up to the middle of the
present century it was a dull world, and ignorant and stupid ;
but it is not such a dull world now, and is growing less and
less dull all the time. This is Avoman's opportunity — she has
had none before. I wonder where man will be in another
forty-seven years ?

WOMAN'S OPPORTUNITY. 301

In the New Zealand law occurs this : " The word person
wherever it occurs throughout the Act includes woman.''''

That is promotion, you see. By that enlargement of the
word, the matron with the garnered wisdom and experience of
fifty years becomes at one jump the political equal of her
callow kid of twenty-one. The white population of the colony
is 626,000, the Maori population is 42,000. The whites elect
seventy members of the House of Kepresentatives, the Maoris
four. The Maori women vote for their four members.

Wovemher 16. After four pleasant days in Christchurch,
we are to leave at midnight to-night. Mr. Kinsey gave me an
ornithorhyncus, and I am taming it.

Sunday, 17th. Sailed last night in the Flora, from Lyt-
telton.

So we did. I remember it yet. The people who sailed in
the Flora that night may forget some other things if they live
a good while, but they will not live long enough to forget
that. The Flora is about the equivalent of a cattle-scow;
but when the Union Company find it inconvenient to keep a
contract and lucrative to break it, they smuggle her into
passenger service, and " keep the change."

They give no notice of their projected depredation ; you
innocently }3uy tickets for the advertised passenger boat, and
when you get down to Lyttelton at midnight, you find that
they have substituted the scow. They have plenty of good
boats, but no competition — and that is the trouble. It is too
late now to make other arrangements if you have engagements
ahead.

It is a powerful company, it has a monopoly, and every-
body is afraid of it — including the government's representa-
tive, who stands at the end of the stage-plank to tally the
passengers and see that no boat receives a greater number
than the law allows her to carry. This conveniently-blind

302 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

representative saw the scow receive a number which Avas far
in excess of its privilege, and winked a politic wink and said
nothing. The passengers bore with meekness the cheat which
had been put upon them, and made no complaint.

It was like being at home in America, where abused
passengers act in just the same way. A few days before, the
Union Cpinpany had discharged a captain for getting a boat
into danger, and had advertised this act as evidence of its
vigilance in looking after the safety of the passengers — for
thugging a captain costs the company nothing, but when
opportunity offered to send this dangerously overcrowded tub
to sea and save a little trouble and a tidy penny by it, it forgot
to worry about the passenger's safety.

The first officer told me that the Flora was privileged to
carry 125 passengers. She must have had all of 230 on board.
All the cabins were full, all the cattle-stalls in the main stable
were full, the spaces at the heads of companionways were full,
every inch of floor and table in the swill-room was packed
with sleeping men and remained so until the place was
required for breakfast, all the chairs and benches on the hurri-
cane deck were occupied, and stUl there were people who had
to walk about all night !

If the Flora had gone down that night, half of the people
on board would have been wholly without means of escape.

The owners of that boat were not technically guilty of
conspiracy to commit murder, but they were morally guilty
of it.

I had a cattle-stall in the main stable — a cavern fitted up
with a long double file of two-storied bunks, the files separated
by a calico partition — twenty men and boys on one side of it,
twenty women and girls on the other. The place was as dark
as the soul of the ITnio]i Company, and smelt like a kennel.
When the vessel got out into the heavy seas and began to

A NEVER-FORGOTTEN NIGHT.

303

"^y-fk^C^.

pitch and wallow, the cavern prisoners became immediately
sea-sick, and then the peculiar results that ensued laid all my
previous experiences of the kind well away in the shade.
And the wails, the groans, the cries,
the shrieks, the strange ejacula-
tions — it was wonderful.

The women and children
and some of the men
and boys spent the
night in that place, for
they were too ill to
leave it; but the rest
of us got up, by and
by, and finished the
night on the hurricane-
deck.

That boat was the
foulest I was ever in ;
and the smell of the
breakfast saloon when
we threaded our way
among the layers of
steaming passengers
stretched tipon its floor and its tables was incomparable for
eificiency.

A good many of us got ashore at the first way-port to seek
another ship. After a wait of three hours we got good rooms
in the Mahinapua, a wee little bridal-parlor of a boat — only
205 tons burthen ; clean and comfortable ; good service ; good
beds; good table, and no crowding. The seas danced her
about like a duck, but she was safe and capable.

Next morning early she went through the French Pass — a
narrow gateway of rock, between bold headlands — so narrow,

CATTLE STALLS ON THE FLORA.

304

FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR,

in fact, that it seemed no wider than a street. The current
tore through there like a mill-race, and the boat darted
through like a telegram. The passage was made in half a
minute ; then we were in a wide place where noble vast eddies
swept grandly round and round in shoal water, and I won-
dered what they would do with the little boat. They did as
they pleased with her. They picked her up and flung her
around like nothing and landed her gently on the solid, smooth
bottom of sand— so gently, indeed, that we barely felt her
touch it, barely felt her quiver when she came to a standstill.
The water was as clear as glass, the sand on the bottom was
vividly distinct, and the fishes seemed to be swimming about
in nothing. Fishing lines were brought out, but before we
could bait the hooks the boat was off and away again.

CHAPTEK XXXIII.

Let us be grateful to Adam our benefactor. He cut us out of the " blessing"
of idleness and won for us the " curse " of labor.

— PudcVnhead Wilson''s New Calendar.

WE soon reached the town of Nelson, and spent the
most of the day there, visiting acquaintances and
driving with them about the garden — the whole
region is a garden, excepting the scene of the " Maungatapu
Murders," of thirty years ago. That is a wild place — wild and
lonely ; an ideal place for a murder. It is at the base of a
vast, rugged, densely timbared mountain. In the deep twilight
of that forest solitude four desperate rascals — Burgess,
Sullivan, Levy, and Kelley ^ ambushed themselves beside the
mountain trail to murder and rob four travelers — Kempthorne,
Mathieu, Dudley, and De Pontius, the latter a New Yorker.
A harmless old laboring man came wandering along, and as his
presence was an embarrassment, they choked him, hid him, and
then resumed their watch for the four. They had to wait a
while, but eventually everything turned out as they desired.

That dark episode is the one large event in the history of
Nelson. The fame of it traveled far. Burgess made a con-
fession. It is a remarkable paper. For brevity, succinctness,
and concentration, it is perhaps without its peer in the litera-
ture of murder. There are no waste words in it ; there is no
obtrusion of matter not pertinent to the occasion, nor any de-
parture from the dispassionate tone proper to a formal business
statement — for that is what it is : a business statement of a
murder, by the chief engineer of it, or superintendent, or fore-
man, or whatever one may prefer to call him.

aO ( 305 )

306 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOli.

"We were getting impatient, when we saw four men and a pack-horse
coming. I left my cover and had a look at the men, for Levy had told me
that Mathieu was a small man and wore a large beard, and that it was a chest-
nut horse. I said, 'Here they come.' They were then a good distance
away ; I took the caps off my gun, and put fresh ones on. I said, ' You
keep where you are, I'll put them up, and you give me your gun while you
tie them.' It was arranged as I have described. The men came ; they
arrived within about fifteen yards when I stepped up and said, ' Stand ! bail
up ! ' That means all of them to get together. I made them fall back on the
upper side of the road with their faces up the range, and Sullivan brought
me his gun, and then tied their hands behind them. The horse was very
quiet all the time, he did not move. When they were all tied, Sullivan took
the horse up the hill, and put him in the bush ; he cut the rope and let the
swags* fall on the ground, and then came to me. We then marched the men
down the incline to the creek ; the water at this time barely running. Up
this creek we took the men ; we went, I daresay, five or six hundred yards
up it, which took us nearly half-an-hour to accomplish. Then we turned to
the right up the range ; we went, I daresay, one hundred and fifty yards
from the creek, and there we sat down with the men. I said to Sullivan, ' Put
down your gun and search these men,' which he did. I asked them their
several names ; they told me. I asked them if they were expected at Nelson.
They said, 'No.' If such their lives would have been spared. In money
we took £60 odd. I said, ' Is this all you have ? You had better tell me.'
Sullivan said, ' Here is a bag of gold.' I said, ' What's on that pack-horse?
Is there any gold ? ' when Kempthorue said, ' Yes, my gold is in the port-
manteau, and I trust you will not take it all.' ' Well,' I said, ' we must take
you away one at a time, because the range is steep just here, and then we will
let you go.' Theysaid, ' All right,' most cheerfully. We tied their feet, and
took Dudley with us ; we went about sixty yards with him. This was
through a scrub. It was arranged the night previously that it would be best
to choke them, in case the report of the arms might be heard from the road,
and if they were missed they never would be found. So we tied a handker-
chief over his eyes, when Sullivan took the sash off his waist, put it round
his neck, and so strangled him. Sullivan, after I had killed the old laboring
man, found fault with the way he was choked. He said, ' The next we do
I'll show you my way.' I said, 'I have never done such a thing before. I
have shot a man, but never choked one.' We returned to the others, when
Kempthorne said, ' What noise was that ?' I said it was caused by breaking
through the scrub. This was taking too much time, so it was agreed to shoot
them. With that I said, ' We'll take you no further, but separate you, and
then loose one of you, and he can relieve the others.' So with that, Sullivan
took De Pontius to the left of where Kempthorne was sitting. I took
Mathieu to the right. I tied a strap round his legs, and shot him with a re-
volver. He yelled, I ran from him with my gun in my hand, I sighted
Kempthorne, who had risen to his feet. I presented the gun, and shot him

*A "swag" is a kit, a pack, small baggage.

THE MAUNGATAPU MURDERS. 307

behind the right ear ; his life's blood welled from him, and he died instan-
taneously. Sullivan had shot De Pontius in the meantime, and then came to
me. I said, 'Look to Mathieu,' indicating the spot where he lay. He shortly
returned and said, ' I had to " chiv " that fellow, he was not dead,' a cant word,
meaning that he had to stab him. Returning to the road we passed where
De Pontius lay and was dead, Sullivan said, ' This is the digger, the others
were all storekeepers ; this is the digger, let's cover him up, for should the
others be found, they'll think he done it and sloped,' meaning he had gone.
So with that we threw all the stones on him, and then left him. This bloody
work took nearly an hour and a half from the time we stopped the men."

Anyone who reads that confession will think that the man
who wrote it was destitute of emotions, destitute of feeling.
That is partly true. As regarded others he was plainly with-
out feeling — utterly cold and pitiless ; but as regarded him-
self the case was different. While he cared nothing- for the
future of the murdered men, he cared a great deal for his
own. It makes one's flesh creep to read the introduction to
his confession. The judge on the bench characterized it as
" scandalousl}^ blasphemous," and it certainly reads so, but
Burgess meant no blasphemy. He was merely a brute, and
whatever he said or wrote was sure to expose the fact. His
redemption was a very real thing to him, and he was as jubi-
lantly happy on the gallows as ever was Christian martyr at
the stake. We dwellers in this world are strangely made, and
mysteriously circumstanced. We have to suppose that the
murdered men are lost, and that Burgess is saved ; but we
cannot suppress our natural regrets :

" Written in my dungeon drear this 7th of August, in the year of Grace, 1866.
To God be ascribed all power and glory in subduing the rebellious spirit of a
most guilty wretch, who has been brought, through the instrumentality of a
faithful follower of Christ, to see his wretched and guilty state, inasmuch as
hitherto he has led an awful and wretched life, and through the assurance of
this faithful soldier of Christ, he has been led and also believes that Christ will
yet receive and cleanse him from all his deep-dyed and bloody sins. I lie
under the imputation which says, ' Come now and let us reason together,
saith the Lord : though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as
snow ; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.' On this
promise I rely."

We sailed in the afternoon late, spent a few hours at New

308 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

Plymouth, then sailed again and reached Auckland the next
day, November 2)th, and remained in that fine city several
days. Its situation is commanding, and the sea- view is superb.
There are charming drives all about, and by courtesy of friends
we had opportunity to enjoy them. From the grassy crater-
summit of Mount Eden one's eye ranges over a grand sweep
and variety of scenery — forests clothed in luxuriant foliage,
rolling green fields, conflagrations of flowers, receding and
dimming stretches of green plain, broken by lofty and sym-
metrical old craters — then the blue bays twinkling and spark-
ling away into the dreamy distances where the mountains loom
spiritual in their veils of haze.

It is from Auckland that one goes to Rotorua, the region of
the renowned hot lakes and geysers — one of the chief won-
ders of New Zealand ; but I was not well enough to make the
trip. The government has a sanitorium there, and everything
is comfortable for the tourist and the invalid. The govern-
ment's official physician is almost over-cautious in his estimates
of the efficacy of the baths, when he is talking about rheuma-
tism, gout, paralysis, and such things ; but when he is talking
about the effectiveness of the waters in eradicating the whisky-
habit, he seems to have no reserves. The baths will cure the
drinkinff- habit no matter how chronic it is — and cure it so
effectually that even the desire to drink intoxicants will come
no more. There should be a rush from Europe and America
to that place ; and when the victims of alcoholism find out
what they can get by going there, the rush will begin.

The Thermal-springs District of New Zealand comprises an
area of upwards of 600,000 acres, or close on 1,000 square
miles. Rotorua is the favorite place. It is the center of a
rich field of lake and mountain scenery ; from Eotorua as a base
the pleasure-seeker makes excursions. The crowd of sick people
is great, and growing. Rotorua is the Carlsbad of Australasia.

HOT SPRINGS, AND GEYSERS.

AUCKLAND AND ROTORUA. 311

It is from Auckland that the Kauri gum is shipped. For a
long time now about 8,000 tons of it have been brought into
the town per year. It is worth about $300 per ton, unassorted ;
assorted, the finest grades are worth about $1,000. It goes to
America, chiefly. It is in lumps, and is hard and smooth, and
looks like amber — the light-colored like new amber, and the
dark brown like rich old amber. And it has the pleasant feel
of amber, too. Some of the light-colored samples were a tol-
erably fair counterfeit of uncut South African diamonds, they
were so perfectly smooth and polished and transparent. It is
manufactured into varnish ; a varnish which answers for copal
varnish and is cheaper.

The gum is dug up out of the ground ; it has been there
for ages. It is the sap of the Kauri tree. Dr. Campbell of
Auckland told me he sent a cargo of it to England fifty years
ago, but nothing came of the venture. Nobody knew Avhat to
do with it ; so it was sold at £5 a ton, to light fires with.

Novemher 26 — 3 p. m., sailed. Yast and beautiful harbor.
Land all about for hours. Tangariwa, the mountain that "has
the same shape from e^oery point of view." That is the com-
mon belief in Auckland. And so it has — from every point of
view except thirteen. . . . Perfect summer weather.
Large school of whales in the distance. Nothing could be
daintier than the puffs of vapor they spout up, when seen
against the pink glory of the sinking sun, or against the dark
mass of an island reposing in the deep blue shadow of a storm-
cloud. . . . Great Barrier rock standing up out of the sea
away to the left. Sometime ago a ship hit it full speed in a
fog — 20 miles out of her course — r40 lives lost; the captain
committed suicide without waiting a moment. He knew that,
whether he was to blame or not, the company owning the ves-
sel would discharge him and make a devotion-to-passengers'-
safety advertisement out of it, and his chance to make a liveli-
hood would be permanently gone.

CHAPTER XXXIY.

Let us not be too particular. It is better to have old second-hand diamonds
than none at all. — Fiicld^nhead Wilson^ s New Calendar.

^OVEMBER 27. To-day we reached Gisborne, and
anchored in a big bay ; there was a heavy sea on, so
we remained on board.
We were a mile from shore ; a little steam-tug put out
from the land ; she was an object of thrilling interest ; she
would climb to the summit of a billow, reel drunkenly there a
moment, dim and gray in the driving storm of spindrift, then
make a plunge like a diver and remain out of sight until one
had given her up, then up she would dart again, on a steep
slant toward the sky, shedding Niagaras of water from her
forecastle — and this she kept up, all the way out to us. She
brought twenty-five passengers in her stomach — men and
women — mainly a traveling dramatic company. In sight on
deck were the crew, in sou'westers, yellow waterproof canvas
suits, and boots to the thigh. The deck was never quiet for
a moment, and seldom nearer level than a ladder, and noble
were the seas which leapt aboard and went flooding aft. We
rove a long line to the yard-arm, hung a most primitive basket-
chair to it and swung it out into the spacious air of heaven,
and there it swayed, pendulum-fashion, waiting for its chance
— then down it shot, skillfully aimed, and was grabbed by the
two men on the forecastle. A young fellow belonging to our
crew was in the chair, to be a protection to the lady-comers.
At once a couple of ladies appeared from below, took seats in
his lap, we hoisted them into the sky, waited a moment till the

(312)

PROTECTING THE LADIES.

PASSENGERS BY THE YARD. 316

roll of the ship brought them in, overhaad, then we lowered
suddenly away, and seized the chair as it struck the deck.
We took the twenty-five aboard, and delivered twenty-five
into the tug — among them several aged ladies, and one blind
one — and all without accident. It was a fine piece of work.

Ours is a nice ship, roomy, comfortable, well-ordered, and
satisfactory. I^ow and then we step on a rat in a hotel, but
we have had no rats on shipboard lately ; unless, perhaps in
the Flora; we had more serious things to think of there, and
did not notice. I have noticed that it is only in ships and
hotels which still employ the odious Chinese gong, that you
find rats. The reason would seem to be, that as a rat cannot
tell the time of day by a clock, he won't stay where he cannot
find out when dinner is ready.

November 'B9. The doctor tells me of several old drunk-
ards, one spiritless loafer, and several far-gone moral wrecks
who have been reclaimed by the Salvation Army and have re-
mained staunch people and hard workers these two years.
Wherever one goes, these testimonials to the Army's efficiency
are forthcoming. . . . This morning we had one of those
whizzing green Ballarat flies in the room, with his stunning
buzz-saw noise — the swiftest creature in the world except the
lightning-flash. It is a stupendous force that is stored up in
that little body. If we had it in a ship in the same proportion,
we could spin from Liverpool to New York in the space of an
hour — the time it takes to eat luncheon. The New Zealand
express train is called the Ballarat Fly. . . . Bad teeth in
the colonies. A citizen told me they don't have teeth filled,
but pull them out and put in false ones, and that now and then
one sees a young lady with a full set. She is fortunate. I
wish I had been born with false teeth and a false liver and
false carbuncles. I should get along better.

December 2. Monday. Left Napier in the Ballarat Fly —

316 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

the one that goes twice a week. From Napier to Hastings,
twelve miles; time, fifty -five minutes — not so far short of
thirteen miles an hour. ... A perfect summer day ; cool
breeze, brilliant sky, rich vegetation. Two or three times dur-
ing the afternoon we saw wonderfully dense . and beautiful
forests, tumultuously piled skyward on the broken highlands
— not the customary roof-like slant of a hillside, where the
trees are all the same height. The noblest of these trees were of
the Kauri breed, we were told — the timber that is now furnish-
ing the wood-paving for Europe, and is the best of all wood for
that purpose. Sometimes these towering upheavals of forestry
were festooned and garlanded with vine-cables, and sometimes
the masses of undergrowth were cocooned in another sort of
vine of a delicate cobwebby texture — they call it the " supple-
jack," I think. Tree ferns everywhere — a stem fifteen feet
high, with a graceful chalice of fern-fronds sprouting from its
top — a lovely forest ornament. And there was a ten-foot
reed with a flowing suit of what looked like yellow hair hang-
ing from its upper end. I do not know its name, but if there
is such a thing as a scalp-plant, this is it. A romantic gorge,
with a brook flowing in its bottom, approaching Palmerston
North.

Waituhurau. Twenty minutes for luncheon. With me
sat my wife and daughter, and my manager, Mr. Carlyle
Smythe. I sat at the head of the table, and could see the
right-hand wall ; the others had their backs to it. On that
wall, at a good distance away, were a couple of framed
pictures. I could not see them clearly, but from the group-
ings of the figures I fancied that they represented the killing
of Napoleon Ill's son by the Zulus in South Africa. I broke
into the conversation, which was about poetry and cabbage
and art, and said to my wife —

" Do you remember when the news came to Paris — "

MENTAL TELEGRAPHY. 817

«_

" Of the killing of the Prince ? "

(Those were the very words I had in my mind.) " Yes,
but what Prince ? "

" Napoleon. Lulu."

" What made you think of that ? " '•

" I don't know."

There was no collusion. She had not seen the pictures, and
they had not been mentioned. She ought to have thought
of some 7'ecent news that came to Paris, for we were but seven
months from there and had been living there a couple of years
when we started on this trip ; but instead of that she thought
of an incident of our brief sojourn in Paris of sixteen years
before.

Here was a clear case of mental telegraphy ; of mind-trans-
ference ; of my mind telegraphing a thought into hers. How
do I know ? Because I telegraphed an error. For it turned
out that the pictures did not represent the killing of Lulu at all,
nor anything connected with Lulu. She had to get the erroi
from my head — it existed nowhere else.

CHAPTER XXXV.

The Autocrat of Russia possesses more power than any other man in the earth ;
but he cannot stop a sneeze. — Pudd^nhead Wilson's New Calendar.

WAUGANUI, December 3. A pleasant trip, yesterday,
per Ballarat Fly. Four hours. I do not know the
distance, but it must have been well along toward
fifty miles. The Fly could have spun it out to eight hours and
not discommoded me ; for where there is comfort, and no need
for hurry, speed is of no value — at least to me ; and nothing
that goes on wheels can be more comfortable, more satisfac-
tory, than the New Zealand trains. Outside of America there
are no cars that are so rationally devised. When you add the
constant presence of charming scenery and the nearly constant
absence of dust — well, if one is not content then, he ought to
get out and walk. That would change his spirit, perhaps ? I
think so. At the end of an hour you would find him Avaiting
humbly beside the track, and glad to be taken aboard again.

Much horseback riding, in and around this town; many
comely girls in cool and pretty summer gowns ; much Salva-
tion Army ; lots of Maoris ; the faces and bodies of some of
the old ones very tastefully frescoed. Maori Council House
over the river — large, strong, carpeted from end to end with
matting, and decorated with elaborate wood carvings, artisti-
cally executed. The Maoris were very polite.

I was assured by a member of the House of Representatives
that the native race is not decreasing, but actually increasing
slightly. It is another evidence that they are a superior breed
of savages. I do not call to mind any savage race that built

(318)

THE MAORIS.

319

such good houses, or such strong and ingenious and scientific
fortresses, or gave so much attention to agriculture, or had
military arts and devices which so nearly approached the white
man's. These, taken together with their high abilities in boat-
building, and their tastes and capacities in the ornamental arts,
modify their savagery to a semi-civilization — or at least to
a quarter-civilization.

It is a compliment to them that the British did not exter-
minate them, as they did the Australians and the Tasmanians,
but were content with subduing them, and showed no desire to
go further. And it is
another compliment
to them that the
British did not take
the whole of their
choicest lands, but
left them a considera-
ble part, and then
went further and pro-
tected them from the
rapacities of land-
sharks — a protection
which the New Zealand Government still extends to them.
And it is still another compliment to the Maoris that the
Government allows native representation in both the legisla-
ture and the cabinet, and gives both sexes the vote. And in
doing these things the Government also compliments itself;
it has not been the custom of the world for conquerors to act
in this large spirit toward the conquered.

The highest class white men who lived among the Maoris
in the earliest time had a high opinion of them and a strong
affection for them. Among the whites of this sort was the
author of " Old New Zealand ; " and Dr. Campbell of Auckland

MAORI WOMEN WITH FEATHER ROBES.

320

FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

was another. Dr. Campbell was a close friend of several
chiefs, and has many pleasant things to say of their fidelity,
their magnanimity, and their generosity. Also of their quaint
notions about the white man's queer civilization, and their
equally quaint comments upon it. One of them thought the
missionary had got everything Avrong end first and upside
down. " Why, he wants us to stop worshiping and supplica-
ting the evil gods, and go
to worshiping and sup-
plicating the Good One !
There is no sense in that.
A good god is not going
to do us any harm."

The Maoris had the
tabu; and had it on a
Polynesian scale of com-
prehensiveness and elabo-
ration. Some of its fea-
tures could have been
importations from India
NOSE RUBBING, FORM OP sALijTATroN. ^ud Judca. Ncithcr the

Maori nor the Hindoo of common degree could cook by a
fire that a person of higher caste had used, nor could the high
Maori or high Hindoo employ fire that had served a man of
low grade ; if a low-grade Maori or Hindoo drank from a ves-
sel belonging to a high-grade man, the vessel was defiled, and
had to be destroyed. There were other resemblances between
Maori tabu and Hindoo caste-custom.

Yesterday a lunatic burst into my quarters and warned me
that the Jesuits were going to " cook " (poison) me in my food,
or kill me on the stage at night. He said a mysterious sign
A was visible upon my posters and meant my .death. He
said he saved Kev. Mr. Haweis's life by warning him that

SAVED BY A LUNATIC. 321

there were three men on his platform who would kill him if he
took his eyes off them for a moment during his lecture. The
same men were in my audience last night, but they saw that
he was there. " Will they be there again to-night ? " He hesi-
tated ; then said no, he thought they would rather take a rest and
chance the poison. This lunatic has no delicacy. But he was |
not uninteresting. He told me a lot of things. He said he
had " saved so many lecturers in twenty years, that they put
him in the asylum.'''' I think he has less refinement than any
lunatic I have met.

December 8. A couple of curious war-monuments here at
Wanganui. One is in honor of white men "who fell in de-
fence of law and order against fanaticism and barbarism."
Fanaticism. We Americans are English in blood, English in
speech, English in religion, English in the essentials of our
governmental system, English in the essentials of our civiliza-
tion ; and so, let us hope, for the honor of the blend, for the
honor of the blood, for the honor of the race, that that word
got there through lack of heedfulness, and will not be suffered
to remain. If you carve it at Thermopylae, or where Winkel-
ried died, or upon Bunker Hill monument, and read it again —
" who fell in defence of law and order against fanaticism " —
you will perceive what the word means, and how mischosen it
is. Patriotism is Patriotism. Calling it Fanaticism cannot
degrade it; nothing can degrade it. Even though it be a
political mistake, and a thousand times a political mistake,
that does not affect it ; it is honorable — always honorable,
always noble — and privileged to hold its head up and look
the nations in the face. It is right to praise these brave white
men who fell in the Maori war — they deserve it; but the
presence of that word detracts from the dignity of their
cause and their deeds, and makes them appear to have spilt
their blood in a conflict with ignoble men, men not worthy
31

322 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

of that costly sacrifice. But the men were worthy. It was
no shame to fight them. They fought for their homes, they
fought for their country; they bravely fought and bravely
fell ; and it would take nothing from the honor of the brave
Englishmen who lie under the monument, but add to it, to say
that they died in defense of English laws and English homes
against men worthy of the sacrifice — the Maori patriots.

The other monument cannot be rectified. Except with dy-
namite. It is a' mistake all through, and a strangely thought-
less one. It is a monument erected by white men to Maoris
who fell fighting with the w^hites and against their own people,
in the Maori war. " Sacred to the memory of the brave men
who fell on the 14:th of May, 1864," etc. On one side are the
names of about twenty Maoris. It is not a fancy of mine; the
monument exists. I saw it. It is an object-lesson to the rising
generation. It invites to treachery, disloyalty, unpatriotism.
Its lesson, in frank terms is, "Desert your flag, slay your
people, burn their homes, shame your nationality — we honor
such."

December 9. Wellington. Ten hoars from "Wanganui by
the Fly.

December 12. It is a fine city and nobly situated. A busy
place, and full of life and movement. Have spent the three
days partly in walking about, partly in enjoying social privi-
leges, and largely in idling around the magnificent garden at
Ilutt, a little distance away, around the shore. I suppose we
shall not see such another one soon.

We are packing to-night for the return- voyage to Australia.
Our stay in New Zealand has been too brief ; still, we are not
unthankful for the glimpse which we have had of it.

The sturdy Maoris made the settlement of the country by
the whites rather difficult. Not at first — but later. At first
they welcomed the whites, and were eager to trade with them

WAR AS A PASTIME. 323

— particularly for muskets ; for their pastime was internecine
war, and they greatly preferretl the white man's weapons to their
own. War was their pastime — 1 use the word advisedly. They
often met and slaughtered each other just for a lark, and when
there was no quarrel. The author of " Old New Zealand "
mentions a case where a victorious army could have followed
up its advantage and exterminated the opposing army, but
declined to do it ; explaining naively that " if we did that,
there couldn't be any more fighting." In another battle one
army sent word that it was out of ammunition, and would be
obliged to stop unless the opposing array would send some.
It was sent, and the fight went on.

In the early days things went well enough. The natives
sold land without clearly understanding the terms of exchange,
and the whites bought it without being much disturbed about
the native's confusion of mind. But by and by the Maori
began to comprehend that he was being wronged ; then there
was trouble, for he was not the man to swallow a wrons: and
go aside and cry about it. He had the Tasmanian's spirit and
endurance, and a notable share of military science besides ;
and so he rose against the oppressor, did this gallant " fanatic,"
and started a war that was not brought to a definite end until
more than a generation had sped.

I CHAPTER XXXYL

There are several good protections against temptations, but the surest i(
cowardice. — Pudd'nhead Wilson^ s New Calendar.

Names are not always what they seem. The common Welsh name BzjxxUwcp
is pronounced JacliBon. — Pudd^nhead Wilson^s New Calendar.

r RID AY, December 13. Sailed, at 3 p. m., in the Mararoa.
Summer seas and a good ship — life has nothing better.
Monday. Three days of paradise. Warm and
sunny and smooth ; the sea a luminous Mediterranean blue. . . '.
One lolls in a long chair all day under deck -awnings, and reads
and smokes, in measureless content. One does not read prose
at such a time, but poetry. I have been reading the poems of
Mrs. Julia A. Moore, again, and I find in them the same grace
and melody that attracted me when they were first published,
twenty years ago, and have held me in happy bonds ever since.
" The Sentimental Song Book " has long been out of print,
and has been forgotten by the world in general, but not by me.
I carry it with me always — it and Goldsmith's deathless story.
. . . Indeed, it has the same deep charm for me that the
Vicar of Wakefield has, and I find in it the same subtle touch
— the touch that makes an intentionally humorous episode
pathetic and an intentionally pathetic one funny. In her time
Mrs. Moore was called " the Sweet Singer of Michigan," and
was best known by that name. I have read her book through
twice to-day, with the purpose of determining Avhich of her
pieces has most merit, and I am persuaded that for wide
grasp and sustained power, "William Upson" may claim

first place :

(324)

THE SWEET SINGER'S BEST EFFORT. 325

WILLIAM UPSON.

Air — " The Major's Only Son."

Come all good people far and near,
Oh, come and see what you can hear,
It's of a young man true and brave,
That is now sleeping in his grave.

Now, William Upson was his name —
If it's not that, it's all the same —
He did enlist in a cruel strife.
And it caused him to lose his life.

He was Perry Upson's eldest son.
His father loved his noble son,
This son was nineteen years of age
When first in the rebellion he engaged.

His father said that he might go,

But his dear mother she said no,

" Oh ! stay at home, dear Billy," she said,

But she could not turn his head.

He went to Nashville, in Tennessee,
There his kind friends he could not see ;
He died among strangers, so far away,
They did not know where his body lay.

He was taken sick and lived four weeks,
And Oh ! how his parents weep,
But now they must in sorrow mourn,
For Billy has gone to his heavenly home.

Oh ! if his mother could have seen her son,

For she loved him, her darling son ;

If she could heard his dying prayer.

It would ease her heart till she met him there

How it would relieve his mother's heart
To see her son from this world depart,
And hear his noble words of love.
As he left this world for that above.

Now it will relieve his mother's heart,
For her son is laid in our graveyard ;
For now she knows that his grave is near,
She will not shed so many tears.

Although she knows not that it was her son,
For his coffin could not be opened —
It might be someone in his place.
For she could not see his noble face.

326 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

Decemher 17. Reached Sydney.

December 19. In the train. Fellow of 30 with four valises ;
a slim creature, with teeth which made his mouth look like a
neglected churchyard. He had solidified hair — solidified with
pomatum ; it was all one shell. He smoked the most extraor-
dinary cigarettes — made of some kind of manure, apparently.
These and his hair made him smell like the very nation. He
had a low-cut vest on, which exposed a deal of frayed and
broken and unclean shirt-front. Showy studs, of imitation
gold — they had made black disks on the linen. Oversized
sleeve buttons of imitation gold, the copper base showing
through. Ponderous watch-chain of imitation gold. I judge
that he couldn't tell the time by it, for he asked Smythe what
time it was, once. He wore a coat which had been gay when
it was young ; 5-o'clock-tea-trousers of a light tint, and mar-
velously soiled ; yellow mustache with a dashing upward Avhirl
at the ends ; foxy shoes, imitation patent leather. He was a
novelty — an imitation dude. He would have been a real one
if he could hi^ve afforded it. But lie was satisfied mth him-
self. You could see it in his expression, and in all his atti-
tudes and movements. He was living in a dude dreamland
where all his squalid shams were genuine, and himself a sin-
cerity. It disarmed criticism, it mollified spite, to see him so
enjoy his imitation languors, and arts, and airs, and his studied
daintinesses of gesture and misbegotten refinements. It was
plain to me that he was imagining himself the Prince of Wales,
and was doing everything the Avay he thought the Prince
would do it. For bringing his four valises aboard and stow-
ing them in the nettings, he gave his porter four cents, and
lightly apologized for the smallness of the gratuity — just with
the condescendingest little royal air in the world. He
stretched himself out on the front seat and rested his poma-
tum-cake on the middle arm, and stuck his feet out of the win-

THE IMITATION DUDE.

827

dow, and began to pose as the Prince and work his dreams and
languors for exhibition ; and he would indolently watch the
blue films curling up from his cigarette, and inhale the stench,
and look so grateful ; and would flip the ash away with the
daintiest gesture, unintentionally displaying his brass ring in
the most intentional way ; why, it was as good as being in
Marlborough House itself to see him do it so like.

There was other
scenery in the trip.
That of the Hawks-
bury river, in the Na-
tional Park region ,
fine — extraordinaril}'
fine, with spacious
views of stream and
lake imposingly
framed in woody hills :
and every now and
then the noblest group-
ings of mountains, and
the most enchanting
re-arrangements of the
water effects. Further along, green flats, thinly covered with
gum forests, with here and there the huts and cabins of small
farmers engaged in raising children. Still further along, arid
stretches, lifeless and melancholy. Then Newcastle, a rushing
town, capital of the rich coal regions. Approaching Scone,
wide farming and grazing levels, with pretty frequent glimpses
/ot a troublesome plant — a particularly devilish little prickly
pear, daily damned in the orisons of the agriculturist ; imported
by a lady of sentiment, and contributed gratis to the colony.
. . . Blazing hot, all day.

December 20. Back to Sydney. Blazing hot again. From

so LIKE THE PRINCE.

328

FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

the newspaper, and from the map, I have made a collection of
curious names of iVustralasian towns, with the idea of making
a poem out of them :

Tumut)/ ' rv^

TakeeV/^

MurriwJllumba V

BowraW .

Ballarat/

Mullengudgery/

MurrurundiU'

Wagga-Wagga

Wyalong

Murrumbidgee V

GoomerooK

Wollowayf/

WangaryX*!^

WanillaV/

Worrow*^

Koppio^'

YankalillaV/

Yaranyackal^

Yackamoorundie

Kaiwaka

Coomooroo .

Tauranga ^

Geelong

TongarirfK

KaikouraC^

Wakatipu'

OohipaKa

It may be
weather help :

)

Waitpinga

Goelwa

Munno Para ■^^

Nangkita J^ .

Myponga 1^

Kapuuda*"'^

Kooringa^

Penolal/ *

Nangwarrjnr

Kongorong ^

Comaura ^

Koolywurtie

Killanoola

Naracoorte

Muloowujftie*^

Binnum\/y

Wallaroa •

Wirregal/^

Muiult)(ti"a "

Hauraki

Rangiriri

TeawamuteV

Tar^naki

Toowoomba'^yr

GoondiwindiK

Jerrilderie^

Whangaro^

WoUongong

Woolloomooloo ^

Bombola *^

Coolgardie '^

Bendigo

Coonamble^*^ .

Cootamundra^

Woolgoolga^

Mittagong*^

Jaijiberoo "»

Kondoparinga

KuitpoV^

Tungjiiillo^

Oukalparinga'''^

Talunga

Yata a\^ ^

Para svirfa ir

Mooioorooj^^

Whahgareilr /

Woofundunga*^

Bool^roo 1^

Pernatty .

Parramattji*'

TaroomV/ ^/

Narrandera

a y

Deniliquin'^
Kawakawa,^

best to build the poem now, and make

the

A SWELTERING DAY IN AUSTRALIA.

{To be read soft and low, with Vie lights turned down.)

The Bombola faints in the hot Bowral tree,
"Where fierce MuUengudgery's smothering fires

Far from the breezes of Coolgardie
Burn ghastly and blue as the day expires ;

And Murriwillumba complaineth in song
For the garlanded bowers of Woolloomooloo,

And the Ballarat Fly and the lone WoUongong
They dream of the gardens of Jamberoo ;

TOWN POETRY.

The wallabi sighs for the Murrubidgr^,

For the velvety sod of the Munno Para//,
Where the waters of healing from Muloowurii'e

Flow dim in the gloaming by YaranyacMA ;

The Koppio sorrows for lost Wolloway,

And sigheth in secret for Murrurundi,
The Whangeroo wombat lamenteth the day

That made him an exile from Jerrilde?ne ;

The Teawaraute Tumut from Wirrega's glade,

The Nangkita swallow, the Wallaroo swan,
They long for the peace of the ^imari^shade

And thy balmy soft airs, O sweet Mittagong I

The Kooringa buffalo pants in the sun,

The Kondoparinga lies gaping for breath.
The Kongorong Camaum to the shadow has won.

But the Goomeroo sinks in the slumber of death ;

In the weltering hell of the Moorooroo plain

The Yatala Wangary withers and dies.
And the Worrow Wanilla, demented with pain,

To the Woolgoolga woodlands despairingly flies ;

Sweet Nangwarry's desolate, Coonamble wails,

And Tungkillo Kuito in sables is drest,
For the Whangerei winds fall asleep in the sails

And the Booleroo life- breeze is dead in the west.

Mypongo, Kapunda, O slumber no more !

Yankalilla, Parawirra, be warned !
There's death in the air ! Killanoola, wherefore

Shall the prayer of Penola be scorned ?

Cootaniundra, and Takee, and Wakatipu,

Toowoomba, Kaikoura are lost ! >
From Onkaparinga to fa^Damaxirr

All burn in this hell's holocaust !

Paramatta and Bi^juuji ^re gone to their rest

In the vale of^apaggl Taroom,
Kawakawa, Deniliquin — all that was best

In thie earth are but graves and a tomb !

Narrandera mourns,l^merQ9 answers not
ael>sthe roll of the scathless we^ cry :

Goondiwindi, Woolundunga, the spot
Islnute and forlorn where ye lie. ^

Those are good words for poetry. Among the best I have
ever seen. There are 81 in the list. I did not need them all,

330

FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

but I have knocked down 66 of them ; which is a good bag, it
seems to me, for a person not in the business. Perhaps a poet
laureate could do better, but a poet laureate gets wages, and
that is different. When I write poetry I do not get any Avages ;
often I lose money by it. The best word in that list, and the
most musical and gurgly, is Woolloomoolloo. It is a place
near Sydney, and is a favorite pleasure-resort. It has eight
O's in it.

CHAPTER XXXVII.

To succeed in the other trades, capacity must be shown ; in the law, conceal-
ment of it will do.— PudcCnhead Wilson''s New Calendar.

KA ONDAY, December 23, 1895. Sailed from Sydney for
j \ Ceylon in the P. & O. steamer Oceana. A Lascar
"^ crew mans this ship — the first I have seen. White

cotton petticoat and pants ; barefoot ; red shawl for belt ;
straw cap, brimless, on head, with red scarf wound around it ;
complexion a rich dark brown ; short straight black hair ;
whiskers fine and silky ; lustrous and intensely black. Mild,
good faces ; willing and obedient people ; capable, too ; but
are said to go into hopeless panics when there is danger. They
are from Bomba}'' and the coast thereabouts. . . . Left
some of the trunks in Sydney, to be shipped to South Africa
by a vessel advertised to sail three months hence. The proverb
says : " Separate not yourself from your baggage."
This Oceana is a stately big ship, luxuriously appointed. She
has spacious promenade decks. Large rooms ; a surpassingly
comfortable ship. The officers' library is well selected ; a
ship's library is not usually that. . . . For meals, the bugle
call, man-of-war fashion ; a |)leasant change from the terrible
gong. . . . Three big cats — very friendly loafers ; they
wander all over the ship ; the white one follows the chief steward
around like a dog. There is also a basket of kittens. One of
these cats goes ashore, in port, in England, Australia, and
India, to see how his various families are getting along, and is
seen no more till the ship is ready to sail. No one knows how
he finds out the sailing date, but no doubt he comes down to

(331)

532

FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

the dock every day and takes a look, and when he sees bag-
gage and passengers flocking in, recognizes that it is time to
get aboard. This is what the sailors believe. . . . The
Chief Engineer has been in the China and India trade thirty-
three years, and has had but three Christmases at home in that
time. . . . Conversational items at dinner , " Mocha ! sold
all over the world ! It is not true. In fact, very few foreigners

WHAT THE SAILORS BELIEVE.

except the Emperor of Russia have ever seen a grain of it, or
ever will, while they live." Another man said : " There is no
sale in Australia for Australian wine. But it goes to France
and comes back with a French label on it, and then they buy
it." I have heard that the most of the French-labeled claret
in New York is made in California. And I remember what
Professor S. told me once about Veuve Cliquot — if that was
the wine, and I think it was. He was the guest of a great wine
merchant whose town was quite near that vineyard, and this
merchant asked him if very much Y. C. was drunk in
America.

DINNER CONVERSATION. 333

" Oh, yes," said S., " a great abundance of it."

" Is it easy to be bad ? "

" Oh, yes — easy as water. All first and second-class hotels
have it,"

" What do you pay for it ? "

"It depends on the style of the hotel — from fifteen to
twenty-five francs a bottle."

" Oh, fortunate country ! Why, it's worth 100 francs right
here on the ground."

" No ! "

" Yes ! "

" Do you mean that we are drinking a bogus Yeuve Cliquot
over there ? "

" Yes — and there was never a bottle of the genuine in
America since Columbus's time. That wine all comes from a
little bit of a patch of ground which isn't big enough to raise
many bottles ; and all of it that is produced goes every year
to one person — the Emperor of Russia. He takes the whole
crop in advance, be it big or little."

January 4^, 1896. Christmas in Melbourne, New Year's
Day in Adelaide, and saw most of the friends again in both
places. . . . Lying here at anchor all day — Albany (King
George's Sound), Western Australia. It is a perfectly land-
locked harbor, or roadstead — spacious to look at, but not deep
water. Desolate-looking rOcks and scarred hills. Plenty of
ships arriving now, rushing to the new gold-fields. The papers
are full of wonderful tales of the sort always to be heard in
connection with new gold diggings. A sample : a youth staked
out a claim and tried to sell half for £5 ; no takers ; he stuck
to it fourteen days, starving, then struck it rich and sold out
for £10,000. . . . About sunset, strong breeze blowing,
got up the anchor. We were in a small deep puddle, with a
narrow channel leading out of it, minutely buoyed, to the sea.

334 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

I stayed on deck to see how we were going to manage it with
such a big ship and such a strong wind. On the bridge our
giant captain, in uniform ; at his side a little pilot in elaborately
gold-laced uniform ; on the forecastle a white mate and quar-
termaster or two, and a brilliant crowd of lascars standing by
for business. Our stern was pointing straight at the head of
the channel ; so we must turn entirely around in the puddle —
and the wind blowing as described. It was done, and beauti-
fully. It was done by help of a jib. "We stirred up much
mud, but did not touch the bottom. We turned right around
in our tracks — a seeming impossibility. We had several casts
of quarter-less 5, and one cast of half 4 — 27 feet ; we were
drawing 26 astern. By the time we were entirely around and
pointed, the first hnoj was not more than a hundred yards in
front of us. It was a fine piece of work, and I was the only
passenger that saw it. However, the others got their dinner ;
the P. & O. Company got mine. . . . More cats developed.
Smythe says it is a British law that they must be carried ; and
he instanced a case of a ship not allowed to sail till she sent
for a couple. The bill came, too : " Debtor, to 2 cats, 20 shil-
lings." . . . ]S^ews comes that within this week Siam has
acknowledged herself to be, in effect, a French province. It
seems plain that all savage and semi-civilized countries are
going to be grabbed. ... A vulture on board ; bald, red,
queer-shaped head, featherless red places here and there on
his body, intense great black eyes set in featherless rims of in-
flamed flesh ; dissipated look ; a business-like style, a selfish,
conscienceless, murderous aspect — the very look of a profes-
sional assassin, and yet a bird which does no murder. What
was the use of getting him up in that tragic style for so inno-
cent a trade as his ? For this one isn't the sort that wars upon
the living, his diet is offal — and the more out of date it is the
better he likes it. Nature should give him a suit of rusty black ;

AUSTRALIAN INDEPENDENCE. 335

then he would be all right, for he would look like an under-
taker and would harmonize with his business ; whereas the way
he is now he is horribly out of true.

January 5. At 9 this morning we passed Cape Leeuwin
(lioness) and ceased from our long due-west course along the
southern shore of Australia. Turning this extreme south-
western corner, we now take a long straight slant nearly
IS^. W., without a break, for Ceylon. As we speed northward
it will grow hotter very fast — but it isn't chilly, now. . . .
The vulture is from the public menagerie at Adelaide — a great
and interesting collection. It was there that we saw the baby
tiger solemnly spreading its mouth and trying to roar like its
majestic mother. It swaggered, scowling, back and forth on
its short legs just as it had seen her do on her long ones, and
now and then snarling viciously, exposing its teeth, with a
threatening lift of its upper lip and bristling moustache ; and
when it thought it was impressing the visitors, it would spread
its mouth wide and do that screechy cry which it meant for a
roar, but which did not deceive. It took itself quite seriously,
and was lovably comical. And there was a hyena — an ugly
creature ; as ugly as the tiger-kitty was pretty. It repeatedly
arched its back and delivered itself of such a human cry ; a
startling resemblance ; a cry which was just that of a grown
person badly hurt. In the dark one would assuredly go to its
assistance — and be disappointed. . . . Many friends of
Australasian Federation on board. They feel sure that the good
day is not far off, now. But there seems to be a party that
would go further — have Australasia cut loose from the British
Empire and set up housekeeping on her own hook. It seems
an unwise idea. They point to the United States, but it seems
to me that the cases lack a good deal of being alike. Austra-
lasia governs herself wholly — there is no interference; and
her commerce and manufactures are not oppressed in any way.

336 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

If our case had been the same we should not have gone out
when we did.

January 13. Unspeakably hot. The equator is arriving
again. "We are within eight degrees of it. Ceylon present.
Dear me, it is beautiful ! And most sumptuously tropical, as
to character of foliage and opulence of it. " What though the
spicy breezes blow soft o'er Ceylon's isle" — an eloquent line, an
incomparable line ; it says little, but conveys whole libraries of
sentiment, and Oriental charm and mystery, and tropic
deliciousness — a line that quivers and tingles with a thousand
unexpressed and inexpressible things, things that haunt one
and find no articulate voice. . . . Colombo, the capital.
An Oriental town, most manifestly ; and fascinating. . . .
In this palatial ship the passengers dress for dinner. The
ladies' toilettes make a fine display of color, and this is in
keeping with the elegance of the vessel's furnishings and the
flooding brilliancies of the electric light. On the stormv
Atlantic one never sees a man in evening dress, except at the
rarest intervals ; and then there is only one, not two ; and he
shows up but once on the voyage — the night before the ship
makes port — the night when they have the " concert " and do
the amateur wailings and recitations. He is the tenor, as a
rule. . . . There has been a deal of cricket-playing on
board ; it seems a queer game for a ship, but they enclose the
promenade deck with nettings and keep the ball from flying
overboard, and the sport goes very well, and is properly violent
and exciting. . . . "We must part from this vessel here.

Jamiary llf.. Hotel Bristol. Servant Brompy. Alert,
gentle, smiling, winning young brown creature as ever was.
Beautiful shining black hair combed back like a woman's, and
knotted at the back of his head ^ tortoise-shell comb in it,
sign that he is a Singhalese ; slender, shapely form ; jacket ;
under it is a beltless and flowing white cotton gown — from

IN CEYLON. 339

neck straight to heel ; he and his outfit quite unmasculine. It
was an embarassment to undress before him.

We drove to the marlcet, using the Japanese jinriksha —
our first acquaintanceship with it. It is a light cart, with a
native to draw it. He makes good speed for half-an-hour, but
it is hard work for him ; he is too slight for it. After the
half-hour there is no more pleasure for you ; your attention is
all on the man, just as it would be on a tired horse, and
necessarily your sympathy is there too. There's a plenty of
these 'rickshas, and the tariff is incredibly cheap.

I was in Cairo years ago. That was Oriental, but there
was a lack. When you are in Florida or New Orleans you are
in the South — that is granted ; but you are not in the South ;
you are in a modified South, a tempered South. Cairo was
a tempered Orient — an Orient with an indefinite something
wanting. That feeling was not present in Ceylon. Ceylon
was Oriental in the last measure of completeness — utterly
Oriental ; also utterly tropical ; and indeed to one's unreason-
ing spiritual sense the two things belong together. All the
requisites were present. The costumes were right ; the black
and brown exposures, unconscious of immodesty, were right ;
the juggler was there, with his basket, his snakes, his mon-
goose, and his arrangements for growing a tree from seed to
foliage and ripe fruitage before one's eyes ; in sight were plants
and flowers familiar to one on books but in no other way —
celebrated, desirable, strange, but in production restricted to
the hot belt of the equator ; and out a little way in the country
were the proper deadly snakes, and fierce beasts of prey, and
the wild elephant and the monkey. And there was that swoon
in the air which one associates with the tropics, and that
smother of heat, heavy with odors of unknown flowers, and
that sudden invasion of purple gloom fissured with lightnings,
— then the tumult of crashing thunder and the downpour —

340 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

and presently all sunny and smiling again; all these things
were there ; the conditions were complete, nothing was lack-
ing. And away off in the deeps of the jungle and in the re-
motenesses of the mountains were the ruined cities and
mouldering temples, mysterious relics of the pomps of a for-
gotten time and a vanished race — and this was as it should be,
also, for nothing is quite satisfyingly Oriental that lacks the
somber and impressive qualities of mystery and antiquity.

The drive through the town and out to the Galle Face by
the seashore, what a dream it was of tropical splendors of
bloom and blossom, and Oriental conflagrations of costume !
The walking groups of men, women, boys, girls, babies — each
individual was a flame, each group a house afire for color.
And such stunning colors, such intensely vivid colors, such rich
and exquisite minglings and fusings of rainbows and light-
nings ! And all harmonious, all in perfect taste ; never a dis-
cordant note ; never a color on any person swearing at another
color on him or failing to harmonize faultlessly with the colors
of any group the wearer might join. The stuffs were silk —
thin, soft, delicate, clinging ; and, as a rule, each piece a solid
color : a splendid green, a splendid blue, a splendid yellow, a
splendid purple, a splendid ruby, deep, and rich with smoulder-
ing fires — they swept continuously by in crowds and legions
and multitudes, glowing, flashing, burning, radiant ; and every
five seconds came a burst of blinding red that made a body
catch his breath, and filled his heart with joy. And then, the
unimaginable grace of those costumes ! Sometimes a woman's
whole dress was but a scarf wound about her person and her
head, sometimes a man's was but a turban and a careless rag
or two — in both cases generous areas of polished dark skin
showing — but always the arrangement compelled the homage
of the eye and made the heart sing for gladness.

I can see it to this day, that radiant panorama, that wilder-

ABl'SED CREATURES.

THE INSINCERITY OF CLOTHES. 343

ness of rich color, that incomparable dissolving-view of
harmonious tints, and lithe half-covered forms, and beautiful
brown faces, and gracious and graceful gestures and attitudes
and movements, free, unstudied, barren of stiffness and
restraint, and —

Just then, into this dream of fairyland and paradise a grat-
ing dissonance was injected. Out of a missionary school came
marching, two and two, sixteen prim and pious little Christian
black girls, Europeanly clothed — dressed, to the last detail, as
they would have been dressed on a summer Sunday in an
English or American village. Those clothes — oh, they were
unspeakably ugly ! Ugly, barbarous, destitute of taste, desti-
tute of grace, repulsive as a shroud. I looked at my women-
folk's clothes — just full-grown duplicates of the outrages
disguising those poor little abused creatures — and was
ashamed to be seen in the street with them. Then I looked at
my own clothes, and was ashamed to be seen in the street
with myself.

However, we must put up with our clothes as they are —
they have their reason for existing. They are on us to expose
us — to advertise what we wear them to conceal. They are a
sign ; a sign of insincerity ; a sign of suppressed vanity ; a
pretense that we despise gorgeous colors and the graces of
harmony and form ; and we put them on to propagate that lie
and back it up. But we do not deceive our neighbor; and
when we step into Ceylon we realize that we have not even
deceived ourselves. We do love brilliant colors and graceful
costumes ; and at home we will turn out in a storm to see
them when the procession goes by — and envy the wearers.
We go to the theater to look at them and grieve that we can't
be clothed like that. We go to the King's ball, when we get a
chance, and are glad of a sight of the splendid uniforms and
the glittering orders. When we are granted permission to

FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

attend an imperial drawing-room we shut ourselves up in
private and parade around in the theatrical court-dress by the
hour, and admire ourselves in the glass, and are utterly happy ;
and every member of every governor's staff in democratic
America does the same with his grand new uniform — and if
he is not watched he will get himself photographed in it, too.
When I see the Lord Mayor's footman I am dissatisfied with
my lot. Yes, our clothes are a lie, and have been nothing
short of that these hundred years. They are insincere, they
are the ugly and appropriate outward exposure of an inward
sham and a moral decay.

The last little brown boy I chanced to notice in the crowds
and swarms of Colombo had nothing on but a twine string
around his waist, but in my memory the frank honesty of his
costume still stands out in pleasant contrast with the odious
fl^ummery in which the little Sunday-school dowdies were
masquerading.

CHAPTER XXXYIII.

Prosperity is the best protector of principle. — Fudd''7ihead Wilson''sNew Calendar.

EYENIN"G — y^^A. Sailed in the Rosetta. This is a
poor old ship, and ought to be insured and sunk. As
in the Oceana, just so here: everybody dresses for
dinner; they make it a sort of pious duty. These fine and
formal costumes are a rather conspicuous contrast to the
poverty and shabbiness of the surroundings. ... If you
want a slice of a lime at four o'clock tea, you must sign an
order on the bar. Limes cost 14 cents a barrel.

January 18th. We have been running up the Arabian
Sea, latterly. Closing up on Bombay now, and due to arrive
this evening.

January ^Oth. Bomhay ! A bewitching place, a bewil-
dering place, an enchanting place — the Arabian Nights come
again! It is a vast city ; contains about a million inhabitants.
Natives, they are, with a slight sprinkling of white people —
not enough to have the slightest modifying effect upon the
massed dark complexion of the public. It is winter here, yet
the weather is the divine weather of June, and the foliage is the
fresh and heavenly foliage of June. There is a rank of noble
great shade trees across the way from the hotel, and under
them sit groups of picturesque natives of both sexes ; and the
juggler in his turban is there with his snakes and his magic ;
and all day long the cabs and the multitudinous varieties of
costumes flock by. It does not seem as if one could ever get
tired of watching this moving show, this shining and shifting
spectacle. ... In the great bazar the pack and jam of

(345)

346 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

natives was marvelous, the sea of rich-colored turbans and
draperies an inspiring sight, and the quaint and showy Indian
architecture was just the right setting for it. Toward sunset
another show ; this is the drive around the sea-shore to Mala-
bar Point, where Lord Sandhurst, the Governor of the Bom-
bay Presidency, lives. Parsee palaces all along the first part
of the drive; and past them all the world is driving; the
private carriages of wealthy Englishmen and natives of rank
are manned by a driver and three footmen in stunning oriental
liveries — two of these turbaned statues standing up behind, as
fine as monuments. Sometimes even the public carriages
have this superabundant crew, slightly modified — one to
drive, one to sit by and see it done, and one to stand up
behind and yell — yell when there is anybody in the way, and
for practice when there isn't. It all helps to keep up the live-
liness and augment the general sense of swiftness and energy
and confusion and pow-wow.

In the region of Scandal Point — felicitous name — where
there are handy rocks to sit on and a noble view of the sea on
the one hand, and on the other the passing and repassing
whirl and tumult of gay carriages, are great groups of comfort-
ably-off Parsee women — perfect flower-beds of brilliant color,
a fascinating spectacle. Tramp, tramp, tramping along the
road, in singles, couples, groups, and gangs, you have the
working-man and the working- woman — but not clothed like
ours.. Usually the man is a nobly-built great athlete, with not
a rag on but his loin-handkerchief; his color a deep dark
brown, his skin satin, his rounded muscles knobbing it as if it
had eggs under it. Usually the woman is a slender and
shapely creature, as erect as a lightning-rod, and she has but
one thing on — a bright-colored piece of stuff which is wound
about her head and her bod}^ down nearly half-way to her
knees, and which clings like her own skin. Her legs and feet

SCENES IN BOMBAY.

347

are bare, and so are her arms, except for her fanciful bunches
of loose silver rings on her ankles and on her arms. She has
jewelry bunched on the side of her nose also, and showy
cluster-rings on her toes. When she undresses for bed she
takes off her jewelry, I suppose. If she took off anything
more she would catch cold. As a rule she has a large shiney
brass water-jar of graceful
shape on her head, and
one of her naked arms
curves up and the hand
holds it there. She is so
straight, so erect, and she
steps with such style, and
such easy grace and dig-
nity ; and her curved arm
and her brazen jar are
such a help to the picture
— indeed, our working-
women cannot begin with
her as a road-decoration.

It is all color, bewitch-
ing color, enchanting
color — everywhere — all
around — all the way
around the curving great
opaline bay clear to Government House, where the tur])aned
big native chuprassies stand grouped in state at the door in
their robes of fiery red, and do most properly and stunningly
finish up the splendid show and make it theatrically complete.
I wish I were a chuprassy.

This is indeed India ! the land of dreams and romance, of
fabulous wealth and fabulous poverty, of splendor and rags,
of palaces and hovels, of famine and pestilence, of genii and

A ROAD-DECORATION.

348 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

giants and Aladdin lamps, of tigers and elephants, the cobra
and the jungle, the country of a hundred nations and a
hundred tongues, of a thousand religions and two million gods,
cradle of the human race, birthplace of human speech, mother
of history, grandmother of legend, great-grandmother of
tradition, whose yesterdays bear date with the mouldering
antiquities of the rest of the nations — the one sole country
under the sun that is endowed with an imperishable interest
for alien prince and alien peasant, for lettered and ignorant,
wise and fool, rich and poor, bond and free, the one land that
all men desire to see, and having seen once, by even a glimpse,
would not give that glimpse for the shows of all the rest of
the globe combined.

Even now, after the lapse of a year, the delirium of those
days in Bombay has not left me, and I hope never will. It
was all new, no detail of it hackneyed. And India did not
wait for morning, it began at the hotel — straight away. The
lobbies and halls were full of turbaned, and fez'd and em-
broidered, cap'd, and barefooted, and cotton-clad dark natives,
some of them rushing about, others at rest squatting, or
sitting on the ground ; some of them chattering with energy,
others still and dreamy ; in the dining-room every man's own
private native servant standing behind his chair, and dressed
for a part in the Arabian Nights.

Our rooms were high up, on the front. A white man —
he was a burly German — went up with us, and brought three
natives along to see to arranging things. About fourteen others
followed in procession, with the hand-baggage ; each carried
an. article — and only one ; a bag, in some cases, in other cases
loss. One strong native carried my overcoat, another a parasol,
another a box of cigars, another a novel, and the last man in
tlie procession had no load but a fan. It was all done with
earnestness and sincerity, there was not a smile in the pro-

FOURTEEN FOLLOWED.

SERVANTS GALORE. 351

cession from the head of it to the tail of it. Each man waited
patiently, tranquilly, in no sort of hurry, till one of us found
time to give him a copper, then he bent his head reverently,
touched his forehead with his fingers, and went his way. They
seemed a soft and gentle race, and there was something both
winning and touching about their demeanor.

There was a vast glazed door which opened upon the
balcony. It needed closing, or cleaning, or something, and a
native got down on his knees and went to work at it. He
seemed to be doing it well enough, but perhaps he wasn't, for
the burly German put on a look that betrayed dissatisfaction,
then without explaining what was wrong, gave the native a
brisk cuff on the jaw and then told him where the defect was.
It seemed such a shame to do that before us all. The native
took it with meekness, saying nothing, and not showing in his
face or manner any resentment. I had not seen the like of
this for fifty years. It carried me back to my boyhood, and
flashed upon me the forgotten fact that this was the usual
way of explaining one's desires to a slave. I was able to re-
member that the method seemed right and natural to me in
those days, I being born to it and unaware that elsewhere there
were other methods ; but I was also able to remember that
those unresented cuffings made me sorry for the victim and
ashamed for the punisher. My father was a refined and kindly
gentleman, very grave, rather austere, of rigid probity, a
sternly just and upright man, albeit he attended no church and
never spoke of religious matters, and had no part nor lot in
the pious joys of his Presbyterian family, nor ever seemed to
suffer from this deprivation. He laid his hand upon me in
punishment only twice in his life, and then not heavily ; once
for telling him a lie — which surprised me, and showed me
how unsuspicious he was, for that was not my maiden effort.
He punished me those two times only, and never any other

352 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

member of the family at all ; yet every now and then he cuffed
our harmless slave boy, Lewis, for trifling little blunders and
awkardnesses. My father had passed his life among the slaves
from his cradle up, and his cuffings proceeded from the custom
of the time, not from his nature. When I was ten years old
I saw a man fling a lump of iron-ore at a slave-man in anger,
for merely doing something awkwardly — as if that were a
crime. It bounded from the man's skull, and the man fell and
never spoke again. He was dead in an hour. I knew the man
had a right to kill his slave if he wanted to, and yet it seemed
a pitiful thing and somehow wrong, though wliy wrong I was
not deep enough to explain if I had been asked to do it.
iSTobody in the village approved of that murder, but of course
no one said much about it.

It is curious — the space-annihilating power of thought.
For just one second, all that goes to make the me in me was
in a Missourian village, on the other side of the globe, vividly
seeing again these forgotten pictures of fifty years ago, and
wholly unconscious of all things but just those ; and in the next
second I was back in Bombay, and that kneeling native's
smitten cheek was not done tingling yet ! Back to boyhood
— fifty years ; back to age again, another fifty; and a flight
equal to the circumference of the globe — all in two seconds
by the watch !

Some natives — I don't remember how many — went into
my bedroom, now, and put things to rights and arranged the
mosquito-bar, and I went to bed to nurse my cough. It was
about nine in the evening. What a state of things ! For three
hours the yelling and shouting of natives in the hall continued,
along with the velvety patter of their swift bare feet — what a
racket it wafj ! They were yelling orders and messages down
three flights. Why, in the matter of noise it amounted to a
riot, an insurrection, a revolution. And then there were other

MORE SERVICE. 353

noises mixed up with these and at intervals tremendously
accenting them — roofs falling in, I judged, windows smash-
ing, persons being murdered, crows squawking, and deriding,
and cursing, canaries screeching, monkeys jabbering, m.acaws
blaspheming, and every now and then fiendish bursts of laugh-
ter and explosions of dynamite. By midnight I had suffered
all the different kinds of shocks there are, and knew that I
could never more be disturbed by them, either isolated or in
combination. Then came peace — stillness deep and solemn —
and lasted till five.

Then it all broke loose again. And who re-started it ?
The Bird of Birds — the Indian crow. I came to know him
well, by and by, and be infatuated with him. I suppose he is
the hardest lot that wears feathers. Yes, and the cheerfulest,
and the best satisfied with himself. He never arrived at what
he is by any careless process, or any sudden one ; he is a work
of art, and " art is long " ; he is the product of immemorial
ages, and of deep calculation ; one can't make a bird like that
in a day. He has been re-incarnated more times than Shiva ;
and he has kept a sample of each incarnation, and fused it into
his constitution. In the course of his evolutionary promotions,
his sublime march toward ultimate perfection, he has been a
gambler, a low comedian, a dissolute priest, a fussy woman, a
blackguard, a scoffer, a liar, a thief, a spy, an informer, a trad-
ing politician, a swindler, a professional hypocrite, a patriot
for cash, a reformer, a lecturer, a lawyer, a conspirator, a rebel,
a royalist, a democrat, a practicer and propagator of irrever-
ence, a meddler, an' intruder, a busybody, an infidel, and a
wallow er in sin for the mere love of it. The strange result,
the incredible result, of this patient accumulation of all dam-
nable traits is, that he does not know what care is, he does not
know what sorrow is, he does not know what remorse is, his life

is one long thundering ecstasy of happiness, and he will go to his
23

354 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

death untroubled, knowing that he will soon turn up again as
an author or soinethitig, and be even more intolerably capable
and comfortable than ever he was before.

In his straddling wide forward-step, and his springy side-
wise series of hops, and his impudent air, and his cunning way
of canting his head to one side upon occasion, he reminds one
of the American blackbird. But the sharp resemblances stop
there. He is much bigger than the blackbird ; and he lacks
the blackbird's trim and slender and beautiful build and
shapely beak ; and of course his sober garb of gray and rusty
black is a poor and humble thing compared with the splendid
lustre of the blackbird's metallic sables and shifting and flash-
ing bronze glories. The blackbird is a perfect gentleman, in
deportment and attire, and is not noisy, I believe, except when
holding religious services and political conventions in a tree ;
but this Indian sham Quaker is just a rowdy, and is always
noisy when awake — always chaffing, scolding, scoffing, laugh-
ing, ripping, and cursing, and carrying on about something
or other. I never saw such a bird for delivering opinions.
Nothing escapes him ; he notices everything that happens, and
brings out his opinion about it, particularly if it is a matter
that is none of his business. And it is never a mild opinion,
but always violent — violent and profane — the presence of
ladies does not affect him. His opinions are not the outcome
of reflection, for he never thinks about anything, but heaves
out the opinion that is on top in his mind, and which is often
an opinion about some quite different thing and does not fit
the case. But that is his way ; his main idea is to get out an
opinion, and if he stopped to think he would lose chances.

I suppose he has no enemies among men. The whites and
Mohammedans never seemed to molest him ; and the Hindoos,
because of their religion, never take the life of any creature,
but spare even the snakes and tigers and fleas and rats. If I

THE INDIAN CROW.

355

sat on one end of the balcony, the crows would gather on the
railing at the other end and talk about me ; and edge closer,
little by little, till I could almost reach them ; and they would
sit there, in the most unabashed way, and talk about my
clothes, and my hair, and my complexion, "-- '^^

and probable character and vocation and -^f^^'^it
politics, and how I came to be in India, ■■'

and what I had been doing, and \*r^

how manv -^'^^'^ '^"'"^ ,

Ol'l'ItESSlYKLY SOCIAIJLI^

days I had got for it, and how I had happened to go unhanged
so long, and when would it probably come off, and might

356

FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

there be more of my sort where I came from, and when would
they be hanged, — and so on, and so on, until I could not
longer endure the embarrassment of it; then I Avould shoo
them away, and they would circle around in the air a little
'while, laughing and deriding and mocking, and presently
settle on the rail and do it all over again.

They were very sociable when there was anything to eat —
oppressively so. With a little encouragement they would come
in and light on the table and help me eat my breakfast ; and
once when I was in the other room and they found themselves
alone, they carried off everything they could lift ; and they
were particular to choose things which they could make no use
of after they got them. In India their number is beyond esti-
mate, and their noise is in proportion. I suppose they cost the
country more than the government does ; yet that is not a
light matter. Still, they pay ; their company pays ; it would
sadden the land to take their cheerful voice out of it.

CHAPTER XXXIX.

By trying we can easily learu to endure adversity. Another man's, I mean.

— Pudd^nhead Wilson's New Calendar.

YOU soon find your long-ago dreams of India rising in a
sort of vague and luscious moonlight above the hori-
zon-rim of your opaque consciousness, and softly light-
ing up a thousand forgotten details which were parts of a
vision that had once been vivid to you when you were a boy,
and steeped your spirit in tales of the East. The barbaric
gorgeousn esses, for instance ; and the princely titles, the sump-
tuous titles, the sounding titles, — how good they taste in the
mouth ! The Nizam of Hyderabad ; the Maharajah of Trav-
ancore ; the Nabob of Jubbelpore ; the Begum of Bhopal ; the
Nawab of Mysore; the Eanee of Gulnare ; the Ahkoond of
Swat's ; the Rao of Rohilkund ; the Gaikwar of Baroda. In-
deed, it is a country that runs richly to name. The great god
Yishnu has 108 — 108 special ones — 108 peculiarly holy ones
— names just for Sunday use only. I learned the whole of
Vishnu's 108 by heart once, but they wouldn't stay ; I don't
remember any of them now but John W.

And the romances connected with those princely native
houses — to this day they are always turning up, just as in the
old, old times. They were sweating out a romance in an En-
glish court in Bombay a while before we were there. In this
case a native prince, 1C| years old, who has been enjoying his
titles and dignities and estates unmolested for fourteen 3^ears,
is suddenly haled into court on the charge that he is rightfully
no prince at all, but a pauper peasant ; that the real prince

(357)

358 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

died when two and one-half years old ; that the death was con-
cealed, and a peasant cliild smuggled into the royal cradle, and
that this present incumbent was that smuggled substitute. This
is the very material that so many oriental tales have been made of.

The case of that great prince, the Gaikwar of Baroda, is a
reversal of the theme. When that throne fell vacant, no heir
could be found for some time, but at last one was found in the
person of a peasant child who was making mud pies in a village
street, and having an innocent good time. But his pedigree
was straight ; he was the true prince, and he has reigned ever
since, with none to dispute his right.

Lately there was another hunt for an heir to another
princely house, and one was found who was circumstanced
about as the Gaikwar had been. His fathers were traced back,
in humble life, along a branch of the ancestral tree to the point
where it joined the stem fourteen generations ago, and his
heirship was thereby squarely established. The tracing was
done by means of the records of one of the great Hindoo
shrines, where princes on pilgrimage record their names and
the date of their visit. This is to keep the prince's religious
account straight, and his spiritual person safe ; but the record
has the added value of keeping the pedigree authentic, too.

When I think of Bombay now, at this distance of time, 1
seem to have a kaleidoscope at my eye ; and I hear the clash of
the glass bits as the splendid figures change, and fall apart,
and flash into new forms, figure after figure, and with the
birth of each new form I feel my skin crinkle and ray nerve-
web tingle with a new thrill of wonder and delight. These
remembered pictures float past me in a sequence of contracts ;
following the same order always, and always whirling by and
disappearing with the swiftness of a dream, leaving me with
the sense that the actuality was the experience of an hour, at
most, whereas it really covered days, I think.

MEN SERVANTS. 359

The series begins with the hiring of a "bearer" — native
man-servant — a person who should be selected Avith some care,
because as long as he is in your employ he will be about as
near to you as your clothes.

In India your day may be said to begin with the "bearer's"
knock on the bedroom door, accompanied by a formula of,
words — a formula which is intended to mean that the bath is
ready. It doesn't really seem to mean anything at all. But
that is because you are not used to " bearer " English. You
will presently understand.

Where he gets his English is his own secret. There is
nothing like it elsewhere in the earth ; or even in paradise, per-
haps, but the other place is probably full of it. You hire him
as soon as you touch Indian soil; for no matter what your sex
is, you cannot do without him. He is messenger, valet, cham-
bermaid, table- waiter, lady's maid, courier — he is everything.
He carries a coarse linen clothes-bag and a quilt ; he sleeps on
the stone floor outside your chamber door, and gets his meals
you do not know where nor when ; you only know that he is
not fed on the premises, either when you are in a hotel or
when you are a guest in a private house. His wages are large
— from an Indian point of view — and he feeds and clothes
himself out of them. We had three of him in two and a half
months. The first one's rate was thirty rupees a month —
that is to say, twenty-seven cents a day ; the rate of the others,
Ks. 40 (40 rupees) a month. A princely sum ; for the native
switchman on a railway and the native servant in a private
family get only Rs. 7 per month, and the farm-hand only 4.
The two former feed and clothe themselves and their families
on their $1.90 per month ; but I cannot believe that the farm-
hand has to feed himself on his $1.08. I think the farm prob-
ably feeds him, and that the whole of his wages, except a trifle
for the priest, go to the support of his family. That is, to the

360 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

feeding of his family ; for they live in a mud hut, hand-made,
and, doubtless, rent-free, and they wear no clothes ; at least,
nothing more than a rag. And not much of a rag at that, in
the case of the males. However, these are handsome times for
the farm-hand ; he was not always the child of luxury that he
is now. The Chief Commissioner of the Central Provinces, in
a recent official utterance wherein he was rebuking a native
deputation for complaining of hard times, reminded them that
they could easily remember when a farm-hand's wages were
only half a rupee (former value) a month — that is to say, less
than a cent a day ; nearly $2.90 a year. If such a wage-earner
had a good deal of a family — and they all have that, for God
is very good to these poor natives in some ways — he would
save a profit of fifteen cents, clean and clear, out of his year's
toil ; I mean a frugal, thrifty person would, not one given to
display and ostentation. And if he owed $13.50 and took good
care of his health, he could pay it off in ninety years. Then
he could hold up his head, and look his creditors in the face
again.

Think of these facts and what they mean. India does not
consist of cities. There are no cities in India — to speak of.
Its stupendous population consists of farm-laborers. India is
one vast farm — one almost interminable stretch of fields with
mud fences between. Think of the above facts ; and consider
what an incredible aggregate of poverty they place before you.

The first Bearer that applied, waited below and sent up his
recommendations. That was the first morning in Bombay.
We read them over ; carefully, cautiously, thoughtfully. There
was not a fault to find with them — except one ; they were all
from Americans. Is that a slur? If it is, it is a deserved one.
In my experience, an American's recommendation of a servant
is not usually valuable. We are too good-natured a race ; we
hate to say the unpleasant thing ; we shrink from speaking the

SERVANTS' RECOMMENDATIONS. 361

unkind truth about a poor fellow whose bread depends upon
our verdict ; so we speak of his good points only, thus not
scrupling to tell a lie — a silent lie — for in not mentioning
his bad ones we as good as say he hasn't any. The only dif-
ference that I know of between a silent lie and a spoken one
is, that the silent lie is a less respectable one than the other.
And it can deceive, whereas the other can't — as a rule. "We
not only tell the silent lie as to a servant's faults, but we sin in
another way : we overpraise his merits ; for when it comes to
writing recommendations of servants we are a nation of gush-
ers. And we have not the Frenchman's excuse. In France
you must give the departing servant a good recommendation ;
and you must conceal his faults ; you have no choice. If you
mention his faults for the protection of the next candidate for
his services, he can sue you for damages; and the court will
award them, too ; and, moreover, the judge will give you a
sharp dressing-down from the bench for trying to destroy a
poor man's character, and rob him of his bread. I do not
state this on my own authority, I got it from a French physi-
cian of fame and repute — a man who was born in Paris, and
had practiced there all his life. And he said that he spoke not
merely from common knowledge, but from exasperating per-
sonal experience.

As I was saying, the Bearer's recommendations were all
from American tourists ; and St. Peter would have admitted
him to the fields of the blest on them — I mean if he is as
unfamiliar with our people and our ways as I suppose he is.
According to these recommendations, Manuel X. was supreme
in all the arts connected with his complex trade; and these
manifold arts were mentioned — and praised — in detail. His
English was spoken of in terms of warm admiration — admira-
tion verging upon rapture. I took pleased note of that, and
hoped that some of it might be true.

362

FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

We haxi to have some one right away ; so the family went
down stairs and took him a week on trial ; then sent him up
to me and departed on their affairs. I was shut up in my
quarters with a bronchial cough, and glad to have something
fresh to look at, something new to play with. Manuel filled
the bill; Manuel was very welcome. He was toward fifty
years old, tall, slender, with a slight stoop — an artificial stoop,

. a deferential stoop, a stoop rigidi-
fied by long habit — with face of
European mould ; short hair in-
tensely black; gentle black eyes,
timid black eyes, indeed ; com-
plexion very dark, nearly black
in fact ; face smooth-shaven. He
was bareheaded and barefooted,
and was never otherwise while his
week with us lasted ; his clothing
was European, cheap, flimsy, and
showed much wear.

He stood before me and inclined
his head (and body) in the pathetic
Indian way, touching his forehead
Avith the finger-ends of his right
hand, in salute. I said : —
" Manuel, you are evidently Indian, but you seem to have a
Spanish name when you put it all together. How is that ? "

A perplexed look gathered in his face ; it was plain that he
had not understood — but he didn't let on. He spoke back
placidly.

" Name, Manuel. Yes, master."
" I know ; but how did you get the name ? "
" Oh, yes, I suppose. , Think happen so. Father same
name, not mother."

WHERE MANUEL GOT HIS ENGLISH. 363

I saw that I must simplify my language and spread my
words apart, if I would be understood by this English scholar.

" Well — then — how — did — your — father — get — his —
name ? "

" Oh, he," — brightening a little — " he Christian — Porty-
gee ; live in Goa ; I born Goa ; mother not Portygee, mother
native — high-caste Brahmin — Coolin Brahmin ; highest caste ;
no other so high caste, I high-caste Brahmin, too. Christian,
too, same like father ; high-caste Christian Brahmin, master —
Salvation Army." *'

All this haltingly, and with difficulty. Then he had an
inspiration, and began to pour out a flood of words that I could
make nothing of ; so I said : —

"There — don't do that. I can't understand HindostaAi."

"Not Hindostani, master — English. Always I speaking
English sometimes when I talking every day all the time at you."

"Yery well, stick to that; that is intelligible. It is not
up to my hopes, it is not up to the promise of the recommenda-
tions, still it is English, and I understand it. Don't elaborate
it ; I don't like elaborations when they are crippled by uncer-
tainty of touch."
* "Master?"

" Oh, never mind ; it was only a random thought ; I didn't
expect you to understand it. How did you get your English ;
is it an acquirement, or just a gift of God ? "

After some hesitation — piously :

" Yes, he very good. Christian god very good, Hindoo
god very good, too. Two million Hindoo god, one Christian
god — make two million and one. All mine ; two million and
one god. I got a plenty. Sometime I pray all time at those,
keep it up, go all time every day ; give something at shrine, all
good for me, make me better man ; good for me, good for my
family, dam good."

364 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

Then he had another inspiration, and went rambling off
into fervent confusions and incoherencies, and I had to stop
him again. I thought we had talked enough, so I told him to
go to the bathroom and clean it up and remove the slops — this
to get rid of him. He went away, seeming to understand, and
got out some of my clothes and began to brush them. I re-
peated my desire several times, simplifying and re-simplifying
it, and at last he got the idea. Then he went away and put a
coolie at the work, and explained that he would lose caste if
he did it himself ; it would be pollution, by^he law of his caste,
and it would cost him a deal of fuss and trouble to purify him-
self and accomplish his rehabilitation. He said that that kind
of work was strictly forbidden to persons of caste, and as
strictly restricted to the very bottom layer of Hindoo society
— the despised Sudra (the toiler, the laborer). He was right ;
and apparently the poor Sudra has been content with his
strange lot, his insulting distinction, for ages and ages — clear
back to the beginning of things, so to speak. Buckle says that
his name — laborer — is a term of contempt ; that it is ordained
by the Institutes of Menu (900 B.C.) that if a Sudra sit on a
level with his superior he shall he exiled or hranded * . . . ;
if he speak contemptuously of his superior or insult him he
shall suffer death ^ if he listen to the reading of the sacred hooks
he shall have hurning oil poured in his ears ; if he memorize
passages from 'Ca^va he shall he hilled ; if he marry his daughter
to a Brahmin the husband shall go to hell for defiling himself
hy contact with a woman so infinitely his inferior ; and that it
is forbidden to a Sudra to acquire wealth. " The bulk of the
population of India," says Bucklef "is the Sudras — the
workers, the farmers, the creators of ii^ealthr

Manuel was a failure, poor old fellow. His age was against

* Without going into particulars I will remark that as a rule they wear no cloth-
ing that would conceal the brand. -^M. T.
t Population to-day, 300,000,000.

A NEW MAN SERVANT. 365

him. He was desperately slow and phenomenally forgetful.
When he went three blocks on an errand he would be gone
two hours, and then forget what it was he went for. When
he packed a trunk it took him forever, and the trunk's contents
were an unimaginable chaos when he got done. He couldn't
wait satisfactorily at table — a prime defect, for if you haven't
your own servant in an Indian hotel you are likely to have a
slow time of it and go away hungry. We couldn't understand
his English ; he couldn't understand ours ; and when we found
that he couldn't understand his own, it seemed time for us to
part. I had to discharge him ; there was no help for it.
But I did it as kindly as I <30uld, and as gently. We must
part, said I, but I hoped we should meet again in a better
world. It was not true, but it was only a little thing to say,
and saved his feelings and cost me nothing.

But now that he was gone, and was off my mind and heart,
my spirits began to rise at once, and I was soon feeling brisk
and ready to go out and have adventures. Then his newly-
hired successor flitted in, touched his forehead, and began to
fly around here, there, and everywhere, on his velvet feet, and
in five minutes he had everything in the room " ship-shape and
Bristol fashion," as the sailors say, and was standing at the
salute, waiting for orders. Dear me, what a rustler he was
after the slumbrous way of Manuel, poor old slug ! All my
heart, all ray affection, all my admiration, went out spontane-
ously to this frisky little forked black thing, this compact and
compressed incarnation of energy and force and promptness
and celerity and confidence, this smart, smily, engaging,
shiney-eyed little devil, feruled on his upper end by a gleam-
ing fire-coal of a fez with a red-hot tassel dangling from it.
I said, with deep satisfaction —

" You'll suit. What is your name ? "

He reeled it mellowly off.

366 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

"Let me see if I can make a selection out of it — for
business uses, I mean; we will keep the rest for Sundays.
Give it to me in installments."

He did it. But there did not seem to be any short ones,
except Mousa — which suggested mouse. It was out of
character ; it was too soft, too quiet, too conservative ; it didn't
fit his splendid style. I considered, and said :

" Mousa is short enough, but I don't quite like it. It seems
colorless — inharmonious — inadequate ; and I am sensitive to
such things. How do you think Satan would do ? "

" Yes, master. Satan do wair good."

It was his way of saying " very good."

There was a rap at the door. Satan covered the ground
with a single skip ; there was a word or two of Hindostani,
then he disappeared. Three minutes later he was before me
again, militarily erect, and waiting for me to speak first.

"What is it, Satan?"

" God want to see you."

" God. I show him up, master ? "

"Why, this is so unusual, that — that — well, you see —
indeed I am so unprepared — I don't quite know what I do
mean. Dear me, can't you explain ? Don't you see that this
is a most ex — "

" Here his card, master."

Wasn't it curious — and amazing, and tremendous, and all
that ? Such a personage going around calling on such as I,
and sending up his card, like a mortal — sending it up by Satan.
It was a bewildering collision of the impossibles. But this
was the land of the Arabian Nights, this was India ! and what
is it that cannot happen in India ?

We had the interview. Satan was right — the Visitor was
indeed a God in the conviction of his multitudinous followers,

AN UNEXPECTED VISITOR. 367

and was worshiped by them in sincerity and humble adora-
tion. They are troubled by no doubts as to his divine origin
and oflSce. They believe in him, they pray to him, they make
offerings to him, they beg of him remission of sins ; to them
his person, together with everything connected with it, is
sacred ; from his barber they buy the parings of his nails and
set them in gold, and wear them as precious amulets.

I tried to seem tranquilly conversational and at rest, but I
was not. Would you have been? I was in a suppressed
frenzy of excitement and curiosity and glad wonder. I could
not keep my eyes off him. I was looking upon a god^ an
actual god, a recognized and accepted god ; and every detail of
his person and his dress had a consuming interest for me. And
the thought went floating through my head, " He is worshiped

— think of it — he is not a recipient of the pale homage
called compliment, wherewith the highest human clay must
make shift to be satisfied, but of an infinitely richer spiritual
food: adoration, worship! — men and women lay their cares
and their- griefs and their broken hearts at his feet ; and he
gives them his peace, and they go away healed."

And just then the Awful Visitor said, in the simplest
way —

"There is a feature of the philosophy of Huck Finn
which " — and went luminously on with the construction of a
compact and nicely-discriminated literary verdict.

It is a land of surprises — India ! I had had my ambitions

— I had hoped, and almost expected, to be read by kings and
presidents and emperors — but I had never looked so high as
That. It would be false modesty to pretend that I was not
inordinately pleased. I was. I was much more pleased than
I should have been with a compliment from a man.

He remained half an hour, and I found him a most courte-
ous and charming gentleman. The godship has been in his

368

FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

family a good while, but I do not know how long. He is a
Mohammedan deity ; by earthly rank he is a prince ; not an
Indian but a Persian prince. He is a direct descendant of the
Prophet's line. He is comely ; also young — for a god ; not
forty, perhaps not above thirty-five years old. He wears his
immense honors with tranquil grace, and with a dignity proper
to his awful calling. He speaks English with the ease and
purity of a person born to it. I think I am not overstating
this. He was the only god I had ever seen, and I was very
favorably impressed. When he rose to say good-bye, the door
swung open and I caught the flash of a red fez, and heard
these words, reverently said —

" Satan see God out ? "

" Yes." And these mis-mated Beings passed from view —
Satan in the lead and The Other following after.

CHAPTER XL.

Few of us can stand prosperity. Another man's, I mean.

— Fudd^nhead Wilnon^s Mew Calendar.

rHE next picture in my mind is Government House, on
Malabar Point, with the wide sea-view from the win-
dows and broad balconies; abode of His Excellency
the Governor of the Bombay Presidency — a residence which
is European in everything but the native guards and servants,
and is a home and a palace of sta^e harmoniously combined.

That was England, the English power, the English civil-
ization, the modern civilization — with the quiet elegancies and
quiet colors and quiet tastes and quiet dignity that are the
outcome of the modern cultivation. And following it came a
picture of the ancient civilization of India — an hour in the
mansion of a native prince : Kumar Schri Samatsinhji Bahadur
of the Palitana State.

The young lad, his heir, was with the prince ; also, the lad's
sister, a wee brown sprite, very pretty, very serious, very win-
ning, delicately moulded, costumed like the daintiest butterfly,
a dear little fairyland princess, gravely willing to be friendly
with the strangers, but in the beginning preferring to hold her
father's hand until she could take stock of them and determine
how far they were to be trusted. She must have been eight
years old ; so in the natural (Indian) order of things she would
be a bride in three or four years from now, and then this free
contact with the sun and the air and the other belongings of
out-door nature and comradeship with visiting male folk would
end, and she would shut herself up in the zenana for life, like
24. (369)

370

FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

her mother, and by inherited habit of mind would be happy in
that seclusion and not look upon it as an irksome restraint and
a weary captivity.

The game which the prince amuses his leisure with — how-
ever, never mind it, I should never be able to describe it intel-
ligibly. I tried to get an idea of it while my wife and daughter

visited the princess in the zenana,
a lady of charming graces and
a fluent speaker of English, but I
did not make it out. It is a
complicated game, and I believe
it is said that nobody can learn
to play it well but an Indian.
And I was not able to learn how
to wind a turban. It seemed a
simple art and easy ; but that
was a deception. It is a piece of
thin, delicate stuff a foot wide or
more, and forty or fifty feet
long ; and the exhibitor of the
art takes one end of it in his
two hands, and winds it in and
out intricately about his head,
twisting it as he goes, and in a minute or two the thing is
finished, and is neat and symmetrical and fits as snugly as a
mould.

We were interested in the wardrobe and the jewels, and in
the silverware, and its grace of shape and beauty and deli-
cacy of ornamentation. The silverware is kept locked up, except
at meal-times", and none but the chief butler and the prince
have keys to the safe. I did not clearly understand why, but
it was not for the protection of the silver. It was either to
protect the prince from the contamination which his caste

KUMAR SCHRI SAMAT8INHJI
BAHADUR.

VISITING A PRINCE. 371

would suffer if the vessels were touched by low-caste hands, or
it was to protect his highness from poison. Possibly it was
both. I believ'^e a salaried taster has to taste everything before
the prince ventures it — an ancient and judicious custom in the
East, and has thinned out the tasters a good deal, for of course
it is the cook that puts the poison in. If I were an Indian
prince I would not go to the expense of a taster, I would eat
with the cook.

Ceremonials are always interesting ; and I noted that the
Indian good-morning is a ceremonial, Avhereas ours doesn't
amount to that. In salutation the son reverently touches the
father's forehead with a small silver implement tipped with
Vermillion paste which leaves a red spot there, and in return
the son receives the father's blessing. Our good morning is
well enough for the rowdy West, perhaps, but would be too
brusque for the soft and ceremonious East.

After being properly necklaced, according to custom, with
great garlands made of yellow flowers, and provided with
betel-nut to chew, this pleasant visit closed, and we passed
thence to a scene of a different sort : from this glow of color
and this sunny life to those grim receptacles of the Parsee dead,
the Towers of Silence. There is something stately about that
name, and an impressiveness which sinks deep ; the hush of
death is in it. We have the Grave, the Tomb, the Mausoleum,
God's Acre, the Cemetery ; and association has made them elo-
quent with solemn meaning ; but we have no name that is so
majestic as that one, or lingers upon the ear with such deep and
haunting pathos.

On lofty ground, in the midst of a paradise of tropical foliage
and flowers, remote from the world and its turmoil and noise,
they stood — the Towers of Silence ; and away below was
spread the wide groves of cocoa palms, then the city, mile on
mile, then the ocean with its fleets of creeping ships — all

372 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

steeped in a stillness as deep as the hush that hallowed this
high place of the dead. The vultures were there. They stood
close together in a great circle all around the rim of a massive
low tower — waiting ; stood as motionless as sculptured orna-
ments, and indeed almost deceived one into the belief that that
was what they were. Presently there was a slight stir among
the score of persons present, and all moved reverently out of
the path and ceased from talking. A funeral procession en-
tered the great gate, marching two and two, and moved
silently by, toward the Tower. The corpse lay in a shallow
shell, and was under cover of a white cloth, but was otherwise
naked. The bearers of the body were separated by an interval
of thirty feet from the mourners. They, and also the mourn-
ers, were draped all in pure white, and each couple of mourners
was figuratively bound together by a piece of white rope or a
handkerchief — though they merely held the ends of it in
their hands. Behind the procession followed a dog, which was
led in a leash. When the mourners had reached the neighbor-
hood of the Tower — neither they nor any other human being
but the bearers of the dead must approach within thirty feet
of it — they turned and went back to on« of the prayerhouses
within the gates, to pray for the spirit of their dead. The
bearers unlocked the Tower's sole door and disappeared from
view within. In a little while they came out bringing the bier
and the white covering-cloth, and locked the door again. Then
the ring of vultures rose, flapping their wings, and swooped
down into the Tower to devour the body. ISTothing was left
of it but a clean-picked skeleton when they flocked out again
a few minutes afterward.

The principle which underlies and orders everything con-
nected with a Parsee funeral is Purity. By the tenets of the
Zoroastrian religion, the elements. Earth, Fire, and Water, are
sacred, and must not be contaminated by contact with a dead

THE TOWERS OF SILENCE. 375

body. Hence corpses must not be burned, neither must they
be buried. None may touch the dead or enter the Towers
where they repose except certain men who are officially
appointed for that purpose. They receive high pay, but theirs
is a dismal life, for they must live apart from their species,
because their commerce with the dead defiles them, and any
who should associate with them would share their defilement.
When they come out of the Tower the clothes they are Avear-
ing are exchanged for others, in a building within the grounds,
and the ones which they have taken off are left behind, for
they are contaminated, and must never be used again or suffered
to go outside the grounds. These bearers come to every
funeral in new garments. So far as is known, no human being,
other than an official corpse-bearer — save one — has ever
entered a Tower of Silence after its consecration. Just a
hundred years ago a European rushed in behind the bearers
and fed his brutal curiosity with a glimpse of the forbidden
mysteries of the place. This shabby sav^age's name is not
given ; his quality is also concealed. These two details, taken
in connection with the fact that for his extraordinary offense
the only punishment he got from the East India Company's
Government was a solemn official " reprimand " — suggest the
suspicion that he was a European of consequence. The same
public document which contained the reprimand gave warning
that future offenders of his sort, if in the Company's service,
would be dismissed ; and if merchants, suffer revocation of
license and exile to England.

The Towers are not tall, but are low in proportion to their
circumference, like a gasometer. If you should fill a gasometer
half way up with solid granite masonry, then drive a wide
and deep well down through the center of this mass of masonry,
you would have the idea of a Tower of Silence. On the
masonry surrounding the well the bodies lie, in shallow trenches

376 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

which radiate like wheel-spokes from the well. The trenches
slant toward the well and carry into it the rainfall. Under-
ground drains, with charcoal filters in them, carry off this
water from the bottom of the well.

When a skeleton has lain in the Tower exposed to the rain
and the flaming sun a month it is perfectly dry and clean.
Then the same bearers that brought it there come gloved and
take it up with tongs and throw it into the well. There it
turns to dust. It is never seen again, never touched again, in
the world. Other peoples separate their dead, and preserve
and continue social distinctions in the grave — the skeletons of
kings and statesmen and generals in temples and pantheons
proper to skeletons of their degree, and the skeletons of the
commonplace and the poor in places suited to their meaner
estate ; but the Parsees hold that all men rank alike in death
— all are humble, all poor, all destitute. In sign of their
poverty they are sent to their grave naked, in sign of their
equality the bones of the rich, the poor, the illustrious and the
obscure are flung into the common well together. At a Parsee
funeral there are no vehicles ; all concerned must walk, both
rich and poor, howsoever great the distance to be traversed
may be. In the wells of the Five Towers of Silence is mingled
the dust of all the Parsee men and women and children who
have died in Bombay and its vicinity during the two centuries
which have elapsed since the Mohammedan conquerors drove
the Parsees out of Persia, and into that region of India. The
earliest of the five towers was built by the Modi family some-
thing more than 200 years ago, and it is now reserved to the
heirs of that house; none but the dead of that blood are
carried thither.

The origin of at least one of the details of a Parsee funeral
is not now known — the presence of the dog. Before a corpse
is borne from the house of mourning it must be uncovered and

A PARSEE FUNERAL. 377

exposed to the gaze of a dog ; a dog must also be led in the
rear of the funeral. Mr. Nusservvanjee Byramjee, Secretary to
the Parsee Punchayet, said that these formalities had once had
a meaning and a reason for their institution, but that they
were survivals whose origin none could now account for.
Custom and tradition continue them in force, antiquity hallows
them. It is thought that in ancient times in Persia the dog
was a sacrecl animal and could guide souls to heaven ; also that
his eye had the power of purifying objects which had been
contaminated by the touch of the dead ; and that hence his
presence with the funeral cortege provides an ever-applicable
remedy in case of need.

The Parsees claim that their method of disposing of the
dead is an effective protection of the living ; that it dissemin-
ates no corruption, no impurities of any sort, no disease-germs ;
that no wrap, no garment which has touched the dead is
allowed to touch the living, afterward; that from the Towers
of Silence nothing proceeds which can carry harm to the out-
side world. These are just claims, I think. As a sanitary
measure, their system seems to be about the equivalent of
cremation, and as sure. We are drifting slowly — but hope-
fully — toward cremation in these days. It could not be ex-
pected that this progress should be swift, but if it be steady
and continuous, even if slow, that will suffice. When cre-
mation becomes the rule we shall cease to shudder at it ; we
should shudder at burial if we allowed ourselves to think what
goes on in the grave.

The dog was an impressive figure to me, representing as he
did a mystery whose key is lost. He was humble, and appar-
ently depressed"; and he let his head droop pensively, and
looked as if he might be trying to call back to his mind what
it was that he had used to symbolize ages ago when he began
his function. There was another impressive thing close at

378

FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

hand, but I was not privileged to see it. That was the sacred
fire — a fire which is supposed to have been burning without
interruption for more than two centuries; and so, living by
the same heat that was imparted to it so long ago.

The Parsees are a remarkable community. There are only
about 60,000 in Bombay, and only about half as many as that
in the rest of India ; but they make up in importance what
they lack in numbers. They are highly educated, energetic,

enterprising, progressive, rich, and
the Jew himself is not more lavish
or catholic in his charities and
benevolences. The Parsees build
and endow hospitals, for both men
and animals ; and they and their
womenkind keep an open purse for
all great and good objects. They
are a political force, and a valued
support to the government. They
have a pure and lofty religion, and
they preserve it in its integrity and
order their lives by it.

We took a final sweep of the
wonderful view of plain and city
and ocean, and so ended our visit to the garden and the
Towers of Silence ; and the last thing I noticed was another
symbol — a voluntary symbo this one; it was a vulture
standing on the sawed-off top of a tall and slender and branch-
less palm in an open space in the ground ; he was perfectly
motionless, and looked like a piece of sculpture on a pillar.
And he had a mortuary look, too, which was in keeping with
the place.

A PARSEE.

CHAPTER XLI.

There is an old-time toast which is golden for its beauty. "When you ascend
the hill of prosperity may you not meet a friend." — Puddhihead Wilson^ s New Calendar.

THE next picture that drifts across the field of my
memory is one which is connected with religious
things. We were taken by friends to see a Jain
temple. It was small, and had many flags or streamers flying
from poles standing above its roof ; and its little battlements
supported a great many small idols or images. Up stairs,
inside, a solitary Jain was praying or reciting aloud in the
middle of the room. Our presence did not interrupt him, nor
even incommode him or modify his fervor. Ten or twelve
feet in front of him Avas the idol, a small figure in a sitting
posture. It had the pinkish look of a wax doll, but lacked the
doll's roundness of limb and approximation to correctness of
form and justness of proportion. Mr. Gandhi explained every-
thing to us. He was delegate to the Chicago Fair Congress of
Religions. It was lucidly done, in masterly English, but in
time it faded from me, and now I have nothing left of that
episode but an impression : a dim idea of a religious belief
clothed in subtle intellectual forms, lofty and clean, barren of
fleshly grossnesses; and with this another dim impression
which connects that intellectual system somehow with that
crude image, that inadequate idol — how, I do not know.
Properly they do not seem to belong together. Apparently
the idol symbolized a person who had become a saint or a god
through accessions of steadily augmenting holiness acquired

through a series of reincarnations and promotions extending

(379)

380 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

over many ages; and was now at last a saint and qualified to
vicariously receive worship and traaisrait it to heaven's chan-
cellery. Was that it ?

And thence we went to Mr. Premchand Roychand's bun-
galow, in Lovelane, BycuUa, where an Indian prince was to
receive a deputation of the Jain community who desired to
congratulate him upon a high honor lately conferred upon
him by his sovereign, Victoria, Empress of India. She had
made him a knight of the order of the Star of India. It would
seem that even the grandest Indian prince is glad to add the
modest title " Sir " to his ancient native grandeurs, and is
willing to do valuable service to win it. He will remit taxes
liberally, and will spend money freely upon the betterment of
the condition of his subjects, if there is a knighthood to be
gotten by it. And he will also do good work and a deal of it
to get a gun added to the salute allowed him by the British
Government. Every year the Empress distributes knight-
hoods and adds guns for public services done by native princes.
The salute of a small prince is three or four guns ; princes of
greater consequence have salutes that run higher and higher,
gun by gun, — oh, clear away up to eleven ; possibly more, but
I did not hear of any above eleven-gun princes. I was told
that when a four-gun prince gets a gun added, he is pretty
troublesome for a while, till the novelty wears off, for he likes
the music, and keeps hunting up pretexts to get himself
saluted. It may be that supremely grand folk, like the I^yzam
of Hyderabad and the Gaikwar of Baroda, have more than
eleven guns, but I don't know.

When we arrived at the bungalow, the large hall on the
ground floor was already about full, and carriages were stiU
flowing into the grounds. The company present made a fine
show, an exhibition of human fireworks, so to speak, in the
matters of costume and comminglings of brilliant color. The

A SIX GUN PRINCE. 381

variety of form noticeable in the display of turbans was
remarkable. "We were told that the explanation of this was,
that this Jain delegation was drawn from many parts of India,
and that each man wore the turban that was in vogue in his
own region. This diversity of turbans made a beautiful effect.
I could have wished to start a rival exhibition there, of
Christian hats and clothes. I would have cleared one side of
the room of its Indian splendors and repacked the space with
Christians drawn from America, England, and the Colonies,
dressed in the hats and habits of now, and of twenty and
forty and fifty years ago. It would have been a hideous
exhibition, a thoroughly devilish spectacle. Then there would
have been the added disadvantage of the white complexion.
It is not an unbearably unpleasant complexion when it keeps
to itself, but when it comes into competition with masses of
brown and black the fact is betrayed that it is endurable only
because we are used to it. Kearly all black and brown skins
are beautiful, but a beautiful white skin is rare. How rare,
one may learn by walking down a street in Paris, New York,
or London on a week-day — particularly an unfashionable
street — and keeping count of the satisfactory complexions
encountered in the course of a mile. Where dark com-
plexions are massed, they make the whites look bleached-
out, unwholesome, and sometimes frankly ghastly. I could
notice this as a boy, down South in the slavery days before the
war. The splendid black satin skin of the South African
Zulus of Durban seemed to me to come very close to perfec-
tion. I can see those Zulus yet — 'ricksha athletes waiting in
front of the hotel for custom ; handsome and intensely black
creatures, moderately clothed in loose summer stuffs whose
snowy whiteness made the black all the blacker by contrast.
Keeping that group in my mind, I can compare those com-
plexions with the white ones which are streaming past this
London window now :

382

FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

A lady. Complexion, new parchment.

Another lady. Complexion, old parch-
ment.

Another. Pink and white, very fine.

Man. Grayish skin, with purple areas.

Man. Unwholesome fish-belly skin.

Girl. Sallow face, sprinkled with
freckles.

Old woman. Face whitey-gray.

Young butcher. Face a general red
flush.

Jaundiced man — mustard yellow.

Elderly lady. Colorless skin, with
two conspicuous moles.

Elderly man — a drinker. Boiled-
cauliflower nose in a flabby face veined
with purple crinklings.

Healthy young gentleman. Fine fresh
complexion.

Sick young man. His face a ghastly
white.

PERFECT COMPLEXIONS. " 383

No end of people Avhose skins are dull and characterless
modifications of the tint which we miscall white. Some of these
faces are pimply ; some exhibit other signs of diseased blood ;
some show scars of a tint out of a harmony with the surround-
ing shades of color. The white man's complexion makes no
concealments. It can't. It seemed to have been designed as
a catch-all for everything that can damage it. Ladies have to
paint it, and powder it, and cosmetic it, and diet it with arsenic,
and enamel it, and be always enticing it, and persuading it,
and pestering it, and fussing at it, to make it beautiful ; and
they do not succeed. But these efforts show what they think
of the natural complexion, as distributed. As distributed it
needs these helps. The complexion which they try to counter-
feit is one which nature restricts to the few — to the very few.
To ninety-nine persons she gives a bad complexion, to the
hundredth a good one. The hundredth can keep it — how
long ? Ten years, perhaps.

The advantage is with the Zulu, I think. He starts with a
beautiful complexion, and it will last him through. And as
for the Indian brown — firm, smooth, blemishless, pleasant and
restful to the eye, afraid of no color, harmonizing with all
colors and adding a grace to them all — I think there is no
sort of chance for the average white complexion against that
rich and perfect tint.

To return to the bungalow. The most gorgeous costumes
present were worn by some children. They seemed to blaze,
so bright were the colors, and so brilliant the jewels strung
over the rich materials. These children were professional
nautch-dancers, and looked like girls, but they were boys.
They got up by ones and twos and fours, and danced and sang
to an accompaniment of weird music. Their posturings and
gesturings were elaborate and graceful, but their voices were
stringently raspy and unpleasant, and there was a good deal
of monotony about the tune.

384 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

By and by there was a burst of shouts and cheers outside
and the prince with his train entered in fine dramatic style.
He was a stately man, he was ideally costumed, and fairly
festooned with ropes of gems ; some of the ropes were of pearls,
some were of uncut great emeralds — emeralds renowned in
Bombay for their quality and value. Their size was marvelous,
and enticing to the eye, those rocks. A boy — a princeling
— was with the prince, and he also was a radiant exhibition.

The ceremonies were not tedious. The prince strode to his
throne with the port and majesty — and the sternness — of a
Julius Caesar coming to receive and receipt for a back-country
kingdom and have it over and get out, and no fooling. There
was a throne for the young prince, too, and the two sat there,
side by side, with their oiRcers grouped at either hand and
most accurately and creditably reproducing the pictures which
one sees in the books — pictures which people in the prince's
line of business have been furnishing ever since Solomon re-
ceived the Queen of Sheba and showed her his things. The
chief of the Jain delegation read his paper of congratulations,
then pushed it into a beautifully engraved silver cylinder, which
was delivered with ceremony into the prince's hands and at
once delivered by him without ceremony into the hands of an
officer. I will copy the address here. It is interesting, as
showing what an Indian prince's subject may have opportunity
to thank him for in these days of modern English rule, as
contrasted with what his ancestor would have giv^en them
opportunity to thank him for a century and a half ago — the
days of freedom unhampered by English interference. A cen-
tury and a half ago an address of thanks could have been put
into small space. It would have thanked the prince —

1. For not slaughtering too many of his people upon mere caprice ;

2. For not stripping them bare by sudden and arbitrary tax levies, and
bringing famine upon them ;

3. For not upon empty pretext destroying the rich and seizing theiJ
property ;

CONGRATULATIONS TO A PRINCE. 385

4. For not killing, blinding, imprisoning, or banishing the relatives of the
royal house to protect the throne from possible plots ;

5. For not betraying the subject secretly, for a bribe, into the hands of
bands of professional Thugs, to be murdered and robbed in the prince's back lot.

Those were rather common princely industries in the old

times, but they and some others of a harsh sort ceased long

ag-o under Eng'lish rule. Better industries have taken their

place, as this Address from the Jain community will show :

"Your Highness, — We the undersigned members of the Jain community
of Bombay have the pleasure to approach your Highness with the expression
of our heartfelt congratulations on the recent conference on your Highness
of the Knighthood of the Most Exalted Order of the Star of India. Ten
years ago we had the pleasure and privilege of welcoming your Highness to
this city under circumstances which have made a memorable epoch in the
history of your State, for had it not been for a generous and reasonable spirit
that your Highness displayed in the negotiations between the Palitana Durbar
and the Jain community, the conciliatory spirit that animated our people
could not have borne fruit. That was the first step in your Highness's ad-
ministration, and it fitly elicited the praise of the Jain community, and of the
Bombay Government. A decade of your Highness's administration, combined
with the abilities, training, and acquirements that your Highness brought to
bear upon it, has justly earned for your Highness the unique and honourable
distinction — the Knighthood of the Most Exalted Order of the Star of India,
which we understand your Highness is the first to enjoy among Chiefs of
your Highness's rank and standing. And we assure your Highness that for
this mark of honour that has been conferred on you by Her Most Gracious
Majesty, the Queen-Empress, we feel no less proud than your Highness.
Establishment of commercial factories, schools, hospitals, etc., by your High-
ness in your State has marked your Highness's career during these ten years,
and we trust that your Highness will be spared to rule over your people with
wisdom and foresight, and foster the many reforms that your Highness has
been pleased to introduce in your State. We again offer your Highness our
warmest felicitations for the honour that has been conferred on you. We
beg to remain your Highness's obedient servants."

Factories, schools, hospitals, reforms. The prince propa-
gates that kind of things in the modern times, and gets knight-
hood and guns for it.

After the address the prince responded with snap and

brevity ; spoke a moment with half a dozen guests in English,

and with an official or two in a native tongue; then the

garlands were distributed as usual, and the function ended.
25

CHAPTEK XLII.

Each person is born to one possession whicli outvalues all bis others — bis last
breath. — Pudd^nhead Wils(m\<i New Calendar.

OWARD midnight, that night, there was another func-

I tion. This was a Hindoo wedding — no, I think it
was a betrothal ceremony. Always before, we had
driven through streets that were multitudinous and tumultuous
with picturesque native life, but now there was nothing of that.
"We seemed to move through a city of the dead. There was
hardly a suggestion of life in those still and vacant streets.
Even the crows were silent. But everywhere on the ground
lay sleeping natives — hundreds and hundreds. They lay
stretched at full length and tightly wrapped in blankets, heads
and all. Their attitude and their rigidity counterfeited death.
The plague was not in Bombay then, but it ig devasting the
city now. The shops are deserted, now, half of the people
have fled, and of the remainder the smitten perish by shoals
every day. No doubt the city looks now in the daytime as it
looked then at night. When we had pierced deep into the na-
tive quarter and were threading its narrow dim lanes, we had
to go carefully, for men were stretched asleep all about and
there was hardly room to drive between them. And every
now and then a swarm of rats would scamper across past the
horses' feet in the vague light — the forbears of the rats that
are carrying the plague from house to house in Bombay now.
The shops were but sheds, little booths open to the street ; and
the goods had been removed, and on the counters families were
sleeping, usually with an oil lamp present. Recurrent dead-
watclies, it looked like. (386j

HINDOO BETROTHAL CEREMONIES.

387

MIDNIGHT IN A BOMBAY STKEET.

But at last we turned a corner and saw a great glare of light
ahead. It was the home of the bride, wrapped in a perfect
conflagration of illuminations, — mainly gas-work designs,
gotten u]) specially for the occasion. Within was abundance of
brilliancy — flames, costumes, colors, decorations, mirrors — it
was another Aladdin show.

The bride was a trim and comely little thing of twelve
years, dressed as we would dress a boy, though more expen-
sively than we should do it, of course. She moved about very
much at her ease, and stopped and talked with the guests and
allowed her wedding jewelry to be examined. It was very fine.
Particularly a rope of great diamonds, a lovely thing to look
at and handle. It had a great emerald hanging to it.

388

FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

The bridegroom was not present. He Avas having betrothal
festivities of his own at his father's house. As I understood it,
he and the bride were to entertain company every night and
nearly all night for a week or more, then get married, if alive.
Both of the children were a little elderly, as brides and grooms
go, in India — tAvelve ; they ought to have been married a year
or two sooner ; still to a stranger twelve
seems quite young enough.

A while after midnight a couple of
celebrated and high-priced nautch-girls ap-
peared in the gorgeous place, and danced
and sang. "With them were
men who played upon strange
instruments which made un-
canny noises of a sort to make
one's flesh creep. One of these
instruments w^as a pipe, and to
its music the girls went through
a performance which represen-
ted snake-chari^ing. It seemed
a doubtful sort of music to
charm anything with, but a
native gentleman assured me
that snakes like it and will come out of their holes and listen
to it with every evidence of refreshment and gratitude. He
said that at an entertainment in his grounds once, the pipe
brought out half a dozen snakes, and the music had to be stopped
before they would be persuaded to go. Nobody wanted their
company, for they were bold, familiar, and dangerous; but
no one would kill them, of course, for it is sinful for a Hindoo
to kill any kind of a creature.

"We withdrew from the festivities at two in the morning.
Another picture, then — but it has lodged itself in my memory

A HIGH PKICED NAUTCH GHtL.

ANOTHER NIGHT SCENE.

389

rather as a stage-scene than as a reality. It is of a porch and
short flight of steps crowded with dark faces and ghostly- white
draperies flooded with the strong glare from the dazzling con-
centration of illuminations ; and midway of the steps one con-
spicuous figure for accent — a turbaned giant, with a name
according to his size : Rao Bahadur Baskirao Balinkanje Pitale,
Vakeel to his Highness the Gaikwar of Baroda. Without him
the picture would not have been complete ; and if his name had
been merely Smith, he wouldn't have answered. Close at hand
on house-fronts on both sides of the narrow street were illum-
inations of a kind commonly employed by the natives — scores
of glass tumblers
(containing tapers)
fastened a few in-
ches apart all over
great latticed
frames, forming
starry constella-
tions which showed
out vividly against
their black back-
grounds. As we
drew away into the distance down the dim lanes the illum-
inations gathered together into a single mass, and glowed out of
the enveloping darkness like 'a sun.

Then again the deep silence, the skurrying rats, the dim
forms stretched everywhere on the ground ; and on either
hand those open booths counterfeiting sepulchres, with coun-
terfeit corpses sleeping motionless in the flicker of the counter-
feit death lamps. And now, a year later, when I read the
cablegrams I seem to be reading of what I myself partly saw
— saw before it happened — in a prophetic dream, as it were.
One cablegram says, " Business in the native town is about

NAUTCH DANCING.

390 FOLLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

suspended. Except the wailing and the tramp of the funerals.
There is l)ut little life or movement. The closed shops exceed
in number those that remain open." Another says that 325,-
000 of the people have fled the city and are carrying the plague
to the country. Three days later comes the news, " The popu-
lation is reduced by halfT The refugees have carried the
disease to Karachi ; " 230 cases, 214 deaths." A day or two
later, " 52 fresh cases, all of which proved fatal."

The plague cg-rries with it a terror which no other disease
can excite ; for of all diseases known to men it is the deadliest
— by far the deadliest. "Fifty-two fresh cases — all fatal."
It is the Black Death alone that slays like that. We can all
imagine, after a fashion, the desolation of a plague-stricken
city, and the stupor of stillness broken at intervals by distant
bursts of wailing, marking the passing of funerals, here and there
and yonder, but I suppose it is not possible for us to realize
to ourselves the nightmare of dread and fear that jwssesses
the living who are present in such a place and cannot get away.
That half million fled from Bombay in a wild panic suggests
to us something of what they were feeling, but perhaps not
even they could realize what the half million were feeling
whom thev left stranded behind to face the stalkincr horror
without chance of escape. Kinglake was in Cairo many years
ago during an epidemic of the Black Death, and he has
imagined the terrors that creep into a man's heart at such a
time and follow him until they themselves breed the fatal sign
in the armpit, and then the delirium with confused images, and
home-dreams, and reeling billiard-tables, and then the sudden
blank of death :

" To tlie contagionist, filled as he is with the dread of final causes, having
no faith in destiny, nor in the fixed will of God, and with none of the devil-
may-care indifference which might stand him instead of creeds — to such one,
every rag that shivers in the breeze of a plague-stricken city has this sort of
sublimity. If by any terrible ordinance he be forced to venture forth, he sees
death dangling from every sleeve ; and, as he creeps forward, he poises his

THE PLAGUE. 391

shuddering limbs between the imminent jacket that is stabbing at his right
elbow and the murderous pelisse that threatens to mow him clean down as it
sweeps along on his left. But most of all he dreads that which most of all he
should love — the touch of a woman's dress; for mothers and wives, hurrying
forth on kindly errands from the bedsides of the dying, go slouching along
through the streets more willfully and less courteously than the men. For a
while it may be that the caution of the poor Levantine may enable him to
avoid contact, but sooner or later, perhaps, the dreaded chance arrives ; that
bundle of linen, with the dark tearful eyes at the top of It, that labors along
with the voluptuous clumsiness of Grisi — she has touched the poor Levantine
with the hem of her sleeve ! From that dread moment his peace is gone ; his
mind for ever hanging upon the fatal touch invites the blow which he fears ;
he watches for the symptoms of plague so carefully, that sooner or later they
come in truth. The parched mouth is a sign — his mouth is parched; the
throbbing brain — his brain does throb ; the rapid pulse — he touches his own
wrist (for he dares not ask counsel of any man lest he be deserted), he touches
his wrist, and feels how his frighted blood goes galloping out of his heart.
There is nothing but the fatal swelling that is wanting to make his sad con-
viction complete ; immediately, he has an odd feel under the arm — no pain,
but a little straining of the skin ; he would to God it were his fancy that were
strong enough to give him that sensation ; this is the worst of all. It now
seems to him that he could be happy and contented with his parched mouth,
and his throbbing brain, and his rapid pulse, if only he could know that there
were no swelling under the left arm ; but dares he try ? — in a moment of
calmness and deliberation he dares not ; but when for a while he has writhed
under the torture of suspense, a sudden strength of will drives him to seek
and know his fate ; he touches the gland, and finds the skin sane and sound
but under the cuticle there lies a small lump like a pistol-bullet, that moves as
he pushes it. Oh ! but is this for all certainty, is this the sentence of death ?
Feel the gland of the other arm. There is not the same lump exactly, yet
something a little like it. Have not some people glands naturally enlarged ?
— would to heaven he were one ! So he does for himself the work of the
plague, and when the Angel of Death thus courted does indeed and in truth
come, he has only to finish that which has been so well begun ; he passes his
fiery hand over the brain of the victim, and lets him rave for a season, but all
chance-wise, of people and things once dear, or of people and things indiffer-
ent. Once more the poor fellow is back at his home in fair Provence, and
sees the sun-dial that stood in his childhood's garden — sees his mother, and
the long-since-forgotten face of that little dear sister — (he sees her, he says,
on a Sunday morning, for all the church bells are ringing); he looks up and
down through the universe, and owns it well piled with bales upon bales of
cotton, and cotton eternal — so much so — that he feels — he knows — he
swears he could make that winning hazard, if the billiard-table would not
slant upwards, and if the cue were a cue worth playing with ; but it is not —
it's a cue that won't move — his own arm won't move — in short, there's the
devil to pay in the brain of the poor Levantine ; and perhaps, the ne.xt night
but one he becomes the " life and the soul" of some squalling jackal family,
who fish him out by the foot from his shallow and sandy grave."

CHAPTEK XLIIL

Hunger is the handmaid of genius. — Pudd^nhead Wilson's New Calendar.

^NE day during our stay in Bombay there was a criminal
trial of a most interesting sort, a terribly realistic
chapter • out of the " Arabian Mghts," a strange mix-
ture of simplicities and pieties and murderous practicalities,
which brought back the forgotten days of Thuggee and made
them live again ; in fact, even made them believable. It was
a case Avhere a young girl had been assassinated for the sake
of her trifling ornaments, things not worth a laborer's day's
wages in America. This thing could have been done in many
other countries, but hardly with the cold business-like deprav-
ity, absence of fear, absence of caution, destitution of the
sense of horror, repentance, remorse, exhibited in this case.
Elsewhere the murderer would have done his crime secretly,
by night, and without witnesses ; his fears would have allowed
him no peace while the dead body was in his neighborhood ;
he would not have rested until he had gotten it safe out of the
way and hidden as effectually as he could hide it. But this
Indian murderer does his deed in the full light of day, cares
nothing for the society of witnesses, is in nd way incom-
moded by the presence of the corpse, takes his own time about
disposing of it, and the whole party are so indifferent, so
phlegmatic, that they take their regular sleep as if nothing
was happening and no halters hanging over them ; and these
five bland people close the episode with a religious service.
The thing reads like a Meadows-Taylor Thug-tale of half a
century ago, as may be seen by the official report of the trial :

(392)

A TRIAL FOR MURDER. 393

"At the Mazagon Police Court yesterday, Superintendent Nolan again
charged Tookaram Suntoo Savat Baya, woman, her daughter Krishni, and
Gopal Vithoo Bhanayker, before Mr. Phiroze lloshang Dastur, Fourth Presi-
dency Magistrate, under sections 302 and 109 of the Code, with having on the
night of the 30th of December last murdered a Hindoo girl named Cassi, aged
12, by strangulation, in the room of a chawl at Jakaria Bunder, on the Sewri-
road, and also with aiding and abetting each other in the commission of the
offense.

"Mr. F. A. Little, Public Prosecutor, conducted the case on behalf of the
Crown, the accused being undefended.

"Mr. Little applied under the provisions of the Criminal Procedure Code
to tender pardon to one of the accused, Krishni, woman, aged 22, on her
undertaking to make a true and full statement of facts under which the
deceased girl Cassi was murdered.

"The Magistrate having granted the Public Prosecutor's application, the
accused Krishni went into the witness-box, and, on being examined by Mr.
Little, made the following confession : — I am a mill-hand employed at the
Jubilee Mill. I recollect the day (Tuesday) on which the body of the deceased
Cassi was found. Previous to that I attended the mill for half a day, and
then returned home at 3 in the afternoon, when I saw live persons in the
house, viz. : the first accused Tookaram, who is my paramour, my mother,
the second accused Baya, the accused Gopal, and two guests named Ramji
Daji and Annaji Gungaram. Tookaram rented the room of the chawl situ-
ated at Jakaria Bunder-road from its owner, Girdharilal Radhakishan, and in
that room I, my paramour, Tookaram, and his younger brother, Yesso
Mahadhoo, live. Since his arrival in Bombay from his native country Yesso
came and lived with us. When I returned from the mill on the afternoon of
that day, I saw the two guests seated on a cot in the veranda, and a few
minutes after the accused Gopal came and took his seat by their side, while I
and my mother were seated inside the room. Tookaram, who had gone out
to fetch some pan and betelnuts, on his return home had brought the two
guests with him. After returning home he gave them pan supari. While
they were eating it my mother came out of the room and inquired of one
of the guests, Ramji, what had happened to his foot, when he replied that he
had tried many remedies, but they had done him no good. My mother then
took some rice in her hand and prophesied that the disease which Ramji was
suffering from would not be cured until he returned to his native country.
In the meantime the deceased Cassi came from the direction of an out-house,
and stood in front on the threshhold of our room with a lota in her hand.
Tookaram then told his two guests to leave the room, and they then went up
the steps towards the quarry. After the guests had gone away, Tookaram
seized the deceased, who had come into the room, and he afterwards put a
waistband around her, and tied her to a post which supports a loft. After
doing this, he pressed the girl's throat, and, having tied her mouth with the
dhotur (now shown in Court), fastened it to the post. Having killed the girl,
Tookaram removed her gold head ornament and a gold putlee, and also took
charge of her lota. Besides these two ornaments Cassi had on her person ear-

391 FOLLOWING THE EQUA.TOR.

studs, a nose-ring, some silver toe-rings, two necklaces, a pair of silver anklets
and bracelets. Tookaram afterwards tried to remove the silver amulets, the
ear-studs, and the nose-ring ; but he failed in his attempt. While he was
doing so, I, my mother, and Gopal were present. After removing the two
gold ornaments, he handed them over to Gopal, who was at the time standing
near me. When he killed Cassi, Tookaram threatened to strangle me also if
I informed any one of this. Gopal and myself were then standing at the
door of our room, and we both were threatened by Tookaram. My mother,
Baya, had seized the legs of the deceased at the time she was killed, and
whilst she was being tied to the post. Cassi then made a noise. Tookaram
and my mother took part in killing the girl. After the murder her body was
wrapped up in a mattress and kept on the loft over the door of our room.
When Cassi was strangled, the door of the room was fastened from the inside
by Tookaram. This deed was committed shortly after my return home from
work in the mill. Tookaram put the body of the deceased in the mattress,
and, after it was left on the loft, he went to have his head shaved by a barber
named Sambhoo Raghoo, who lives only one door away from me. My mother
and myself then remained in the possession of the information. I was slapped
and threatened by my paramour, Tookaram, and that was the only reason
why I did not inform any one at that time. When I told Tookaram that I
would give information of the occurrence, ho slapped nie. The accused Gopal
was asked by Tookaram to go back to his room, and he did so, taking away
with him the two gold ornaments and the lota. Yesso Mahadhoo, a brother-
in-law of Tookaram, came to the house and asked Tookaram why he was
washing, the water-pipe being just opposite. Tookaram replied that he was
washing his dhotur, as a fowl had polluted it. About 6 o'clock of the evening
of that day my mother gave me three pice and asked me to buy a cocoanut,
and I gave the money to Yessoo, who went and fetched a cocoanut and some
betel leaves. When Yessoo and others were in the room I was bathing, and,
after I finished my bath, my mother took the cocoanut and the betel leaves
from Yessoo, and we five went to the sea. The party consisted of Tookaram,
my mother. Yessoo, Tookaram's younger brother, and myself. On reaching
the seashore, my mother made the offering to the sea, and prayed to be par-
doned for what we had done. Before we went to the sea, some one came to
inquire after the girl Cassi. The police and other people came to make these
inquiries both before and after we left the house for the seashore. The police
questioned my mother about the girl, and she replied that Cassi had come to
her door, but had left. The next day the police questioned Tookaram, and
he, too, gave a similar reply. This was said the same night when the search
was made for the girl. After the offering was made to the sea, we partook of
the cocoanut and returned home, when my mother gave me some food ; but
Tookaram did not partake of any food that night. After dinner I and my
mother slept inside the room, and Tookaram slept on a cot near his brother-
in-law, Yessoo Mahadhoo, just outside the door. That was not the usual
place where Tookaram slept. He usually slept inside the room. The body
of the deceased remained on the loft when I went to sleep. The room in
which we slept was locked, and I heard that my paramour, Tookaram, was

THE TESTIMONY. 395

restless outside. About 3 o'clock the following morning Tookaram knocked
at the door, when both myself and my mother opened it. He then told me to
go to tiie steps leading to the quarry, and see if any one was about. Those
steps lead to a stable, through which we go to the quarry at the back of the com-
pound. When I got to the steps I saw no one there. Tookaram asked me if
any one was there, and I replied that I could see no one about He then took
the body of the deceased from the loft, and, having wrapped it up in his saree,
asked me to accompany him to the steps of the quarry, and I did so. The
saree now produced here was the same. Besides the saree, there was also a
cholee on the body. He then carried the body in his arms, and went up the
steps, through the stable, and then to the right hand towards a sahib's bunga-
low, where Tookaram placed the body near a wall. All the time I and my
mother were with him. When the body was taken down, Yessoo was lying
on the cot. After depositing the body under the wall, we all returned home,
and soon after 5 a. m. the police again came and took Tookaram away.
About an hour after they returned and took me and my mother away. We
were questioned about it, when I made a statement. Two hours later I
was taken to the room, and I pointed out this waistband, the dJiotur, tlie mat-
tress, and tlie wooden post to Superintendent Nolan and Inspectors Roberts
and Rashanali, in the presence of my mother and Tookaram. Tookaram
killed the girl Cassi for her ornaments, which he wanted for the girl to whom
he was shortly going to be married. The body was found in the same place
where it was deposited by Tookaram/'

The criminal side of the native has always been picturesque,
always readable. The Thuggee and one or two other particu-
larly outrageous features of it have been suppressed by the
English, but there is enough of it left to keep it darkly inter-
esting. One finds evidence of these survivals in the news-
papers. Macaulay has a light-throwing passage upon this
matter in his great historical sketch of Warren Hastings,
where he is describing some effects which followed the tem-
porary paralysis of Hastings" powerful government brought
about by Sir Philip Francis and his party :

" The natives considered Hastings as a fallen man ; and they acted after
their kind. Some of our readers may have seen, in India, a cloud of crows
pecking a sick vulture to death — no bad type of what liappens in that country
as often as fortune deserts one who has been great and dreaded. In an instant
all the sycophants, who had lately been ready to lie for him, to forge for him,
to pander for him, to poison for him, hasten to purchase the favor of his
victorious enemies by accusing him. An Indian government has only to let
it be understood that it wishes a particular man to be ruined, and in twenty-
four hours it will be furnished with grave charges, supported by depositions
so full and circumstantial that any person unaccustomed to Asiatic mendacity

396 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

would regard them as decisive. It is well if the signature of the destined
victim is not counterfeited at the foot of some illegal compact, and if some
treasonable paper is not slipped into a liiding-place in his house."

That was nearly a century and a quarter ago. An article

in one of the chief journals of India (the Pioneer) shows that

in some respects the native of to-day is just what his ancestor

was then. Here are niceties of so subtle and delicate a sort

that they lift their breed of rascality to a place among the fine

arts, and almost entitle it to respect :

" The records of the Indian courts might certainly be relied upon to prove
that swindlers as a class in the East come very close to, if they do not surpass,
in brilliancy of execution and originality of design the most expert of their
fraternity in Europe and America. India in especial is the home of forgery.
There are some particular districts which are noted as marts for the tinest
specimens of the forger's handiwork. The business is carried on by firms
who possess stores of stamped papers to suit every emergency. They liabitually
lay in a store of fresh stamped papers every year, and some of the older and
more thriving houses can supply documents for the past forty years, bearing
the proper icater-mark and possessing the genuine appearance of age. Other dis-
tricts have earned notoriety for skilled perjury, a pre-eminence that excites a
respectful admiration when one thinks of tlie universal prevalence of the art,
and persons desirous of succeeding in false suits are ready to pay handsomely
to avail themselves of the services of these local experts as witnesses."

Various instances illustrative of the methods of these
swindlers are given. They exhibit deep cunning and total
depravity on the part of the swindler and his pals, and more
obtuseness on the part of the victim than one would expect to
find in a country where suspicion of your neighbor must surely
be one of the earliest things learned. The favorite subject is the
young fool who has just come into a fortune and is trying to
see how poor a use he can put it to. I will quote one example :

"Sometimes anotlier form of confidence trick is adopted, which is invari-
ably successful. Tlie particular pigeon is spotted, and, his acquaintance
having been made, he is encouraged in every form of vice. When the friend-
ship is thoroughly established, the swindler remarks to the young man that
he has a brother who has asked him to lend him Rs. 10,000. The swindler
says he has the money and would lend it ; but, as the borrower is his brother,
he cannot charge interest. So he proposes that he should hand the dupe the
money, and the latter should lend it to the swindler's brother, exacting a
heavy pre-payment of interest which, it is pointed out, they may equally

NO DUPLICATE OF INDIA. 397

enjoy in dissipation. The dupe sees no objection, and on tlie appointed day-
receives Rs.7,000 from the swindler, which he hands over to the confederate.
The latter is profuse in his thanks, and executes a promissory note for
Rs. 10,000, payable to bearer. The swindler allows the scheme to remain
quiescent for a time, and then suggests that, as the money has not been
repaid and as it would be unpleasant to sue his brother, it would be better to
sell the note in the bazaar. The dupe Jiands the note over, for the money he
advanced was not his, and, on being informed that it would be necessary to
have his signature on the back so as to render the security negotiable, he
signs without any hesitation. The swindler passes it on to confederates, and
the latter employ a respectable firm of solicitors to ask the dupe if his signa-
ture is genuine. He admits it at once, and his fate is sealed. A suit is filed
by a confederate against the dupe, two accomplices being made co-defend-
ants. They admit their signatures as indorsers, and the one swears he bought
the note for value from the dupe The latter has no defense, for no court
would believe the apparently idle explanation of the manner in which he
came to endorse the note."

There is only one India ! It is the only country that has
a monopoly of grand and imposing specialties. When another
country has a remarkable thing, it cannot have it all to itself
— some other country has a duplicate. But India — that is
different. Its marvels are its own ; the patents cannot be in-
fringed ; imitations are not possible. And think of the size of
them, the majesty of them, the weird and outlandish character
of the most of them !

There is the Plague, the Black Death : India invented it ;
India is the cradle of that mighty birth.

The Car of Juggernaut was India's invention.

So was the Suttee ; and within the time of men still living
eight hundred widows willingly, and, in fact, rejoicingly,
burned themselves to death on the bodies of their dead hus-
bands in a single year. Eight hundred would do it this year
if the British government would let them.

Famine is India's specialty. Elsewhere famines are incon-
sequential incidents — in India they are devastating cataclysms ;
in one case they annihilate hundreds; in the other, millions.

India has 2,000,000 gods, and worships them all. In religion
all other countries are paupers ; India is the only millionaire.

398 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

With her everything is on a giant scale — even her poverty ;
no other country can show anything to compare with it. And
she has been used to wealth on so vast a scale that she has to
shorten to single words the expressions describing great suras.
She describes 100,000 with one word — 2, lakh; she describes
ten millions with one word — a crore.

In the bowels of the granite mountains she has patiently
carved out dozens of vast temples, and made them glorious
with sculptured colonnades and stately groups of statuary, and
has adorned the eternal walls with noble paintings. She has
built fortresses of such magnitude that the show-strongholds
of the rest of the world are but modest little things by com-
parison ; palaces that are wonders for rarity of materials, deli-
cacy and beauty of workmanship, and for cost ; and one tomb
which men go around the globe to see. It takes eighty nations,
speaking eighty languages, to people her, and they number
three hundred millions.

On top of all this she is the mother and home of that won-
der of wonders — caste — and of that myster}'^ of mysteries,
the Satanic brotherhood of the Thugs.

India had the start of the whole world in the beginning of
things. She had the first civilization ; she had the first accu-
mulation of material wealth ; she was populous with deep
thinkers and subtle intellects ; she had mines, and woods, and
a fruitful soil. It would seem as if she should have kept the
lead, and should be to-day not the meek dependent of an alien
master, but mistress of the world, and delivering law and com-
mand to every tribe and nation in it. But, in truth, there was
never any possibility of such supremacy for her. If there had
been but one India and one language — but there were eighty
of them ! Where there are eighty nations and several hun-
dred governments, fighting and quarreling must be the common
business of life ; unity of purpose and policy are impossible ;

A RARE CHANCE FOR BUSINESS. 399

out of such elements supremacy in the world cannot come.
Even caste itself could have had the defeating effect of a
multiplicity of tongues, no doubt; for it separates a people
into layers, and layers, and still other layers, that have no
community of feeling with each other; and in such a con-
dition of things as that, patriotism can have no healthy
growth.

It was the division of the country into so many States and
nations that made Thuggee possible and prosperous. It is
difficult to realize the situation. But perhaps one may approxi-
mate it by imagining the States of our Union peopled by sep-
arate nations, speaking separate languages, with guards and
custom-houses strung along all frontiers, plenty of interrup-
tions for travelers and traders, interpreters able to handle all
the languages very rare or non-existent, and a few wars always
going on here and there and yonder as a further embarrass-
ment to commerce and excursioning. It would make inter-
communication in a measure ungeneral. India had eighty
languages, and more custom-houses than cats. No clever man
with the instinct of a highway robber could fail to notice what
a chance for business was here offered. India Avas full of clever
men with the highwayman instinct, and so, quite naturally,
the brotherhood of the Thugs came into being to meet the
long-felt want.

How long ago that was 'nobody knows — centuries, it is
supposed. One of the chiefest wonders connected with it was
the success with which it kept its secret. The English trader
did business in India two hundred years and more before he
ever heard of it ; and yet it was assassinating its thousands all
around him every year, the whole time.

CHAPTER XLIV.

The old saw says, " Let a sleeping dog lie." Right. Still, when there is much
at stake it is better to get a newspaper to do it. — Fuddhihead Wilson's New Calendar.

Feom Diaky :

lANUARY. 28. I learned of an official Thug-book the
0 I other day. I was not aware before that there was such
^^ a thing. I am allowed the temporary use of it. We
are making preparations for travel. Mainly the preparations
are purchases of bedding. This is to be used in sleeping berths
in the trains ; in private houses sometimes ; and in nine-tenths
of the hotels. It is not realizable ; and yet it is true. It is a
survival ; an apparently unnecessary thing which in some
strange way has outlived the conditions which once made it
necessary. It comes down from a time when the railway and
the hotel did not exist ; when the occasional white traveler
went horseback or by bullock-cart, and stopped over night in the
small dak-bungalow provided at easy distances by the govern-
ment— a shelter, merely, and nothing more. He had to carry
bedding along, or do without. The dwellings of the English
residents are spacious and comfortable and commodiously fur-
nished, and surely it must be an odd sight to see half a dozen
guests come filing into such a place and dumping blankets and
pillows here and there and everywhere. But custom makes in-
congruous things congruous.

One buys the bedding, with waterproof hold-all for it at al-
most any shop — there is no diiRculty about it.

January 30. What a spectacle the railway station was, at
train-time ! It was a very large station, yet when we arrived

(400)

TRAVELING THRONGS. 403

it seemed as if the whole world was present — half of it inside,
the other half outside, and both halves, bearing mountainous
head-loads of bedding and other freight, trying simultaneously
to pass each other, in opposing floods, in one narrow door.
These opposing floods were patient, gentle, long-suffering na-
tives, with whites scattered among them at rare intervals ; and
wherever a white man's native servant appeared, that native
seemed to have put aside his natural gentleness for the time
and invested himself with the white man's privilege of making
a way for himself by promptly shoving all intervening black
things out of it. In these exhibitions of authority Satan was
scandalous. He was probably a Thug in one of his' former in-
carnations.

Inside the great station, tides upon tides of rainbow-cos-
tumed natives swept along, this way and that, in massed and
bewildering confusion, eager, anxious, belated, distressed ; and
washed up to the long trains and flowed into them with their
packs and bundles, and disappeared, followed at once by the
next wash, the next wave. And here and there, in the midst
of this hurly-burly, and seemingly undisturbed by it, sat great
groups of natives on the bare stone floor, — young, slender
brown women, old, gray wrinkled women, little soft brown
babies, old men, young men, boys ; all poor people, but all the
females among them, both big and little, bejeweled with cheap
and showy nose-rings, toe-rings, leglets, and armlets, these
things constituting all their wealth, no doubt. These silent
crowds sat there with their humble bundles and baskets and
small household gear about them, and patiently waited — for
what ? A train that was to start at some time or other during
the day or night! They hadn't timed themselves well, but
that was no matter — the thing had been so ordered from on
high, therefore why worry ? There was plenty of time, hours

404 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

and hours of it, and the thing that was to happen would hap-
pen — there was no hurrying it.

The natives traveled third class, and at marvelously cheap
rates. They were packed and crammed into cars that held
each about fifty ; and it was said that often a Brahmin of the
highest caste was thus brought into personal touch, and conse-
quent defilement, with persons of the lowest castes — no doubt
a very shocking thing if a body could understand it and prop
erly appreciate it. Yes, a Brahmin who didn't own a rupee
and couldn't borrow one, might have to touch elbows with a
rich hereditary lord of inferior caste, inheritor of an ancient
title a couple of yards long, and he would just have to stand
it ; for if either of the two was allowed to go in the cars
where the sacred white people were, it probably wouldn't be
the august poor Brahmin. There was an immense string of
those third-class cars, for the natives travel by hordes ; and a
weary hard night of it the occupants would have, no doubt.

When we reached our car, Satan and Barney had already
arrived there with their train of porters carrying bedding and
parasols and cigar boxes, and were at work. We named him
Barney for short ; we couldn't use his real name, there wasn't
time.

It was a car that promised comfort ; indeed, luxury. Yet
the cost of it — well, economy could no further go; even in
France ; not even in Italy. It was built of the plainest and
cheapest partially-smoothed boards, with a coating of dull
paint on them, and there was nowhere a thought of decoration.
The floor was bare, but would not long remain so when the
dust should begin to fly. Across one end of the compartment
ran a netting for the accommodation of hand-baggage ; at the
other end was a door which would shut, upon compulsion, but
wouldn't stay shut ; it opened into a narrow little closet which
had a wash-bowl in one end of it, and a place to put a towel.

RAILWAY CAR FURNISHINGS. 405

in case you had one with you — and you would be sure to
have towels, because you buy thera with the bedding, knowing
that the railway doesn't furnish them. On each side of the
car, and running fore and aft, was a broad leather-covered sofa
— to sit on in the day and sleep on at night. Over each sofa
hung, by straps, a wide, flat, leather-covered shelf — to sleep
on. In the daytime you can hitch it up against the wall, out
©f the way — and then you have a big unencumbered and most
comfortable room to spread out in. ]^o car in any country is
quite its equal for comfort (and privacy) I think. For usually
there are but two persons in it ; and even when there are four
there is but little sense of impaired privacy. Our own cars at
home can surpass the railway world in all details but that one :
they have no cosiness ; there are too many people together.

At the foot of each sofa was a side-door, for entrance and
exit.

Along the whole length of the sofa on each side of the car
ran a row of large single-plate windows, of a blue tint — blue
to soften the bitter glare of the sun and protect one's eyes
from torture. These could be let down out of the way when
one wanted the breeze. In the roof were two oil lamps which
gave a light strong enough to read by ; each had a green-cloth
attachment by which it could be covered when the light
should be no longer needed.

While we talked outside with friends, Barney and Satan
placed the hand-baggage, books, fruits, and soda-bottles in the
racks, and the hold-alls and heavy baggage in the closet, hung
the overcoats and sun-helmets and towels on the hooks, hoisted
the two bed-shelves up put of the way, then shouldered their
bedding and retired to the third class.

Now then, you see what a handsome, spacious, light, airy,
homelike place it was, wherein to walk up and down, or sit
and write, or stretch out and read and smoke. A central

406 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

door in the forward end of the compartment opened into a
similar compartment. It was occupied by my wife and
daughter. About nine in the evening, while we halted a
while at a station, Barney and Satan came and undid the
clumsy big hold-alls, and spread the bedding on the sofas in
both compartments — mattresses, sheets, gay coverlets, pillows,
all complete; there are no chambermaids in India — appar-
ently it was an office that was never heard of. Then they
closed the communicating door, nimbly tidied up our place,
put the night-clothing on the beds and the slippers under
them, then returned to their own quarters.

January 31. It was novel and pleasant, and I stayed
awake as long as I could, to enjoy it, and to read about those
strange people the Thugs. In my sleep they remained with
me, and tried to strangle me. The leader of the gang was
that giant Hindoo who was such a picture in the strong light
when we were leaving those Hindoo betrothal festivities at
two o'clock in the morning — Rao Bahadur Baskirao Balink-
anje Pitale, Yakeel to the Gaikwar of Baroda. It w^as he
that brought me the invitation from his master to go to
Baroda and lecture to that prince — and now he was misbe-
having in my dreams. But all things can happen in dreams.
It is indeed as the Sweet Singer of Michigan says — irrel-
evantly, of course, for the one and unfailing great quality
which distinguishes her poetry from Shakespeare's and makes
it precious to us is its stern and simple irrelevancy :

My heart was gay and happy,

This was ever in my mind,
There is better times a coming,

And I hope some day to find
Myself capable of composing.

It was my heart's delight
To compose on a sentimental subject

If it came in my mind just right.*

*"The Sentimental Song Book," p. 49; theme, " The Author's Early Life," 19tl»
stanza.

AT BARODA. 40T

Baroda. Arrived at 7 this morning. The dawn was just
beginning to show. It was forlorn to have to turn out in a
strange place at such a time, and the blinking lights in the
station made it seem night still. But the gentlemen who had
come to receive us were there with their servants, and they
make quick work ; there was no lost time. We were soon out-
side and moving swiftly through the soft gray light, and
presently were comfortably housed — with more servants to
help than we were used to, and with rather embarassingly im-
portant officials to direct them. But it was custom; they
spoke Ballarat English, their bearing was charming and hospit-
able, and so all went wxU.

Breakfast was a satisfaction. Across the lawns was visible
in the distance through the open window an Indian well, with
two oxen tramping leisurely up and down long inclines, draw-
ing water ; and out of the stillness came the suffering screech
of the machinery — not quite musical, and yet soothingly
melancholy and dreamy and reposeful — a wail of lost spirits,
one might imagine. And commemorative and reminiscent,
perhaps ; for of course the Thugs used to throw people down
that well when they were done with them.

After breakfast the day began, a sufficiently busy one.
We were driven by winding roads through a vast park, with
noble forests of great trees, and with tangles and jungles of
lovely growths of a humbler' sort ; and at one place three large
gray apes came out and pranced across the road — a good deal
of a surprise and an unpleasant one, for such creatures belong
in the menagerie, and they look artificial and out of place in
a wilderness.

We came to the city, by and by, and drove all through it.
Intensely Indian, it was, and crumbly, and mouldering, and
imraemorially old, to all appearance. And the houses — oh,
indescribably quaint and curious they were, with their fronts

408 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

an elaborate lace- work of intricate and beautiful wood-carving,
and now and then further adorned with rude pictures of
elephants and princes and gods done in shouting colors ; and
all the ground floors along these cramped and narrow lanes
occupied as shops — shops unbelievably small and impossibly
packed with merchantable rubbish, and with nine-tenths-naked
natives squatting at their work of hammering, pounding, braz-
ing, soldering, sewing, designing, cooking, measuring out
grain, grinding it, repairing idols — and then the swarm of
ragged and noisy humanity under the horses' feet and every-
where, and the pervading reek and fume and smell ! It was
all wonderful and delightful.

Imagine a file of elephants marching through such a crevice
of a street and scraping the paint off both sides of it with their
hides. How big they must look, and how little they must
make the houses look ; and when the elephants are in their
glittering court costume, what a contrast they must make with
the humble and sordid surroundings. And when a mad
elephant goes raging through, belting right and left with his
trunk, how do these swarms of people get out of the way ?
I suppose it is a thing which happens now and then in the mad
season (for elephants have a mad season).

I wonder how old the town is. There are patches of build-
ing— massive structures, monuments, apparently — that are so
battered and worn, and seemingly so tired and so burdened
with the weight of age, and so dulled and stupefied with try-
ing to remember things they forgot before history began, that
they give one the feeling that they must have been a part of
orig-inal Creation. This is indeed one of the oldest of the
princedoms of India, and has always been celebrated for its
barbaric pomps and splendors, and for the wealth of its
princes.

A MAD SEASON.

CHAPTER XLY.

It takes your enemy and your friend, working together, to hurt you to the
heart ; the one to slander you and the other to get the news to you. — PudtVnhead
WUsoH^s New Calendar.

OUT of the town again ; a long drive through open coun-
try, by winding roads among secluded villages nest-
ling in the inviting shade of tropic vegetation, a Sab-
bath stillness everywhere, sometimes
a pervading sense of solitude, but
always barefoot natives gliding by
like spirits, without
sound of footfall, and
others in the distance
dissolving away and
vanishing like the
creatures of dreams.
Now and then a
string of stately
camels passed by —
always interesting things to look
at — and they were velvet-shod by
nature, and made no noise. Indeed,
there were no noises of any sort in
this paradise. Yes, once there was one, for a moment : a file of
native convicts passed along in charge of an oificer, and we

(410)

ROADSIDE VIEWS.

RIDING AN ELEPHANT. 411

caught the soft clink of their chains. In a retired spot, resting
himself under a tree, was a holy person — a naked black
fakeer, thin and skinny, and whitey-gray all over with ashes.

By and by to the elephant stables, and I took a ride ; but
it was by request — I did not ask for it, and didn't want it ;
but I took it, because otherwise they would have thought I
was afraid, which I was. The elephant kneels down, by com-
mand — one end of him at a time — and you climb the ladder
and get into the howdah, and then he gets up, one end at a
time, just as a ship gets up over a wave ; and after that, as he
strides monstrously about, his motion is much like a ship's
motion. The mahout bores into the back of his head with a
great iron prod and you wonder at his temerity and at the
elephant's patience, and you think that perhaps the patience
will not last ; but it does, and nothing happens. The mahout
talks to the elephant in a lo^ voice all the time, and the ele-
phant seems to understand it all and to be pleased with it ; and
he obeys every order in the most contented and docile way.
Among these twenty-five elephants were two which were
larger than any I had ever seen before, and if I had thought I
could learn to not be afraid, I would have taken one of them
while the police were not looking.

In the howdah-house there were many howdahs that were
made of silver, one of gold, and one of old ivory, and equipped
with cushions and canopies ,of rich and costly stuffs. The
wardrobe of the elephants was there, too ; vast velvet covers
stiff and heavy with gold embroidery ; and bells of silver and
gold ; and ropes of these metals for fastening the things on —
harness, so to speak ; and monster hoops of massive gold for
the elephant to wear on his ankles when he is out in procession
on business of state.

But we did not see the treasury of crown jewels, and that
was a disappointment, for in mass and richness it ranks only

412 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

second in India. By mistake we we taken to see the new pal-
ace instead, and we used up the last remnant of our spare time
there. It was a pity, too ; for the new palace is mixed modern
American-European, and has not a merit except costliness. It
is wholly foreign to India, and impudent and out of place.
The architect has escaped. This comes of overdoing the sup-
pression of the Thugs ; they had their merits. The old palace
is oriental and charming, and in consonance with the country.
The old palace would still be great if there were nothing of it
but the spacious and lofty hall where the durbars are held. It
is not a good place to lecture in, on account of the echoes, but
it is a good place to hold durbars in and regulate the affairs of
a kino-dom, and that is what it is for. If I had it I would have
a durbar every day, instead of once or twice a year.

The prince is an educated gentleman. His culture is Euro-
pean. He has been in Europe five times. People say that
this is costly amusement for him, since in crossing the sea he
must sometimes be obliged to drink water from vessels that
are more or less public, and thus damage his caste. To get it
purified again he must make pilgrimage to some renowned
Hindoo temples and contribute a fortune or two to them. His
people are like the other Hindoos, profoundly religious ; and
they could not be content with a master who was impure.

"We failed to see the jewels, but we saw the gold cannon and
the silver one — they seemed to be six-pounders. They were
not designed for business, but for salutes upon rare and partic-
ularly important state occasions. An ancestor of the present
Gaikwar had the silver one made, and a subsequent ancestor
had the gold one made, in order to outdo him.

This sort of artillery is in keeping with the traditions of
Baroda, which was of old famous for style and show. It used
to entertain visiting rajahs and viceroys with tiger-fights, ele-

A REMARKABLE DOG. 413

phant-fights, illuminations, and elephant-processions of the
most glittering and gorgeous character.

It makes the circus a pale, poor thing.

In the train, during a part of the return journey from
Baroda, we had the company of a gentleman who had with
him a remarkable looking dog. I had not seen one of its kind
before, as far as I could remember ; though of course I might
have seen one and not noticed it, for I am not acquainted with
dogs, but only with cats. This dog's coat was smooth and
shiny and black, and I think it had tan trimmings around the
edges of the dog, and perhaps underneath. It
was a long, low dog, with very short, strange
leo^s — leo^s that ^ .-

curved inboard,
something like
p arentheses
turned the*^
wrong way (.

T 1 J •, A PKIZE WINNER.

Indeed, it was

made on the plan of a bench for length and lowness. It
seemed to be satisfied, but I thought the plan poor, and struct-
urally weak, on account of the distance between the forward
supports and those abaft. With age the dog's back was likely
to sag ; and it seemed to me that it would have been a stronger
and more practicable dog if ' it had had some more legs. It
had not begun to sag yet, but the shape of the legs showed
that the undue weight imposed upon them was beginning to
tell. It had a long nose, and floppy ears that hung down, and
a resigned expression of countenance. I did not like to ask
what kind of a dog it was, or how it came to be deformed, for
it was plain that the gentleman was very fond of it, and natu-
rally he could be sensitive about it. From delicacy I thought
it best not to seem to notice it too much. No doubt a man

414 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

with a dog like that feels just as a person does who has a child
that is out of true. The gentleman was not merely fond of
the dog, he was also proud of it — just the same again, as a
mother feels about her child Avhen it is an idiot. I could see that
he was proud of it, notwithstanding it was such a long dog and
looked so resigned and pious. It had been all over the world
with him, and had been pilgriming like that for years and
years. It had traveled 50,000 miles by sea and rail, and had
ridden in front of him on his horse 8,000. It had a silver
medal from the Geographical Society of Great Britain for its
travels, and I saw it. It had won prizes in dog shows, both in
India and in England — I saw them. He said its pedigree was
on record in the Kennel Club, and that it was a well-known
dog. He said a great many people in London could recognize
it the moment they saw it. I did not say anything, but I did
not think it anything strange ; I should know that dog again,
myself, yet I am not careful about noticing dogs. He said
that when he walked along in London, people often stopped
and looked at the dog. Of course I did not say- anything, for
I did not want to hurt his feelings, but I could have explained
to him that if you take a great long low dog like that and
waddle it along the street anywhere in the world and not
charge anything, people will stop and look. He was gratified
because the dog took prizes. But that was nothing ; if I were
built like that I could take prizes myself. I wished I knew
what kind of a dog it was, and what it w^as for, but I could not
very well ask, for that would show that I did not know. Not
that I want a dog like that, but only to know the secret of its
birth.

I think he was going to hunt elephants with it, because I
know, from remarks dropped by him, that he has hunted large
game in India and Africa, and likes it. But I think that if he
tries to hunt elephants with it, he is going to be disappointed.

AUGUSTIN DALY'S INVITATION. 415

I do not believe that it is suited for elephants. It lacks energy,
it lacks force of character, it lacks bitterness. These things all
show- in the meekness and resignation of its expression. It
would not attack an elephant, I am sure of it. It might not
run if it saw one coming, but it looked to me like a dog that
would sit down and praj.

I wish he had told me what breed it was, if there are
others ; but I shall know the dog next time, and then if I can
bring myself to it I will put delicacy aside and ask. If I seem
strangely interested in dogs, I have a reason for it ; for a dog
saved me from an embarrassing position once, and that has
made me grateful to these animals ; and if by study I could
learn to tell some of the kinds from the others, I should be
greatly pleased. I only know one kind apart, yet, and that is
the kind that saved me that time. I always know that kind
when I meet it, and if it is hungry or lost I take care of it.
The matter happened in this way :

It was years and years ago. I had received a note from
Mr. Augustin Daly of the Fifth Avenue Theatre, asking me to
call the next time I should be in New York. I was writing
plays, in those days, and he was admiring them and trying to
get me a chance to get them played in Siberia. I took the first
train — the early one — the one that leaves Hartford at 8.29 in
the morning. At New Haven I bought a paper, and found it
filled with glaring display-liries about a " bench-show " there.
I had often heard of bench-shows, but had never felt any inter-
est in them, because I supposed they were lectures that were
not well attended. It turned out, now, that it was not that,
but a dog-show. There was a double-leaded column about the
king-feature of this one, which was called a Saint Bernard, and
was worth $10,000, and was known to be the largest and finest
of his species in the world. I read all this with interest,
because out of my school-boy readings I dimly remembered

416 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

how the priests and pilgrims of St. Bernard used to go out in
the storms and dig these dogs out of the snowdrifts when lost
and exhausted, and give them brandy and save their lives, and
drag them to the monastery and restore them with gruel.

Also, there was a picture of this prize-dog in the paper, a
noble great creature with a benignant countenance, standing by
a table. He was placed in that way so that one could get
a right idea of his great dimensions. You could see that he
was just a shade higher than the table — indeed, a huge fellow
for a dog. Then there was a description which went into the
details. It gave his enormous weight — 150^ pounds, and his
length — 4 feet 2 inches, from stem to stern-post; and his
height — 3 feet 1 inch, to the top of his back. The pictures
and the figures so impressed me, that I could see the beautiful
colossus before me, and I kept on thinking about him for the
next two hours ; then I reached New York, and he dropped
out of my mind.

In the swirl and tumult of the hotel lobby I ran across Mr.
Daly's comedian, the late James Lewis, of beloved memory,
and I casually mentioned that I was going to call upon Mr.
Daly in the evening at 8. He looked surprised, and said he
reckoned not. For answer I handed him Mr. Daly's note.
Its substance was : " Come to my private den, over the theater,
where we cannot be interrupted. And come by the back way,
not the front. No. 642 Sixth Avenue is a cigar shop; pass
through it and you are in a paved court, with high buildings
all around ; enter the second door on the left, and come up
stairs."

" Is this all ? "

" Yes," I said.

" Well, you'll never get in."

"Why?"

*' Because you won't. Or if you do you can draw on me

yOvM-H Gorralay.)
"WELL, SOR. WHAT WILL YOU HAVE?'

MR. DALY'S DOORKEEPER. 41f^

for a hundred dollars ; for you will be the first man that has
accomplished it in twenty-five years. I can't think what Mr.
Daly can have been absorbed in. lie has forgotten a most
important detail, and he will feel humiliated in the morning
when he finds that you tried to get in and couldn't."

" Why, what* is the trouble ? "

"I'll tell you. You see — "

At that point we were swept apart by the crowd, somebody
detained me with a moment's talk, and we did not get together
again. But it did not matter; I believed he was joking, any-
way.

At eight in the evening I passed through the cigar shop and
finto the court and knocked at the second door.

" Come in ! "

I entered. It was a small room, carpetless, dusty, with a
naked deal table, and two cheap wooden chairs for furniture,
A giant Irishman was standing there, with shirt collar and vest
unbuttoned, and no coat on. I put my hat on the table, and
was about to say something, when the Irishman took the
innings himself. And not with marked courtesy of tone :

" Well, sor, what will you have ? "

I was a little disconcerted, and my easy confidence suffered
a shrinkage. The man stood as motionless as Gibraltar, and
kept his unblinking eye upon me. It was very embarrassing,
very humiliating. I stammered at a false start or two; then —

" I have just run down from — "

"Av ye plaze, ye'll not smoke here, ye understand."

I laid my cigar on the window-ledge ; chased my flighty
thoughts a moment, then said in a placating manner : —

"I — I have come to see Mr. Daly."

" Oh, ye haA)e, have ye ? "

"Yes."

420

FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

" "Well, ye'U not see him."
" But he asked me to come."
" Oh, he did, did he ? "
" Yes, he sent me this note, and — "
" Lemme see it."

For a moment I fancied there would be a change in the
atmosphere, now ; but this idea was premature. The big man

was examining the note
searchingly under the gas-
jet. A glance showed me
that he had it upside down
— disheartening evidence
that he could not read.

" Is ut his own hand-
write ? "

" Yes — he wrote it him-
self."

"He did, did he?"
" Yes."

"H'm. Well, then, why
ud he write it like that? "
" How do you mean ? "
" I mane, why wudn't he put his name to ut ? "
" His name is to it. Thafs not it — 3^ou are looking at ony
name."

1 thought that that was a home shot, but he did not betray
that he had been hit. He said :

" It's not an aisy one to spell ; how do you pronounce ut ? "
" Mark Twain."

"Hm. H'm. Mike Train. H'm. I don't remember ut.
"What is it ye want to see him about ? "

" It isn't I that want to see him, he wants to see m^."
" Oh, be does, does he ? "

"he had it upside down.

IN THE SHOW BUSINESS; 421

« Yes."

" What does he want to see ye about ?"

" I don't know."

" Ye don't know ! And ye confess it, becod ! Well, I can
tell ye wan thing — ye'll not see him. Are ye in the business ? "

" What business ? "

" The show business."
. A fatal question. I recognized that I was defeated. If I
answered no, he would cut the matter short and wave me to
the door without the grace of a word — I saw it in his uncom-
promising eye ; if I said I was a lecturer, he would despise me,
and dismiss me with opprobrious words ; if I said I was a
dramatist, he would throw me out of the window. I savy that
my case was hopeless, so I chose the course which seemed
least humiliating: I would pocket my shame and glide out
without answering. The silence was growing lengthy.

" I'll ask ye again. Are ye in the show business yerself ? "

"Yes!"

I said it with splendid confidence ; for in that moment the
very twin of that grand New Haven dog loafed into the room,
and I saw that Irishman's q^q light eloquently with pride and
affection.

" Ye are ? And what is it ?"

"I've got a bench-show in New Haven."

The weather did change then.

" You don't say, sir ! And that's your show, sir ! Oh, it's
a grand show, it's a wonderful show, sir, and a proud man I
am to see your honor this day. And ye'll be an expert, -sir,
and ye'll know all about dogs — more than ever they know
theirselves, I'll take me oath to ut."

I said, with modesty —

" I believe I have some reputation that way. In fact, my
business requires it."

422 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

" Ye have some reputation, your honor ! Bedad I believe
you ! There's not a jintleraan in the worrld that can lay over
ye in the judgmint of a dog, sir. Now I'll vinture that your
honor'll know that dog's dimensions there better than he knows
them his own self, and just by the casting of your educated eye
upon him. Would you mind giving a guess, if ye'll be so good ? "

I knew that upon my answer would depend my fate. If I
made this dog bigger than the prize-dog, it would be bad
diplomacy, and suspicious ; if I fell too far short of the prize-
dog, that would be equally damaging. The dog was standing
by the table, and I believed I knew the difference between him
and the one whose picture I had seen in the newspaper to a
shade. I «poke promptly up and said —

" It's no trouble to guess this noble creature's figures :
height, three feet ; length, four feet and three-quarters of an
inch ; weight, a hundred and forty-eight and a quarter."

The man snatched his hat from its peg and danced on it
with joy, shouting : —

" Ye've hardly missed it the hair's breadth, hardly the shade
of a shade, your honor ! Oh, it's the miraculous eye ye'v^e got,
for the judgmint of a dog ! "

And still pouring out his admiration of my capacities, he
snatched off his vest and scoured off one of the wooden chairs
with it, and scrubbed it and polished it, and said —

" There, sit down, your honor, I'm ashamed of meself that I
forgot ye were standing all this time ; and do put on your hat,
ye mustn't take cold, it's a drafty place ; and here is your
cigar, sir, a getting cold, I'll give ye a light. There. The
place is all yours, sir, and if ye'll just put your feet on the
table and make yourself at home, I'll stir around and get a
candle and light ye up the ould crazy stairs and see that ye
don't come to anny harm, for be this time Mr. Daly'll be that
impatient to see your honor that he'll be taking the roof off."

'YE DON'T SAY, SIR!'

THE DOG WON.

425

He conducted me cautiously and tenderly up the stairs,
lighting the way and protecting me with friendly warnings,
then pushed the door open and bowed me in and went his way,
mumbling hearty things about my wonder-
ful eye for points of a dog. Mr. Daly was
writing and had his back
to me. He glanced over
his shoulder presently,
then jumped up and said -

" Oh, dear me, I for-
got all about giving in-
structions. I was just
writing you to beg a
thousand pardons. But
how is it you are here ?
How did you get by that
Irishman ? You are the
first man that's done it
in five and twenty years.
You didn't bribe him, 1
know that ; there's not
money enough in New
York to do it. And you didn't persuade him ; he is all ice and
iron: there isn't a soft place nor a warm one in him any-
where. What is your secret I Look here ; you owe me a hun-
dred dollars for unintentionally giving you a chance to perform
a miracle — for it is a miracle that you've done."

" That is all right," I said, " collect it of Jimmy Lewis."

That good dog not only did me that good turn in the time
of my need, but he won for me the envious reputation among
all the theatrical people from the Atlantic to the Pacific of
being the only man in history who had ever run the blockade
of Augustin Daly's back door.

HE LIGHTED ME UP THE STAIRS.

CHAPTER XLYI.

If the desire to kill and the opportuuity to kill came always together, who
would escape hanging. — PudcVnhead Wilson'' s New Calendar.

ON the Train. Fifty years ago, when I was a boy in the
then remote and sparsely peopled Mississippi valley,
vague tales and rumors of a mysterious body of pro-
fessional murderers came wandering in from a country which
was constructively as far from us as the constellations blinking
in space — India; vague tales and rumors of a sect called
Thugs, who w^aylaid travelers in lonely places and killed them
for the contentment of a god whom they worshiped ; tales
which everybody liked to listen to and nobody believed —
except with reservations. It was considered that the stories
had gathered bulk on their travels. The matter died down
and a lull followed. Then Eugene Sue's " Wandering Jew "
appeared, and made great talk for a while. One character in
it was a chief of Thugs — " Feringhea " — a mysterious and
terrible Indian who was as slippery and sly as a serpent, and
as deadly ; and he stirred up the Thug interest once more. But
it did not last. It presently died again — this time to stay dead.
At first glance it seems strange that this should have
happened ; but really it was not strange — on the contrary, it
was natural ; I mean on our side of the water. For the source
whence the Thug tales mainly came was a Government Report,
and without doubt was not republished in America ; it was
probably never even seen there. Government Reports have
no general circulation. They are distributed to the few, and
are not always read by those few. I heard of this Report for

(426)

THUGGEE. 427

the first time a day or two ago, and borrowed it. It is full of

fascinations ; and it turns those dim, dark fairy tales of my

boyhood days into realities.

The Report was made in 1839 by Major Sleeraan, of the

Indian Service, and was printed in Calcutta in 1840. It is a

clumsy, great, fat, poor sample of the printer's art, but good

enough for a government printing-office in that old day and in

that remote region, perhaps. To Major Sleeman was given

the general superintendence of the giant task of ridding India

of Thuggee, and he and his seventeen assistants accomplished

it. It was the Augean Stables over again. Captain Vallancey,

writing in a Madras journal in those old times, makes this

remark :

" The day that sees this far-spread evil eradicated from India and known
only in name, will greatly tend to immortalize British rule in the East."

He did not overestimate the magnitude and difficulty of
the work, nor the immensity of the credit which would justly
be due to British rule in case it was accomplished.

Thuo^aee became known to the British authorities in India
about 1810, but its wide prevalence was not suspected ; it was
not regarded as a serious matter, and no systematic measures
were taken for its suppression until about 1830. About that
time Major Sleeman captured Eugene Sue's Thug-chief,
" Feringhea," and got him to turn King's evidence. The
revelations were so stupefying that Sleeman was not able to
believe them. Sleeman thought he knew every criminal within
his jurisdiction, and that the worst of them were merely
thieves ; but Feringhea told him that he was in reality living
in the midst of a swarm of professional murderers ; that they
had been all about him for many years, and that they buried
their dead close by. These seemed insane tales ; but Feringhea
said come and see — and he took him to a grave and dug up a
hundred bodies, and told him all the circumstances of the

428 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

killings, and named the Thugs who had done the work. It
was a staggering business. Sleenian captured some of these
Thugs and proceeded to examine them separately, and with
proper precautions against collusion ; for he would not believe
any Indian's unsupported word. The evidence gathered proved
the truth of what Feringhea had said, and also revealed the
fact that gangs of Thugs were plying their trade all over
India. The astonished government now took hold of Thuggee,
and for ten years made systematic and relentless war upon it,
and finally destroyed it. Gang after gang was captured, tried,
and punished. The Thugs were harried and hunted from one
end of India to the other. The government got all their
secrets out of them ; and also got the names of the members
of the bands, and recorded them in a book, together with
their birthplaces and places of residence.

The Thugs were worshipers of Bhowanee ; and to this god
they sacrificed anybody that came handy ; but they kept the
dead man's things themselves, for the god cared for nothing
but the corpse. Men were initiated into the sect with solemn
ceremonies. Then they were taught how to strangle a person
with the sacred choke-cloth, but were not allowed to perform
officially with it until after long practice. No half-educated
strangler could choke a man to death quickly enough to keep
him from uttering a sound — a mufiled scream, gurgle, gasp,
moan, or something of the sort ; but the expert's work was
instantaneous : the cloth was whipped around the victim's neck,
there was a sudden twist, and the head fell silently forward,
the eyes starting from the sockets ; and all was over. The
Thug carefully guarded against resistance. It was usual to
to get the victims to sit down, for that was the handiest
position for business.

If the Thug had plai^ned India itself it could not have been
more conveniently arranged for the needs of his occupation.

THUG ORGANIZATION. 429

There were no public conveyances. There were no conveyances
for hire. The traveler went on foot or in a bullock cart or on a
horse which he bought for the purpose. As soon as he was out
of his own little State or principality he was among strangers ;
nobody knew him, nobody took note of him, and from that time
his movements could no longer be traced. He did not stop in
towns or villages, but camped outside of them and sent his ser-
vants in to buy provisions. There were no habitations between
villages. Whenever he was between villages he was an easy prey,
particularly as he usually traveled by night, to avoid the heat.
He was always being overtaken by strangers who offered him
the protection of their company, or asked for the protection of
his — and these strangers were often Thugs, as he presently
found out to his cost. The landholders, the native police, the
petty princes, the village officials, the customs officers were in
many cases protectors and harborers of the Thugs, and
betrayed travelers to them for a share of the spoil. At first
this condition of things made it next to impossible for the
government to catch the marauders ; they were spirited away
by these watchful friends. All through a vast continent, thus
infested, helpless people of every caste and kind moved along
the paths and trails in couples and groups silently by night,
carrying the commerce of the country — treasure, jewels,
money, and petty batches of silks, spices, and all manner of
wares. It was a paradise for the Thug.

When the autumn opened, the Thugs began to gather to-
gether by pre-concert. Other people had to have interpreters
at every turn, but not the Thugs ; they could talk together,
no .matter how far apart they were born, for they had a
language of their own, and they had secret signs by which
they knew each other for Thugs ; and they were always friends.
Even their diversities of religion and caste were sunk in
devotion to their calling, and the Moslem and the high-caste

430 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

and low-caste Hindoo were staunch and affectionate brothers
in Thuggery.

When a gang had been assembled, they had religious
worship, and waited for an omen. They had definite notions
about the omens. The cries of certain animals were good
omens, the cries of certain other creatures were bad omens. A
bad omen would stop proceedings and send the men liome.

The sword and the strangling-cloth were sacred emblems.
The Thugs worshiped the sword at home before going out to
the assembling-place ; the strangling-cloth was worshiped at
the place of assembly. The chiefs of most of the bands per-
formed the religious ceremonies themselves ; but the Kaets
delegated them to certain official stranglers (Chaurs). The
rites of the Kaets were so holy that no one but the Chaur was
allowed to touch the vessels and other things used in them.

Thug methods exhibit a curious mixture of caution and the
absence of it ; cold business calculation and sudden, unreflect-
ing impulse ; but there were two details which were constant,
and not subject to caprice : patient persistence in following up
the prey, and pitilessness when the time came to act.

Caution was exhibited in the strength of the bands. They
never felt comfortable and confident unless their strength ex-
ceeded that of any party of travelers they were likely to
meet by four or fivefold. Yet it was never their purpose to
attack openly, but only when the victims were off their guard.
When they got hold of a party of travelers they often moved
along in their company several days, using all manner of arts
to win their friendship and get their confidence. At last,
when this was accomplished to their satisfaction, the real busi-
ness began. A few Thugs were privately detached and sent for-
ward in the dark to select a good killing-place and dig the graves.
When the rest reached tlje spot a halt was called, for a rest or
a smoke. The travelers were invited to sit. By signs, the chief

MODE OF EXECUTION. 431

appointed certain Thugs to sit down in front of the travelers as
if to wait upon them, others to sit down beside them and
engage them in conversation, and certain expert stranglers to
stand behind the travelers and be ready when the signal Avas
given. The signal was usually some commonplace remark,
like " Bring the tobacco." Sometimes a considerable wait
ensued after all the actors Avere in their places — the chief was
biding his time, in order to make everything sure. Meantime,
the talk droned on, dim figures moved about in the dull light,
peace and tranquility reigned, the travelers resigned themselves
to the pleasant reposefulness and comfort of the situation, un-
conscious of the death-angels standing motionless at their
backs. The time was ripe, now, and the signal came : " Bring
the tobacco." There was a mute swift movement, all in the
same instant the men at each victim's sides seized his hands,
the man in front seized his feet, and pulled, the man at his
back whipped the cloth around his neck and gave it a twist —
the head sunk forward, the tragedy was over. The bodies
were stripped and covered up in the graves, the s])oil packed
for transportation, then the Thugs gave i)ious thanks to
Bhowanee, and departed on further holy service.

The Report shows that the travelers moved in exceedingly
small groups — twos, threes, fours, as a rule ; a party Avith a
dozen in it Avas rare. The Thugs themselves seem to have been
the only people Avho moved in force. They Avent about in
gangs of 10, 15, 25, 40, 60, 100, 150, 200, 250, and one gang of
310 is mentioned. Considering their numbers, their catch Avas
not extraordinary — particularly Avhen you consider that they
were not in the least fastidious, but took anybody they could
get, whether rich or poor, and sometimes even killed children.
KoAv and then they killed Avomen, but it was considered
sinful to do it, and unlucky. The " season " was six or eight
months long. One season the half dozen Bundelkand and

432 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

Gvvalior gangs aggregated 712 men, and they murdered 210
people. One season the Malvva and Kandeish gangs aggre-
gated 702 men, and they murdered 232. One season the Kan-
deish and Berar gangs aggregated 963 men, and they murdered
385 people.

Here is the tally-sheet of a gang of sixty Thugs for a whole
season — gang under two noted chiefs, " Chotee and Sheik Kun-
goo from Gwalior " :

" Left Poora, ia- Jhansee, and on arrival at Sarora murdered a traveler.

" On nearly reaching Bhopal, met 3 Brahmins, and murdered them.

"Cross the Nerbudda ; at a village called Hutteea, murdered a Hindoo.

" Went through Aurungabad to Walagow; there met a Havildar of the
barber caste and 5 sepoys (native soldiers) ; in the evening came to Jokur, and
in the morning killed them near the place where the treasure-bearers were
killed the year before.

" Between Jokur and Dholeea met a sepoy of the shepherd caste ; killed
him in the jungle.

" Passed through Dholeea and lodged in a village ; two miles beyond, on
the road to Indore, met a Byragee (beggar — holy mendicant); murdered him
at the Thapa.

"In the morning, beyond the Thapa, fell in with 3 Marwarie travelers;
murdered them.

" Near a village on the banks of the Taptee met 4 travelers and killed
them.

"Between Choupra and Dhoreea met a Marwarie ; murdered him.

" At Dhoreea met 3 Marwaries ; took them two miles and murdered
them.

" Two miles further on, overtaken by three treasure-bearers ; took them
two miles and murdered them in the jungle.

" Came on to Khurgore Bateesa in Indore, divided spoil, and dispersed.

" A total of 27 men murdered on one expedition."

Chotee (to save his neck) was informer, and furnished these
facts. Several things are noticeable about his resume. 1.
Business brevity ; 2, absence of emotion ; 3, smallness of the
parties encountered by the 60; 4, variety in character and
quality of the game captured ; 5, Hindoo and Mohammedan
chiefs in business together for Bhowanee ; 6, the sacred caste
of the Brahmins not respected by either ; 7, nor yet the char-
acterof that mendicant, that Byragee.

THUG RECORDS. 433

A beggar is a holy creature, and some of the gangs spared
him on that account, no matter how slack business might be ;
but other gangs slaughtered not only him, but even that
sacredest of sacred creatures, the fakeer — that repulsive skin-
and-bone thing that goes around naked and mats his bushy
hair with dust and dirt, and so beflours his lean body with
ashes that he looks like a specter. Sometimes a fakeer trusted
a shade too far in the protection of his sacredness. In the
middle of a tally-sheet of Feringbea's, who had been out with
forty Thugs, I find a case of the kind. After the killing of
thirty-nine men and one woman, the fakeer appears on the scene :

"Approaching Doregow, met 3 pundits; also a fakeer, mounted on a
pony ; lie was plastered over with sugar to collect flies, and was covered with
them. Drove off the fakeer, and killed the other three.

"Leaving Doregow, the fakeer joined again, and went on in company to
Raojana ; met 6 Khutries on their way from Bombay to Nagpore. Drove off
the fakeer with stones, and killed the 6 men in camp, and buried them in the
grove.

"Next day the fakeer joined again; made him leave at Mana. Beyond
there, fell in with two Kahars and a sepoy, and came on towards the place
selected for tlie murder. "When near it, the fakeer came again. Losing all
patience with him, gave Mithoo, one of the gang, 5 rupees ($2.50) to murder
him, and take the sin upon himself. All four were strangled, including the
fakeer. Surprised to find among the fakeer's effects 30 pounds of coral, 350
strings of small pearls, 15 strings of large pearls, and a gilt necklace."

It it curious, the little effect that time has upon a really
interesting circumstance. This one, so old, so long ago gone
down into oblivion, reads with the same freshness and charm
that attach to the news in the, morning paper; one's spirits go
up, then down, then up again, following the chances which
the fakeer is running ; now you hope, now you despair, now
you hope again ; and at last everything comes out right, and
you feel a great wave of personal satisfaction go weltering
through you, and without thinking, you put out your hand to
pat Mithoo on the back, when — puff! the whole thing has
vanished away, there is nothing there ; Mithoo and all the
28

434 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

crowd have been dust and ashes and forgotten, oh, so many,
many, many lagging years ! And then comes a sense of
injury : you don't know whether Mithoo got the swag, along
with the sin, or had to divide up the swag and keep all the sin
himself. There is no literary art about a government report.
It stops a story right in the most interesting place.

These reports of Thug expeditions run along interminably
in one monotonous tune : " Met a sepoy — killed him ; met 5
pundits — killed them ; met 4 Rajpoots and a woman — killed
them" — and so on, till the statistics get to be pretty dry.
But this small trip of Feringhea's Forty had some little variety
about it. Once they came across a man hiding in a grave —
a thief ; he had stolen 1,100 rupees from Dhunroj Seith of
Parowtee. They strangled him and took the money. They
had no patience with thieves. They killed two treasure-
bearers, and got 4,000 rupees. They came across two bullocks
" laden with copper pice," and killed the four drivers and took
the money. There must have been half a ton of it. I think
it takes a double handful of pice to make an anna, and 16
annas to make a rupee ; and even in those days the rupee was
worth only half a dollar. Coming back over their tracks
from Baroda, they had another picturesque stroke of luck:
"The Lobars of Oodeypore" put a traveler in their charge
" for safety," Dear, dear, across this abyssmal gulf of time we
still see Feringhea's lips uncover his teeth, and through the
dim haze we catch the incandescent glimmer of his smile. He
accepted that trust, good man ; and so we know what went
with the traveler.

Even Eajahs had no terrors for Feringhea ; he came across
an elephant-driver belonging to the Rajah of Oodeypore and
promptly strangled him.

" A total of 100 men and 5 women murdered on this ex-
pedition."

WHO WERE VICTIMS.

435

Among the reports of expeditions we find mention of
victims of almost every quality and estate :

Chuprassies.
Treasure-bearers.
Children.
Cowherds.
Gardeners.
Shopkeepers.
Palanquin-bearers.
Farmers.
Bullock-drivers.
Male servants seeking
work.

Women servants seeking

work.
Shepherds. ~

Archers.
Table-waiters.
Weavers.
Priests.
Bankers.
Boatmen.
Merchants.
Grass-cutters.

Native soldiers.

Fakeers.

Mendicants.

Holy-water carriers.

Carpenters.

Peddlers.

Tailors.

Blacksmiths.

Policemen (native).

Pastry cooks.

Grooms.

Mecca pilgrims.

Also a prince's cook; and even the water-carrier of that

sublime lord of lords and king of kings, the Governor-General

of India ! How broad they were in their tastes ! They also

murdered actors — poor wandering barn-stormers. There are

two instances recorded ; the first one by a gang of Thugs

under a chief who soils a great name borne by a better man —

Kipling's deathless " Gungadin " :

"After murdering 4 sepoys, going on toward Indore, met 4 strolling
players, and persuaded them to come with us, on the pretense that we would
see their performance at the next stage. Murdered them at a temple near
Bhopal."

Second instance :

"At Deohuttee, joined by comedians. Murdered them eastward of that
place."

But this gang was a particularly bad crew. On that ex-
pedition they murdered a fakeer and twelve beggars. And
yet Bhowanee protected them ; for once when they were
strangling a man in a wood when a crowd was going by close
at hand and the noose slipped and the man screamed, Bho-
wanee made a camel burst out at the same moment with a
roar that drowned the scream ; and before the man could
repeat it the breath was choked out of his body.

The cow is so sacred in India that to kill her keeper is an
awful sacrilege, and even the Thugs recognized this ; yet noAv

436 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

and then the lust for blood was too strong, and so they did
kill a few cow-keepers. In one of these instances the witness
who killed the cowherd said, " In Thuggee this is strictly for-
bidden, and is an act from which no good can come. I was
ill of a fever for ten days afterward. I do believe that evil
will follow the murder of a man with a cow. If there be no
cow it does not signify." Another Thug said he held the
cowherd's feet while this witness did the strangling. He felt
no concern, " because the bad fortune of such a deed is upon
the strangler and not upon the assistants ; even if there should
be a hundred of them."

There were thousands of Thugs roving over India con-
stantly, during many generations. They made Thuggee a
hereditary vocation and taught it to their sons and to their
son's sons. Boys were in full membership as early as 16 years
of age; veterans were still at Avork at TO. What was the
fascination, what was the impulse ? Apparently, it was partly
piety, largely gain, and there is reason to suspect that the
sport afforded was the chiefest fascination of all. Meadows
Taylor makes a Thug in one of his books claim that the pleas-
ure of killing men was the white man's beast-hunting instinct
enlarged, refined, ennobled. I will quote the passage :

CHAPTER XLYII.

Simple rules for saving money : To save half, when you are fired by an eager
impulse to contribute to a charity, wait, and count forty. To save three-quarters,
count sixty. To save it all, count sixty-five. — Pudd'nhead Wdson^s New Calendar.

THE Thug said :
"Hovsr many of you English are passionately devoted to sport-
ing ! Your days and months are passed in its excitement. A
tiger, a panther, a buffalo or a hog rouses your utmost energies for
its destruction — you even risk your lives in its pursuit. How much higher
game is a Thug's ! "

That must really be the secret of the rise and development
of Thuggee. The joy of killing ! the joy of seeing killing
done — these are traits of the human race at large. We white
people are merely modified Thugs ; Thugs fretting under the
restraints of a not very thick skin of civilization; Thugs
who long ago enjoyed the slaughter of the Roman arena, and
later the burning of doubtful Christians by authentic Christians
in the public squares, and who now, with the Thugs of Spain
and Nimes, flock to enjoy the blood and misery of the bull-
ring. We have no tourists of either sex or any religion who
are able to resist the delights of the bull-ring when opportunity
offers; and we are gentle Thugs in the hunting-season, and
love to chase a tame rabbit and kill it. Still, we have made
some progress — microscopic, and in truth scarcely worth
mentioning, and certainly nothing to be proud of — still, it is
progress : we no longer take pleasure in slaughtering or burn-
ing helpless men. We have reached a little altitude where Ave
may look down upon the Indian Thugs with a complacent
shudder ; and we may even hope for a day, many centuries hence,
when our posterity will look down upon us in the same way.

(437)

438 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

There are many indications that the Thug often hunted

men for the mere sport of it ; that the fright and pain of the

quarry were no more to him than are the fright and pain of

the rabbit or the stag to us ; and that he was no more ashamed

of beguiling his game with deceits and abusing its trust than

are we when we have imitated a wild animal's call and shot it

when it honored us with its confidence and came to see what

we wanted :

"Madara, son of Nihal, and I, Ramzam, set out from Kotdee in the cold
weather and followed the high road for about twenty days in search of
travelers, until we came to Selempore, where we met a very old man going to
the east. We won his confidence in this manner : he carried a load which
was too heavy for his old age ; I said to him, ' You are an old man, I will aid
you in carrying your load, as you are from my part of the country.' He
said, 'Very well, take me with you.' So we took him with us to Selempore,
where we slept that night. We woke him next morning before dawn and set
out, and at the distance of three miles we seated him to rest while it was still
very dark. Madara was ready behind him, and strangled him. He never
spoke a word. He was about 60 or 70 years of age."

Another gang fell in with a couple of barbers and persuaded
them to corae along in their company by promising them the
job of shaving the whole crew — 30 Thugs. At the place ap-
pointed for the murder 15 got shaved, and actually paid the
barbers for their work. Then killed them and took back the
money.

A gang of forty-two Thugs came across two Brahmins and
a shopkeeper on the road, beguiled them into a grove and got
up a concert for their entertainment. While these poor fellows
were listening to the music the stranglers were standing behind
them; and at the proper moment for dramatic effect they
applied the noose.

The most devoted fisherman must have a bite at least as
often as once a week or his passion will cool and he will put
up his tackle. The tiger-sportsman must find a tiger at least
once a fortnight or he will get tired and quit. The elephant-
hunter's enthusiasm will waste away little by little, and his

THE THIRST FOR BLOOD. 439

zeal will perish at last if he plod around a month without find-
ing a member of that noble family to assassinate.

But when the lust in the hunter's heart is for the noblest of
all quarries, man, how different is the case ! and how watery
and poor is the zeal and how childish the endurance of those
other hunters by comparison. Then, neither hunger, nor
thirst, nor fatigue, nor deferred hope, nor monotonous disap-
pointment, nor leaden-footed lapse of time can conquer the
hunter's patience or weaken the joy of his quest or cool the
splendid rage of his desire. Oi' all the hunting-passions that
burn in the breast of man, there is none that can lift him
superior to discouragements like these but the one — the royal
sport, the supreme sport, whose quarry is his brother. By
comparison, tiger-hunting is a colorless poor thing, for all it
has been so bragged about.

Why, the Thug was content to tramp patiently along,
afoot, in the wasting heat of India, week after week, at an
average of nine or ten miles a day, if he might but hope to
find game some time or other and refresh his longing soul with
blood. Here is an instance :

"I (Ramzam) and Hyder set out, for the purpose of strangling
travelers, from Guddapore, and proceeded via the Fort of Julalabad,
Newulgunge, Bangermow, on the banks of the Ganges (upwards of 100
miles), from whence we returned by another route. Still no travelers ! till
we reached Bowaneegunge, where we fell in with a traveler, a boatman ; we
inveigled him and about two miles east of there Hyder strangled him as he
stood — for he was troubled and afraid, and would not sit. We then made a
long journey (about 130 miles) and reached Hussunpore Bundwa, where at
the tank we fell in with a traveler — he slept there that night ; next morning
we followed him and tried to win his confidence ; at the distance of two miles
we endeavored to induce him to sit down — but he would not, having become
aware of us. I attempted to strangle him as he walked along, but did not
succeed ; both of us then fell upon him, he made a great outcry, ' They are
murdering me ! ' at length we strangled him and flung his body into a well.
After this we returned to our homes, having been out a month and traveled
about 260 miles. A total of two men murdered on the expedition."

And here is another case — related by the terrible Futty Khan,

a man with a tremendous record, to be re-mentioned by and by ;

440 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

" I, with three others, traveled for about 45 days a distance of about 200
miles in search of victims along the highway to Bundwa and returned by Da-
vodpore (another 200 miles) during which journey we had only one murder,
which happened in this manner. Four miles to the east of Noubustaghat we
fell in with a traveler, an old man. I, with Koshal and Hyder, inveigled him
and accompanied him that day within 3 miles of Rampoor, where, after dark,
in a lonely place, we got him to sit down and rest ; and while I kept him in
talk, seated before him, Hyder behind strangled him : he made no resistance.
Koshal stabbed him under the arms and in the throat, and we flung the body
into a running stream. We got about 4 or 5 rupees each ($2 or $2.50). We
then proceeded homewards. A total of one man murdered on this expedi-
tion."

There. They tramped 400 miles, were gone about three
months, and harvested two dollars and a half apiece. But the
mere pleasure of the hunt was sufficient. That was pay enongh.
They did no grumbling.

Every now and then in this big book one comes across that
pathetic remark : " "We tried to get him to sit down but he
would not." It tells the whole story. Some accident had
awakened the suspicion in him that these smooth friends who
had been petting and coddling him and making him feel so
safe and so fortunate after his forlorn and lonely wanderings
were the dreaded Thugs ; and now their ghastly invitation to
" sit and rest " had confirmed its truth. He knew there was
no help for him, and that he was looking his last upon earthly
things, but " he would not sit." No, not that — it was too
awful to think of !

There are a number of instances which indicate that when

a man had once tasted the regal joys of man-hunting he could

not be content with the dull monotony of a crimeless life after

ward. Example, from a Thug's testimony :

"We passed through to Kurnaul, where we found a former Thug named
Junooa, an old comrade of ours, who had turned religious mendicant and
become a disciple and holy. He came to us in the serai and weeping with
joy returned to his old trade."

Neither wealth nor honors nor dignities could satisfy a re-
formed Thug for long. He would throw them all away, some

MAN HUNTING A CONFIRMED HABIT. 441

day, and go back to the lurid pleasures of hunting men^ and
being hunted himself by the British.

Ramzam was taken into a great native grandee's service and
given authority over five villages. " My authority extended
over these people to summons them to my presence, to make
them stand or sit. I dressed well, rode my pony, and had two
sepoys, a scribe and a village guard to attend me. During
three years I used to pay each village a monthly visit, and no
one suspected that I was a Thug ! The chief man used to wait
on me to transact business, and as I passed along, old and
young made their salaam to me."

And yet during that very three years he got leave of
absence "to attend a wedding," and instead went off on a
Thugging lark with six other Thugs and hunted the highway
for fifteen days ! — with satisfactory results.

Afterwards he held a great office under a Rajah. There he
had ten miles of country under his command and a military
guard of fifteen men, with authority to call out 2,000 more
upon occasion. But the British got on his track, and they
crowded him so that he had to give himself up. See what a
figure he was when he was gotten up for style and had all his
things on: " I was fully armed — a sword, shield, pistols, a
matchlock musket and a flint gun, for I was fond of being thus
arrayed, and when so armed feared not though forty men
stood before me."

He gave himself up and proudly proclaimed himself a Thug.
Then by request he agreed to betray his friend and pal,
Buhram, a Thug with the most tremendous record in India.
" I went to the house where Buhram slept (often has he led
our gangs ! ) I woke him, he knew me well, and came outside
to me. It was a cold night, so under pretence of warming
myself, but in reality to have light for his seizure by the guards,
I lighted some straw and made a blaze. We were warming-

442 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

our hands. The guards drew around us. I said to them,
" This is Buhram," and he was seized just as a cat seizes a
mouse. Then Buhram said, " I am a Thug ! my father was a
Thug, my grandfather was a Thug, and I have thugged with
many ! "

So spoke the mighty hunter, the mightiest of the mighty,
the Gordon Cumming of his day. Not much regret noticeable
in it.*

So many niany times this Official Report leaves one's
curiosity unsatisfied. For instance, here is a little paragraph
out of the record of a certain band of 193 Thugs, which has
that defect :

" Fell in with Lall Sing Subahdar and his family, consisting of nine per-
sons. Traveled with them two days, and the third put them all to death
except the two children, little boys of one and a half years old."

There it stops. What did they do with those poor little
fellows ? What was their subsequent history ? Did they
purpose training them up as Thugs ? How could they take
care of such little creatures on a march which stretched over
several months ? No one seems to have cared to ask any
questions about the babies. But I do wish I knew.

One would be apt to imagine that the Thugs Avere utterly
callous, utterly destitute of human feelings, heartless toward

*" Having planted a bullet in the shoulder-bone of au elephant, and caused the
agonized creature to lean for support against a tree, I proceeded to brew some coffee.
Having refreshed myself, taking observations of the elephant's spasms and writh-
ings between the sips, I resolved to make experiments on vulnerable points, and,
approaching very near, I fired several bullets at different parts of his enormous skull.
He only acknowledged the shots by a salaam-like movement of his trunk, with the
point of which he gently touched the wounds with a striking and peculiar action.
Surprised and shocked to find that I was only prolonging the suffering of the noble
beast, which bore its trials with such dignified composure, I resolved to finish the
proceeding with all possible despatch, and accordingly opened fire upon him from
the left side. Aiming at the shoulder, I fired six shots with the two-grooved rifle,
which must have eventually proved mortal, after which I fired six shots at the same
part with the Dutch six-pounder. Large tears now trickled down from his eyes,
which he slowly shut and openecl, his colossal frame shivered convulsively, and fall-
ing on his side he expired." — Gordon Cumming.

FAMILY AFFECTION AMONG THUGS. 443

their own families as well as toward other people's ; but this
was not so. Like all other Indians, they had a passionate love
for their kin. A shrewd British officer who knew the Indian
character, took that characteristic into account in laying his
plans for the capture of Eugene Sue's famous Feringhea. He
found out Feringhea's hiding-place, and sent a guard by night
to seize him, but the squad was awkward and he got away.
However, they got the rest of the family — the mother, wife,
child, and brother — and brought them to the officer, at Jubbul-
pore ; the officer did not fret, but bided his time : " I knew
Feringhea would not go far while links so dear to him were in
my hands." He was right. Feringhea knew all the danger
he was running by staying in the neighborhood, still he could
not tear himself away. The officer found that he divided his time
between five villages where he had relatives and friends who
could get news for him from his family in Jubbulpore jail ;
and that he never slept two consecutive nights in the same
village. The officer traced out his several haunts, then pounced
upon all the five villages on the one night and at the same
hour, and got his man.

Another example of family affection. A little while
previously to the capture of Feringhea's family, the British
officer had captured Feringhea's foster-brother, leader of a
gang of ten, and had tried the eleven and condemned them to
be hanged. Feringhea's captured family arrived at the jail
the day before the execution was to take place. The foster-
brother, Jhurhoo, entreated to be allowed to see the aged
mother and the others. The prayer was granted, and this is
what took place — it is the British officer who speaks :

"In the morning, just before going to the scaffold, the interview took
place before me. He fell at the old woman's feet and begged that she would
relieve him from the obligations of the milk with which she had nourished
him from infancy, as he was about to die before he could fulfill any of them.
She placed her hands on his head, and he knelt, and she said she forgave him
all, and bid him die like a man."

444 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

If a capable artist should make a picture of it, it would be
full of dignity and solemnity and pathos ; and it could touch
you. You would imagine it to be anything but what it was.
There is reverence there, and tenderness, and gratefulness, and
compassion, and resignation, and fortitude, and self-respect —
and no sense of disgrace, no thought of dishonor. Everything
is there that goes to make a noble parting, and give it a
moving grace and beauty and dignity. And yet one of these
people is a Thug and the other a mother of Thugs ! The in-
congruities of our human nature seem to reach their limit here.

I wish to make note of one curious thing while I think of
it. One of the very commonest remarks to be found in. this
bewildering array of Thug confessions is this :

" Strangled him and threw him in a well ! " In one case
they threw sixteen into a well — and they had thrown others
in the same well before. It makes a body thirsty to read
about it.

And there is another very curious thing. The bands of
Thugs had jprivate graveyards. They did not like to kill and
bury at random, here and there and everywhere. They pre-
ferred to wait, and toll the victims along, and get to one of
their regular burying-places (bheels) if they could. In the
little kingdom of Oude, which was about half as big as Ireland
and about as big as the State of Maine, they had two hundred
am.d seventy-four hheels. They were scattered along fourteen
hundred miles of road, at an average of ovly five miles apart,
and the British government traced out and located each and
every one of them and set them down on the map.

The Oude bands seldom went out of their own country, but
they did a thriving business within its borders. So did outside
bands who came in and helped. Some of the Thug leaders of
Oude were noted for their successful careers. Each of four of
them confessed to above 300 murders ; another to nearly 400 ;

ERADICATION OF THUGGEE. 445

our friend Kamzam to 604 — he is the one who got leave of
absence to attend a wedding and went thugging instead ; and
he is also the one who betrayed Buhram to the British.

But the biggest records of all were the murder-lists of Futty
Khan and Buhram. Futty Khan's number is smaller than
Ramzam's, but he is placed at the head because his average is
the best in Oude-Thug history per year of service. His
slaughter was 508 men in twenty years, and he was still a
young man when the British stopped his industry. Buhram's
list was 931 murders, but it took him forty years. His aver-
age was one man and nearly all of another man per month for
forty years, but Futty Khan's average was two men and a little
of another man per month during his twenty years of useful-
ness.

There is one very striking thing which I wish to call atten-
tion to. You have surmised from the listed callings followed
by the victims of the Thugs that nobody could travel the
Indian roads unprotected and live to get through ; that the
Thugs respected no quality, no vocation, no religion, nobody ;
that they killed every unarmed man that came in their way.
That is wholly true — with one reservation. In all the long
file of Thug confessions an FMglish traveler is mentioned hut
once — and this is what the Thug says of the circumstance :

" He was on his way from Mhow to Bombay. We studiously avoided Mm.
He proceeded next morning with a number of travelers wJw had sought Ms
protection, and they took the road to Baroda."

"We do not know who he was ; he flits aross the page of
this rusty old book and disappears in the obscurity beyond ;
but he is an impressive figure, moving through that valley
of death serene and unafraid, clothed in the might of the Eng-
lish name.

"We have now followed the big official book through, and
we understand what Thuggee was, what a bloody terror it
was, what a desolating scourge it was. In 1830 the English-

446 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

found this cancerous organization imbedded in the vitals of the
empire, doing its devastating work in secrecy, and assisted,
protected, sheltered, and hidden by innumerable confederates —
big and little native chiefs, customs officers, village officials, and
native police, all ready to lie for it, and the mass of the people,
through fear, persistently pretending to know nothing about
its doings ; and this condition of things had existed for genera-
tions, and was formidable with the sanctions of age and old
custom. If ever there was an unpromising task, if ever there
was a hopeless task in the world, surely it was offered here —
the task of conquering Thuggee. But that little handful of
English officials in India set their sturdy and confident grip
upon it, and ripped it out, root and branch ! How modest do
Captain Yallancey's ^vords sound now, when we read them
again, knowing what we know :

"The day that sees this far-spread evil completely eradicated from India,
and known only in name, will greatly tend to immortalize British rule in the
East."

It would be hard to word a claim more modestly than that
for this most noble work.

CHAPTER XLVIII.

Grief can take care of itself ; but to get the full value of a joy you must have
somebody to divide it with. — Pudd^nfiead WUson^s New Calendar.

VE left Bombay for Allahabad by a night train. It is
the custom of the country to avoid day travel when it
can conveniently be done. But there is one trouble :
while you can seemingly " secure " the two lower berths by
making early application, there is no ticket as witness of it,
and no other producible evidence in case your proprietorship
shall chance to be challenged. The word " engaged " appears
on the window, but it doesn't state who the compartment is
engaged /br. If your Satan and your Barney arrive before
somebody else's servants, and spread the bedding on the two
sofas and then stand guard till you come, aU will be well ; but
if they step aside on an errand, they may find the beds pro-
moted to the two shelves, and somebody else's demons standing
guard over their master's beds, which in the meantime have
been spread upon your sofas.

You do not pay anything extra for your sleeping place ; that
is where the trouble lies. If you buy a fare-ticket and fail
to use it, there is room thus made available for someone else ;
but if the place were secured to you it would remain vacant,
and yet your ticket would secure you another place when you
were presently ready to travel.

However, no explanation of such a system can make it
seem quite rational to a person who has been used to a more
rational system. If our people had the arranging of it, we
should charge extra for securing the place, and then the road

would suffer no loss if the purchaser did not occupy it.

(447)

448 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

The present system encourages good manners — and also
discourages them. If a young girl has a lower berth and an
elderly lady comes in, it is usual for the girl to offer her place
to this late comer ; and it is usual for the late comer to thank
her courteously and take it. But the thing happens differently
sometimes. When we were ready to leave Bombay my daugh-
ter's satchels were holding possession of her berth — a lower
one. At the last moment, a middle-aged American lady
swarmed into the compartment, followed by native porters
laden with her baggage. She was growling and snarling and
scolding, and trying to make herself phenomenally disagreea-
ble ; and succeeding. Without a word, she hoisted the
satchels into the hanging shelf, and took possession of that
lower berth.

On one of our trips Mr. Smythe and I got out at a station
to walk up and down, and when we came back Smythe's bed
was in the hanging shelf and an English cavalry officer was in
bed on the sofa which he had lately been occupying. It Avas
mean to be glad about it, but it is the way we are made;
I could not have been gladder if it had been my enemy that
had suffered this misfortune. We all like to see people in
trouble, if it doesn't cost us anything. I was so happy over
Mr. Smythe's chagrin that I couldn't go to sleep for thinking
of it and enjoying it. I knew he supposed the officer had
committed the robbery himself, whereas without a doubt the
officer's servant had done it without his knowledge. Mr.
Smythe kept this incident warm in his heart, and longed for
a chance to get even with somebody for it. Sometime after-
ward the opportunity came, in Calcutta. We were leaving
on a 24-hour journey to Darjeeling. Mr. Barclay, the general
superintendent, has made special provision for our accommo-
dation, Mr. Smythe said ; so there was no need to hurry about
getting to the train ; consequently, we were a little late.

INDIAN SLEEPING CARS. 449

When we arrived, the usual immense turmoil and confusion of
a great Indian station were in full blast. It was an immoder-
ately long train, for all the natives of India were going by it
somewhither, and the native officials were being pestered to
frenzy by belated and anxious people. They didn't know
where our car Avas, and couldn't remember having received
any orders about it. It was a deep disappointment ; more-
over, it looked as if our half of our party would be left behind
altogether. Then Satan came running and said he had found
a compartment with one shelf and one sofa unoccupied, and
had made our beds and had stowed our baofg'aor'e. We rushed
to the place, and just as the train was ready to pull out and
the porters were slamming the doors to, all down the line, an
officer of the Indian Civil Service, a good friend of ours, put
his head in and said : — ^

" I have been hunting for you everywhere. What are you
doing here ? Don't you know ' — "

The train started before he could finish. Mr. Smythe's
opportunity was come. His bedding, on the shelf, at once
changed places with the bedding — a stranger's — that was
occupying the sofa that was opposite to mine. About ten
o'clock we stopped somewhere, and a large Englishman of
official military bearing stepped in. We pretended to be asleep.
The lamps w^ere covered, but there was light enough for us to
note his look of surprise. He stood there, grand and fine,
peering down at Smythe, and wondering in silence at the
situation. After a bit he said : —

" Well ! " And that was all.

But that was enough. It was easy to understand. It
meant: "This is extraordinary. This is high-handed. I
haven't had an experience like this before."

He sat down on his baggage, and for twenty minutes we

watched him through our eyelashes, rocking and swaying there
29

450

FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

to the motion of the train. Then we came to a station, and he
got up and went out, muttering : " I must find a lower berth,
or wait over." His servant came presently and carried away
his things.

Mr. Smythe's sore place was healed, his hunger for revenge
was satisfied. But he couldn't sleep, and neither could I ; for
this was a venerable old car, and nothing about it was taut.
The closet door slammed all nig^it, and defied every fastening

s^iii

■*■■"■'' '*(®1' N

,j_ — _|

"^1

^ f^

^^^^^^^^ ■ '^^5

lift.

8MYTHE S REVENGE.

we could invent. We got up very much jaded, at dawn, and
stepped out at a way station ; and, while we were taking a cup
of coffee, that Englishman ranged up alongside, and somebody
said to him :

" So you didn't stop ofl', after all ? "

"No. The guard found a place for me that had been
engaged and not occupied. I had a whole saloon car all to
myself — oh, quite palatial ! I never had such luck in my
life."

ACCOMMODATION TRAINS. 451

That was our car, you see. We moved into it, straight off,
the family and all. But I asked the English gentleman to re-
main, and he did. A pleasant man, an infantry colonel ; and
doesn't know, yet, that Smythe robbed him of his berth, but
thinks it was done by Smythe's servant without Smythe's
knowledge. He was assisted in gathering this impression.

The Indian trains are manned by natives exclusively. The
Indian stations — except very large and important ones — are
manned entirely by natives, and so are the posts and tele-
graphs. The rank and file of the police are natives. All
these people are pleasant and accommodating. One day I left
an express train to lounge about in that perennially ravishing
show, the ebb and flow and whirl of gaudy natives, that is
always surging up and down the spacious platform of a great
Indian station ; and I lost myself in the ecstasy of it, and
when I turned, the train was moving swiftly away. I was
going to sit down and wait for another train, as I would have
done at home ; I had no thought of any other course. But a
native official, who had a green flag in his hand, saw me, and
said politely :

" Don't you belong in the train, sir ? "

" Yes," I said.

He waved his flag, and the train came back I And he put
me aboard with as much ceremony as if I had been the Gen-
eral Superintendent. They - are kindly people, the natives.
The face and the bearing that indicate a surly spirit and a bad
heart seemed to me to be so rare among Indians — so nearly
non-existent, in fact^ — that I sometimes wondered if Thuggee
wasn't a dream, and not a reality. The bad hearts are there,
but I believe that they are in a small, poor minority. One
thing is sure : They are much the most interesting people in
the world — and the nearest to being incomprehensible. At
any rate, the hardest to account for. Their character and

452 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

their history, their customs and their religion, confront you
with riddles at every turn — riddles which are a trifle more
perplexing after they are explained than they were before.
You can get the facts of a custom — like caste, and Suttee,
and Thuggee, and so on — and with the facts a theory which
tries to explain, but never quite does it to your satisfaction.
You can never quite understand hoio so strange a thing could
have been born, nor why.

For instance 7— the Suttee. This is the explanation of it:
A woman who throws away her life when her husband dies is
instantly joined to him again, and is forever afterward happy
with him in heaven ; her family wall build a little monument
to her, or a temple, and will hold her in honor, and, indeed,
w^orship her memory always; they will themselves be held
in honor by the public; the woman's self-sacrifice has
conferred a noble and lasting distinction upon her posterity.
And, besides, see what she has escaped : If she had elected
to live, she would be a disgraced person ; she could not re-
marry ; her family would despise her and disown her ; she
would be a friendless outcast, and miserable all her days.

Very well, you say, but the explanation is not complete
yet. How did people come to drift into such a strange cus-
tom? AVhat Avas the origin of the idea? "Well, nobody
knows ; it was probably a revelation sent down by the
gods." One more thing : Why was such a cruel death chosen
— why wouldn't a gentle one have answ^ered ? " Nobody
knows ; maybe that was a revelation, too."

No — you can never understand it. It all seems impossi-
ble. You resolve to believe that a widow never burnt herself
willingly, but went to her death because she was afraid to defy
public opinion. But you are not able to keep that position.
History drives you from it. Major Sleeman has a convincing
CMse in one of his books. In his government on the Nerbudda

THE SUTTEE. 453

he made a brave attempt on the 28th of March, 1828, to put
down Suttee on his own hook and without warrant from the
Supreme Government of India. He could not foresee that the
Government would put it down itself eight months later. The
only backing he had was a bold nature and a compassionate
heart. He issued his proclamation abolishing the Suttee in his
district. On the morning of Tuesday — note the day of the
week — the 24th of the following l^ovember, Ummed Singh
Upadhya, head of the most respectable and most extensive
Brahmin family in the district, died, and presently came a dep-
utation of his sons and grandsons to beg that his old widow
might be allowed to burn herself upon his pyre. Sleeman
threatened to enforce his order, and punish severely any man
who assisted ; and he placed a police guard to see that no one
did so. From the early morning the old widow of sixty-five
had been sitting on the bank of the sacred river by her dead,
waiting through the long hours for the permission ; and at
last the refusal came instead. In one little sentence Sleeman
gives you a pathetic picture of this lonely old gray figure : all
day and all night " she remained sitting by the edge of the
water without eating or drinking." The next morning the
body of the husband was burned to ashes in a pit eight feet
square and three or four feet deep, in the view of several thou-
sand spectators. Then the widow waded out to a bare rock in
the river, and everybod}^ wpnt away but her sons and other
relations. All day she sat there on her rock in the blazing
sun without food or drink, and with no clothing but a sheet
over her shoulders.

The relatives remained with her and all tried to persuade
her to desist from her purpose, for they deeply loved her. She
steadily refused. Then a part of the family went to Sleeman's
house, ten miles away, and tried again to get him to let her
burn herself. He refused, hoping to save her yet.

454 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

All that day she scorched in her sheet on the rock, and all
that night she kept her vigil there in the bitter cold. Thurs-
day morning, in the sight of her relatives, she went through a
ceremonial which said more to them than any words could
have done ; she put on the dhaja (a course red turban) and
broke her bracelets in pieces. I^y these acts she became a dead
person in the eye of the law, and excluded from her caste for-
ever. By the iron rule of ancient custom, if she should now
choose to live she could never return to her family. Sleeman
was in deep trouble. If she starved herself to death her family
would be disgraced ; and, moreover, starving ^vould be a more
lingering misery than the death by fire. He w^ent back in the
evening thoroughly worried. The old woman remained on her
rock, and there in the morning he found her with her dhaja
still on her head. " She talked very collectedly, telling me
that she had determined to mix her ashes with those of her
departed husband, and should patiently wait my permission to
do so, assured that God would enable her to sustain life till
that was given, though she dared not eat or drink. Looking
at the sun, then rising before her over a long and beautiful
reach of the river, she said calmly, ' My soul has been for five
days W' ith my husband's near that sun ; nothing but my earthly
frame is left ; and this, I know, you will in time suffer to be
mixed mth his ashes in yonder pit, because it is not in your
nature or usage wantonly to prolong the miseries of a poor old
woman.' "

He assured her that it was his desire and duty to save her,
and to urge her to live, and to keep her family from the dis-
grace of being thought her murderers. But she said she was
not afraid of their being thought so ; that they had all, like
good children, done everything in their power to induce her to
live, and to abide wdth them ; " and if I should consent I know
they would love and honor me, but my duties to them have

THE WIDOW'S DETERMINATION. 455

now ended. I commit them all to your care, and I go to
attend my husband, Ummed Singh Upadhya, with whose ashes
on the funeral pile mine have been already three times mixed."

She believed that she and he had been upon the earth three
several times as wife and husband, and that she had burned
herself to death three times upon his pyre. That is why she
said that strange thing. Since she had broken her bracelets
and put on the red turban she regarded herself as a corpse ;
otherwise she Avould not have allowed herself to do her hus-
band the irreverence of pronouncing his name. " This was the
first time in her long life that she had ever uttered her hus-
band's name, for in India no woman, high or low, ever pro-
nounces the name of her husband."

Major Sleeman still tried to shake her purpose. He prom-
ised to build her a fine house among the temples of her ances-
tors upon the bank of the river and make handsome provision
for her out of rent-free lands if she would consent to live ; and
if she wouldn't he would allow no stone or brick to ever mark
the place where she died. But she only smiled and said, " My
pulse has long ceased to beat, my spirit has departed ; I shall
suffer nothing in the burning ; and if you wish proof, order
some fire and you shall see this arm consumed without giving
me any pain."

Sleeman was now satisfied that he could not alter her
purpose. He sent for all the chief members of the family and
said he would suffer her to burn herself if they would enter
into a written eno^ao^ement to abandon the suttee in their
family thenceforth. They agreed ; the papers were drawn out
and signed, and at noon, Saturday, word was sent to the poor
old woman. She seemed greatly pleased. The ceremonies of
bathing were gone through with, and by three o'clock she was
ready and the fire was briskly burning in the pit. She had
now gone without food or drink during more than four days

456 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

and a half. She came ashore from her rock, first wetting her
sheet in the waters of the sacred river, for without that safe-
guard any shadow which might fall upon her would convey
impurity to her; then she walked to the pit, leaning upon
one of her sons and a nephew — the distance was a hundred
and fifty yards.

"I had sentries placed all around, and no other person was allowed to
approach within five paces. She came on with a calm and cheerful counte-
nance, stopped once, and casting her eyes upwards, said, ' Why have they
kept me five days from thee, my husband ?' On coming to the sentries her
supporters stopped and remained standing ; she moved on, and walked once
around the pit, paused a moment, and while muttering a prayer, threw some
flowers into the fire. She then walked up deliberately and steadily to the
brink, stepped into the centre of the flame, sat down, and leaning back in the
midst as if reposing upon a couch, was consumed without uttering a shriek or
betraying one sign of agony."

It is fine and beautiful. It compels one's reverence and
respect — no, has it freely, and without compulsion. We see
how the custom, once started, could continue, for the soul of it
is that stupendous power. Faith ; faith brought to the pitch of
effectiveness by the cumulative force of example and long use
and custom ; but we cannot understand how the first widows
came to take to it. That is a perplexing detail.

Sleeman says that it was usual to. play music at the suttee,
but that the white man's notion that this was to drown the
screams of the martyr is not correct ; that it had a quite dif-
ferent purpose. It was believed that the martyr died prophe-
cying ; that the prophecies sometimes foretold disaster, and it
was considered a kindness to those upon whom it was to fall to
drown the voice and keep them in ignorance of the misfortune
that was to come.

HE STOLE BLANKETS.

CHAPTER XLIX.

He had had much experience of physicians, and said "the only way to keep your
health is to eat what you don't want, drink what you don't like, and do what you'd
druther not." — Padd'nJiead Wilson'' s New Calendar.

IT was a long journey — two nights, one day, and part of
another day, from Bombay eastward to Allahabad ; but it
was always interesting, and it was not fatiguing. At first
the night travel promised to be fatiguing, but that was on
account of pyjamas. This foolish night-dress consists of jacket
and drawers. Sometimes they are made of silk, sometimes of
a raspy, scratchy, slazy woolen material with a sandpaper sur-
face. The drawers are loose elephant-legged and elephant-
waisted things, and instead of buttoning around the body
there is a draw-string to produce the required shrinkage. The
jacket is roomy, and one buttons it in front. Pyjamas are hot
on a hot night and cold on a cold night — defects which a
nightshirt is free from. I tried the pyjamas in order to be in
the fashion ; but I was obliged to give them up, I couldn't
stand them. There was no sufficient change from day-gear to
night-gear. I missed the refreshing and luxurious sense, in-
duced by the night-gown, of being undressed, emancipated, set
free from restraints and trammels. In place of that, I had the
worried, confined, oppressed, suffocated sense of being abed
with my clothes on. All through the warm half of the night
the coarse surfaces irritated my skin and made it feel baked
and feverish, and the dreams which came in the fitful flurries
of slmnber were such as distress the sleep of the damned, or
ought to ; and all through the cold other half of the night I
could get no time for sleep because I had to employ it all in

(459)

4(10 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

stealing blankets. But blankets are of no value at such a
time ; the higher they are piled the more effectively they
cork the cold in and keep it from getting out. The result is
that your liegs are ice, and you know how you will feel by and
by when you are buried. In a sane interval I discarded the
pyjamas, and led a rational and comfortable life thenceforth.

Out in the country in India, the day begins early. One
sees a plain, perfectly flat, dust-colored and brick-yardy, stretch-
ing limitlessly away on ev^ery side in the dim gray light, striped
everywhere with hard-beaten narrow paths, the vast flatness
broken at wide intervals by bunches of spectral trees that
mark where villages are ; and along all the paths are slender
women and the black forms of lanky naked men moving to
their work, the women with brass water-jars on their heads,
the men carrying hoes. The man is not entirely naked;
always there is a bit of white rag, a loin-cloth ; it amounts to
a bandage, and is a white accent on his black person, like the
silver band around the middle of a pipe-stem. Sometimes he
also wears a fluffy and voluminous white turban, and this adds
a second accent. He then answers properly to Miss Gordon
Cumming's flash-light picture of him — as a person who is
dressed in " a turban and a pocket handkerchief."

All day long one has this monotony of dust-colored dead
levels and scattering bunches of trees and mud villages. You
soon realize that India is not beautiful ; still there is an en-
chantment about it that is beguiling, and which does not pall.
You cannot tell just what it is that makes the spell, perhaps,
but you feel it and confess it, nevertheless. Of course, at bot-
tom, you know in a vague way that it is history ; it is that
that affects you, a haunting sense of the myriads of human
lives that have blossomed, and withered, and perished here,
repeating and repeating and repeating, century after century,
and age after age, the barren and meaningless process ; it is

CIRCUMSTANTIAL EVIDENCE. 461

this sense that gives to this forlorn, uncomely land power to
speak to the spirit and make friends with it; to speak to it
with a voice bitter with satire, but eloquent with melancholy.
The deserts of Australia and the ice-barrens of Greenland have
no speech, for they have no venerable history ; with nothing
to tell of man and hi& vanities, his fleeting glories and his
miseries, they have nothing wherewith to spiritualize their
ugliness and veil it with a charm.

There is nothing pretty about an Indian village — a mud
one — and I do not remember that we saw any but mud ones
on that long flight to Allahabad. It is a little bunch of dirt-
colored mud hovels jammed together within a mud wall. As
a rule, the rains had beaten down parts of some of the houses,
and this gave the village the aspect of a mouldering and hoary
ruin. I believe the cattle and the vermin live inside the wall ;
for I saw cattle coming out and cattle going in ; and whenever
I saw a villager, he was scratching. This last is only circum-
stantial evidence, but I think it has value. The village has a
battered little temple or two, big enough to hold an idol, and
with custom enough to fat-up a priest and keep him comfort-
able. Where there are Mohammedans there are generally a
few sorry tombs outside the village that have a decayed and
neglected look. The villages interested me because of things
which Major Sleeman says about them in his books — particu-
larly what he says about the division of labor in them. He
says that the whole face of India is parceled out into estates of
villages ; that nine-tenths of the vast population of the land
consist of cultivators of the soil; that it is these cultivators
who inhabit the villages ; that there are certain " established "
village servants — mechanics and others who are apparently
paid a wage by the village at large, and whose callings remain
in certain families and are handed down from father to son,
like an estate. He gives a list of these established servants :

462 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

Priest, blacksmith, carpenter, accountant, washerman, basket-
maker, potter, watchman, barber, shoemaker, brazier, confec-
tioner, weaver, dyer, etc. In his day witches abounded, and it
was not thought good business wisdom for a man to marry
his daughter into a family that hadn't a witch in it, for she
would need a witch on the premises to protect her children
from the evil spells which would certainly be cast upon them
by the witches connected with the neighboring families.

The office of midwife was hereditary in the family of the
basket-maker. It belonged to his wife. She might not be
competent, but the office was hers, anyway. Her pay was not
high — 25 cents for a boy, and half as much for a girl. The
girl was not desired, because she would be a disastrous expense
by and by. As soon as she should be old enough to begin to
wear clothes for propriety's sake, it would be a disgrace to the
family if she were not married ; and to marry her meant finan-
cial ruin ; for by custom the father must spend upon feasting
and Avedding-display everything he had and all he could borrow
— in fact, reduce himself to a condition of poverty which he
might never more recover from.

It was the dread of this ])rospective ruin which made the
killing of girl-babies so prevalent in India in the old days
before England laid the iron hand of her prohibitions upon the
piteous slaughter. One may judge of how prevalent the cus-
tom was, by one of Sleeman's casual electrical remarks, when
he speaks of children at play in villages — wliere girl-voices
were never heard !

The wedding-display folly is still in full force in India, and
by consequence the destruction of girl-babies is still furtively
practiced; but not largely, because of the vigilance of the
government and the sternness of the penalties it levies.

In some parts of India the village keeps in its pay three
other servants : an astrologer to tell the villager when he may

ESTABLISHED VILLAGE SERVANTS.

463

plant his crop, or make a journey, or marry a wife, or strangle
a child, or borrow a dog, or climb a tree, or catch a rat, or
swindle a neighbor, without offending the alert and solicitous
heavens ; and what his dream means, if he has had one and
was not bright enough to interpret it himself by the details of
his dinner ; the two other established servants were the tiger-
persuader and the hailstorm discourager. The one kept away
the tigers if he could, and collected the wages anyway, and
the other kept off the hailstorms, or explained why he failed.
He charged the same for explaining a failure that he did for
scoring a success. A man is an idiot who can't earn a living in
India.

Major Sleeman reveals the fact that the trade union and
the boycott are antiquities in India. India seems to have
originated everything. The
" sweeper " belongs to the bot-
tom caste ; he is the lowest of
the low — all other castes
despise him and scorn his office.
But that does not trouble him.
His caste is a caste, and that
is sufficient for him, and so he
is proud of it, not ashamed.
Sleeman says :

" It is perhaps not known to many
of my countrymen, even in India, that
in every town and city in the country
the right of sweeping the houses and
streets is a monopoly, and is supported
entirely by the pride of castes among
the scavengers, who are all of the low-
est class. The right of sweeping within a certain range is recognized by the
caste to belong to a certain member ; and if any other member presumes to
sweep within that range, he is excommunicated —no other member will
smoke out of his pipe or drink out of his jug ; and he can get restored to
caste only by a feast to the whole body of sweepers. If any housekeeper
within a particular circle happens to oflFend the sweeper of that range, none of

A STREET SPRINKLEU.

464 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

his filth will be removed till he pacifies him, because no other sweeper will
dare to touch it ; and the people of a town are often more tyrannized over by
these people than by any other. "

A footnote by Major Sleeman's editor, Mr. Vincent Arthur

Smith, says that in our day this tyranny of the sweepers' guild

is one of the many diflflculties which bar tlie progress of Indian

sanitary reform. Think of this :

" The sweepers cannot be readily coerced, because no Hindoo or Mussul-
man would do their work to save his life, nor will he pollute himself by
beating the refractory scavenger."

They certainly do seem to have the whip-hand ; it would
be difficult to imagine a more impregnable position, " The
vested rights described in the text are so fully recognized in
practice that they are frequeiitly the Huhject of sale or morUjmjeP
Just like a milk-route ; or like a London crossing-sweepersliip.
It is said that the London crossing-sweeper's right to his cross-
ing is recognized by the rest of the guild ; that they protect
him in its possession ; that certain choice cross-
ings are valuable property, and are saleable at
high figures. I have noticed that the man who
sweeps in fn^nt of the Army and Navy Stores
has a wealthy South African aristocratic style
about him ; and when he is off his guard, he has
exactlv that look on his face which you alwavs

A SOUTH AFRICAN ' J ^

STYLE. gpg j^ ^|,g f.^(,g Qf r^ j^^.^jj \\\\o has is saving

U]) his daughter to marry her to a duke.

It appears from Sleeman that in India the occupation of
elephant-driver is confined to Mohammedans. I wonder why
that is. The water-carrier {hJieestie) is a Mohammedan, but
it is said that the reason of that is, that the Hindoo's religion
does not allow him to touch the skin of dead kine, and that
is what the Avater-sack is made of; it would defile him.
And it doesn't allow him to eat meat; the animal that fur-
nished the meat was murdered, and to take any creature's life
is a sin. It is a good and gentle religion, but inconvenient.

PECULIARITY OF INDIAN RIVERS. 465

A great Indian river, at low water, suggests the familiar
anatomical picture of a skinned human body, the intricate
mesh of interwoven muscles and tendons to stand for water-
channels, and the archipelagoes of fat and flesh inclosed by
them to stand for the sandbars. Somewhere on this journey
we passed such a river, and on a later journey we saw in the
Sutlej the duplicate of that river. Curious rivers they are;
low shores a dizzy distance apart, with nothing between but an
enormous acreage of sand-flats with sluggish little veins of
water dribbling around amongst them ; Saharas of sand, small-
pox-pitted with footprints punctured in belts as straight as the
equator clear from the one shore to the other (barring the
channel-interruptions) — a dry-shod ferry, you see. Long rail-
way bridges are required for this sort of rivers, and India has
them. You approach Allahabad by a very long one. It was
now carrying us across the bed of the eTumna, a bed which did
not seem to have been slept in for one while or more. It
wasn't all river-bed — most of it was overflow ground.

Allahabad means "City of God." I get this from the
books. From a printed curiosity — a letter written by one of
those brave and confident Hindoo strugglers with the English
tongue, called a "babu" — I got a more compressed transla-
tion : " Godville." It is perfectly correct, but that is the most
that can be said for it.

We arrived in the forenoon, and short-handed ; for Satan
got left behind somewhere that morning, and did not ov-ertake
us until after nightfall. It seemed very peaceful without him.
The world seemed asleep and dreaming.

I did not see the native town, I think. I do not remember

why ; for an incident connects it with the Great Mutiny, and

that is enough to make any place interesting. But I saw the

English part of the city. It is a town of wide avenues and

466 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

noble distances, and is comely and alluring, and full of sug-
gestions of comfort and leisure, and of the serenity which a
good conscience buttressed by a sufficient bank account gives.
The bungalows (dwellings) stand well back in the seclusion
and privacy of large enclosed compounds (private grounds, as
we should say) and in the shade and shelter of trees. Even
the photographer and the prosperous merchant ply their indus-
tries in the elegant reserve of big compounds, and the citizens
drive in there upon their business occasions. And not in cabs —
no ; in the Indian cities cabs are for the drifting stranger ; all the
white citizens have private carriages ; and each carriage has a
flock of white-turbaned black footmen and drivers all over it.
The vicinity of a lecture-hall looks like a snowstorm, and
makes the lecturer feel like an opera. India has many names,
and they are correctly descriptive. It is the Land of Contra-
dictions, the Land of Subtlety and Superstition, the Land of
Wealth and Poverty, the Land of Splendor and Desolation, the
Land of Plague and Famine, the Land of the Thug and the
Poisoner, and of the Meek and the Patient, the Land of the
Suttee, the Land of the Unreinstatable Widow, the Land where
All Life is Holy, the Land of Cremation, the Land where the
Vulture is a Grave and a Monument, the Land of the Mul-
titudinous Gods ; and if signs go for anything, it is the Land
of the Private Carriage.

In Bombay the forewoman of a millinery shop came to the
hotel in her private carriage to take the measure for a gown —
not for me, but for another. She had come out to India to
make a temporary stay, but was extending it indefinitely ; in-
deed, she was purposing to end her days there. In London, she
said, her work had been hard, her hours long ; for economy's
sake she had had to live in shabby rooms and far away from
the shop, watch the pennies, deny herself many of the common
comforts of life, restrict herself in effect to its bare necessities,

HINDOO PATIENCE. 467

eschew cabs, travel third-class by underground train to and
from her work, swallowing coal-smoke and cinders all the way,
and sometimes troubled with the society of men and women
who were less desirable than the smoke and the cinders. But
in Bombay, on almost any kind of wages, she could live in
comfort, and keep her carriage, and have six servants in place
of the woman-of-all-work she had had in her English home.
Later, in Calcutta, I found that the Standard Oil clerks had
small one-horse vehicles, and did no walking ; and I was told
that the clerks of the other large concerns there had the like
equipment. But to return to Allahabad.

I was up at dawn, the next morning. In India the tourist's
servant does not sleep in a room in the hotel, but rolls himself
up head and ears in his blanket and stretches himself on the
veranda, across the front of his master's door, and spends the
night there. I don't believe anybody's servant occupies a
room. Apparently, the bungalow servants sleep on the
veranda ; it is roomy, and goes all around the house. I speak
of men-servants ; I saw none of the other sex. I think there
are none, except child-nurses. I was up at dawn, and walked
around the veranda, past the rows of sleepers. In front of one
door a Hindoo servant was squatting, waiting for his master to
call him. He had polished the yellow shoes and placed them
by the door, and now he had nothing to do but wait. It was
freezing cold, but there he was, as motionless as a sculptured
image, and as patient. It troubled me. I wanted to say to
him. Don't crouch there like that and freeze ; nobody requires
it of you; stir around and get warm." But I hadn't the
words. I thought of saying jeldy jow, but I couldn't remem-
ber what it meant, so I didn't say it, I knew another phrase,
but it wouldn't come to my mind. I moved on, purposing to
dismiss him from my thoughts, but his bare legs and bare feet
kept him there. They kept drawing me back from the sunny

468

FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

side to a point whence I could see him. At the end of an
hour he had not changed his attitude in the least degree. It
was a curious and impressive exhibition of meekness and
patience, or fortitude or indifference, I did not know which.
But it worried me, and it was spoiling my morning. In fact,
it spoiled two hours of it quite thoroughly. I quitted this
vicinity, then, and left him to punish himself as much as he
might want to. But up to that time the man had not changed
his attitude a hair. He will always remain with me, I suppose ;

" IT WORKIED ME "

his figure never grows vague in my memory. Whenever I
read of Indian resignation, Indian patience under wrongs,
hardships, and misfortunes, he comes before me. He becomes
a personification, and stands for India in trouble. And for
untold ages India in trouble has been pursued with the very
remark which I was going to utter but didn't, because its
meaning had slipped me : Jeldy jow ! (" Come, shove along ! ")
"Why, it was the very thing.

In the early brightness we made a long drive out to the

A CROWD OF PILGRIMS. 469

Fort. Part of the way was beautiful. It led under stately-
trees and through groups of native houses and by the usual
village well, where the picturesque gangs are always flocking
to and fro and laughing and chattering; and this time brawny
men were deluging their bronze bodies with the limpid water,
and making a refreshing and enticing show of it ; enticing, for
the sun was already transacting business, firing India up for
the day. There was plenty of this early bathing going on, for
it was getting toward breakfast time, and with an unpurified
body the Hindoo must not eat.

Then we struck into the hot plain, and found the roads
crowded with pilgrims of both sexes, for one of the great
religious fairs of India was being held, just beyond the Fort,
at the junction of the sacred rivers, the Ganges and the Jumna.
Three sacred rivers, I should have said, for there is a subter-
ranean one. Nobody has seen it, but that doesn't signify.
The fact that it is there is enough. These pilgrims had come
from all over India ; some of them had been months on the
way, plodding patiently along in the heat and dust, worn,
poor, hungry, but supported and sustained by an unwavering
faith and belief; they were supremely happy and content,
now ; their full and sufficient reward was at hand ; they were
going to be cleansed from every vestige of sin and corruption
by these holy waters which make utterly pure whatsoever thing
they touch, even the dead and rotten. It is wonderful, the
power of a faith like that, that can make multitudes upon
multitudes of the old and weak and the young and frail enter
without hesitation or complaint upon such incredible journeys
and endure the resultant miseries without repining. It is done
in love, or it is done in fear ; I do not know which it is. No
matter what the impulse is, the act born of it is beyond imag-
ination marvelous to our kind of people, the cold whites.
There are choice great natures among us that could exhibit

4Y0 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

the equivalent of this prodigious self-sacrifice, but the rest of
us know that we should not be equal to anything approaching
it. Still, we all talk self-sacrifice, and this makes me hope
that we are large enough to honor it in the Hindoo.

Two millions of natives arrive at this fair every year.
How many start, and die on the road, from age and fatigue
and disease and scanty nourishment, and how many die on the
return, from the same causes, no one knows ; but the tale is
great, one may say enormous. Every twelfth year is held to
be a year of peculiar grace ; a greatly augmented volume of
pilgrims results then. The twelfth year has held this distinc-
tion since the remotest times, it i^ said. It is said also that
there is to be but one more twelfth year — for the Ganges.
Afte"r that, that holiest of all sacred rivers will cease to be
holy, and will be abandoned by the pilgrim for many centuries ;
how many, the wise men have not stated. At the end of that
interval it will become holy again. Meantime, the data Avill
be arranged by those people who have charge of all such mat-
ters, the great chief Brahmins. It will be like shutting down
a mint. At a first glance it looks most unbrahminically un-
commercial, but I am not disturbed, being soothed and tran-
quilized by their reputation. " Brer fox he lay low," as Uncle
Remus says ; and at the judicious time he will spring some-
thing on the Indian public which will show that he was not
financially asleep when he took the Ganges out of the market.

Great numbers of the natives along the roads were bringing
away holy water from the rivers. They would carry it far
and wide in India and sell it. Tavernier, the French traveler
(17th century), notes that Ganges water is often given at wed.
dings, " each guest receiving a cup or two, according to the
liberality of the host ; sometimes 2,000 or 3,000 rupees' worth
of it is consumed at a wedding."

The Fort is a huge old structure, and has had a large

VIEW FROM THE FORT. 473

experience in religions. In its great court stands a monolith
which was placed there more than 2,000 years ago to preach
Budhism by its pious inscription ; the Fort was built three
centuries ago by a Mohammedan Emperor — a resanctification
of the place in the interest of that religion. There is a Hindoo
temple, too, with subterranean ramifications stocked with
shrines and idols ; and now the Fort belongs to the English, it
contains a Christian Church. Insured in all the companies.

From the loft}'- ramparts one has a fine view of the sacred
rivers. They join at that point — the pale blue Jumna, ap-
parently clean and clear, and the muddy Ganges, dull yellow
and not clean. On a long curved spit between the rivers, towns
of tents were visible, with a multitude of fluttering pennons, and
a mighty swarm of pilgrims. It was a troublesome place to
get down to, and not a quiet place when you arrived ; but it
was interesting. There was a world of activity and turmoil and
noise, partly religious, partly commercial ; for the Mohamme-
dans were there to curse and sell, and the Hindoos to buy and
pray. It is a fair as well as a religious festival. Crowds were
bathing, praying, and drinking the purifying waters, and many
sick pilgrims had come long journeys in palanquins to be
healed of their maladies by a bath ; or if that might not be,
then to die on the blessed banks and so make sure of heaven.
There were fakeers in plenty, with their bodies dusted over
with ashes and their long hair caked together with cow-dung;
for the cow is holy and so is the rest of it; so holy that
the good Hindoo peasant frescoes the walls of his hut with this
refuse, and also constructs ornamental figures out of it for the
gracing of his dirt floor. There were seated families, fearfully
and wonderfully painted, who by attitude and grouping repre-
sented the families of certain great gods. There was a holy
man who sat naked by the day and by the week on a cluster of
iron spikes, and did not seem to mind it ; and another holy

474

FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

man, who stood all day holding his withered arms motionless
aloft, and was said to have been doing it for years. All of
these performers have a cloth on the ground beside them for
the reception of contributions, and even the poorest of the
people give a trifle and hope that the sacrifice will be blessed
to him. At last came a procession of naked holy people
marching by and chanting, and I wrenched myself away.

CHAPTER L.

The man who is ostentatious of his modesty is twin to the statue that wears a
fig-leaf. — PadcVnhead Wilson' h New Calendar.

rHE journey to Benares was all in daylight, and occu-
pied but a few hours. It was admirably dusty. The
dust settled upon you in a thick ashy layer and turned
you into a fakeer, with nothing lacking to the rdle but the
cow manure and the sense of holiness. There was a change of
cars about mid-afternoon at Moghul-serai — if that was the
name — and a wait of two hours there for the Benares train.
We could have found a carriage and driven to the sacred city,
but we should have lost the wait. In other countries a long
wait at a station is a dull thing and tedious, but one has no
right to have that feeling in India. You have the monster
crowd of bejeweled natives, the stir, the bustle, the confusion,
the shifting splendors of the costumes — dear me, the delight
of it, the charm of it are beyond speech. The two-hour wait
was over too soon. Among other satisfying things to look at
was a minor native prince from the backwoods somewhere,
with his guard of honor, a ragged but wonderfully gaudy
gang of fifty dark barbatians armed with rusty flint-lock
muskets. The general show came so near to exhausting
variety that one would have said that no addition to it could
be conspicuous, but when this Falstaff and his motleys marched
through it one saw that that seeming impossibility had hap-
pened.

We got away by and by, and soon reached the outer edge
of Benares; then there Avas another wait; but, as usual, with

(475)

476 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

something to look at. This was a cluster of little canvas-
boxes — palanquins. A canvas-box is not much of a sight —
when empty ; but when there is a lady in it, it is an object of
interest. These boxes were grouped apart, in the full blaze of
the terrible sun during the three-quarters of an hour that we
tarried there. They contained zenana ladies. They had to sit
up ; there was not room enough to stretch out. They prob-
ably did not mind it. They are used to the close captivity of
their dwellings all their lives ; when they go a journey they
are carried to the train in these boxes ; in the train they have
to be secluded from inspection. Many people pity them, and
I always did it myself and never charged anything ; but it is
doubtful if this compassion is valued. While we were in India
some good-hearted Europeans in one of the cities proposed to
restrict a large park to the use of zenana ladies, so that they
could go there and in assured privacy go about unveiled and
enjoy the sunshine and air as they had never enjoyed them
before. The good intentions back of the proposition were
recognized, and sincere thanks returned for it, but the propo-
sition itself met with a prompt declination at the hands of
those who were authorized to speak for the zenana ladies.
Apparently, the idea was shocking to the ladies — indeed, it
was quite manifestly shocking. Was that proposition the
equivalent of inviting European ladies to assemble scantily
and scandalously clothed in the seclusion of a private park?
It seemed to be about that.

Without doubt modesty is nothing less than a holy feeling ;
and without doubt the person whose rule of modesty has been
trangressed feels the same sort of wound that he would feel if
something made holy to him by his religion had suffered a
desecration. I say " rule of modesty " because there are about
a million rules in the world, and this makes a million standards
to be looked out for. Major Sleeman mentions the case of some

THE EXTREMES OF FASHION. 477

liigh-caste veiled ladies who were profoundl}^ scandalized when
some English young ladies passed by with faces bare to the
world ; so scandalized that they spoke out with strong indigna-
tion and wondered that people could be so shameless as to
expose their persons like that. And yet "the legs of the
objectors were naked to mid-thigh." Both parties were clean-
minded and irreproachably modest, while abiding by their
separate rules, but they couldn't have traded rules for a change
without suffering considerable discomfort. All human rules
are more or less idiotic, I suppose. It is best so, no doubt.
The way it is now, the asylums can hold the sane people, but
if we tried to shut up the insane we should run out of building
materials.

You have a long drive through the outskirts of Benares
before you get to the hotel. And all the aspects are melan-
choly. It is a vision of dusty sterility, decaying temples,
crumbling tombs, broken mud walls, shabby huts. The whole
region seems to ache with age and penury. It must take ten
thousand years of want to produce such an aspect. We were
still outside of the great native city when we reached the hotel.
It was a quiet and homelike house, inviting, and manifestly
comfortable. But we liked its annex better, and went thither.
It was a mile away, perhaps, and stood in the midst of a large
compound, and was built bungalow fashion, everything on the
ground floor, and a veranda, all around. They have doors in
India, but I don't know why. They don't fasten, and they
stand open, as a rule, with a curtain hanging in the doorspace
to keep out the glare of the sun. Still, there is plenty of pri-
vacy, for no white person will come in without notice, of course.
The native men servants will, but they don't seem to count.
They glide in, barefoot and noiseless, and are in the midst be-
fore one knows it. At first this is a shock, and sometimes it
is an embarrassment ; but one has to get used to it, and does.

478 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

There was one tree in the compound, and a monkey lived
in it. At first I was strongly interested in the tree, for I was
told that it was the renowned peepul — the tree in whose
shadow you cannot tell a lie. This one failed to stand the test,
and I went away from it disappointed. There was a softly
creaking well close by, and a couple of oxen drew water from
it by the hour, superintended by two natives dressed in the
usual " turban and pocket-handkerchief." The tree and the
well were the only scenery, and so the compound was a sooth-
ing and lonesome and satisfying place ; and very restful after
so many activities. There was nobody in our bungalow but
ourselves ; the other guests were in the next one, Avhere the
table d'hote was furnished, A body could not be more pleas-
antly situated. Each room had the customary bath attached —
a room ten or twelve feet square, with a roomy stone-paved
pit in it and abundance of water. One could not easily
improve upon this arrangement, except by furnishing it with
cold water and excluding the hot, in deference to the fervency
of the climate ; but that is forbidden. It would damage the
bather's health. The stranger is warned against taking cold
baths in India, but even the most intelligent strangers are
fools, and they do not obey, and so they presently get laid up.
I was the most intelligent fool that passed through, that year.
But I am still more intelligent now. Now that it is too late.

I wonder if the dorian, if that is the name of it, is another
superstition, like the peepul tree. There was a great abun-
dance and variety of tropical fruits, but the dorian was never
in evidence. It was never the season for the dorian. It was
always going to arrive from Burma sometime or other, but it
never did. By all accounts it was a most strange fruit, and
incomparably delicious to the taste, but not to the smell. Its
rind was said to exude a stench of so atrocious a nature that
when a dorian was in the room even the presence of a polecat

THE DOIUAN.

479

was a refreshment. "We found many who had eaten the
dorian, and they all spoke of it with a sort of rapture. They
said that if you could hold your nose until the fruit was in
your mouth a sacred joy would suffuse you from head to foot
that would make you oblivious to
the smell of the rind, but that if
your grip slipped and you caught
the smell of the rind before the
fruit was in your mouth, you
would faint. There is a for-
tune in that rind. Some dav
somebody will import it into
Europe and sell it for cheese.
Benares was not a disap-
pointment. It justified its
reputation as a curiosity. It
is on high ground, and over-
hangs a grand curve of the
Ganges. It is a vast mass of
building, compactly crusting
a hill, and is cloven in all
directions by an intricate
confusion of cracks which
stand for streets. Tall, slim
minarets and beflagged tem-
ple-spires rise out of it and
give it picturesqueness,
viewed from the river. The city is as busy as an ant-hill, and
the hurly-burly of human life swarming along the web of
narrow streets reminds one of the ants. The sacred cow
swarms along, too, and goes whither she pleases, and takes
toll of the grain-shops, and is very much in the way, and is a
good deal of a nuisance, since she must not be molested.

TIIEY SPOKE OF IT WITH RAl'TUKE.

480 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

Benares is older than history, older than tradition, older
even than legend, and looks twice as old as all of them put
together. From a Hindoo statement quoted in Rev. Mr.
Parker's compact and lucid Guide to Benares, I find that the
site of the town was the beginning-place of the Creation. It
was merely an upright "lingam," at first, no larger than a
Istove-pipe, and stood in the midst of a shoreless ocean. This
was the work of the God Vishnu. Later he spread the lingam
out till its surface was ten miles across. Still it was not large
enough for the business; therefore he presently built the
globe around it. Benares is thus the center of the earth.
This is considered an advantage.

It has had a tumultuous history, both materially and spirit-
ually. It started Brahminically, many ages ago ; then by and
by Buddha came in recent times 2,500 years ago, and after
that it was Buddhist during many centuries — twelve, per-
haps— but the Brahmins got the upper hand again, then, and
have held it ever since. It is unspeakably sacred in Hindoo
eyes, and is as unsanitary as it is sacred, and smells like the
rind of the dorian. It is the headquarters of the Brahmin
faith, and one-eighth of the population are priests of that
church. But it is not an overstock, for they have all India as
a prey. All India flocks thither on pilgrimage, and pours its
savings into the pockets of the priests in a generous stream,
which never fails. A priest with a good stand on the shore of
the Ganges is much better off than the sweeper of the best cross-
ing in London. A good stand is worth a world of money.
The holy proprietor of it sits under his grand spectacular
umbrella and blesses people all his life, and collects his com-
mission, and grows fat and rich; and the stand passes from
father to son, down and down and down through the ages,
and remains a permanent and lucrative estate in the family.
As Mr. Parker suggests, it can become a subject of dispute, at

BENARES. 481

one time or another, and then the matter will be settled, not
by prayer and fasting and consultations with Yishnu, but by
the intervention of a much more puissant power — an English
court. In Bombay I was told by an American missionary
that in India there are 640 Protestant missionaries at work.
At first it seemed an immense force, but of course that was a
thoughtless idea. One missionary to 500,000 natives — no,
that is not a force ; it is the reverse of it ; 640 marching
against an intrenched camp of 300,000,000 — the odds are too
great, A force of 640 in Benares alone would have its hands
over-full with 8,000 Brahmin priests for adversary. Mission-
aries need to be well equipped with hope and confidence, and
this equipment they seem to have always had in all parts of
the world. Mr. Parker has it. It enables him to get a favor-
able outlook out of statistics which might add up differently
with other mathematicians. For instance:

" During the past few years competent observers declare
that the number of pilgrims to Benares has increased."

And. then he adds up this fact and gets this conclusion :

" But the revival, if so it may be called, has in it the marks
of death. It is a spasmodic struggle before dissolution."

In this world we have seen the Roman Catholic power
dying, upon these same terms, for many centuries. Many a
time we have gotten all ready for the funeral and found it
postponed again, on account of the weather or something.
Taught by experience, we ought not to put on our things for
this Brahminical one till we see the procession move. Appar-
ently one of the most uncertain things in the world is the
funeral of a religion.

I should have been glad to acquire some sort of idea of
Hindoo theology, but the diificulties were too great, the matter
was too intricate. Even the mere A, B, C of it is baffling.
31

482 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

There is a trinity — Brahma, Shiva, and Vishnu — independent
powers, apparently, though one cannot feel quite sure of that,
because in one of the temples there is an image where an
attempt has been made to concentrate the three in one person.
The three have other names and plenty of them, and this
makes confusion in one's mind. The three have wives and the
wives have several names, and this increases the confusion.
There are children, the children have many names, and thus
the confusion goes on and on. It is not worth while to try to
get any grip upon the cloud of minor gods, there are too many
of them.

It is even a justifiable economy to leave Brahma, the
chiefest god of all, out of your studies, for he seems to cut no
great figure in India. The vast bulk of the national worship
is lavished upon Shiva and Vishnu and their families. Shiva's
symbol — the " lingam " Avith which Vishnu began the Crea-
tion — is worshiped by everybody, apparently. It is the com-
monest object in Benares. It is on view everywhere, it is
garlanded with flowers, offerings are made to it, it suffers no
neglect. Commonly it is an upright stone, shaped like a
thin^ble — sometimes like an elongated thimble. This priapus-
worship, then, is older than history. Mr. Parker says that the
lingams in Benares " outnumber the inhabitants.''^

In Benares there are many Mohammedan mosques. There
are Hindoo temples without number — these quaintly shaped
and elaborately sculptured little stone jugs crowd all the lanes.
The Ganges itself and every individual drop of water in it are
temples. Keligion, then, is the business of Benares, just as
gold-production is the business of Johannesburg. Other indus-
tries count for nothing as compared with the vast and all-ab-
sorbing rush and drive and boom of the town's specialty. Be-
nares is the sacredest of sacred cities. The moment you step
across the sharply -defined line which separates it from the rest

THE BUSINESS OF BENARES. 483

of the globe, you stand upon ineffably and unspeakably holy
ground. Mr. Parker says : " It is impossible to convey any
adequate idea of the intense feelings of veneration and affec-
tion with which the pious Hindoo regards ' Holy Kashi '
(Benares)." And then he gives you this vivid and moving pic-
ture:

" Let a Hindoo regiment be marched through the district, and as soon as
they cross the line and enter the limits of the holy place they rend the air with
cries of ' Kashi ji ki jai — jai — jai ! (Holy Kashi ! Hail to thee ! Hail !
Hail ! Hail)'. The weary pilgrim scarcely able to stand, with age and weak-
ness, blinded by the dust and heat, and almost dead with fatigue, crawls out
of the oven-like railway carriage and as soon as his feet touch the ground he
lifts up his withered hands and utters the same pious exclamation. Let a
European in some distant city in casual talk in the bazar mention the fact that
he has lived at Benares, and at once voices will be raised to call down bless-
ings on his head, for a dweller in Benares is of all men most blessed."

It makes our own religious enthusiasm seem pale and cold.
Inasmuch as the life of religion is in the heart, not the head,
Mr. Parker's touching picture seems to promise a sort of indefi-
nite postponement of that funeral.

CHAPTER LI.

Let me make the superstitions of a nation and I care not wbo makes its laws or
its songs either. — Pudd^nhead Wilson's New Calendar.

YES, the city of Benares is in effect just a big church, a
religious hive, whose every cell is a temple, a shrine or
a mosque, and whose every conceivable earthly and
heavenly good is procurable under one roof, so to speak — a
sort of Army and Navy Stores, theologically stocked.

I will make out a little itinerary for the pilgrim ; then you
will see how handy the system is, how convenient, how com-
prehensive. If you go to Benares with a serious desire to spir-
itually benefit yourself, you will find it valuable. I got some
of the facts from conversations with the Rev. Mr. Parker and
the others from his Guide to Benares ; they are therefore trust-
worthy.

1. Purification. At sunrise you must go down to the
Granges and bathe, pray, and drink some of the water. This is
for your general purification.

2. Protection against Hunger. Next, you must fortify
yourself against the sorrowful earthly ill just named. This
you will do by worshiping for a moment in the Cow Temple.
By the door of it you will find an image of Ganesh, son of
Shiva ; it has the head of an elephant on a human body ; its
face and hands are of silver. You will worship it a little, and
pass on, into a covered veranda, Avhere you will find devotees
reciting from the sacred books, with the help of instructors.
In this place are groups of rude and dismal idols. You may
contribute something for their support ; then pass into the tem-

(484)

THE PILGRIM'S GUIDE. 485

pie, a grim and stenchy place, for it is populous with sacred
cows and with beggars. You will give something to the beg-
gars, and " reverently kiss the tails " of such cows as pass along,
for these cows are peculiarly holy, and this act of worship will
secure you from hunger for the day.

.'fT.">

DO IT REVERENTLY.

3. " The Poor Mavus Friend^ You will next worship
this god. He is at the bottom of a stone cistern in the temple
of Dalbhyeswar, under the shade of a noble peepul tree on the
bluff overlooking the Ganges, so you must go back to the
river. The Poor Man's Friend is the god of material pros-
perity in general, and the god of the rain in particular. You
will secure material prosperity, or both, by worshiping him.
He is Shiva, under a new alias, and he abides in the bottom
of that cistern, in the form of a stone lingam. You pour
Ganges water over him, and in return for this homage you
get the promised benefits. If there is any delay about the
rain, you must pour water in until the cistern is full ; the rain
will then be sure to come.

4. Fever. At the Kedar Ghat you will find a long flight
of stone steps leading down to the river. Half way down is a
tank filled with sewage. Drink as much of it as you want. It
is for fever.

486 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

5. Smallpox. Go straight from there to the central Ghat.
At its upstream end you will find a small whitewashed build-
ing, which is a temple sacred to Sitala, goddess of smallpox.
Her under-study is there — a rude human figure behind a brass
screen. You will worship this for reasons to be furnished
presently.

6. The Well of Fate. For certain reasons you will next
go and do homage at this well. You will find it in the Dand-
pan Temple, in . the city. The sunlight falls into it from a
square hole in the masonry above. You mil approach it with
awe, for your life is now at stake. You will bend over and
look. If the fates are propitious, you will see your face pic-
tured in the water far down in the well. If matters have been
otherwise ordered, a sudden cloud will mask the sun and you
will see nothing. This means that you have not six months to
live. If you are already at the point of death, your circum-
stances are now serious. There is no time to lose. Let this
world go, arrange for the next one. Handily situated, at
your very elbow, is opportunity for this. You turn and wor-
ship the image of Maha Kal, the Great Fate, and happiness in
the life to come is secured. If there is breath in your body
yet, you should now make an effort to get a further lease of
the present life. You have a chance. There is a chance for
everything in this admirably stocked and wonderfully system-
ized Spiritual and Temporal Army and Navy Store. You
must get yourself carried to the

7. Well of Long Life. This is within the precincts of the
mouldering and venerable Briddhkal Temple, which is one of
the oldest in Benares, You pass in by a stone image of the
monkey god, Hanuman, and there, among the ruined court-
yards, you will find a shallow pool of stagnant sewage. It
smells like the best limburger cheese, and is filthy with the
washings of rotting lepers, but that is nothing, bathe in it ;

THE WELL OF FATE.

THE PILGRIM'S GUIDE. 489

bathe in it gratefully and worshipfully, for this is the Foun-
tain of Youth ; these are the Waters of Long Life. Your
gray hairs will disappear, and with them your wrinkles and
your rheumatism, the burdens of oare and the weariness of age,
and you will come out young, fresh, elastic, and full of eager-
ness for the new race of life. Now will come flooding upon
you the manifold desires that haunt the dear dreams of the
morning of life. You will go whither you will find

8. Fulfilhnent of Desire. To wit, to the Kameshwar
Temple, sacred to Shiva as the Lord of Desires. Arrange for
yours there. And if you like to look at idols among the pack
and jam of temples, there you will find enough to stock a
museum. You will begin to commit sins now with a fresh,
new vivacity ; therefore, it will be well to go frequently to a
place where you can get

9. Temporary Cleansing from Sin. To wit, to the Well
of the Earring. You must approach this with the profoundest
reverence, for it is unutterably sacred. It is, indeed, the most
sacred place in Benares, the very Holy of Holies, in the esti-
mation of the people. It is a railed tank, with stone stairways
leading down to the water. The water is not clean. Of
course it could not be, for people are always bathing in it.
As long as you choose to stand and look, you will see the files
of sinners descending and ascending — descending soiled with
sin, ascending purged from it. " The liar, the thief, the mur-
derer, and the adulterer may here wash and be clean," says
the Eev. Mr. Parker, in his book. Very well. I know Mr.
Parker, and I believe it ; but if anybody else had said it, I
should consider him a person who had better go down in the
tank and take another wash. The god Vishnu dug this tank.
He had nothing to dig with but his " discus." I do not know
what a discus is, but I know it is a poor thing to dig tanks
with, because, by the time this one was finished, it was full of

490 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

sweat — Vishnu's sweat. He constructed the site that
Benares stands on, and afterward built the globe around it,
and thought nothing of it, yet sweated like that over a little
thing like this tank. One of these statements is doubtful. 1
do not know which one it is, but I think it difficult not to
believe that a god who could build a world around Benares
would not be intelligent enough to build it around the tank
too, and not have to dig it. Youth, long life, temporary puri-
fication from sin, salvation through propitiation of the Great
Fate — these are all good. But you must do something more.
You must

10. Make Salvation Sure. There are several ways. To
get drowned in the Ganges is one, but that is not pleasant.
To die within the limits of Benares is another ; but that is a
risky one, because you might be out of town when your time
came. The best one of all is the Pilgrimage Around the City.
You must walk ; also, you must go barefoot. The tramp is
forty-four miles, for the road winds out into the country a
piece, and you will be marching five or six days. But you
will have plenty of company. You will move with throngs
and hosts of happy pilgrims whose radiant costumes will
make the spectacle beautiful and whose glad songs and holy
paeans of triumph will banish your fatigues and cheer your
spirit ; and at intervals there will be temples where you may
sleep and be refreshed with food. The pilgrimage completed,
you have purchased salvation, and paid for it. But you may
not get it unless you

11. Get Your Redemption Recorded. You can get this
done at the Sakhi Binayak Temple, and it is best to do it, for
otherwise you might not be able to prove that you had made
the pilgrimage in case the matter should some day come to be
disputed. That temple is in a lane back of the Cow Temple.
Over the door is a red image of Ganesh of the elephant head,

THE PILGRIM'S GUIDE. 491

son and heir of Shiva, and Prince of Wales to the Theological
Monarchy, so to speak, "Within is a god whose office it is to
record your pilgrimage and be responsible for you. You will
not see him, but you will see a Brahmin who will attend to the
matter and take the money. If he should forget to collect the
money, you can remind him. He knows that your salvation
is now secure, but of course you would like to know it your-
self. You have nothing to do but go and pray, and pay at the

12. Well of the Knowledge of Salvation. It is close to
the Golden Temple. There you will see, sculptured out of a
single piece of black marble, a bull which is much larger than
any living bull you have ever seen, and yet is not a good like-
ness after all. And there also you will see a very uncommon
thing — an image of Shiva. You have seen his lingam fifty
thousand times already, but this is Shiva himself, and said to
be a good likeness. It has three eyes. He is the only ^od in
the firm that has three. "The well is covered by a fine
canopy of stone supported by forty pillars," and around it you
will find what you have already seen at almost every shrine
you have visited in Benares, a mob of devout and eager pil-
grims. The sacred water is being ladled out to them ; with it
comes to them the knowledge, clear, thrilling, absolute, that
they are saved ; and you can see by their faces that there is
one happiness in this world which is supreme, and to which no
other joy is comparable. You receive your water, you make
your deposit, and now what more would you have? Gold,
diamonds, power, fame % All in a single moment these things
have withered to dirt, dust, ashes. The world has nothing to
give you now. For you it is bankrupt.

I do not claim that the pilgrims do their acts of worship in
the order and sequence above charted out in this Itinerary of
mine, but I think logic suggests that they ought to do so.
Instead of a helter-skelter worship, we then have a definite

492 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

starting-place, and a march which carries the pilgrim steadily
forward by reasoned and logical progression to a definite goal.
Thus, his Ganges bath in the early morning gives him an
appetite ; he kisses the cow-tails, and that removes it. It is
now business hours, and longings for material prosperity rise
in his mind, and he goes and pours water over Shiva's symbol ;
this insures the prosperity, but also brings on a rain, which
gives him a fever. Then he drinks the sewage at the Kedar
Ghat to cure the fever ; it cures the fever but gives him the
smallpox. He wishes to know how it is going to turn out ; he
goes to the Dandpan Temple and looks down the well. A
clouded sun shows him that death is near. Logically his best
course for the present, since he cannot tell at what moment he
may die, is to secure a happy hereafter ; this he does, through
the agency of the Great Fate. He is safe, now, for heaven ;
his next move will naturally be to keep out of it as long as he
can. Therefore he goes to the Briddhkal Temple and secures
Youth and long life by bathing in a puddle of leper-pus which
would kill a microbe. Logically, Youth has re-equipped him
for sin and with the disposition to commit it ; he will naturally
go to the fane which is consecrated to the Fulfillment of
Desires, and make arrangements. Logically, he will now go
to the Well of the Earring from time to time to unload and
freshen up for further banned enjoyments. But first and last
and all the time he is human, and therefore in his reflective
intervals he Avill always be speculating in " futures." He will
make the Great Pilgrimage around the city and so make his
salvation absolutely sure ; he will also have record made of it,
so that it may remain absolutely sure and not be forgotten or
repudiated in the confusion of the Final Settlement. Logic-
ally, also, he will Avish to have satisfying and tranquilizing
personal knowledge that that salvation is secure ; therefore he
goes to the "Well of the Knowledge of Salvation, adds that

THE PILGRIM'S GUIDE.

493

completing detail, and then goes about his affairs serene and
content ; serene and content, for he is now royally endowed
with an advantage which no religion in this world could give
him but his own ; for henceforth he may commit as many mil-
lion sins as he wants to and nothing can come of it.

Thus the system, properly and logically ordered, is neat,
compact, clearly defined, and covers the whole ground. I
desire to recommend it to such as find the other systems too
difficult, exacting, and irksome for the uses of this fretful brief
life of ours.

However, let me not deceive any one. My Itinerary lacks
a detail. I must put it in. The truth is, that after the pil-
grim has faithfully followed the requirements of the Itinerary
through to the end and has secured his salvation and also the
personal knowledge of that fact, there is still an accident pos-
sible to him which can annul the whole thing. If he should
ever cross to the other side of the Ganges and get caught out
and die there he would at once come to life a^ain in the form

CONSIDERING THE MATTER.

of an ass. Think of that, after all this trouble and expense.
You see how capricious and uncertain salvation is there. The
Hindoo has a childish and unreasoning aversion to being

494 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

turned into an ass. It is hard to tell why. One could prop-
erly expect an ass to have an aversion to being turned into a
Hindoo. One could understand that he could lose dignity by
it; also self-respect, and nine-tenths of his intelligence. But
the Hindoo changed into an ass wouldn't lose anything, unless
you count his religion. And he would gain much — release
from his slavery to two million gods and twenty million
priests, f akeers, holy mendicants, and other sacred bacilli ; he
would escape the Hindoo hell; he would also escape the
Hindoo heaven. These are advantages which the Hindoo
ought to consider ; then he would go over and die on the other
side.

Benares is a religious Vesuvius. In its bowels the theolog-
ical forces have been heaving and tossing, rumbling, thunder-
ing and quaking, boiling, and weltering and flaming and
smoking for ages. But a little group of missionaries have
taken post at its base, and they have hopes. There are the
Baptist Missionary Society, the Church Missionary Society, the
London Missionary Society, the Wesleyan Missionary Society,
and the Zenana Bible and Medical Mission. They have
schools, and the principal work seems to be among the
childrei^. And no doubt that part of the work prospers best,
for grown people everywhere are always likely to cling to the
religion they were brought up in.

CHAPTER LII.

Wrinkles should merely indicate where smiles have been.

— PtultVnhead Wih<m''s New Calendar.

IN one of those Benares temples we saw a devotee working
for salvation in a curious way. He had a huge wad of
clay beside him and was making it up into little wee gods
no bigger than carpet tacks. He stuck a grain of rice into
each — to represent the lingam, I think. He turned them out
nimbly, for he had had long practice and had acquired great
facility. Every day he made 2,000 gods, then threw them into
the holy Ganges. This act of homage brought him the pro-
found homage of the pious — also their coppers. He had a sure
living here, and was earning a high place in the hereafter.

The Ganges front is the supreme show-place of Benares.
Its tall bluffs are solidly caked from water to summit, along a
stretch of three miles, with a splendid jumble of massive and
picturesque masonry, a bewildering and beautiful confusion of
stone platforms, temples, stair-flights, rich and stately palaces
— nowhere a break, nowhere a glimpse of the bluff itself ; all
the long face of it is compactly w^alled from sight by this
crammed perspective of platforms, soaring stairways, sculp-
tured temples, majestic palaces, softening away into the dis-
tances ; and there is movement, motion, human life everywhere,
and brilliantly costumed — streaming in rainbows up a,nd
down the lofty stairways, and massed in metaphorical flower-
gardens on the miles of great platforms at the river's edge.

All this masonry, all this architecture represents piety.
The palaces were built by native princes whose homes, as a

(496)

BOATING ON THE GANGES. 497

rule, are far from Benares, but who go there from time to time
to refresh their souls with the sight and touch of the Ganges, the
river of their idolatry. The stairways are records of acts of
piety ; the crowd of costly little temples are tokens of iponey
spent by rich men for present credit and hope of future re-
ward. Apparently, the rich Christian who spends large sums
upon his religion is conspicuous with us, by his rarity, but the
rich Hindoo who doesn't spend large sums upon his religion is
seemingly non-existent. With us the poor spend money on
their religion, but they keep back some to live on. Appar-
ently, in India, the poor bankrupt themselves daily for their
religion. The rich Hindoo can afford his pious outlays; he
gets much glory for his spendings, yet keeps back a sufficiency
of his income for temporal purposes ; but the poor Hindoo is
entitled to compassion, for his spendings keep him poor, yet
get him no glory.

We made the usual trip up and down the river, seated in
chairs under an awning on the deck of the usual commodious
hand-propelled ark; made it two or three times, and could
have made it with increasing interest and enjoyment many
times more; for, of course, the palaces and temples would
grow more and more beautiful every time one saw them, for
that happens with all such things ; also, I think one would not
get tired of the bathers, nor their costumes, nor of their inge-
nuities in getting out of them and into them again without
exposing too much bronze, nor of their devotional gesticula-
tions and absorbed bead-tellings.

But I should get tired of seeing them wash their mouths
with that dreadful water and drink it. In fact, I did get tired
of it, and very early, too. At one place where we halted for a
while, the foul gush from a sewer was making the water turbid
and murky all around, and there was a random corpse slopping
around in it that had floated down from up country. Ten steps

THE PICTURESQUE RIVER FRONT. 499

below that place stood a crowd of men, women, and comely
young maidens waist deep in the water — and they were
scooping it up in their hands and drinking it. Faith can cer-
tainly do wonders, and this is an instance of it. Those people
were not drinking that fearful stuff to assuage thirst, but in
order to purify their souls and the interior of their bodies.
According to their creed, the Ganges water makes everything
pure that it touches — instantly and utterly pure. The sewer
water was not an offence to them, the corpse did not revolt
them ; the sacred water had touched both, and both were now
snow-pure, and could defile no one. The memory of that sight
will always stay by me ; but not by request.

A word further concerning the nasty but all-purifying
Ganges water. When we went to Agra, by and by, we hap-
pened there just in time to be in at the birth of a marvel — a
memorable scientific discovery — the discovery that in certain
ways the foul and derided Ganges water is the most puissant
purifier in the world ! This curious fact, as I have said, had
just been added to the treasury of modern science. It had
long been noted as a strange thing that while Benares is often
afflicted with the cholera she does not spread it beyond her
borders. This could not be accounted for. Mr. Henkin, the
scientist in the employ of the government of Agra, concluded
to examine the water. He went to Benares and made his
tests. He got water at the mouths of the sewers where they
empty into the river at the bathing ghats ; a cubic centimetre
of it contained millions of germs ; at the end of six hours
they were all dead. He caught a floating corpse, towed it to
the shore, and from beside it he dipped up Avater that was
swarming with cholera germs ; at the end of six hours they were
all dead. He added swarm after swarm of cholera germs to this
water ; ^vithin the six hours they always died, to the last sam-
ple. Repeatedly, he took pure well water which was barren

500 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

of animal life, and put into it a few cholera germs ; they always
began to propagate at once, and always within six hours they
swarmed — and were nurnherdble hy millions upon millions.

For ages and ages the Hindoos have had absolute faith that
the water of the Ganges was absolutely pure, could not be
defiled by any contact whatsoever, and infallibly made pure
and clean whatsoever thing touched it. They still believe it,
and that is why they bathe in it and drink it, caring nothing
for its seeming filthiness and the floating corpses. The Hindoos
have been laughed at, these many generations, but the laugh-
ter will need to modify itself a little from now on. How did
they find out the water's secret in those ancient ages ? Had
they germ-scientists then % We do not know. We only know
that they had a civilization long before we emerged from
savagery. But to return to where I was before ; I was about
to speak of the burning-ghat.

They do not burn fakeers — those revered mendicants.
They are so holy that they can get to their place without that
sacrament, provided they be consigned to the consecrating
river. We saw one carried to mid-stream and thrown over-
board. He was sandwiched between two great slabs of stone.

We lay off the cremation-ghat half an hour and saw nine
corpses burned. I should not wish to see any more of it,
unless I might select the parties. The mourners follow the
bier through the town and down to the ghat ; then the bier-
bearers deliver the body to some low-caste natives — Doms —
and the mourners turn about and go back home. I heard no
crying and saw no tears, there was no ceremony of parting.
Apparently, these expressions of grief and affection are reserved
for the privacy of the home. The dead women came draped
in red, the men in white. They are laid in the water at the
river's edge while the pyre is being prepared.

The first subject was a man. When the Doms unswathed

WHERE THEY BURN THE DEAD.

601

him to wash him, he proved to be a sturdily built, well-nour-
ished and handsome old gentleman, with not a sign about him
to suggest that he had ever been ill. Dry wood was brought
and built up into a loose pile ; the corpse was laid upon it and
covered over with fuel.
Then a naked holy man
who was sitting on high
ground a little distance
away began to talk and
shout with great energy,
and he kept up this noise
right along. It may have
been the funeral sermon,
and probably was. I for-
got to say that one of the
mourners remained behind
when the others went away.
This was the dead man's
son, a boy of ten or twelve,
brown and handsome, grave
and self-possessed, and
clothed in flowing white.
He was there to burn his father. He was given a torch, and
while he slowly walked seven times around the pyre the
naked black man on the high ground poured out his sermon
more clamorously than ever. The seventh circuit completed,
the boy applied the torch at his father's head, then at his feet ;
the flames sprang briskly up with a sharp crackling noise, and
the lad went away. Hindoos do not want daughters, because
their weddings make such a ruinous expense ; but they want
sons, so that at death they may have honorable exit from the
world ; and there is no honor equal to the honor of having
one's pyre lighted by one's son. The father who dies sonless

EXTRA EXPENSE.

502 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

is in a grievous situation indeed, and is pitied. Life being
uncertain, the Hindoo marries while he is still a boy, in the
hope that he will have a son ready when the day of his need
shall come. But if he have no son, he will adopt one. This
answers every purpose.

Meantime the corpse is burning, also several others. It is a
dismal business. The stokers did not sit down in idleness, but
moved briskly about, punching up the fires with long poles,
and now and then adding fuel. Sometimes they hoisted the
half of a skeleton into the air, then slammed it down and beat
it with the pole, breaking it up so that it would burn better.
They hoisted skulls up in the same way and banged and
battered them. The sight was hard to bear; it would have
been harder if the mourners had stayed to witness it. I had
but a moderate desire to see a cremation, so it was soon satisfied.
For sanitary reasons it would be well if cremation were univer-
sal ; but this form is revolting, and not to be recommended.

The fire used is sacred, of course — for there is money in it.
Ordinary fire is forbidden ; there is no money in it. I was
told that this sacred fire is all furnished by one person, and
that he has a monopoly of it and charges a good price for it.
Sometimes a rich mourner pays a thousand rupees for it. To
get to paradise from India is an expensive thing. Every de-
tail connected. with the matter costs something, and helps to
fatten a priest. I suppose it is quite safe to conclude that that
fire-bug is in holy orders.

Close to the cremation-ground stand a few time-worn stones
which are remembrances of the suttee. Each has a rough
carving upon it, representing a man and a woman standing or
walking hand in hand, and marks the spot where a widoAV
went to her death by fire in the days when the suttee flourished.
Mr. Parker said that widows would burn themselves now
if the government would allow it. The family that can point

IDOLS AND MONKEYS.

603

to one of these little memorials and say :
"She who burned herself there was an
ancestress of ours," is envied.

It is a curious people. With them, all
life seems to be sacred except human life.
Even the life of vermin is sacred, and must
not be taken. The good Jain wipes off a
seat before using it, lest he cause the death
of some valueless insect by sitting down on
it. It grieves him to have to drink water,
because the provisions in his stomach may
not agree with the microbes. Yet
India invented Thuggery and the
Suttee. India is a hard country to
understand.

We went to the temple of the
Thug goddess, Bhowanee, or Kali, or
Durga. She has these names and
others. She is the only god to whom
living sacrifices are made. Goats are
sacrificed to her. Monkeys would
be cheaper. There are plenty of them
about the place. Being sacred, they
make themselves very free, and scram-
ble around wherever they please. The
temple and its porch are beautifully
carved, but this is not the case with
the idol. Bho-
wanee is not
pleasant to look
at. She has a
silver face, and '' "^ a projecting swollen

tongue painted a deep red. She wears a necklace of skulls.

MONKET ANTICS.

504 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

In fact, none of the idols in Benares are handsome or
attractive. And what a swarm of them there is ! The town
is a vast museum of idols — and all of them crude, misshapen,
and ugly. They flock through one's dreams at night, a wild
mob of nightmares. When you get tired of them in the
temples and take a trip on the river, you find idol giants,
flashily painted, stretched out side by side on the shore. And
apparently wherever there is room for one more lingam, a
lingam is there. If Vishnu had foreseen what his town was
^oing to be, he would have called it Idolville or Lingamburg.

The most conspicuous feature of Benares is the pair of
slender white minarets which tower like masts from the great
Mosque of Aurangzeb. They seem to be always in sight, from
everywhere, those airy, graceful, inspiring things. But masts
is not the right word, for masts have a perceptible taper, while
these minarets have not. They are 142 feet high, and only 8i
feet in diameter at the base, and 7^ at the summit — scarcely
any taper at all. These are the proportions of a candle ; and
fair and fairy-like candles these are. Will be, anyway, some
day, when the Christians inherit them and top them with the
electric light. There is a great view from up there — a wonder-
ful view. A large gray monkey was part of it, and damaged
it. A monkey has no judgment. This one was skipping about
the upper great heights of the mosque — skipping across empty
yawning intervals which were almost too wide for him, and
which he only just barely cleared, each time, by the skin of his
teeth. He got me so nervous that I couldn't look at the view.
I couldn't look at anything but him. Every time he went
sailing over one of those abysses my breath stood still, and
when he grabbed for the perch he was going for, I grabbed
too, in sympathy. And he was perfectly indifferent, perfectly
unconcerned, and I did all the panting myself. He came
within an ace of losing his life a dozen times, and I was so
troubled about him that I would have shot him if I had had

THE RECKLESS MONKEY. 605

anything to do it with. But I strongly recommend the view.
There is more monkey than view, and there is always going to
be more monkey while that idiot survives, but what view you
get is superb. All Benares, the river, and the region round
about are spread before you. Take a gun, and look at the view.

The next thing I saw was more reposeful. It was a new
kind of art. It was a picture painted on water. It was done
by a native. He sprinkled fine dust of various colors on the
still surface of a basin of water, and out of these sprinklings a
dainty and pretty picture gradually grew, a picture which
a breath could destroy. Somehow it was impressive, after so
much browsing among massive and battered and decaying
fanes that rest upon ruins, and those ruins upon still other
ruins, arid those upon still others again. It was a sermon,
an allegory, a symbol of Instability. Those creations in
stone were only a kind of Avater pictures, after all.

A prominent episode in the Indian career of Warren Hast-
ings had Benares for its theater. Wherever that extraordi-
nary man set his foot, he left his mark. He came to Benares
in 1781 to collect a fine of £500,000 which he had levied upon
its Rajah, Cheit Singh, on behalf of the East India Company.
Hastings was a long way from home and help. There were,
probably, not a dozen Englishmen within reach ; the Rajah
was in his fort with his myriads around him. But no matter.
From his little camp in a neighboring garden, Hastings sent a
party to arrest the sovereign. He sent on this daring mission
a couple of hundred native soldiers — sepoys — under com-
mand of tliree young English lieutenants. The Rajah sub-
mitted without a word. The incident lights up the Indian
situation electrically, and gives one a vivid sense of the strides
which the English had made and the mastership they had
acquired in the land since the date of Olive's great victory.
In a quarter of a century, from being nobodies, and feared by
none, they were become confessed lords and masters, feared by

506 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

all, sovereigns included, and served by all, sovereigns included.
It makes the fairy tales sound true. The English had not
been afraid to enlist native soldiers to fight against their own
people and keep them obedient. And now Hastings was not
afraid to come away out to this remote place with a handful
of such soldiers and send them to arrest a native sovereign.

The lieutenants imprisoned the Rajah in his own fort. It
was beautiful, the pluckiness of it, the impudence of it. The
arrest enraged the Rajah's people, and all Benares came
storming about the place and threatening vengeance. And
yet, but for an accident, nothing important would have
resulted, perhaps. The mob found out a most strange thing,
an almost incredible thing — that this handful of soldiers had
come on this hardy errand with empty guns and no ammuni-
tion. This has been attributed to thoughtlessness, but it could
hardly have been that, for in such large emergencies as this,
intelligent people do think. It must have been indifference,
an over-confidence born of the proved submissiveness of the
native character, when confronted by even one or two stern
Britons in their war j)aint. But, however that may be, it was
a fatal discovery that the mob had made. They were full of
courage, now, and they broke into the fort and massacred the
helpless soldiers and their officers. Hastings escaped from
Benares by night and got safely away, leaving the principality
in a state of wild insurrection ; but he was back again within
the month, and quieted it down in his prompt and virile way,
and took the Rajah's throne away from him and gave it to
another man. He was a capable kind of person was Warren
Hastings. This was the only time he was ever out of ammu-
nition. Some of his acts have left stains upon his name which
can never be washed away, but he saved to England the
Indian Empire, and that was the best service that was ever
done to the Indians themselves, those wretched heirs of a hun-
dred centuries of pitiless oppression and abuse.

CHAPTER LIII.

True irreverence is disrespect for another man's god.

— Pudd''nhead Wilson^ s New Calendar,

IT was in Benares that I saw another living god. That
makes two. I believe I have seen most of the greater and
lesser wonders of the world, but I do not remember that
any of them interested me so overwhelmingly as did that pair
of gods.

When I try to account for this effect I find no difficulty
about it. I find that, as a rule, Avhen a thing is a wonder to
us it is not because of what we see in it, but because of what
others have seen in it. We get almost all our wonders at sec-
ond hand. We are eager to see any celebrated thing — and we
never fail of our reward ; just the deep privilege of gazing
upon an object which has stirred the enthusiasm or evoked the
reverence or affection or admiration of multitudes of our race
is a thing which we value ; we are profoundly glad that we
have seen it, we are permanently enriched from having seen
it, we would not part with the memory of that experience for
a great price. And yet that very spectacle may be the Taj.
You cannot keep your enthusiasms down, you cannot keep
your emotions within bounds when that soaring bubble of
marble breaks upon your view. But these are not your enthu-
siasms and emotions — they are the accumulated emotions and
enthusiasms of a thousand fervid writers, who have been slowly
and steadily storing them up in your heart day by day and
year by year all your life ; and now they burst out in a flood
and overwhelm you ; and you could not be a whit happier if

( 507 )

508 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

they were your very own. By and by you sober down, and then
you perceive that you have been drunk on the smell of some-
body else's cork. For ever and ever the memory of my dis-
tant first glimpse of the Taj will compensate me for creeping
around the globe to have that great privilege.

But the Taj — with all your inflation of delusive emotions,
acquired at second-hand from people to whom in the majority
of cases they were also delusions acquired at second-hand — a
thing which you fortunately did not think of or it might have
made you doubtful of what you imagined were your own —
what is the Taj as a marvel, a spectacle and an uplifting and
overpowering wonder, compared with a living, breathing,
speaking personage whom several millions of human beings
devoutly and sincerely and unquestioningly believe to be a
God, and humbly and gratefully worship as a God ?

He was sixty years old when I saw him. He is called Sri
108 Swami Bhaskarananda Saraswati. That is one form of it.
I think that that is what you would call him in speaking to
him — because it is short. But you would use more of his name
in addressing a letter to him ; courtesy would require this. Even
then you would not have to use all of it, but only this much :

Sri 108 Matj[>aramahanswparivrajahacharya8'wa7nihha8Tcar-
anandasaraswati.

You do not put " Esq." after it, for that is not necessary.
The word which opens the volley is itself a title of honor —
" Sri." The " 108 " stands for the rest of his names, I believe.
Vishnu has 108 names which he does not use in business, and
no doubt it is a custom of gods and a privilege sacred to their
order to keep 108 extra ones in stock. Just the restricted
name set down above is a handsome property, without the 108.
By my count it has 58 letters in it. This removes the long
German words from competition ; they are permanently out of
the race.

SRI 108, UTTERLY PERFECT. 509

Sri 108 S. B. Saraswati has attained to what among the
Hindoos is called the '" state of perfection." It is a state which
other Hindoos reach by being born again and again, and over
and over again into this world, through one re-incarnation
after another — a tiresome long job covering centuries and
decades of centuries, and one that is full of risks, too, like
the accident of dying on the wrong side of the Ganges some
time or other and waking up in the form of an ass, with a fresh
start necessary and the numerous trips to be made all over
again. But in reaching perfection, Sri 108 S. B. S. has escaped
all that. He is no longer a part or a feature of this world ; his
substance has changed, all earthiness has departed out of it ;
he is utterly holy, utterly pure; nothing can desecrate this
holiness or stain this purity ; he is no longer of the earth, its
concerns are matters foreign to him, its pains and griefs and
troubles cannot reach him. When he dies, Mrvana is his ; he
will be absorbed into the substance of the Supreme Deity and
be at peace forever.

The Hindoo Scriptures point out how this state is to be
reached, but it is only once in a thousand years, perhaps, that
candidate accomplishes it. This one has traversed the course
required, stage by stage, from the beginning to the end, and
now has nothing left to do but wait for the call which shall
release him from a world in which he has now no part nor lot.
First, he passed through the student stage, and became learned
in the holy books. Next he became citizen, householder, hus-
band, and father. That was the required second stage. Then
— like John Bunyan's Christian — he bade perpetual good-bye
to his family, as required, and went wandering away. He
went far into the desert and served a term as hermit. Next,
he became a beggar, " in accordance with the rites laid down
in the Scriptures," and wandered about India eating the bread
of mendicancy. A quarter of a century ago he reached the

510 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

stage of purity. This needs no garment ; its symbol is nudity ;
he discarded the waist-cloth which he had previously worn.
He could resume it now if he chose, for neither that nor any
other contact can defile him ; but he does not choose.

There are several other stages, I believe, but I do not re-
member what they are. But he has been through them.
Throughout the long course he was perfecting himself in holy
learning, and writing commentaries upon the sacred books.
He was also meditating upon Brahma, and he does that now.

White marble relief-portraits of him are sold all about
India. He lives in a good house in a noble great garden in
Benares, all meet and proper to his stupendous rank. Neces-
sarily he does not go abroad in the streets. Deities would
never be able to move about handily in any country. If one
whom we recognized and adored as a god should go abroad in
our streets, and the day it was to happen were known, all
traffic would be blocked and business would come to a stand-
still.

This god is comfortably housed, and yet modestly, all
things considered, for if he wanted to live in a palace he would
only need to speak and his worshipers Avould gladly build it.
Sometimes he sees devotees for a moment, and comforts them
and blesses them, and they kiss his feet and go away happy.
Kank is nothing to him, he being a god. To him all men are
alike. He sees whom he pleases and denies himself to whom
he pleases. Sometimes he sees a prince and denies himself to
a pauper ; at other times he receives the pauper and turns the
prince away. However, he does not receive many of either
class. He has to husband his time for his meditations. I
think he would receive Rav. Mr. Parker at any time. I think
he is sorry for Mr. Parker, and I think Mr. Parker is sorry for
him ; and no dbubt this compassion is good for both of them.

When we arrived we had to stand around in the garden a

A CALL UPON SRI. 511

little while and wait, and the outlook was not good, for he had
been turning away Maharajas that day and receiving only the
riff-raff, and we belonged in between, somewhere. But pres-
ently, a servant came out saying it was all right, he was coming.

And sure enough, he came, and I saw him — that object of
the worship of millions. It was a strange sensation, and
thrilling. I wish I could feel it stream through my veins
again. And yet, to me he Avas not a god, he was only a Taj.
The thrill was not my thrill, but had come to me secondhand
from those invisible millions of believers. By a hand-shake
with their god I had ground-circuited their wire and got their
monster battery's whole charge.

He was tall and slender, indeed emaciated. He had a clean
cut and conspicuously intellectual face, and a deep and kindly
eye. He looked many years older than he really Avas, but
much study and meditation and fasting and prayer, with the
arid life he had led as hermit and beggar, could account for
that. He is wholly nude when he receives natives, of whatever
rank they may be, but he had white cloth around his loins now,
a concession to Mr. Parker's Europe prejudices, no doubt.

As soon as I had sobered down a little we got along very
well together, and I found him a most pleasant and friendly
deity. He had heard a deal about Chicago, and showed a
quite remarkable interest in it, for a god. It all came of the
World's Fair and the Congress of Eeligions. If India knows
about nothing else American, she knows about those, and will
keep them in mind one while.

He proposed an exchange of autographs, a delicate atten-
tion which made me believe in him, but I had been having my
doubts before. He wrote his in his book, and I have a rever-
ent regard for that book, though the words run from right to
left, and so I can't read it. It was a mistake 'to print in that
way. It contains his voluminous comments on the Hindoo

512 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR

holy writings, and if I could make them out I would try for
perfection myself. I gave him a copy of Huckleberry Finn.
I thought it might rest him up a little to mix it in along with
his meditations on Brahma, for he looked tired, and I knew
that if it didn't do him any good it wouldn't do him any harm.

Sri J 08 MatparamahaTisaparivra-

jakacharyaswamibhaskara-.

nandasaraswati, sishya

Mina Bahadur Rana

PAGE FROM BAHADUR'S BOOK.

He has a scholar meditating under him — Mina Bahadur
Rana — but we did not see him. He wears clothes and is
very imperfect. He has written a little pamphlet about his
master, and I have that. It contains a wood-cut of the master
and himself seated on a rug in the garden. The portrait of
the master is very good indeed. The posture is exactly that
which Brahma himself affects, and it requires long arms and

MINA BAHADUR RANA.

513

limber legs, and can be accumulated only by gods and the india
rubber man. There is a life-size marble relief of Shri 108, S.B.S,
in the garden. It represents him in this same posture.

Dear me ! It is a strange
world. Particularly the Indian
division of it. This pupil, Mina
Bahadur Eana, is not a com-
monplace person, but a man
of distinguished capacities and
attainments, and, apparently,
he had a fine worldly career in

• ^: n

ANUBjiUTIVIVHRIiNAOARS

front of him. He was serving

Sri 108 Matparamahansapdriurajakacharya- ^
swdmibhaskaranandasaraswati, ^

WITH A CI.OSS CALLED ^

BALABOOHINI I

BTWlSPCeiL ^

MIN^i>L Bi^-H^DTj R RAJSTA. 1

bY ORDER OF BIS SON
HEMABrKRAMA RKHA BAHADUR

^enacts:

By order of Pandit Gopee N«tS Pallink,

Printed by Jadava Natti f utbak.

Light Press.

1895.

TITLE PAGE OF BAHADUR S BOOK.

the Nepal Government in a
high capacity at the Court of
the Yiceroy of India, twenty
years ago. He was an able
man, educated, a thinker, a man
of property. But tJae longing
to devote himself to a religious life came upon him, and he
resigned his place, turned his back upon the vanities and com-
forts of the world, and went away into the solitudes to live in
a hut and study the sacred writings and meditate upon virtue
and holiness and seek to attain them. This sort of religion
resembles ours. Christ recommended the rich to give away
all their property and follow. Him in poverty, not in worldly
comfort. American and English millionaires do it every
day, and thus verify and confirm to the world the tremend-
ous forces that lie in religion. Yet many people scoff at
them for this loyalty to duty, and many will scoff at Mina
Bahadur Rana and call him a crank. Like many Christians
of great character and intellect, he has made the study
of his Scriptures and the writing of books of commentaries
33

514 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

upon them the loving lai)or of his life. Like them, he has
believed that his was not an idle and foolish waste of his life,
but a most worthy and honorable employment of it. Yet,
there are many people who ■will see in those others, men
worthy of homage and deep reverence, but in hfm merely a
crank. But I shall not. He has my reverence. And I don't
offer it as a common thing and poor, but as an unusual thing
and of value. The ordinary reverence, the reverence defined
and explained by the dictionary costs nothing. Reverence
for one's own sacred things — parents, religion, flag, laAvs, and
respect for one's own beliefs — these are feelings which we
cannot even help. They come natural to us ; they are invol-
untary, like breathing. There is no personal merit in breath-
ing. But the reverence which is difficult, and which has per-
sonal merit in it, is the respect which you pay, without com-
pulsion, to the political or religious attitude of a man whose
beliefs are not yours. You can't revere his gods or his politics,
and no one expects you to do that, but you could respect his
belief in them if you tried hard enough ; and you could
respect him, too, if you tried hard enough. But it is very,
very difficult ; it is next to impossible, and so we hardly ever
try. If the man doesn't believe as we do, we say he is a
crank, and that settles it. I mean it does nowadays, because
now we can't burn him.

We are always canting about people's "irreverence," always
charging this offense upon somebod}^ or other, and thereby
intimating that we are better than that person and do not
commit that offense ourselves. "Whenever we do this we are
in a lying attitude, and our speech is cant ; for none of us are
reverent — in a meritorious way ; deep down in our hearts we
are all irreverent. There is probably not a single exception to
this rule in the earth. There is probably not one person whose
reverence rises higher than respect for his own sacred things ;

REVERENCE AND IRREVERENCE. 515

and therefore, it is not a thing to boast about and be proud of,
since the most degraded savage has that — and, like the best of
us, has nothing higher. To speak plainly, we despise all rev-
erences and all objects of reverence which are outside the pale
of our own list of sacred things. And yet, with strange incon-
sistency, we are shocked when other people despise and • defile
the things which are holy to us. Suppose we should meet with
a paragraph like the following, in the newspapers :

" Yesterday a visiting party of the British nobility had a
picnic at Mount Yernon, and in the tomb of Washington they
ate their luncheon, sang popular songs, played games, and
danced waltzes and polkas."

Should we be shocked ? Should we feel outraged ? Should
we be amazed ? Should we call the performance a desecra-
tion ? Yes, that would all happen. We should denounce
those people in round terms, and call them hard names.

And suppose we found this paragraph in the newspapers r

" Yesterday a visiting party of American pork-millionaires
had a picnic in Westminster Abbey, and in that sacred place
they ate their luncheon, sang popular songs, played games, and
danced waltzes and polkas."

Would the English be shocked? Would they feel out-
raged ? Would they be amazed ? Would they call the per-
formance a desecration ? That would all happen. The pork-
raillionaires would be denounced in round terms ; they would
be called hard names.

In the tomb at Mount Yernon lie the ashes of America's
most honored son ; in the Abbey, the ashes of England's
greatest dead ; the tomb of tombs, the costliest in the earth,
the wonder of the world, the Taj, was built by a great Em-
peror to honor the memory of a perfect wife and perfect
mother, one in whom there was no spot or blemish, whose love
was his stay and support, whose life was the light of the world

516

FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

to him ; in it her ashes lie, and to the Mohammedan millions of

India it is a holy place ;

to them it is what Mount

Vernon is to Americans,

it is what the Abbey is

to the English.

Major Sleeman wrote

forty or fifty years ago

(the italics are mine) :

' ' I would here enter my
humble protest agaimt the quad-
nlle and lunch parties which are
sometimes given to European
ladies and gentlemen of the
station at this imperial tomb ;
drinking and dancing are no
doubt very good things in their
season, but they are sadly out
of place in a sepulchre."

"Were there any Amer-
icans among those lunch
parties ? If they were in-
vited, there were.
If my imagined lunch-parties in Westminster and the tomb
of Washington should take place, the incident w^ould cause a
vast outbreak of bitter eloquence about Barbarism and Irrever-
ence ; and it would come from two sets of people who would
go next day and dance in the Taj if they had a chance.

As we took our leave of the Benares god and started away
we noticed a group of natives w^aiting respectfully just within
the gate — a Eajah from somewhere in India, and some people
of lesser consequence. The god beckoned them to come, and
as we passed out the Kajah was kneeling and reverently kiss-
ing his sacred feet.

If Barnum — but Barnum's ambitions are at rest. This
god will remain in the holy peace and seclusion of his garden,
undisturbed. Barnum could not have gotten him, anyway.
Still, he would have found a substitute that would answer.

A PICNIC IN A SEPULCIIKE.

CHAPTER LIY.

Do not undervalue the headache. While it is at its sharpest it seems a bad
investuieut ; but when relief begins, the unexpired remainder is worth $4 a minute.

— Pudd''nhead WUii<m''s New Calendar.

A COMFORTABLE railway journey of seventeen and a
half hours brought us to the capital of India, which is
likewise the capital of Bengal — Calcutta. Like Bom-
bay, it has a population of nearly a million natives and a small
gathering of white people. It is a huge city and fine, and is
called the City of Palaces. It is rich in historical memories ;
rich in British achievement — military, political, commercial;
rich in the results of the miracles done by that brace of
mighty magicians, Clive and Hastings. And has a cloud-
kissing monument to one Ochterlony.

It is a fluted candlestick 250 feet high. This lingam is the
only large monument in Calcutta, I believe. It is a fine
ornament, and will keep Ochterlony in mind.

Wherever you are, in Calcutta, and for miles around, you
can see it ; and always when you see it you think of Ochter-
lony. And so there is not an hour in the day that you do not
think of Ochterlony and WQuder who he was. It is good that
Clive cannot come back, for he would think it was for Plassey;
and then that great spirit would be wounded when the revelation
came that it was not. Clive would find out that it was for
Ochterlony; and he would think Ochterlony was a battle.
And he would think it was a great one, too, and he would say,
" With three thousand I whipped sixty thousand and founded
the Empire — and there is no monument; this other soldier must
have whipped a billion with a dozen and saved the world,"

(517)

518 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

But he would be mistaken. Ochterlony was a man, not a
battle. And he did good and honorable service, too ; as good
and honorable service as has been done in India by seventy-
five or a hundred other Englishmen of courage, rectitude, and
distinguished capacity. For India has been a fertile breeding-
ground of such men, and remains so ; great men, both in war
and in the civil service, and as modest as great. But they
have no monuments, and were not expecting any. Ochter-
lony could not have been expecting one, and it is not at all
likely that he desired one — certainly not until Clive and
Hastings should be supplied. Every day Clive and Hastings
lean on the battlements of heaven and look down and wonder
w^hich of the two the monument is for; and they fret and
worry because they cannot find out, and so the peace of
heaven is spoiled for them and lost. But not for Ochterlony.
Ochterlony is not troubled. He doesn't suspect that it is his
monument. Heaven is sweet and peaceful to him. There is a
sort of unfairness about it all.

Indeed, if monuments were always given in India for high
achievements, duty straitly performed, and smirchless records,
the landscape would be monotonous with them. The handful
of English in India govern the Indian myriads with apparent
ease, and without noticeable friction, through tact, training,
and distinguished administrative ability, reinforced by just and
liberal laws — and by keeping their word to the native when-
ever they give it.

England is far from India and knows little about the
eminent services performed by her servants there, for it is the
newspaper correspondent who makes fame, and he is not sent
to India but to the continent, to report the doings of the
princelets and the dukelets, and where they are visiting and
whom they are marrying. Often a British official spends
thirty or forty years in India, climbing from grade to grade

IMPRESSIONS OF FOREIGN LANDS. 519

by services which would make him celebrated anywhere else,
and finishes as a vice-sovereign, governing a great realm and
millions of subjects ; then he goes home to England substanti-
ally unknown and unheard of, and settles down in some
modest corner, and is as one extinguished. Ten years later
there is a twenty-line obituary in the London papers, and the
reader is paralyzed by the splendors of a career which he is
not sure that he had ever heard of before. But meanwhile he
has learned all about the continental princelets and dukelets.

The average man is profoundly ignorant of countries that
lie remote from his own. When they are mentioned in his
presence one or two facts and maybe a couple of names rise
like torches in his mind, lighting up an inch or two of it and
leaving the rest all dark. The mention of Egypt suggests
some Biblical facts and the Pyramids — nothing more. The
mention of South Africa suggests Kimberly and the diamonds
and there an end. Formerly the mention, to a Hindoo, of
America suggested a name — George Washington — with that
his familiarity with our country was exhausted. Latterly his
familiarity with it has doubled in bulk ; so that when America
is mentioned now, two torches flare up in the dark caverns of
his mind and he says, " Ah, the country of the great man —
Washington ; and of the Holy City — Chicago." For he
knows about the Congress of Keligion, and this has enabled
him to get an erroneous impression of Chicago.

When India is mentioned to the citizen of a far country it
suggests Clive, Hastings, the Mutiny, Kipling, and a number
of other great events ; and the mention of Calcutta infallibly
brings up the Black Hole. And so, when that citizen finds
himself in the capital of India he goes first of all to see the
Black Hole of Calcutta — and is disappointed.

The Black Hole was not preserved ; it is gone, long, long
ago. It is strange. Just as it stood, it was itself a monu-

520

FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

ment ; a ready-made one. It was finished, it was complete, its
materials were strong and lasting, it needed no furbishing up,
no repairs ; it merely needed to be let alone. It was the first
brick, the Foundation Stone, upon which was reared a mighty
Empire — the Indian Empire of Great Britain. It was the
ghastly episode of the Black Hole that maddened the British
and brought Clive, that young military marvel, raging up from
Madras ; it was the seed from which sprung Plassey ; and it
was that extraordinary battle, whose like had not been seen in
the earth since Agincourt, that laid deep and strong the
foundations of England's colossal Indian sovereignty.

And yet within the time of men who still live, the Black
Hole was torn down and thrown away as carelessly as if its
bricks were common clay, not ingots of historic gold. There
is no accounting for human beings.

The supposed site of the Black Hole is marked by an en-
graved plate. I saw that; and better that than nothing.
The Black Hole was a prison — a cell is nearer the right word
— eighteen feet square, the dimensions of an ordinary bed-
chamber ; and into this place the victorious Nabob of Bengal
packed 146 of his English prisoners. There was hardly standing
room for them ; scarcely a breath of air was to be got ; the
time was night, the weather sweltering hot. Before the dawn
came, the captives were all dead but twenty-three. Mr.
Holwell's long account of the awful episode was familiar to
the world a hundred years ago, but one seldom sees in print
even an extract from it in our day. Among the striking
things in it is this. Mr. Holwell, perishing with thirst, kept
himself alive by sucking the perspiration from his sleeves. It
gives one a vivid idea of the situation. He presently found
that while he was busy drawing life from one of his sleeves a
young English gentleman was stealing supplies from the other
one. Holwell was an unselfish man, a man of the most gen-

THE BLACK HOLE OF CALCUTTA. 521

erous impulses ; he lived and died famous for these fine and
rare qualities ; yet when he found out what was liappening to
that unwatched sleeve, he took the precaution to suck that
one dry first. The miseries of the 131ack Hole were able to
change even a nature like his. But that young gentleman
was one of the twenty-three survivors, and he said it was the
stolen perspiration that saved his life. From the middle of
Mr. Hoi well's narrative I will make a brief excerpt:

"Then a general prayer to Heaven, to hasten the approach of the flames
to the right and left of us, and put a period to our misery. But these failing,
they whose strength and spirits were quite exhausted laid themselves down
and expired quietly upon their fellows: others who had yet some strength
and vigor left made a last effort at the windows, and several succeeded by
leaping and scrambling over the backs and heads of those in the first rank,
and got hold of the bars, from which there was no removing them. Many to
the right and left sunk with the violent pressure, and were soon suffocated;
for now a steam arose from the living and the dead, which affected us in all
its circumstances as if we were forcibly held with our heads over a bowl full
of strong volatile spirit of hartshorn, until suffocated; nor could the effluvia
of the one be distinguished from the other, and frequently, when I was forced
by the load upon my head and shoulders to hold my face down, I was obliged,
near as I was to the window, instantly to raise it again to avoid suffocation. I
need not, my dear friend, ask your commiseration, when I tell you, that in this
plight, from half an hour past eleven till near two in the morning, I sustained
the weight of a heavy man, with his knees in my back, and the pressure of
his whole body on my head. A Dutch surgeon who had taken his seat upon
my left shoulder, and a Topaz (a black Christian soldier) bearing on my
right ; all which nothing could have enabled me to support but the props and
pressure equally sustaining me all around. The two latter I frequently dis-
lodged by shifting my hold on the bars and driving my knuckles into their
ribs; but my friend above stuck fast, held immovable by two bars.

"I exerted anew my strength and fortitude ; but the repeated trials and
efforts I made to dislodge the insufferable incumbrances upon me at last
quite exhausted me ; and towards two o'clock, finding I must quit the window
or sink where I was, I resolved on the former, having bore, truly for the sake
of others, infinitely more for life than the best of it is worth. In the rank
close behind me was an officer of one of the ships, whose name was Cary, and
who had behaved with much bravery during the siege (his wife, a fine
woman, though country born, would not quit him, but accompanied him into
the prison, and was one who survived). This poor wretch had been long rav-
ing for water and air ; I told him I was determined to give up life, and
recommended his gaining my station. On my quitting it he made a fruitless
attempt to get my place ; but the Dutch surgeon, who sat on my shoulder,
supplanted him. Poor Cary expressed his thankfulness, and said he would

522 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

give up life too ; but it was with the utmost labor we forced our way from
the window (several in the inner ranks appearing to me dead standing, unable
to fall by the throng and equal pressure around). He laid himself down to
die ; and his death, I believe, was very sudden ; for he was a short, full, san-
guine man. His strength was great ; and, I imagine, had he not retired with
me, I should never have been able to force my way. I was at this time sen-
sible of no pain, and little uneasiness ; I can give you no better idea of my
situation than by repeating my simile of the bowl of spirit of hartshorn. I
found a stupor coming on apace, and laid myself down by that gallant old
man, the Rev. Mr. Jervas Bellamy, who laid dead with his son, the lieutenant,
hand in hand, near the southernmost wall of the prison. When I had lain
there some little time, I still had reflection enough to suffer some uneasiness
in the thought that I should be trampled upon, when dead, as I myself had
done to others. With some difficulty I raised myself, and gained the plat-
form a second time, where I presently lost all sensation; the last trace of sen-
sibility that I have been able to recollect after my laying down, was my sash
being uneasy about my waist, which I untied, and threw from me. Of what
passed in this interval, to the time of my resurrection from this hole of bor-
rows, I can give you no account."

There was plenty to see in Calcutta, but there was not
plenty of time for it. I saw the fort that Clive built ; and the
place where Warren Hastings and the author of the Junius
Letters fought their duel ; and the great botanical gardens ;
and the fashionable afternoon turnout in the Maidan ; and a
grand review of the garrison in a great plain at sunrise ; and a
military tournament in which great bodies of native soldiery
exhibited the perfection of their drill at all arms, a spectacular
and beautiful show occupying several nights and closing with the
mimic storming of a native fort which was as good as the reality
for thrilling and accurate detail, and better than the reality for
security and comfort ; we had a pleasure excursion on the
Iloogly by courtesy of friends, and devoted the rest of the time
to social life and the Indian museum. One should spend a
month in the museum, an enchanted palace of Indian antiquities.
Indeed, a person might spend half a year among the beautiful
and wonderful things without exhausting their interest.

It was winter. We were of Kipling's " hosts of tourists
who travel up and down India in the cold weather showing

BLUNTED PERCEPTIONS.

523

how things ought to be managed." It is a common expression
there, " the cold weather," and the people think there is such
a thing. It is because they have lived there half a lifetime,
and their perceptions have become blunted. When a person is
accustomed to 138 in the shade, his ideas about cold weather
are not valuable. I had read, in the histories, that the June
marches made between Lucknow and Cawnpore by the British
forces in the time of the Mutiny were made in that kind of
weather — 138 in the shade — and had taken it for historical
embroidery. I had read it again in Serjeant-
Major Forbes-Mitchell's account of his mili-
tary experiences in the Mutiny — at least I
thought I had — and in Calcutta I asked him
if it was true, and he said it was. An officer
of high rank who had been in the thick of the
Mutiny said the same. As long as those men
were talking about what they knew, they
were trustworthy, and I believed them ; but
when they said it was now " cold weather," I
saw that they had traveled outside of their
sphere of knowledge and were floundering.
I believe that in India " cold weather " is
merely a conventional phrase and has come
into use through the necessity of having some
way to distinguish between ' weather which
will melt a brass door-knob and weather
which will only make it mushy. It was ^^shy weather.
observable that brass ones were in use while I was in Calcutta,
showing that it was not yet time to change to porcelain ; I Avas
told the change to porcelain was not usually made until May.
But this cold weather was too warm for us ; so we started to
Darjeeling, in the Himalayas — a twenty-four hour journey.

CHAPTER LY.

There are 869 different forms of lying, but only one of them has been squarely
forbidden. Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.

— Pudd^nhead Wilson''s New CaHendar.

rROM Diary :
February llf.. We left at 4:30 p.m. Until dark we
moved through rich vegetation, then changed to a
boat and crossed the Ganges.

February 15. Up with the sun. A brilliant morning, and
frosty. A double suit of flannels is found necessary. The
plain is perfectly level, and seems to stretch away and away
and away, dimming and softening, to the uttermost bounds of
nowhere. What a soaring, strenuous, gushing fountain spray
of delicate greenery a bunch of bamboo is ! As far as the eye
can reach, these grand vegetable geysers grace the view, their
spoutings refined to steam by distance. And there are fields
of bananas, with the sunshine glancing from the varnished
surface of their ^drooping vast leaves. And there are frequent
groves of palm ; and an effective accent is given to the land-
scape by isolated individuals of this picturesque family, tower-
ing, clean-stemmed, their plumes broken and hanging ragged,
Nature's imitation of an umbrella that has been out to see
what a cyclone is like and is trying not to look disappointed.
And everywhere through the soft morning vistas we
glimpse the villages, the countless villages, the myriad villages,
thatched, built of clean new matting, snuggling among grouped
palms and sheaves of bamboo ; villages, villages, no end of

villages, not three hundred yards apart, and dozens and dozens

(524)

SOME PAGAN WAYS WORTH BORROWING.

525

of them in sight all the time ; a mighty City, hundreds of
miles long, hundreds of miles broad, made all of villages, the
biggest city in the earth, and as populous as a European
kingdom. I have seen no such city as this before. And there
is a continuously repeated and replenished multitude of naked
men in view on both sides and ahead. We fly through it
mile after mile, but still it is always there, on both sides and
ahead — brown-bodied, naked men and boys, plowing in the
fields. But not a woman. In these two hours I have not
seen a woman or a girl working in the fields.

" From Greenland's icy mountains,

From India's coral strand,
Where Afric's sunny fountains

Roll down their golden sand.
From many an ancient river.

From many a palmy plain.
They call us to deliver

Their land from error's chain."

Those are beautiful verses, and they have remained in my
memory all my life. But if the closing lines are true, let us
hope that when we come to answer the call and deliver the
land from its errors, we shall secrete from it some of our
high-ci\'ilization ways, and at the same time borrow some of
its pagan ways to enrich our high system with. We have a

626 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

right to do this. If we lift those people up, we have a right to
lift ourselves up nine or ten grades or so, at their expense. A
few years ago I spent several weeks at Tolz, in Bavaria. It
is a Roman Catholic region, and not even Benares is more
deeply or pervasively or intelligently devout. In my diary of
those days I find this :

" We took a long drive yesterday around about the lovely country roads.
But it was a drive whose pleasure was damaged in a couple of ways : by the
dreadful shrines and by the shameful spectacle of gray and venerable old
grandmothers toiling in the fields. The shrines were frequent along the
roads — figures of the Saviour nailed to the cross and streaming with blood
from the wounds of the nails and the thorns.

"When missionaries go from here do they find fault with the pagan
idols ? I saw many women seventy and even eighty years old mowing and
binding in the fields, and pitchforking the loads into the wagons."

I was in Austria later, and in Munich. In Munich I saw
gray old women pushing trucks up hill and down, long dis-
tances, trucks laden with barrels of beer, incredible loads. In
my Austrian diary I find this :

"In the fields I often see a
woman and a cow harnessed to the
plow, and a man driving.

" In the public street of Marien-
bad to-day, I saw an old, bent, gray-
headed woman, in harness with a
dog, drawing a laden sled over bare
dirt roads and bare pavements ; and
at his ease walked the driver, smok-
ing his pipe, a hale fellow not thirty
years old."

Five or six years ago I
bought an open boat, made
a kind of a canvas wagon-roof
over the stern of it to shelter me from sun and rain ; hired a
courier and a boatman, and made a twelve-day floating voy-
age down the Ehone frdm Lake Bourget to Marseilles. In
my diary of that trip I find this entry. I was far down the
Rhone then :

^S^

AUSTRIA.

HIGH CIVILIZATION METHODS.

527

" Passing St. Etienne, 2:15 p.m. On a distant ridge inland, a tall open-
work structure cominandingly situated, with a statue of the Virgin standing
on it. A devout country. All down this river, wherever there is a crag
there is a statue of the Virgin on it. I believe I have seen a hundred of
them. And yet, in many respects, the peasantry seem to be mere pagans,
and destitute of any considerable degree of civilization.

" . . . . We reached a not very promising looking village about 4
o'clock, and I concluded to tie up for the day ; munching fruit and fogging
the hood with pipe-smoke had grown monotonous ; I could not have the hood
furled, because the floods of rain fell unceasingly. The tavern was on the
river bank, as is the custom. It was dull there, and melancholy — nothing to
do but look out of the window into the drenching rain, and shiver ; one could
do that, for it was bleak and cold and windy, and country France furnishes
no fire. Winter overcoats did not help me much ; they had to be supple-
mented with rugs. The raindrops were so large and struck the river with
such force that they knocked up the water like pebble-splashes.

" With the exception of
a very occasional wooden-
shod peasant, nobody was
abroad in this bitter weather

— I mean nobody of our
sex. But all weathers are
alike to the women in these
continental countries. To
them and the other animals,
life is serious ; nothing in-
terrupts their slavery.
Three of them were wash-
ing clothes in the river un-
der the window when I
arrived, and they continued
at it as long as there was
light to work by. One was
apparently thirty ; another

— the mother ! — above
fifty; the third — grand-
mother ! — so old and worn
and gray she could have
passed for eighty ; I took
her to be that old. They had no waterproofs nor rubbers, of course ; over
their shoulders they wore gunny-sacks — simply conductors for rivers of
water ; some of the volume reached the ground ; the rest soaked in on the
way.

"At last a vigorous fellow of thirty-five arrived, dry and comfortable,
smoking his pipe under his big umbrella in an open donkey-cart — husband,
son, and grandson of those women ! He stood up in the cart, sheltering him-
s'^lf , and began to superintend, issuing his orders in a masterly tone of com-
mand, and showing temper when they were not obeyed swiftly enough.

FRANCE.

528 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

Without complaiut or murmur the drowned women patiently carried out the
orders, lifting the immense baskets of soggy, wrung-out clothing into the
cart and stowing them to the man's satisfaction. There were six of the great
baskets, and a man of mere ordinary strength could not have lifted any one
of them. The cart being full now, the Frenchman descended, still sheltered
by his umbrella, entered the tavern, and the women went drooping home-
ward, trudging in the wake of the cart, and soon were blended with the
deluge and lost to sight.

" When I went down into the public room, the Frenchman had his bottle
of wine and plate of food on a bare table black with grease, and was
"chomping" like a horse. He had the little religious paper which is in
everybody's hands on the Rhone borders, and was enlightening himself with
the histories of French saints who used to flee to the desert in the Middle
Ages to escape the contamination of woman. For two hundred years France
has been sending missionaries to other savage lands. To spare to the needy
from poverty like hers is fine and true generosity."

But to get back to India — where, as my favorite poem

says —

" Every prospect pleases.
And only man is vile."

It is because Bavaria and Austria and France have not
introduced their civilization to him yet. But Bavaria and
Austria and France are on their way. They are coming.
They will rescue him ; they will refine the vileness out of
him.

Some time during the forenoon, approaching the mountains,
we changed from the regular train to one composed of little
canvas-sheltered cars that skimmed along within a foot of the
ground and seemed to be going fifty miles an hour when they
were really making about twenty. Each car had seating
capacity for half-a-dozen persons ; and when the curtains were
up one was substantially out of doors, and could see every-
where, and get all the breeze, and be luxuriously comfortable.
It was not a pleasure excursion in name only, but in fact.

After a while we stopped at a little wooden coop of a sta-
tion just within the curtain of the sombre jungle, a place with
a deep and dense forest of great trees and scrub and vines all
about it. The royal Bengal tiger is in great force there, and

MY FIRST TIGER HUNT. 529

is very bold and unconventional. From this lonely little sta-
tion a message once went to the railway manager in Calcutta:
" Tiger eating station-master on front porch ; telegraph instruc-
tions." •

It was there that I had my first tiger hunt. I killed thir-
teen. We were presently away again, and the train began to
climb the mountains. In one place seven w41d elephants
crossed the track, but two of them got away before I could
overtake them. The railway journey up the mountain is forty
miles, and it takes eight hours to" make it. It is so wild and
interesting and exciting and enchanting that it ought to take a
week. As for the vegetation, it is a museum. The jungle
seemed to contain samples of every rare and curious tree and
bush that we had ever seen or heard of. It is from that
museum, I think, that tlie globe must have been supplied with
the trees and vines and shrubs that it holds precious.

The road is infinitely and charmingly crooked. It goes
winding in and out under lofty cliffs that are smothered in
vines and foliage, and around the edges of bottomless chasms;
and all the way one glides by files of picturesque natives, some
carrying burdens up, others going down from their work in
the tea-gardens ; and once there was a gaudy wedding proces-
sion, all bright tinsel and color, and a bride, comely and girlish,
who peeped out from the curtains of her palanquin, exposing
her face with that pure delight which the young and happy
take in sin for sin's own sake.

By and by we were well up in the region of the clouds, and
from that breezy height we looked down and afar over a won-
derful picture — the Plains of India, stretching to the horizon,
soft and fair, level as a floor, shimmering with heat, mottled
with cloud-shadows, and cloven Avith shining rivers. Immedi-
ately below us, and receding down, down, down, toward the

valley, was a shaven confusion of hilltops, with ribbony roads
84

530 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

and paths squirming and snaking cream-yellow all over them
and about them, every curve and twist sharply distinct.

At an elevation of 6,000 feet we entered a thick cloud, and
it shut out the world and kept it shut out. We climbed 1,000
feet higher, then began to descend, and presently got down to
Darjeeling, which is 6,000 feet above the level of the Plains.

We had passed many a mountain village on the way up,
and seen some new kinds of natives, among them many sam-
ples of the fighting Ghurkas. They are not large men, but
they are strong and resolute. There are no better soldiers
.among Britain's native troops. And we had passed shoals of
their women climbing the forty miles of steep road from the
valley to their mountain homes, with tall baskets on their backs
hitched to their foreheads by a band, and containing a freight-
age weighing — I will not say how many hundreds of pounds,
for the sum is unbelievable. These were young women, and
they strode smartly along under these astonishing burdens
with the air of people out for a holiday. I was told that a
woman will carry a piano on her back all the way up the
mountain ; and that more than once a Avoman had done it. If
these were old women I should regard the Ghurkas as no
more civilized than the Europeans.

At the railway station at Darjeeling you find plenty of cab-
substitutes — open coffins, in which you sit, and are then borne
on men's shoulders up the steep roads into the town.

Up there we found a fairly comfortable hotel, the property
of an indiscriminate and incoherent landlord, who looks after
nothing, but leaves everything to his army of Indian servants.
No, he does look after the bill — to be just to him — and the
tourist pannot do better than follow his example. I was told
by a resident that the summit of Kinchin junga is often hidden
in the clouds, and that sometimes a tourist has waited twenty-
two days and then been obliged to go away without a sight of

A CAB SUBSTITUTE.

532 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

it. And yet went not disappointed ; for when he got his hotel
bill he recognized that he was now seeing the highest thing in
the Himalayas. But this is probably a lie.

After lecturing I Avent to the Club that night, and that was
a comfortable place. It is loftily situated, and looks out over
a vast spread of scenery ; from it you can see where the boun-
daries of three countries come together, some thirty miles away ;
Thibet is one of them, Kepaul another, and I think Herze-
govina was the other. Apparently, in every town and city in
India the gentlemen of the British civil and military service
have a club ; sometimes it is a palatial one, always it is pleas-
ant and homelike. The hotels are not always as good as they
might be, and the stranger who has access to the Club is grate-
ful for his privilege and knows how to value it.

Next day was Sunday. Friends came in the gray dawn
with horses, and my party rode away to a distant point where
Kinchinjunga and Mount Everest show up best, but I stayed at
home for a private view ; for it Avas very old, and I was not
acquainted Avith the horses, any Avay. I got a pipe and a few
blankets and sat for tAvo hours at the window, and saw the sun
drive away the veiling gray and touch up the snow-peaks one
after another Avith pale pink splashes and delicate Avashes of
gold, and finally flood the Avhole mighty convulsion of snow-
mountains Avith a deluge of rich splendors.

Kinchinjunga's peak was but fitfully Ansible, but in the be-
tween times it Avas vividly clear against the sky — away up
there in the blue dome more than 28,000 feet above sea level
— the loftiest land I had ever seen, by 12,000 feet or more. It
was 45 miles away. Mount Everest is a thousand feet higher,
but it was not a part of that sea of mountains piled up there
before me, so I did not see it ; but I did not care, because I
think that mountains that are as high as that are disagreeable.

I changed from the back to the front of the house and

534

FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

spent the rest of the morning there, watching the swarthy
strange tribes flock by from their far homes in the Himalayas.
All ages and both sexes were represented, and the breeds were

quite new to me, though the
costumes of the Thibetans made
them look a good deal like
Chinamen. The prayer-wheel
was a frequent feature. It
brought me near to these people,
and made them seem kin folk of
mine. Through our preacher we
do much of our praying by
proxy. We do not whirl him
around a stick, as tliey do, but
that is merely a detail. The
swarm swung briskly by, hour
after hour, a strange and striking
pageant. It was wasted there,
and it seemed a pity. It should
have been sent streaming through
the cities of Europe or America, to refresh eyes weary of the
pale monotonies of the circus-pageant. These people were
bound for the bazar, with things to sell. We went down there,
later, and saw that novel congress of the wild peoples, and
plowed here and there through it, and concluded that it would
be worth coming from Calcutta to see, even if there were no
Kinchinjunga and Everest.

TIIK I'KAYKU WHKEL.

CHAPTER LYI.

There are two times in a man's life when he should not speculate: when he can't
afford it, and when he can. — Puddn^head Wilson'' s New Calendar.

N Monday and Tuesday at sunrise we again had fair- to-
middling views of the stupendous mountains; then,
being well cooled off and refreshed, we were ready to
chance the weather of the lower world once more.

We traveled up hill by the regular train five miles to the
summit, then changed to a little canvas-canopied hand-car for
the 35-mile descent. It was the size of a sleigh, it had six seats
and was so low that it seemed to rest on the ground. It had
no engine or other propelling poAver, and needed none to help
it fly down those steep inclines. It only needed a strong
brake, to modify its flight, and it had that. There was a story
of a disastrous trip made down the mountain once in this little
car by the Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal, when the car
jumped the track and threw its passengers over a precipice.
It was not true, but the story had value for me, for it made
me nervous, and nervousness wakes a person up and makes
him alive and alert, and heightens the thrill of a new and
doubtful experience. The car could really jump the track, of
course ; a pebble on the track, placed there by either accident
or malice, at a sharp curve where one might strike it before
the eye could discover it, could derail the car and fling it down
into India ; and the fact that the lieutenant-governor had
escaped was no proof that I would have the same luck. And
standing there, looking down upon the Indian Empire from
the airy altitude of 7,000 feet, it seemed unpleasantly far,
dangerously far, to be flung from a hand-car.

(535)

536 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

But after all, there was but small danger — for me. What
there was, was for Mr. Pugh, inspector of a division of the
Indian police, in whose company and protection we had come
from Calcutta. He had seen long service as an artillery officer,
was less nervous than I was, and so he was to go ahead of us
in a pilot hand-car, with a Ghurka and another native ; and
the plan was that when we should see his car jump over a
precipice we must put on our break and send for another pilot.
It was a good arrangement. Also Mr. Barnard, chief engineer
of the mountain-division of the road, was to take personal
charge of our car, and he had been down the mountain in it
many a time.

Everything looked safe. Indeed, there was but one ques-
tionable detail left : the regular train was to follow us as soon
as we should start, and it might run over us. Privately, I
thought it would.

The road fell sharply down in front of us and went cork-
screwing in and out around the crags and precipice, down,
down, forever down, suggesting nothing so exactly or so un-
comfortably as a crooked toboggan slide with no end to it.
Mr. Pugh waved his flag and started, like an arrow from a
bow, and before I could get out of the car we were gone too.
I had previously had but one sensation like the shock of that
departure, and that was the gaspy shock that took my breath
away the first time that I was discharged from the summit of
a toboggan slide. But in both instances the sensation was
pleasurable — intensely so ; it was a sudden and immense ex-
altation, a mixed ecstasy of deadly fright and unimaginable
joy. I believe that this combination makes the perfection of
human delight.

The pilot car's flight down the mountain suggested the
swoop of a swallow that is skimming the ground, so swiftly
and smoothly and gracefully it swept down the long straight

WE PLAYED WITiI THE TRAIN.

538 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

reaches and soared in and out of the bends and around the
corners. We raced after it, and seemed to flash by the capes
and crags with the speed of light ; and now and then we
almost overtook it — and had hopes ; but it was only playing
■with us ; when we got near, it released its brake, make a spring
around a corner, and the next time it spun into view, a few
seconds later, it looked as small as a wheelbarrow, it was so far
away. We played with the train in the same way. We often
got out to gather flowers or sit on a precipice and look at the
scenery, then presently we would hear a dull and growing
roar, and the long coils of the train would come into sight be-
hind and above us ; but we did not need to start till the loco-
motive was close down upon us — then we soon left it far
behind. It had to stop at every station, therefore it was not
an embarrassment to us. Our brake was a good piece of
machinery ; it could bring the car to a standstill on a slope as
steep as a house-roof.

The scenery was grand and varied and beautiful, and there
was no hurry ; we could always stop and examine it. There
was abundance of time. We did not need to hamper the
train ; if it wanted the road, we could switch off and let it go
by, then overtake it and pass it later. We stopped at one
place to see the Gladstone Cliff, a great crag which the ages
and the weather have sculptured into a recognizable portrait of
the venerable statesman. Mr. Gladstone is a stockholder in
the road, and Nature began this portrait ten thousand years
ago, with the idea of having the compliment ready in time for
the event.

We saw a banyan tree which sent down supporting stems
from branches which were sixty feet above the ground. That
is, I suppose it was a banyan ; its bark resembled that of the
great banyan in the botanical gardens at Calcutta, that spider-
legged thing with its wilderness of vegetable columns. And

SLIDING DOWN THE HIMALAYAS. 539

there were frequent glimpses of a totally leafless tree upon
whose innumerable twigs and branches a cloud of crimson
butterflies had lighted — apparently. In fact these brilliant
red butterflies were flowers, but the illusion Avas good. After-
ward in South Africa, I saw another splendid effect made by
red flowers. This flower was probably called the torchplant
— should have been so named, anyway. It had a slender stem
several feet high, and from its top stood up a single tongue of
flame, an intensely red flower of the size and shape of a small
corn-cob. The stems stood three or four feet apart all over a
great hill-slope that was a mile long, and make one think of
what the Place de la Concorde would be if its myriad lights
were red instead of white and yellow.

A few miles down the mountain we stopped half an hour
to see a Thibetan dramatic performance. It was in the open
air on the hillside. The audience was composed of Thibetans,
Ghurkas, and other unusual people. The costumes of the
actors were in the last degree outlandish, and the performance
was in keeping with the clothes. To an accompaniment of
barbarous noises the actors stepped out one after another and
began to spin around with immense swiftness and vigor and
violence, chanting the while, and soon the whole troupe would
be spinning and chanting and raising the dust. They were
performing an ancient and celebrated historical play, and a
Chinaman explained it to mp in pidjin English as it went
along. The play was obscure enough without the explana-
tion ; with the explanation added, it was opake. As a drama
this ancient historical work of art was defective, I thought,
but as a wild and barbarous spectacle the representation was
beyond criticism.

Far down the mountain we got out to look at a piece of
remarkable loop-engineering — a spiral where the road curves
upon itself with such abruptness that when the regular train

540 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

came down and entered the loop, we stood over it and saw tb'e
locomotive disappear under our bridge, then in a few moments
appear again, chasing its own tail ; and we saw it gain on it,
overtake it, draw ahead past the rear cars, and run a race with
that end of the train. It was like a snake swallowing itself.

Half-way down the mountain we stopped about an hour at
Mr. Barnard's house for refreshments, and while we were
sitting on the veranda looking at the distant panorama of
hills through a gap in the forest, we came very near seeing a
leopard kill a calf.* It is a wild place and lovely. From the
woods all about came the songs of birds, — among them the
contributions of a couple of birds which I was not then
acquainted with : the brain-fever bird and the coppersmith.
The song of the brain-fever demon starts on a low but steadily
rising key, and is a spiral twist which augments in intensity
and severity with each added spiral, growing sharper and
sharper, and more and more painful, more and more agonizing,
more and more maddening, intolerable, unendurable, as it
bores deeper and deeper and deeper into the listener's brain,
until at last the brain fever comes as a relief and the man dies.
I am bringing some of these birds home to America. They
will be a great curiosity there, and it is believed that in our
climate they will multiply like rabbits.

The coppersmith bird's note at a certain distance away
has the ring of a sledge on granite ; at a certain other distance
the hammering has a more metallic ring, and you might think
that the bird was mending a copper kettle ; at another distance
it has a more woodeny thump, but it is a thump that is full of
energy, and sounds just like starting a bung. So he is a hard
bird to name Avith a single name ; he is a stone-breaker, cop-
persmith, and bung-starter, and even then he is not completely
named, for when he is close by you find that there is a soft,

* It killed it the day before.

NEW BIRDS FOR AMERICA. 543

deep, melodious quality in his thump, and for that no satisfy-
ing name occurs to you. You will not mind his other notes,
but when he camps near enough for you to hear that one, you
presently find that his measured and monotonous repetition of
it is beginning to disturb you ; next it will weary you, soon it
will distress you, and before long each thump will hurt your
head ; if this goes on, you will lose your mind with the pain
and misery of it, and go crazy. I am bringing some of these
birds home to America. There is nothing like them there.
They will be a great surprise, and it is said that in a climate
like ours they will surpass expectation for fecundity.

I am bringing some nightingales, too, and some cue-owls.
I got them in Italy. The song of the nightingale is the dead^
liest known to ornithology. That demoniacal shriek can kill
at thirty yards. The note of the cue-owl is infinitely soft and
sweet — soft and sweet as the whisper of a flute. But pene-
trating— oh, beyond belief; it can bore through boiler-iron.
It is a lingering note, and comes in triplets, on the one un-
changing key : hoo-o-o, hoo-o-o, hoo-o-o / then a silence of fifteen
seconds, then the triplet again ; and so on, all night. At first
it is divine ; then less so ; then trying ; then distressing ; then
excruciating ; then agonizing, and at the end of tAvo hours the
listener is a maniac.

And so, presently w^e took to the hand-car and went flying
down the mountain again ; flying and stopping, flying and
stopping, till at last we were in the plain once more and stowed
for Calcutta in the regular train. That was the most enjoy-
able day I have spent in the earth. For rousing, tingling,
rapturous pleasure there is no holiday trip that approaches the
bird-flight down the Himalayas in a hand-car. It has no
fault, no blemish, no lack, except that there are only thirty
five miles of it instead of five hundred.

CHAPTER LVII.

She was not quite what you would call refined. She was not quite what you
would call unrefined. She was the kind of person that keeps a parrot.

— Piidd^nhead Wilsoii's New Calendar.

SO far as I am able to judge, nothing has been left
undone, either by man or Nature, to make India the
most extraordinary country that the sun visits on his
round. Nothing seems to have been forgotten, nothing over-
looked. Always, when you think you have come to the end
of her tremendous specialties and have finished hanging tags
upon her as the Land of the Thug, the Land of the Plague,
the Land of P'amine, the Land of Giant Illusions, the Land of
Stupendous Mountains, and so forth, another specialty crops
up and another tag is required. I have been overlooking the
fact that India is by an unapproachable supremacy — the Land
of Murderous Wild Creatures. Perhaps it will be simplest to
throw away the tags and generalize her with one all-compre-
hensive name, as the Land of AVonders.

For many 3'ears the British Indian Government has been
trying to destroy the murderous wild creatures, and has spent
a great deal of money in the effort. The annual official
returns show that the undertaking is a difficult one.

These returns exhibit a curious annual uniformity in results;
the sort of uniformity which you find in the annual output of
suicides in the world's capitals, and the proportions of deaths
by this, that, and the other disease. You can always come
close to foretelling how many suicides will occur in Paris,
London, and New York, next year, and also how many deaths
will result from cancer, consumption, dog-bite, falling out of

(644)

THE LAND OF MUUDEKOUS WILD CREATURES. 545

the window, getting run over by cabs, etc., if you know the
statistics of those matters for the present year. In the same
way, with one year's Indian statistics before you, you can
guess closely at how many people were killed in that Empire
by tigers during the previous year, and the year before that,
and the year before that, and at how many were killed in each
of those years by bears, how many by wolves, and how many
by snakes ; and you can also guess closely at how many people
are going to be killed each year for the coming five years by
each of those agencies. You can also guess closely at how
many of each agency the government is going to kill each
year for the next five years.

I have before me statistics covering a period of six consec-
utive years. By these, I know that in India the tiger kills
something over 800 persons every year, and that the govern-
ment responds by killing about double as many tigers every
year. In four of the six years referred to, the tiger got 800
odd ; in one of the remaining two years he got only TOO, but in
the other remaining 3'ear he made his average good by scoring
91T. He is always sure of his average. Anyone who bets
that the tiger will kill 2,400 people in India in any three
consecutive years has invested his money in a certainty ; any-
one who bets that he will kill 2,600 in any three consecutive
years, is absolutely sure to lose.

As strikingly uniform as are the statistics of suicide, they
are not any more so than are those of the tiger's annual out-
put of slaughtered human beings in India. The government's
work is quite uniform, too ; it about doubles the tiger's aver-
age. In six years the tiger killed 5,000 persons, minus 50 ; in
the same six years 10,000 tigers were killed, minus 400.

The wolf kills nearly as many people as the tiger — TOO a
year to the tiger's 800 odd — but while he is doing it, more
than 5,000 of his tribe fall.
85

540 FOLLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

The leopard kills an average of 230 people per year, but
loses 3,300 of his own mess while he is doing it.

The bear kills 100 people per year at a cost of 1,250 of his
own tribe.

The tiger, as the figures show, makes a very handsome
fight against man. But it is nothing to the elephant's fight.
The king of beasts, the lord of the jungle, loses four of his
mess per year, but he kills forty-^ve persons to make up for it.

But when it comes to killing cattle, the lord of the jungle
is not interested. He kills but 100 in six years — horses of
hunters, no doubt — but in the same six the tiger kills more
than 84,000, the leopard 100,000, the bear 4,000, the wolf
70,000, the hyena more than 13,000, other wild beasts 2Y,000,
and the snakes 19,000, a grand total of more than 300,000 ; an
average of 50,000 head per year.

In response, the government kills, in the six years, a total
of 3,201,232 wild beasts and snakes. Ten for one.

It will be perceived that the snakes are not much interested
in cattle ; they kill only 3,000 odd per year. The snakes are
much more interested in man. India swarms with deadly
snakes. At the head of the list is the cobra, the deadliest
known to the world, a snake wiiose bite kills where the rattle-
snake's bite merely entertains.

In India, the annual man-killings by snakes are as uniform,
as regular, and as forecastable as are the tiger-average and the
suicide-average. Anyone who bets that in India, in any three
consecutive years the snakes will kill 49,500 persons, will win
his bet ; and anyone who bets that in India in any three con-
secutive years, the snakes will kill 53,500 persons, will lose his
bet. In India the snakes kill 17,000 people a year ; they
hardly ever fall short of it ; they as seldom exceed it. An
insurance actuary could take the Indian census tables and the
government's snake tallies and tell you within sixpence how
much it would be worth to insure a man against death by

SPECULATION ON THE SNAKE CROP. 547

snake-bite there. If I had a dollar for every person killed per
year in India, I would rather have it than any other property,
as it is the only property in the world not subject to shrinkage.

I should like to have a royalty on the government-end of
the snake business, too, and am in London now trying to get
it ; but when I get it it is not going to be as regular an income
as the other will be if I get that ; I have applied for it. The
snakes transact their end of the business in a more orderly and
systematic way than the government transacts its end of it,
because the snakes have had a long experience and know all
about the traffic. You can make sure that the government
will never kill fewer than 110,000 snakes in a year, and that it
will never quite reach 300,000 — too much room for oscillation ;
good speculative stock, to bear or bull, and buy and sell long
and short, and all that kind of thing, but not eligible for invest-
ment like the other. The man that speculates in the govern-
ment's snake crop wants to go carefully. I would not advise
a man to buy a single crop at all — I mean a crop of futures —
for the possible wobble is something quite extraordinary. If
he can buy six future crops in a bunch, seller to deliver
1,500,000 altogether, that is another matter. I do not know
what snakes are worth now, but I know what they would be
worth then, for the statistics show that the seller could not
come within 427,000 of carrying out his contract. However, I
think that a person who speculates in snakes is a fool, anyway.
He always regrets it afterwards.

To finish the statistics. In six years the wild beasts kill
20,000 persons, and the snakes kill 103,000. In the same six
the government kills 1,073,540 snakes. Plenty left.

There are narrow escapes in India. In the very jungle
where I killed sixteen tigers and all those elephants, a cobra
bit me but it got well ; everyone was surprised. This could
not happen twice in ten years, perhaps. Usually death would
result in fifteen minutes.

548 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

We struck out westward or northwestward from Calcutta
on an itinerary of a zig-zag sort, which would in the course of
time carry us across India to its northwestern corner and the
border of Afghanistan. The first part of the trip carried us
through a great region which was an endless garden — miles
and miles of the beautiful flower from whose juices comes the
opium, and at Muzaffurpore we were in the midst of the indigo
culture; thence by a branch road to the Ganges at a point
near Dinapore; and by a train Avliich would have missed the
connection by a week but for the though tfulness of some
British officers who were along, and who kneAV the ways of
trains that are run by natives without white supervision.
This train stopped at every village ; for no purpose connected
with business, apparently. We put out nothing, we took
nothing aboard. The train hands stepped ashore and gossiped
with friends a quarter of an hour, then pulled out and repeated
this at the succeeding villages. We had thirty-five miles to go
and six hours to do it in, but it was plain that we were not
going to make it. It was then that the English officers said it
was now necessary to turn this gravel train into an express.
So they gave the engine-driver a rupee and told him to fly.
It was a simple remedy. After that we made ninet}'^ miles an
hour. We crossed the Ganges just at dawn, made our connec-
tion, and went to Benares, where we stayed twenty-four hours
and inspected that strange and fascinating piety-hive again;
then left for Lucknow, a city which is perhaps the most con-
spicuous of the many monuments of British fortitude and valor
that are scattered about the earth.

The heat was pitiless, the flat plains were destitute of grass,
and. baked dry by the sun they were the color of pale dust,
which was flying in clouds. But it was much hotter than
this when the relieving forces marched to Lucknow in the time
of the Mutiny. Those were the days of 138° in the shade.

CHAPTEH LYIII.

Make it a point to do something every day that you don't want to do. This is
the golden rule for acquiring the habit of doing your duty without pain.

— Padd''nhead Wilson'' s New Calendar.

IT seems to be settled, now, that among the many causes
from which the Great Mutiny sprang, the main one was
the annexation of the kingdom of Oudh by the East India
Company — characterized by Sir Henry Lawrence as " the
most unrighteous act that was ever committed." In the
spring of 1857, a mutinous spirit was observable in many of
the native garrisons, and it grew day by day and spread wider
and wider. The younger military men saw something d'ery
serious in it, and would have, liked to take hold of it vigorously
and stamp it out promptly ; but they were not in authority.
Old men were in the high places of the army — men who
should have been retired long before, because of their great
age — and they regarded the matter as a thing of no conse-
quence. They loved their native soldiers, and would not
believe that anything could move them to revolt. Every-
where these obstinate veterans listened serenely to the rum-
bling of the volcanoes under them, and said it was nothing.

And so the propagators of mutiny had everything their
own way. They moved from camp to camp undisturbed, and
painted to the native soldier the wrongs his people were suffer-
ing at the hands of the English, and made his heart burn for
revenge. They were able to point to two facts of formidable
value as backers of their persuasions : In Olive's da}^, native
armies were incoherent mobs, and without effective arms;

(549)

550 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

therefore, they were weak against Olive's organized handful of
well-armed men, but tho thing was the other way, now. The
British forces were native ; they had been trained by the
British, organized by the British, armed by the British, all the
power was in their hands — they were a club made by British
hands to beat out British brains with. There was nothing to
oppose their mass, nothing but a few weak battalions of Brit-
ish soldiers scattered about India, a force not worth speaking
of. This argument, taken alone, might not have succeeded,
for the bravest and best Indian troops had a wholesome dread
of the white soldier, whether he was weak or strong ; but the
agitators backed it with their second and best point — jyroph-
ecy — a prophecy a hundred years old. The Indian is open to
prophecy at all times ; argument may fail to convince him, but
not prophecy. There was a prophecy that a hundred years
from the year of that battle of Olive's which founded the
British Indian Empire, the British power would be overthrown
and swept away by the natives.

The Mutiny broke out at Meerut on the 10th of May, 1857,
and fired a train of tremendous historical explosions. I^ana
Sahib's massacre of the surrendered garrison of Oawnpore
occurred in June, and the long siege of Lucknow began. The
military history of England is old and great, but I think it
must be granted that the crushing of the Mutiny is the great-
est chapter in it. The British were caught asleep and unpre-
pared. They were a few thousands, swallowed up in an ocean
of hostile populations. It would take months to inform Eng-
land and get help, but they did not falter or stop to count the
odds, but with English resolution and English devotion they
took up their task, and went stubbornly on with it, through
good fortune and bad, and fought the most unpromising
fight that one may read of in fiction or out of it, and won it
thoroughly.

THE BREAKING OUT OF THE MUTINY. 551

The Mutiny broke out so suddenly, and spread with such

rapidity that there was but little time for occupants of weak

outlying stations to escape to places of safety. Attempts were

made, of course, but they were attended by hardships as bitter

as death in the few cases which were successful ; for the heat

ranged between 120 and 138 in the shade ; the way led through

hostile peoples, and food and water were hardly to be had.

For ladies and children accustomed to ease and comfort and

plenty, such a journey must have been a cruel experience.

Sir G. O. Trevelyan quotes an example :

"This is what befell Mrs. M , the wife of the surgeon at a certain

station on the southern confines of the insurrection. ' I heard,' she says, 'a
number of shots fired, and, looking out, I saw my husband driving furiously
from the mess-house, waving his whip. I ran to him, and, seeing a bearer
with my child in his arms, I caught her up, and got into the buggy. At the
mess-house we found all the officers assembled, together with sixty sepoys,
who had remained faithful. We went off in one large party, amidst a general
conflagration of our late homes. We reached the caravanserai at Chattapore
the next morning, and thence started for Callinger. At this point our sepoy
escort deserted us. We were fired upon by matchlockmen, and one officer was
shot dead. We heard, likewise, that the people had risen at Callinger, so we

returned and walked back ten miles that day. M and I carried the child

alternately. Presently Mrs. Smalley died of sunstroke. We had no food
amongst us. An officer kindly lent us a horse. We were very faint. The
Major died, and was buried ; also the Sergeant-major and some women. The
bandsmen left us on the nineteenth of June. We were fired at again by match-
lockmen, and changed direction for Allahabad. Our party consisted of nine
gentlemen, two children, the sergeant and his wife. On the morning of the
twentieth. Captain Scott took Lottie on to his horse. I was riding behind my
husband, and she was so crushed between us. She was two years old on the
first of the month. We were both ,weak through want of food and the effect

of the sun. Lottie and I had no head covering. M had a sepoy's cap I

found on the ground. Soon after sunrise we were followed by villagers
armed with clubs and spears. One of them struck Captain Scott's horse on
the leg. He galloped off with Lottie, and my poor husband never, saw his
child again. We rode on several miles, keeping away from villages, and then

crossed the river. Our thirst was extreme. M had dreadful cramps, so •

that I had to hold him on the horse. I was very uneasy about him. The day
before I saw the drummer's wife eating chupatties, and asked her to give a
piece to the child, which she did. I now saw water in a ravine. The

descent was steep, and our only drinking-vessel was M 's cap. Our horse

got water, and I bathed my neck. I had no stockings, and my feet were torn
and blistered. Two peasants came in sight, and we were frightened and rode

552 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

off. The sergeant held our horse, and M put me up and mounted. I think

he must have got suddenly faint, for I fell and he over me, on the road, when
the horse started off. Some time before he said, and Barber, too, that he
could not live many hours. I felt he was dying before we came to the ravine.
He told me his wishes about his children and myself, and took leave. My
brain seemed burnt up. No tears came. As soon as we fell, the sergeant let
go the horse, and it went off ; so that escape was cut off. We sat down on
the ground waiting for death. Poor fellow ! he was very weak ; his thirst
was frightful, and I went to get him water. Some villagers came, and took
my rupees and watch. I took off my wedding-ring, and twisted it in my
hair, and replaced the guard. I tore off the skirt of my dress to bring water
in, but was no use, for when I returned my beloved's eyes were fixed, and,
though I called and tried to restore him, and poured water into his mouth, it
only rattled in his throat. He never spoke to me again. I held him in my
arms till he sank gradually down. I felt frantic, but could not cry. I was
alone. I bound his head and face in my dress, for there was no earth to bury
him. The pain in my hands and feet was dreadful. I went down to the
ravine, and sat in the water on a stone, hoping to get off at night and look for
Lottie. When I came back from the water, I saw that they had not taken
her little watch, chain, and seals, so I tied them under my petticoat. In an
hour, about thirty villagers came, they dragged me out of the ravine, and
took off my jacket, and found the little chain. They then dragged me to a
village, mocking me all the way, and disputing as to whom I was to belong
to. The whole population came to look at me. I asked for a bedstead, and
lay down outside the door of a hut. They had a dozen of cows, and yet
refused me milk. When night came, and the village was quiet, some old
woman brought me a leafful of rice. I was too parched to eat, and they
gave me water. The morning after a neighboring Rajah sent a palanquin
and a horseman to fetch me, who told me that a little child and three Sahibs
had come to his master's house. And so the poor mother found her lost one,
'greatly blistered,' poor little creature. It is not for Europeans in India to
pray that their flight be not in the winter."

In the first days of June the aged general, Sir Hugh

Wheeler commanding the forces at Cawnpore, was deserted by

his native troops ; then he moved out of the fort and into an

exposed patch of open flat ground and built a four-foot mud

wall around it. He had with him a few hundred white

soldiers and officers, and apparently more women and children

than soldiers. He was short of provisions, short of arms, short

of ammunition, short of military wisdom, short of everything

but courage and devotion to duty. The defense of that open

lot through twenty-one days and nights of hunger, thirst,

Indian heat, and a never-ceasing storm of bullets, bombs, and

THE DEFENSE OF CAWNPORE. 553

cannon-balls — a defense conducted, not by the aged and infirm
general, but by a young officer named Moore — is one of the
most heroic episodes in history. When at last the Nana found
it impossible to conquer these starving men and women with
powder and ball, he resorted to treachery, and that succeeded.
He agreed to supply them with food and send them to
Allahabad in boats. Their mud wall and their barracks were
in ruins, their provisions were at the point of exhaustion, they
had done all that the brave could do, they had conquered an
honorable compromise, their forces had been fearfully reduced
by casualties and by disease, they were not able to continue
the contest longer. They came forth helpless but suspecting
no treachery, the Nana's host closed around them, and at a
signal from a trumpet the massacre began. About two
hundred women and children were spared — for the present —
but all the men except three or four were killed. Among the
incidents of the massacre quoted by Sir G. O. Trevelyan, is

this:

"When, after the lapse of some twenty minutes, the dead began to out-
number the living ; — when the fire slackened, as the marks grew few and far
between ; then the troopers who had been drawn up to the right of the temple
plunged into the river, sabre between teeth, and pistol in hand. Thereupon
two half-caste Christian women, the wives of musicians in the band of the
Fifty-sixth, witnessed a scene which should not be related at second-hand.
' In the boat where I was to have gone,' says Mrs. Bradshaw, confirmed
throughout by Mrs. Setts, ' was the school-mistress and twenty -two misses.
General Wheeler came last in a palkee. They carried him into the water
near the boat. I stood close by. He said, ' Carry me a little further towards
the boat.' But a trooper said, ' No, get out here.' As the General got out of
the palkee, headforemost, the trooper gave him a cut with his sword into the
neck, and he fell into the water. My son was killed near him. I saw it ;
alas! alas! Some were stabbed with bayonets; others cut down. Little in-
fants were torn in pieces. We saw it; we did; and tell you only what we
saw. Other children were stabbed and thrown into the river. The school-
girls were burnt to death. I saw their clothes and hair catch fire. In the
water, a few paces off, by the next boat, we saw the youngest daughter of
Colonel Williams. A sepoy was going to kill her with his bayonet. She
said, 'My father was always kind to sepoys.' He turned away, and just
then a villager struck her on the head with a club, and she fell into the water.
These people likewise saw good Mr. Moncrieff, the clergyman, take a book

554 FOLLOWma THE EQUATOR.

from his pocket that he never had leisure to open, and heard him commence
a prayer for mercy which he was not permitted to conclude. Another de-
ponent observed an European making for a drain like a scared water-rat,
when some boatmen, armed with cudgels, cut off his retreat, and beat him
down dead into the mud."

The women and children who had been reserved from the
massacre were imprisoned during a fortnight in a small build-
ing, one story high — a cramped place, a slightly modified
Black Hole of Calcutta. They were waiting in suspense;
there was none who could forecaste their fate. Meantime the
news of the massacre had traveled far and an army of rescuers
with Havelock at its head was on its way — at least an army
which hoped to be rescuers. It was crossing the country by
forced marches, and strewing its way with its own dead —
men struck down by cholera, and by a heat which reached
135°. It was in a vengeful fury, and it stopped for nothing —
neither heat, nor fatigue, nor disease, nor human opposition.
It tore its impetuous way through hostile forces, winning vic-
tory after victory, but still striding on and on, not halting to
count results. And at last, after this extraordinary march, it
arrived before the walls of Cawnpore, met the Nana's massed
strength, delivered a crushing defeat, and entered.

But too late — only a few hours too late. For at the last

moment- the Nana had decided upon the massacre of the

captive women and children, and had commissioned three

Mohammedans and two Hindoos to do the work. Sir G. O,

Trevelyan says :

"Thereupon the five men entered. It was the short gloaming of Hindo-
stan — the hour when ladies take their evening drive. She who had accosted
the officer was standing in the doorway. With her were the native doctor
and two Hindoo menials. That much of the business might be seen from the
veranda, but all else was concealed amidst the interior gloom. Shrieks and
scuffling acquainted those without that the journeymen were earning their
hire. Survur Khan soon emerged with his sword broken off at the hilt. He
procured another from the Nana's house, and a few minutes after appeared
again on the same errand. The third blade was of better temper ; or perhaps
the thick of the work was already over. By the time darkness had closed in,

THE MASSACRE AT CAWNPORE. 555

the men came forth and locked up the house for the night. Then the screams
ceased, but the groans lasted till morning.

"The sun rose as usual. When he had been up nearly three hours the
five repaired to the scene of their labors over night. They were attended by
a few sweepers, who proceeded to transfer the contents of the house to a dry
well situated behind some trees which grew hard by. ' The bodies,' says one
who was present throughout, ' were dragged out, most of them by the hair of
the head. Those who had clothing worth taking were stripped. Some of the
women were alive. I cannot say how many ; but three could speak. They
prayed for the sake of God that an end might be put to their sufferings. I
remarked one very stout woman, a half-caste, who was severely wounded in
both arms, who entreated to be killed. She and two or three others were
placed against the bank of the cut by which bullocks go down in drawing
water. The dead were first thrown in. Yes : there was a great crowd look-
ing on ; they were standing along the walls of the compound. They were
principally city people and villagers. Yes : there were also sepoys, lliree
boys were alive. They were fair children. The eldest, I think, must have been
six or seven, and the youngest five years. They were running around the
well (where else could they go to ?), and there was none to save them. No :
none said a word or tried to save them.'

" At length the smallest of them made an infantile attempt to get away.
The little thing had been frightened past bearing by the murder of one of the
surviving ladies. He thus attracted the observation of a native who flung
him and his companions down the well."

The soldiers had made a march of eighteen days, almost

without rest, to save the women and the -children, and now

they were too late — all were dead and the assassin had flown.

"What happened then, Trevelyan hesitated to put into words.

" Of w^hat took place, the less said is the better."

• Then he continues :

" But there was a spectacle to witness which might excuse much. Those
who, straight from the contested field, wandered sobbing through the rooms
of the ladies' house, saw what it were well could the outraged earth have
straightway hidden. The inner apartment was ankle-deep in blood. The
plaster was scored with sword-cuts ; not high up as where men have fought,
but low down, and about the corners, as if a creature had crouched to avoid
the blow. Strips of dresses, vainly tied around the handles of the doors, sig-
nified the contrivance to which feminine despair had resorted as a means of
keeping out the murderers. Broken combs were there, and the frills of chil-
dren's trousers, and torn cuffs and pinafores, and little round hats, and one or
two shoes with burst latchets, and one or two daguerreotype cases with
cracked glasses. An officer picked up a few curls, preserved in a bit of card-
board, and marked 'Ned's hair, with love'; but around were strewn locks,
some near a yard in length, dissevered, not as a keepsake, by quite other
scissors."

556 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

The battle of Waterloo was fought on the J8th of June,
1815. I do not state this fact as a reminder to the reader, but
as news to him. For a forgotten fact is news when it comes
again. Writers of books have the fashion of whizzing by vast
and renowned historical events with the remark, " The details
of this tremendous episode are too familiar to the reader to
need repeating here." They know that that is not true. It is
a low kind of flattery. They know that the reader has for-
gotten every detail of it, and that nothing of the tremendous
event is left in his mind but a vague and formless luminous
smudge. Aside from the desire to flatter the reader, they
have another reason for making the remark — tAvo reasons,
indeed. They do not remember the details themselves, and do
not want the trouble of hunting them up and copying them
out ; also, they are afraid that if they search them out and
print them they will be scoffed at by the book-reviewers for
retelling those worn old things which are familiar to every-
body. They should not mind the reviewer's jeer ; he doesn't
remember any of the worn old things until the book which he
is reviewing has retold them to him.

I have made the quoted remark myself, at one time and
another, but I was not doing it to flatter the reader ; I was
merely doing it to save work. If I had known the details with-
out brushing up, I would have put them in ; but I didn't, and
I did not want the labor of posting myself ; so I said, " The
details of this tremendous episode are too familiar to the reader
to need repeating here." I do not like that kind of a lie ; still,
it does save work.

I am not trying to get out of repeating the details of the
Siege of Lucknow in fear of the reviewer ; I am not leaving
them out in fear that they would not interest the reader ; I am
leaving them out partly to save work ; mainly for lack of room.
It is a pity, too ; for there is not a dull place anywhere in the
gi^at story.

BEGINNING OF THE MUTINY AT LUCKNOW. 557

Ten days before the outbreak (May 10th) of the Mutiny,
all was serene at Lucknow, the huge capital of Oudh, the king-
dom which had recently been seized by the India Company.
There was a great garrison, composed of about 7,000 native
troops and between 700 and 800 whites. These white soldiers
and their families Avere probably the only people of their race
there ; at their elbow was that swarming population of warlike
natives, a race of born soldiers, brave, daring, and fond of
fighting. On high ground just outside the city stood the
palace of that great personage, the Resident, the representative
of British power and authority. It stood in the midst of
spacious grounds, with its due complement of outbuildings,
and the grounds were enclosed by a wall — a wall not for
defense, but for privacy. The mutinous spirit was in the air,
but the whites w^ere not afraid, and did not feel much
troubled.

Then came the outbreak at Meerut, then the capture of
Delhi by the mutineers; in June came the three -weeks
leaguer of Sir Hugh Wheeler in his open lot at Cawnpore —
40 miles distant from Lucknow — then the treacherous massa-
cre of that gallant little garrison ; and now the great revolt
was in full flower, and the comfortable condition of things at
Lucknow was instantly changed.

There was an outbreak there, and Sir Henrj^ Lawrence
marched out of the Residency on the 30th of June to put it
down, but was defeated with heavy loss, and had difficulty in
getting back again. That night the memorable siege of the
Residency — called the siege of Lucknow — began. Sir Henry
was killed three days later, and Brigadier Inglis succeeded him
in command.

Outside of the Residency fence was an immense host of
hostile and confident native besiegers ; inside it were 480 loyal
native soldiers, 730 white ones, and 500 women and children.

558 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

In those days the English garrisons always managed to ham-
per themselves sufficiently with women and children.

The natives established themselves in houses close at hand
and began to rain bullets and cannon-balls into the Kesidency ;
and this they kept up, night and day, during four months and
a half, the little garrison industriously replying all the time.
The women and children soon became so used to the roar of
the guns that it ceased to disturb their sleep. The children
imitated siege and defense in their play. The women — with
any pretext, or with none — would sally out into the storm-
swept grounds.

The defense was kept up week after week, with stubborn
fortitude, in the midst of death, which came in many forms —
by bullet, small-pox, cholera, and by various diseases induced
by unpalatable and insufficient food, by the long hours of
wearying and exhausting overwork in the daily and nightly
battle in the oppressive Indian heat, and by the broken rest
caused by the intolerable pest of mosquitoes, flies, mice, rats,
and fleas.

Six weeks after the beginning of the siege more than one-
half of the original force of white soldiers was dead, and close
upon three-fifths of the original native force.

But the fighting went on just the same. The enemy
mined, the English counter-mined, and, turn about, they blew
up each other's posts. The Residency grounds were honey-
combed with the enemy's tunnels. Deadly courtesies were
constantly exchanged — sorties by the English in the night ;
rushes by the enemy in the night — rushes whose purpose was
to breach the walls or scale them ; rushes which cost heavily,
apd always failed.

The ladies got used to all the horrors of war — the shrieks
of mutilated men, the sight of blood and death. Lady Inglis
makes this mention in her diary :

THE SIEGE. 561.

"Mrs. Bruere's nurse "was carried past our door to-day, wounded in the
eye. To extract tlie bullet it was found necessary to take out the eye — a
fearful operation. Her mistress held her while it was performed."

The first relieving force failed to relieve. It was under
Havelock and Out ram, and arrived when the siege had been
going on for three months. It fought its desperate way to
LucknoAv, then fought its way through the city against odds of
a hundred to one, and entered the Residency ; but there was
not enough left of it, then, to do any good. It lost more men
in its last fight than it found in the Residency when it got in.
It became captive itself.

The fighting and starving and dying by bullets and disease
went steadily on. Both sides fought with energy and industry.
Captain Birch puts this striking incident in evidence. He is
speaking of the third month of the siege :

"As an instance of the heavy firing brought to bear on our position this
month may be mentioned the cutting down of the upper story of a brick
building simply by musketry firing. This building was in a most exposed
position. All the shots which just missed the top of the rampart cut into the
dead wall pretty much in a straight line, and at length cut right through and
brought the upper story tumbling down. The upper structure on the top of
the brigade-mess also fell in. The Residency house was a wreck. Captain
Anderson's post had long ago been knocked down, and Innes' post also fell
in. These two were riddled with round shot. As many as 200 were picked
up by Colonel Masters."

The exhausted garrison fought doggedly on all through the
next month — October. Then, November 2d, news came —
Sir Colin Campbell's relieving force would soon be on its way
from Cawnpore.

On the 12th the boom of his guns was heard.

On the 13th the sounds came nearer — he was slowly, but
steadily, cutting his way through, storming one stronghold
after another.

On the 14th he captured the Martiniere College, and ran up
the British flag there. It was seen from the Residency.

Next he took the Dilkoosha.
36

562 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

On the 17th he took the former mess-house of the 32d
regiment — a fortified building, and very strong. "A most
exciting, anxious day," writes Lady Inglis in her diary.
"About 4 p. M., two strange officers walked through our yard,
leading their horses " — and by that sign she knew that com-
munication was established between the forces, that the relief
was real, this time, and that the long siege of Lucknow was
ended.

The last eight or ten miles of Sir Colin Campbell's march
was through seas of blood. The weapon mainly used was the
bayonet, the fighting was desperate. The way was mile-
stoned with detached strong buildings of stone, fortified, and
heavily garrisoned, and these had to be taken by assault.
Neither side asked for quarter, and neither gave it. At the
Secundrabagh, where nearly two thousand of the enemy oc-
cupied a great stone house in a garden, the work of slaughter
was continued until every man was killed. That is a sample
of the character of that devastating march.

There were but few trees in the plain at that time, and
from the Residency the progress of the march, step by step,
victory by victory, could be noted ; the ascending clouds of
battle-smoke marked the way to the eye, and the thunder of
the guns marked it to the ear.

Sir Colin Campbell had not come to Lucknow to hold it,
but to save the occupants of the Residency, and bring them
away. Four or five days after his arrival the secret evacua-
tion by the troops took place, in the middle of a dark night,
by the principal gate (the Bailie Guard). The two hundred
women and two hundred and fifty children had been previously
removed. Captain Birch says :

"And now commenced a movement of the most perfect arrangement and
successful generalship — the withdrawal of the whole of the various forces, a
combined movement requiring the greatest care and skill. First, the garri-
son in immediate contact with the enemy at the furthest extremity of the

THE EVACUATION OF LUCKNOW.

565

Residency position was marched out. Every other garrison in turn fell in
behind it, and so passed out through the Bailie Guard gate, till the whole of
our position was evacuated. Then Havelock's force was similarly with-
drawn, post by post, marching in rear of our garrison. After them in turn
came the forces of the Commander-in-Ohief, whicli joined on in the rear of
Havelock's force. Regiment by regiment was withdrawn with the utmost
order and regularity. The whole operation resembled the movement of a
telescope. Stern silence was kept, and the enemy took no alarm."

Lady Inglis, referring to her husband and to General Sir

James Outram, sets down the closing detail of this impressive

midnight retreat, in darkness and by stealth, of this shadowy

host through the gate which it had defended so long and so

well :

"At twelve precisely they marched out, John and Sir James Outram re-
maining till all had passed, and then they took off their hats to the Bailie
Guard, the scene of as noble a defense as I think history will ever have to
relate."

CHAPTEE LIX.

Don't part with your illusions. When they are gone you may still exist but you
have ceased to live. — Pudd'nhead Wihon^s N'ew Calendar.

Often, the surest way to convey misinformation is to tell the strict truth.

— Padd^nhead Wilson^ s New Calendar.

VE were driven over Sir Colin Campbell's route by a
British officer, and when I arrived at the Residency
I was so familiar with the road that I could have led a
retreat over it myself ; but the compass in my head has been
out of order from my birth, and so, as soon as I was within the
battered Bailie Guard and turned about to review the march
and imagine the relieving forces storming their way along it,
everything was upside down and wrong end first in a moment,
and I was never able to get straightened out again. And
now, when I look at the battle-plan, the confusion remains.
In me the east was born west, the battle-plans which have the
east on the right-hand side are of no use to me.

The Residency ruins are draped with flowering vines, and
are impressive and beautiful. They and the grounds are
sacred now, and will suffer no neglect nor be profaned by any
sordid or commercial use while the British remain masters of
India. Within the grounds are buried the dead who gave up
their lives there in the long siege.

After a fashion, I was able to imagine the fiery storm that

raged night and day over the place during so many months,

and after a fashion I could imagine the men moving through

it, but I could not satisfactorily place the 200 women, and I

could do nothing at all with the 250 children. I knew by

(567)

A CONNECTING LINK. 569

Lady Inglis' diary that the children carried on their small
affairs very much as if blood and carnage and the crash and
thunder of a siege were natural and proper features of nursery
life, and I tried to realize it ; but when her little Johnny came
rushing, all excitement, through the din and smoke, shouting,
" Oh, mamma, the white hen has laid an egg ! " I saw that I
could not do it. Johnny's place was under the bed. I could
imagine him there, because I could imagine myself there ; and
I think I should not have been interested in a hen that was lay-
ing an egg ; my interest would have been with the parties that
were laying the bombshells. I sat at dinner with one of those
children in the Club's Indian palace, and I knew that all
through the siege he was perfecting his teething and learning
to talk ; and while to me he was the most impressive object
in Lucknow after the Residency ruins, I was not able to imag-
ine what his life had been during that tempestuous infancy of
his, nor what sort of a curious surprise it must have been to
him to be marched suddenly out into a strange dumb world
where there wasn't any noise, and nothing going on. He was
only forty-one when I saw him, a strangel}^ youthful link to
connect the present with so ancient an episode as the Great
Mutiny.

By and by we saw Cawnpore, and the open lot which was
the scene of Moore's memorable defense, aud the spot on the
shore of the Ganges where the massacre of the betrayed garri-
son occurred, and the small Indian temple whence the bugle-
signal notified the assassins to fall on. This latter was a
lonely spot, and silent. The sluggish river drifted by, almost
currentless. It was dead low water, narrow channels with
vast sandbars between, all the way across the wide bed ; and
the only living thing in sight was that grotesque and solemn
bald-headed bird, the Adjutant, standing on his six-foot stilts,
solitary on a distant bar, with his head sunk between his

570 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

shoulders, thinking; thinking of his prize, I suppose — the
dead Hindoo that lay awash at his feet, and whether to eat
him alone or invite friends. He and his prey were a proper
accent to that mournful place. They were in keeping with it,
they emphasized its loneliness and its solemnity.

And we saw the scene of the slaughter of the helpless
women and children, and also the costly memorial that is built
over the well which contains their remains. The Black Hole
of Calcutta is . gone, but a more reverent age is come, and
whatever remembrancer still exists of the moving and heroic
sufferings and achievements of the garrisons of Lucknow and
Cawnpore will be guarded and preserved.

In Agra and its neighborhood, and afterwards at Delhi, we
saw forts, mosques, and tombs, which were built in the great
days of the Mohammedan emperors, and which are marvels of
cost, magnitude, and richness of materials and ornamentation,
creations of surpassing grandeur, wonders which do indeed
make the like things in the rest of the world seem tame and
inconsequential by comparison. I am not purposing to
describe them. By good fortune I had not read too much
about them, and therefore was able to get a natural and
rational focus upon them, with the result that they thrilled,
blessed, and exalted me. But if I had previously overheated
my imagination by drinking too much pestilential literary
hot Scotch, I should have suffered disappointment and sorrow.

I mean to speak of only one of these many world-renowned
buildings, the Taj Mahal, the most celebrated construction in
the earth. I had read a great deal too much about it. I saw
it in the daytime, I saw it in the moonlight, I saw it near at
hand, I saw it from a distance ; and I knew all the time, that
of its kind it was the wonder of the world, with no competitor
now and no possible future competitor ; and yet, it was not
my Taj. My Taj had been built by excitable literary people ;
it -was solidly lodged in my head, and I could not blast it out.

A LITERARY TAJ. 571

I wish to place before the reader some of the usual descrip-
tions of the Taj, and ask him to take note of the impressions
left in his mind. These descriptions do really state the truth
— as nearly as the limitations of language will allow. But
language is^a treacherous thing, a most unsure vehicle, and it
can seldom arrange descriptive words in such a way that they
will not inflate the facts — by help of the reader's imagination,
which is always ready to take a hand, and work for nothing,
and do the bulk of it at that.

I will begin with a few sentences from the excellent little

local guide-book of Mr, Satya Chandra Mukerji. I take them

from here and there in his description :

"The inlaid work of the Taj and the flowers and petals that are to be
found on all sides on the surface of the marble evince a most delicate touch."

That is true.

"The inlaid work, the marble, the flowers, the buds, the leaves, the
petals, and the lotus stems fere almost without a rival in the whole of the civ-
ilized world."

" The work of inlaying with stones and gems is found in the highest per-
fection in the Taj."

Gems, inlaid flowers, buds, and leaves to be found on all

sides. What do you ^ee before you ? Is the fairy structure

growing ? Is it becoming a jewel casket ?

' ' The whole of the Taj produces a wonderful effect that is equally sub-
lime and beautiful."

Then Sir William Wilson Hunter :

"The Taj Mahal with its beautiful domes, 'a dream of marble,' rises on
the river bank."

" The materials are white marble and red sandstone."

"The complexity of its design and the delicate intricacy of the workman-
ship baffle description."

Sir William continues. I will italicize some of his words :
"The mausoleum stands on a raised marble platform at each of whose
corners rises a tall and slender minaret of graceful proportions and of ex-
quisite beauty. Beyond the platform stretch the two wings, one of which is
itself a mosque of great architectural merit. In the center of the whole de-
sign the mausoleum occupies a square of 186 feet, with the angles deeply
truncated so as to form an unequal octagon. The main feature in this central

572 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

pile is the great dome, which swells upward to nearly two-thirds of a sphere
and tapers at its extremity into a pointed spire crowned by a crescent.
Beneath it an enclosure of marble trellis-work surrounds the tomb of the
princess and of her husband, the Emperor. Each corner of the mausoleum is
covered by'a similar though much smaller dome erected on a pediment pierced
with graceful Saracenic arches. Light is admitted into the interior through a
double screen of pierced marble, which tempers the glare of an Indian sky
while its whiteness prevents the mellow effect from degenerating into gloom.
The internal decorations consist of inlaid work in precious stones, such as agate,
jasper, etc., with which every squandril or salient point in the architecture is
richly fretted. Brown and violet marble is also freely employed in wreaths,
scrolls, and lintels to relieve the monotony of white wall. In regard to color
and design, the interior of the Taj may rank first in tlie world for piirely decora-
tive workmanship ; while the perfect symmetry of its exterior, once seen can
never be forgotten, nor the atrial grace of its domes, rising like marble bub-
bles into the clear sky. The Taj represents the most highly elaborated stage
of ornamentation reached by the Indo-Mohammedan builders, the stage in
which the architect ends and \h^ jeweler begins. In its magnificent gateway
the diagonal ornamentation at the corners, which satisfied the designers of the
gateways of Itimad-ud-doulah and Sikandra mausoleums is superseded by
fine marble cables, in bold twists, strong and handsome. The triangular
insertions of white marble and large flowers have in like manner given place
to fine inlaid work. Firm perpendicular lines in black marble with well pro-
portioned panels of the same material are effectively used in the interior of the
gateway. On its top the Hindu brackets and monolithic architraves of
Sikandra are replaced by Moorish carped arches, usually single blocks of red
sandstone, in the Kiosks and pavilions which adorn the roof. From the pil-
lared pavilions a magnificent view is obtained of the Taj gardens below, with
the noble Jumna river at their farther end, and the city and fort of Agra in
the distance. From this beautiful and splendid gateway one passes up a
straight alley shaded by evergreen trees cooled by a broad shallow piece of
water running along the middle of the path to the Taj itself. Tim Taj is
entirely of marble and gems. The red sandstone of the other Mohammedan
buildings has entirely disappeared, or rather the red sandstone which used to
form the thickness of the walls, is in the Taj itself overlaid completely with
white marble, and the white marble is itself inlaid with precious stones arranged
in lately patterns of flowers. A feeling of purity impresses itself on the eye
and the mind from the absojice of the coarser material which forms so invari-
able a material in Agra architecture. The lower wall and panels are covered
with tulips, oleanders, and full-blown lilies, in flat carving on the white marble ;
and although tlie inlaid work of jloiuers done in gems is very brilliant when
looked at closely, there is on the whole but little color, and the all-prevailing
sentiment is one of whiteness, silence, and calm. The whiteness is broken
only by the fine color of the inlaid gems, by lines in black marble, and by
delicately written inscriptions, also in black, from the Koran. Under the dome
of the vast mausoleum a high and beautiful screen of open tracery in white
marble rises around the two tombs, or rather cenotaphs of the emperor and

THE REAL TAJ. 573

his princess ; and in this marvel of marble the carving has advanced from the
old geometrical patterns to a trellis work of flowers and foliage, handled with
great freedom and spirit. The two cenotaphs in the center of the exquisite
enclosure have no carving except the plain Kalamdan or oblong pen-box on
the tomb of Emperor Shah Jehan. But both cenotaphs are inlaid with
flowers made of costly gems, and with the ever graceful oleander scroll."

Bayard Taylor, after describing the details of the Taj, goes

on to say :

"On both sides the palm, the banyan, and the feathery bamboo mingle
their foliage ; the song of birds meets your ears, and the odor of roses and
lemon flowers sweetens the air. Down such a vista and over such a fore-
ground rises the Taj . There is no mystery, no sense of partial failure about
the Taj. A thing of perfect beauty and of absolute finish in every detail, it
might pass for the work of genii who knew naught of the weaknesses and ills
with which mankind are beset."

All of these details are true. But, taken together, they
state a falsehood — to you. You cannot add them up correctly.
Those writers know the values of their words and phrases, but
to you the words and phrases convey other and uncertain
values. To those writers their phrases have values Avhich I
think I am now acquainted with ; and for the help of the
reader I will here repeat certain of those words and phrases,
and follow them with numerals which shall represent those
values — then we shall see the difference between a writer's
ciphering and a mistaken reader's :

Precious stones, such as agate, jasper, etc. — 6.

With which every salient point is richly fretted — 5.

First in the loorld for purely decorative workmanship — 9.

The Taj represents the stage where the architect ends and the
jeweler hegins — 5.

The Taj is entirely of marble and gems — 7.

Inlaid with precious stones in lovely patterns of flowers — 5.

The inlaid work of flowers done in gems is very brilliant —
(followed by a most important modification which the reader
is sure to read too carelessly) — 2.

Th€' vast mausoleum — 5.

574 . FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

This marvel of marhle — 5.
- The exquisite enclosure — 5.

Inlaid with flowers inade of costly gems — 5.

A thing of perfect leauty and absolute finish — 5.

Those details are correct ; the figures which I have placed

after them represent quite fairly their individual values.

Then Avhy, as a whole, do they convey a false impression to

the reader I It is because the reader — beguiled by his heated

imagination — masses them in the wrong way. The writer

would mass the first three figures in the following way, and

they would speak the truth :

5
5

Total — 19

But the reader masses them thus — and then they tell a lie
— 559.

The writer would add all of his twelve numerals together,
and then the sum would express the whole truth about the Taj,
and the truth only — 63.

But the reader — always helped by his imagination —
would put the figures in a row one after the other, and get this
sum, which would tell him a noble big lie :

559575255555.

You must put in the commas yourself; I have to go on
with my work.

The reader will always be sure to put the figures together
in that wrong way, and then as surely before him will stand,
sparkling in the sun, a gem-crusted Taj tall as the Matterhorn.

I had to visit Niagara fifteen times before I succeeded in
getting my imaginary Falls gauged to the actuality and could
begin to sanely and wholesomely wonder at them for what they
were, not what I had expected tlTem to be. When I first ap-

A2h BXAGQKRATED NIAGARA.

NIAGARA FALLS. 577

proached them it was with my face lifted toward the sky, for
I thought I was going to see an Atlantic ocean pouring down
thence over cloud-vexed Himalayan heights, a sea-green wall
of water sixty miles front and six miles high, and so, when the
toy reality came suddenly into view — that beruffled little wet
apron hanging out to dry — the shock was too much for me,
and I fell with a dull thud.

Yet slowly, surely, steadily, in the course of my fifteen visits,
the proportions adjusted themselves to the facts, and I came at
last to realize that a waterfall a hundred and sixty-five feet
high and a quarter of a mile wide was an impressive thing. It
was not a dipperful to my vanished great vision, but it would
answer.

I know that I ought to do with the Taj as I was obliged to
do with Niagara — see it fifteen times, and let my mind grad-
ually get rid of the Taj built in it by its describers, by help of
my imagination, and substitute for it the Taj of fact. It
would be noble and fine, then, and a marvel ; not the marvel
which it replaced, but still a marvel, and fine enough. I am a
careless reader, I suppose — an impressionist reader; an im-
pressionist reader of what is not an impressionist picture ; a
reader who overlooks the informing details or masses their
sum improperly, and gets only a large splashy, general effect
— an effect which is not correct, and which is not warranted
by the particulars placed before me — particulars which I did
not examine, and whose meanings I did not cautiously and
carefully estimate. It is an effect which is some thirty-five or
forty times finer than the reality, and is therefore a great deal
better and more valuable than the reality ; and so, I ought
never to hunt up the reality, but stay miles away from it, and
thus preserve undamaged my own private mighty Niagara
tumbling out of the vault of heaven, and my own ineffable Taj,
87

578 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

built of tinted mists upon jeweled arches of rainbows supported
by colonnades of moonlight. It is a mistake for a person with
an unregulated imagination to go and look at an illustrious
world's wonder.

I suppose that many, many years ago I gathered the idea
that the Taj's place in the achievements of man was exactly
the place of the ice-storm in the achievements of Nature ; that
the Taj represented man's supremest possibility in the creation
of grace and beauty and exquisiteness and splendor, just as the
ice-storm represents Nature's supremest possibility in the com-
bination of those same qualities. I do not know how long ago
that idea was bred in me, but I know that I cannot remember
back to a time when the thought of either of these symbols of
gracious and unapproachable perfection did not at once suggest
the other. If I thought of the ice-storm, the Taj rose before
me divinely beautiful ; if I thought of the Taj, with its en-
crustings and inlay ings of jewels, the vision of the ice-storm
rose. And so, to me, all these years, the Taj has had no rival
among the temples and palaces of men, none that even re-
motely approached it — it was man's architectural ice-storm.

Here in London the other night I was talking with some
Scotch and English friends, and I mentioned the ice-storm,
using it as a figure — a figure which failed, for none of them
had heard of the ice-storm. One gentleman, who was very
familiar with American literature, said he had never seen it
mentioned in any book. That is strange. And I, myself, was
not able to say that I had seen it mentioned in a book ; and
yet the autumn foliage, with all other American scenery, has
received full and competent attention.

The oversight is strange, for in America the ice-storm is an
event. And it is not an event which one is careless about.
"When it comes, the news flies from room to room in the
house, there are hangings on the doors, and shoutings, " The

AN ICE-STORM IN AMERICA. 579

ice-storm ! the ice-storm ! " and even the laziest sleepers throw-
off the covers and join the rush for the windows. The ice-
storm occurs in mid-winter, and usually its enchantments are
wrought in the silence and the darkness of the night. A
tine drizzling rain falls hour after hour upon the naked twigs
and branches of the trees, and as it falls it freezes. In time
the trunk and every branch and twig are incased in hard pure
ice; so that the tree looks like a skeleton tree made all of
glass — glass that is crystal-clear. All along the under side of
every branch and twig is a comb of little icicles — the frozen
drip. Sometimes these pendants do not quite amount to
icicles, but are round beads — frozen tears.

The weather clears, toward dawn, and leaves a brisk pure
atmosphere and a sky without a shred of cloud in it — and
everything is still, there is not a breath of wind. The dawn
breaks and spreads, the news of the storm goes about the
house, and the little and the big, in wraps and blankets, flock
to the window and press together there, and gaze intently out
upon the great white ghost in the grounds, and nobody says a
word, nobody stirs. All are waiting ; they know what is
coming, and they are waiting — w^aiting for the miracle. The
minutes drift on and on and on, with not a sound but the
ticking of the clock; at last the sun fires a sudden sheaf of
rays into the ghostly tree and turns it into a white splendor of
glittering diamonds. Everybpdy catches his breath, and feels
a swelling in his throat and a moisture in his eyes — but waits
again ; for he knows what is coming ; there is more yet. The
sun climbs higher, and still higher, flooding the tree from its
loftiest spread of branches to its lowest, turning it to a glory of
white fire ; then in a moment, without warning, comes the
great miracle, the supreme miracle, the miracle without its fel-
low in the earth ; a gust of wind sets every branch and twig
to swaying, and in an instant turns the whole white tree into a

580 FOLLOWING THE EQUA.TOR.

spouting and spraying explosion of flashing gems of every
conceivable color ; and there it stands and sways this way and
that, flash I flash ! flash ! a dancing and glancing world of
rubies, emeralds, diamonds, sapphires, the most radiant specta-
cle, the most blinding spectacle, the divinest, the most ex-
quisite, the most intoxicating vision of fire and color and
intolerable and unimaginable splendor that ever any eye has
rested upon in this world, or will ever rest upon outside of the
gates of heaven.

By all my senses, all my faculties, I know that the ice-
storm is Nature's supremest achievement in the domain of the
superb and the beautiful ; and by my reason, at least, I know
that the Taj is man's ice-storm.

In the ice-storm every one of the myriad ice-beads pendant
from twig and branch is an individual gem, and changes color
with every motion caused by the wind ; each tree carries a
million, and a forest-front exhibits the splendors of the single
tree multiplied by a thousand.

It occurs to me now that I have never seen the ice-storm
put upon canvas, and have not heard that any painter has tried
to do it. I wonder why that is. Is it that paint cannot coun-
terfeit the intense blaze of a sun-flooded jewel ? There should
be, and must be, a reason, and a good one, why the most
enchanting sight that Nature has created has been neglected
by the brush.

Often, the surest way to convey misinformation is to tell
the strict truth. The describers of the Taj have used the word
gem in its strictest sense — its scientific sense. In that sense it
is a mild word, and promises but little to the eye — nothing
bright, nothing brilliant, nothing sparkling, nothing splendid in
the way of color. It accurately describes the sober and unob-
trusive gem- work of the Taj ; that is, to the very highly-
educated one person in a thousand ; but it most falsel}" describes

DECEPTIVE WORDS. 581

it to the 999. But the 999 are the people who ought to be es-
pecially taken care of, and to them it does not mean quiet-
colored designs wrought in carnelians, or agates, or such
things; they know the word in its wide and ordinary sense
only, and so to them it means diamonds and rubies and opals
and their kindred, and the moment their eyes fall upon it in
print they see a vision of glorious colors clothed in fire.

These describers are writing for the " general," and so, in
order to make sure of being understood, they ought to use
words in their ordinary sense, or else explain. The word
fountain means one thing in Syria, where there is but a hand-
ful of people ; it means quite another thing in !North America,
where there are 75,000,000. If I were describing some Syrian
scenery, and should exclaim, "Within the narrow space of a
quarter of a mile square I saw, in the glory of the flooding
moonlight, two hundred noble fountains — imagine the specta-
cle ! " the North American would have a vision of clustering
columns of water soaring aloft, bending over in graceful arches,
bursting in beaded spray and raining white fire in the moon-
light — and he would be deceived. But the Syrian would not
be deceived ; he would merely see two hundred fresh-water
springs — two hundred drowsing puddles, as level and unpre-
tentious and unexcited as so many door-mats, and even with
the help of the moonlight he would not lose his grip in the
presence of the exhibition.' My word "fountain" would be
correct ; it would speak the strict truth ; and it Avould convey
the strict truth to the handful of Syrians, and the strictest
misinformation to the North American millions. With their
gems — and gems — and more gems — and gems again — and
still other gems — the describers of the Taj are within their
legal but not their moral rights ; they are dealing in the strict-
est scientific truth ; and in doing it they succeed to admiration
in telling " what ain't so."

CHAPTEE LX.

Satan (impatiently) to Nbw-Comek. The trouble with you Chicago people is,
that you think you are the best people down here ; whereas you are merely the most
numerous. — Pudd'nhead Wilson''s New Calendar.

VE wandered contentedly around here and there in
India ; to Lahore, among other places, where the
Lieutenant-Governor lent me an elephant. This
hospitality stands out in my experiences in a stately isolation.
It was a fine elephant, affable, gentlemanly, educated, and I
was not afraid of it. I even rode it with confidence through
the crowded lanes of the native city, where it scared all the
horses out of their senses, and where children were always
just escaping its feet. It took the middle of the road in a fine
independent way, and left it to the Avorld to get out of the
way or take the consequences. I am used to being afraid of
collisions when I ride or drive, but when one is on top of an
elephant that feeling is absent. I could have ridden in com-
fort through a regiment of runaway teams. I could easily
learn to prefer an elephant to any other vehicle, partly because
of that immunity from collisions, and partly because of the
fine view one has from up there, and partly because of the dig-
nity one feels in that high place, and partly because one can
look in at the windows and see what is going on privately
among the family. The Lahore horses were used to elephants,
but they were rapturously afraid of them just the same. It
seemed curious. Perhaps the better they know the elephant
the more they respect him in that peculiar way. In our own
case we are not afraid of dynamite till we get acquainted

with it.

(582)

LAHORE AND DELHI.

583

We drifted as far as Rawal Pindi, away up on the Afghan
frontier — I think it was the Afghan frontier, but it may have
been Hertzegovina — it was around there somewhere — and
down again to Delhi, to see the ancient architectural wonders
there and in Old Delhi and not describe them, and also to see
the scene of the illustrious assault, in the Mutiny days, when
the British carried Delhi by storm, one of the marvels of his-
tory for impudent daring and immortal valor.

We had a refreshing rest, there in Delhi, in a great old
mansion which possessed historical interest. It was built by
a rich Englishman who had become orientalized — so much
so that he had a zenana. But he was a broad-minded man,
and remained so. To please his harem he built a mosque ; to
please himself he built an English church. That kind of a
man will arrive, somewhere. In the Mutiny days the man-
sion was the British general's headquarters. It stands in a
great garden — oriental fashion — and about it are many noble
trees. The trees harbor monkeys ; and they are monkeys of
a watchful and enterprising sort, and not much troubled with
fear. They invade the house whenever they get a chance,
and carry off everything they don't want. One morning the
master of the house was in his bath, and the window was
open. Near it stood a pot of yellow paint and a brush.
Some monkeys appeared in the window ; to scare them away,
the gentleman threw his sponge at them. They did not scare
at all ; they jumped into the room and threw yellow paint
all over him from the brush, and drove him out ; then they
painted the walls and the floor and the tank and the win-
dows and the furniture yellow, and were in the dressing-room
painting that when help arrived and routed them.

Two of these creatures came into my room in the early
morning, through a window whose shutters I had left open,
and when I woke one of them was before the glass brushing

584 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

his hair, and the other one had my note-book, and was reading
a page of humorous notes and crying. I did not mind the
one with the hair-brush, but the conduct of the other one hurt
me ; it hurts me yet. I threw something at him, and that was
wrong, for my host had told me that the monkeys were best
left alone. They threw everything at me that they could lift,
and then went into the bathroom to get some more things,
and I shut the door on them.

At Jeypore, in Rajputana, we made a considerable stay.
"We were not in the native city, but several miles from it, in
the small European official suburb. There were but few Euro-
peans — only fourteen — but they were all kind and hospitable,
and it amounted to being at home. In Jeypore we found again
what we had found all about India — that while the Indian
servant is in his Avay a very real treasure, he will sometimes
bear watching, and the Englishman watches him. If he sends
him on an errand, he wants more than the man's word for it
that he did the errand. When fruit and vegetables were sent
to us, a " chit " came with them — a receipt for us to sign ;
otherwise the things might not arrive. If a gentleman sent
up his carriage, the chit stated "from" such-and-such an hour
" to " such-and-such an hour — which made it unhandy for the
coachman and his two or three subordinates to put us off with
a part of the allotted time and devote the rest of it to a lark
of their own.

We were pleasantly situated in a small two-storied inn, in
an empty large compound which was surrounded by a mud
wall as high as a man's head. The inn was kept by nine Hin-
doo brothers, its owners. They lived, \vith their families, in a
one-storied building within the compound, but off to one side,
and there was always a long pile of their little comely brown
children loosely stacked in its veranda, and a detachment of
the parents wedged among them, smoking the hookah or the

AN HONEST CKITIC.

THE INN AT JEYPORE. 587

howdah, or whatever they call it. By the veranda stood a
palm, and a monkey lived in it, and led a lonesome life, and
always looked sad and weary, and the crows bothered him a
good deal.

The inn cow poked about the compound and emphasized
the secluded and country air of the place, and there was a dog
of no particular breed, who was always present in the com-
pound, and always asleep, always stretched out baking in the
sun and adding to the deep tranquility and reposefulness of the
place, when the crows were away on business. "White-draperied
servants were coming and going all the time, but they seenled
only spirits, for their feet were bare and made no sound.
Down the lane a piece lived an elephant in the shade of a noble
tree, and rocked and rocked, and reached about with his trunk,
begging of his brown mistress or fumbling the children play-
ing at his feet. And there were camels about, but they go on
velvet feet, and were proper to the silence and serenity of the
surroundings.

The Satan mentioned at the head of this chapter was not
our Satan, but the other one. Our Satan was lost to us. In
these later days he had passed out of our life — lamented by
me, and sincerely. I was missing him ; I am missing him yet,
after all these months. He was an astonishing creature to fly
around and do things. He didn't always do them quite right,
but he did them, and did them suddenly. There was no time
wasted. You would say :

" Pack the trunks and bags, Satan."

" Wair good " (very good).

Then there would be a brief sound of thrashing and slashing
and humming and buzzing, and a spectacle as of a whirlwind
spinning gowns and jackets and coats and boots and things
through the air, and then — with bow and touch —

" Awready, master."

588 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

It was wonderful. It made one dizzy. He crumpled
dresses a good deal, and he had no particular plan about the
work — at first — except to put each article into the trunk it
didn't belong in. But he soon reformed, in this matter. Not
entirely ; for, to the last, he would cram into the satchel
sacred to literature any odds and ends of rubbish that he
couldn't find a handy place for elsewhere. When threatened
with death for this, it did not trouble him ; he only looked
pleasant, saluted with soldierly grace, said " Wair good," and
did it again next day.

He was always busy ; kept the rooms tidied up, the boots
polished, the clothes brushed, the wash-basin full of clean
water, my dress clothes laid out and ready for the lecture-hall
an hour ahead of time ; and he dressed me from head to heel
in spite of my determination to do it myself, according to my
lifelong custom.

He was a born boss, and loved to command, and to jaw and
dispute with inferiors and harry them and bullyrag them. He
was fine at the railway station — yes, he was at his finest there.
He would shoulder and plunge and paw his violent way
through the packed multitude of natives with nineteen coolies
at his tail, each bearing a trifle of luggage — one a trunk, an-
other a parasol, another a shawl, another a fan, and so on ; one
article to each, and the longer the procession, the better he was
suited — and he was sure to make for some engaged sleeper
and begin to hurl the owner's things out of it, swearing that it
was ours and that there had been a mistake. Arrived at our
own sleeper, he would undo the bedding-bundles and make the
beds and put everything to rights and shipshape in two min-
utes ; then put his head out at a window and have a restful
good time abusing his gang of coolies and disputing their bill
until we arrived and made him pay them and stop his noise.

Speaking of noise, he certainly was the noisest little devil

THE LOST SATAN. 589

in India — and that is saying much, very much, indeed. I
loved him for his noise, but the family detested him for it.
They could not abide it ; they could not get reconciled to it.
It humiliated them. As a rule, when we got within six hun-
dred yards of one of those big railway stations, a mighty
racket of screaming and shrieking and shouting and storming
would break upon us, and I would be happy to myself, and the
family would say, with shame :

"There — that's Satan. Why do you keep him?"

And, sure enough, there in the whirling midst of fifteen
hundred wondering people we would find that little scrap of a
creature gesticulating like a spider with the colic, his black
eyes snapping, his fez-tassel dancing, his jaws pouring out
floods of billingsgate upon his gang of beseeching and aston-
ished coolies.

I loved him ; I couldn't help it ; but the family — why, they
could hardly speak of him with patience. To this day I regret
his loss, and wish I liad him back; but they — it is different
with them. He was a native, and came from Surat. Twenty
degrees of latitude lay between his birthplace and Manuel's,
and fifteen hundred between their ways and characters and
dispositions. I only liked Manuel, but I loved Satan. This
hitter's real name was intensely Indian. I could not quite get
the hang of it, but it sounded like Bunder Rao Ram Chunder
Clam Chowder. It was too long for handy use, anyway ; so I
reduced it.

When he had been with us two or three weeks, he began
to make mistakes which I had difficulty in patching up for
him. Approaching Benares one day, he got out of the train
to see if be could get up a misunderstanding with somebody,
for it had been a weary, long journey and he wanted to
freshen up. He found what he was after, but kept up his
pow-wow a shade too long and got left. So there we were in a

590 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

strange city and no chambermaid. It was awkward for us,
and we told him he must not do so any more. He saluted and
said in his dear, pleasant way, " Wair good." Then at Luck-
now he got drunk. I said it was a fever, and got the family's
compassion and solicitude aroused ; so they gave him a tea-
spoonful of liquid quinine and it set his vitals on fire. He
made several grimaces which gave me a better idea of the
Lisbon earthquake than any I have ever got of it from paint-
ings and descriptions. His drunk was still portentously solid
next morning, but I could have pulled him through with the
family if he would only have taken another spoonful of that
remedy ; but no, although he was stupefied, his memory still
had flickerings of life ; so he smiled a divinely dull smile and
said, fumblingly saluting :

" Scoose me, mem Saheb, scoose me, Missy Saheb ; Satan
not prefer it, please."

Then some instinct revealed to them that he was drunk.
They gave him prompt notice that next time this happened
he must go. He got out a maudlin and most gentle " Wair
good," and saluted indefinitely.

Only one short Aveek later he fell again. And oh, sorrow !
not in a hotel this time, but in an English gentleman's private
house. And in Agra, of all places. So he had to go. When
I told him, he said patiently, " Wair good," and made his part-
ing salute, and went out from us to return no more forever.
Dear me ! I would rather have lost a hundred angels than that
one poor lovely devil. What style he used to put on, in a
swell hotel or in a private house — snow-white muslin from
his chin to his bare feet, a crimson sash embroidered with gold
thread around his waist, and on his head a great sea-green
turban like to the turban of the Grand Turk.

He was not a liar, but he will become one if he keeps on.
He told me once that he used to crack cocoanuts with his

JEYPORE. 593

teeth when he was a boy ; and when I asked how he got them
into his mouth, he said he was upward of six feet high at that
time, and had an unusual mouth. And when I followed him
up and asked him what had become of that other foot, he said
a house fell on him and he was never able to get his stature
back again. Swervings like these from the strict line of fact
often beguile a truthful man on and on until he eventually
becomes a liar.

His successor was a Mohammedan, Sahadat
Mohammed Khan ; very dark, very tall, very
grave. He went always in flowing masses of
white, from the top of his big turban down
to his bare feet. His voice was low. He
glided about in a noiseless way, and looked
like a ghost. He was competent and satis- ' ^' " ^li^l''l
factory. But where he Avas, it seemed al-

"^ ' SAHADAT KHAN.

ways Sunday. It was not so in Satan's time.

Jeypore is intensely Indian, but it has two or three features
which indicate the presence of European science and European
interest in the weal of the common public, such as the liberal
water-supply furnished by great works built at the State's
expense ; good sanitation, resulting in a degree of healthful-
ness unusually high for India ; a noble pleasure garden, with
privileged days for women ; schools for the instruction of
native youth in advanced art, both ornamental and utilitarian ;
and a new and beautiful palace stocked with a museum of
extraordinary interest and value. Without the Maharaja's
sympathy and purse these beneficences could not have been
created ; but he is a man of wide views and large generosities,
and all such matters find hospitality with him.

We drove often to the city from the hotel Kaiser-i-Hind, a
journey which Avas always full of interest, both night and day,

594 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

for that country road was never quiet, never empty, but was
always India in motion, always a streaming flood of brown
people clothed in smouchings from the rainbow, a tossing and
moiling flood, happy, noisy, a charming and satisfying con-
fusion of strange human and strange animal life and equally
strange and outlandish vehicles.

And the city itself is a curiosity. Any Indian city is that,
but this one is not like any other that we saw. It is shut up in
a lofty turreted wall ; the main body of it is divided into six
parts by perfectly straight streets that are more than a hun-
dred feet wide; the blocks of houses exhibit a long frontage of
the most taking architectural quaintnesses, the straight lines
being broken everywhere by pretty little balconies, pillared
and highly ornamented, and other cunning and cozy and in-
viting perches and projections, and many of the fronts are
curiously pictured by the .brush, and the whole of them have
the soft rich tint of strawberry ice-cream. One cannot look
down the far stretch of the chief street and persuade himself
that'these are real houses, and that it is all out of doors — the
impression that it is an unreality, a picture, a scene in a thea-
ter, is the only one that will take hold.

Then there came a great day when this illusion was more
pronounced than ever. A rich Hindoo had been spending a
fortune upon the manufacture of a crowd of idols and accom-
panying paraphernalia whose purpose was to illustrate scenes
in the life of his especial god or saint, and this fine show was
to be brought through the town in processional state at ten
in the morning. As we passed through the great public
pleasure garden on our way to the city we found it crowded
with natives. That was one sight. Then there was another.
In the midst of the spacious lawns stands the palace which
contains the museum — a beautiful construction of stone which
shows arched colonnades, one above another, and receding,

liL^il^^r4'.

596 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

terrace-fashion, toward the sky. Every one of these terraces,
all the way to the top one, was packed and jammed with
natives. One must try to imagine those solid masses of splen-
did color, one above another, up and up, against the blue sky,
and the Indian sun turning them all to beds of fire and flame.

Later, when we reached the city, and glanced down the
chief avenue, smouldering in its crushed-strawberry tint, those
splendid effects were repeated ; for every balcony, and every
fanciful bird-cage of a snuggery countersunk in the house-
fronts, and all the long lines of roofs were crowded with
people, and each crowd was an explosion of brilliant color.

Then the wide street itself, away down and down and down
into the distance, was alive with gorgeously-clothed people —
not still, but moving, swaying, drifting, eddying, a delirious dis-
play of all colors and all shades of color, delicate, lovel}'', pale,
soft, strong, stunning, vivid, brilliant, a sort of storm of sweet-
pea blossoms passing on the wings of a hurricane ; and presently,
through this storm of color, came swaying and swinging the
majestic elephants, clothed in their Sunday best of gaudinesses,
and the long procession of fanciful trucks freighted with their
groups of curious and costly images, and then the long rear-
guard of stately camels, with their picturesque riders.

For color, and picturesqueness, and novelty, and outlandish-
ness, and sustained interest and fascination, it was the most
satisfying show I had ever seen, and I suppose I shall not have
the privilege of looking upon its like again.

CHAPTEK LXL

In the first place God made idiots. This was for practice. Then He made
School Boards. — Paddhihcad Wilsmi's Xew Calendar.

SUPPOSE we applied no more ingenuity to the instruc-
tion of deaf and dumb and blind children than we
sometimes apply in our American public schools to the
instruction of children who are in possession of all their
faculties ? The result would be that the deaf and dumb and
blind would acquire nothing. They would live and die as
ignorant as bricks and stones. ' The methods used in the
asylums are rational. The teacher exactly measures the
child's capacity, to begin Avith ; and from thence onwards the
tasks imposed are nicely gauged to the gradual development of
that capacity ; the tasks keep pace with the steps of the child's
progress, they don't jump miles and leagues ahead of it by
irrational caprice and land in vacancy — according to the
average public-school plan. In the public school, apparently,
they teach the child to spell cat, then ask it to calculate an
eclipse ; when it can read words of two syllables, they require
it to explain the circulation of the blood ; when it reaches the
head of the infant class they bully it with conundrums that
cover the domain of universal knowledge. This sounds ex-
travagant — and is ; yet it goes no great way beyond the
facts.

I received a curious letter one day, from the Punjab (you
must pronounce it Vxmjawh). The handwriting was excellent,
and the wording was English — English, and yet not exactly
English. The style was easy and smooth and flowing, yet

(597)

598 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

there was something subtly foreign about it — something tropi-
cally ornate and sentimental and rhetorical. It turned out to
be the work of a Hindoo youth, the holder of a humble clerical
billet in a railway oiRce. He had been educated in one of the
numerous colleges of India. Upon inquiry I was told that the
country was full of young fellows of his like. They had been
educated away up to the snow-summits of learning — and the
market for all this elaborate cultivation was minutely out of
proportion to the vastness of the product. This market con-
sisted of some thousands of small clerical posts under the
government — the supply of material for it was multitudinous.
If this youth with the flowing style and the blossoming Eng-
lish was occupying a small railway clerkship, it meant that
there were hundreds and hundreds as capable as he, or he
would be in a high place ; and it certainly meant that there
were thousands whose education and capacity had fallen a
little short, and that they would have to go without places.
Apparently, then, the colleges of India were doing what our
high schools have long been doing — richly over-supplying the
market for highly -educated service ; and thereby doing a dam-
age to the scholar, and through liim to the country.

At home I once made a speech deploring the injuries in-
flicted by the high school in making handicrafts distasteful to
boys who would have been willing to make a living at trades
and agriculture if they had but had the good luck to stop with
the common school. But I made no converts. Not one, in a
community overrun with educated idlers who were above fol-
lowing their fathers' mechanical trades, yet could find no
market for their book-knowledge. The same mail that brought
me the letter from the Punjab, brought also a little book pub-
lished by Messrs. Thacker, Spink & Co., of Calcutta, which
interested me, for both its preface and its contents treated of
this matter of over-education. In the preface occurs this para-

SOME EVILS OF EDUCATION. 599

graph from the Calcutta Review. For " Government office "

read "dry -goods clerkship" and it will fit more than one

region of America:

" The education that we give makes the boys a little less clownish in their
manners, and more intelligent when spoken to by strangers. On the other
hand, it has made them less contented with their lot in life, and less willing to
work with their hands. The form which discontent takes in this country is
not of a healthy kind; for, the Natives of India consider that the only occupa-
tion worthy of an educated man is that of a writership in some office, and es-
pecially in a Government office. The village schoolboy goes back to the
plow with the greatest reluctance; and the town schoolboy carries the same
discontent and inefficiency into his father's workshop. Sometimes these
ex-students positively refuse at first to work ; and more than once parents
have openly expressed their regret that they ever allowed their sons to be
inveigled to school."

The little book which I am quoting from is called " Indo-
Anglian Literature," and is well stocked with " baboo " Eng-
lish— clerkly English, booky English, acquired in the schools.
Some of it is very funny, — almost as funny, perhaps, as what
you and I produce when we try. to write in a language not our
own ; but much of it is surprisingly correct and free. If I were
going to quote good English — but I am not. India is well
stocked with natives who speak it and write it as Avell as the
best of us. I merely wish to show some of the quaint imper-
fect attempts at the use of our tongue. There are many letters
in the book ; poverty imploring help — bread, money, kindness,
office — generally an office, a clerkship, some way to get food
and a rag out of the applicant's unmarketable education ; and
food not for himself alone, but sometimes for a dozen helpless
relations in addition to his OAvn family ; for those people are
astonishingly unselfish, and admirably faithful to their ties of
kinship. Among us I think there is nothing approaching it.
Strange as some of these wailing and supplicating letters are,
humble and even groveling as some of them are, and quaintly
funny and confused as a goodly number of them are, there is
still a pathos about them, as a rule, that checks the rising laugh

600 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

and reproaches it. In the following letter " father " is not to
be read literally. In Ceylon a little native beggar-girl embar-
rassed me by calling me father, although I knew she was mis-
taken. I was so new that I did not know that she was merely
following the custom of the dependent and the supplicant.

"Sm,

" I pray please to give me some action (work) for I am very poor boy I
have no one to help me even so father for it so it seemed in thy good sight,
you give the Telegraph Office, and another work what is your wish I am very
poor boy, this understand what is your wish you my father I am your son
this understand what is your wish.

" Your Sirvent, P. C. B."

Through ages of debasing oppression suffered by these
people at the hands of their native rulers, they come legiti-
mately by the attitude and language of fawning and flattery,
and one must remember this in mitigation when passing judg-
ment upon the native character. It is common in these letters
to find the petitioner furtively trying to get at the white man's
soft religious side ; even this poor boy baits his hook with a
macerated Bible-text in the hope that it may catch something
if all else fail.

Here is an application for the post of instructor in English
to some children :

"My Dear Sir or Gentleman, that your Petitioner has much qualification
in the Language of English to instruct the young boys ; I was given to
understand that your of suitable children has to acquire the knowledge of
English language."

As a sample of the flowery Eastern style, I will take a

sentence or two from a long letter written by a young native

to the Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal — an application for

employment :

"Honored and Much Respected Sib,

" I hope your honor will condescend to hear the tale of this poor creature.
I shall overflow with gratitude at this mark of your royal condescension.
The bird-like happiness has flown away from my nest-like heart and has not
hitherto returned from the period whence the rose of my father's life suffered
the autumnal breath of death, in plain English he passed through the
gates of Grave, and from that hour the phantom of delight has never danced
before me."

"I WAS EMBARRASSED.

SAMPLE LETTERS. 603

It is all school-English, book-English, you see ; and good
enough, too, all things considered. If the native boy had but
that one study he would shine, he would dazzle, no doubt.
But that is not the case. He is situated as are our public-
school children — loaded down with an over-freiofhtag'e of
other studies ; and frequently they are as far beyond the actual
point of progress reached by him and suited to the stage of
development attained, as could be imagined by the insanest
fancy. Apparently — like our public-school boy — he must
work, work, work, in school and out, and play but little.
Apparently — like our public-school boy — his "education"
consists in learning things, not the meaning of them ; he is fed
upon the husks, not the corn. From several essays written by
native schoolboys in answer to the question of how they spend
their day, I select one — the one which goes most into detail :

" 66. At the break of day I rises from my own bed and finish my daily
duty, then I employ myself till 8 o'clock, after which I employ myself to
bathe, then take for my body some sweet meat, and just at Q^ I came to
school to attend my class duty, then at 2^ p. m. I return from school and
engage myself to do my natural duty, then, I engage for a quarter to take my
tiffin, then I study till 5 p.m., after which I began to play anything which
comes .a my head. After 8^ half pass to eight we are began to sleep, before
sleeping I told a constable just 11 o' he came and rose us from half pass
eleven we began to read still morning."

It is not perfectly clear, now that I come to cipher upon it.
He gets up at about 5 in the morning, or along there some-
where, and goes to bed about fifteen or sixteen hours after-
ward— that much of it seems straight ; but why he should rise
again three hours later and resume his studies till morning is
puzzling.

I think it is because he is studying history. History
requires a world of time and bitter hard work when your
" education " is no further advanced than the cat's ; when you
are merely stuffing yourself with a mixed-up mess of empty
names and random incidents and elusive dates, which no one

604 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

teaches you how to interpret, and which, uninterpreted, pay
you not a farthing's value for your waste of time. Yes, I
think he had to get up at half -past 11 p. m. in order to be sure
to be perfect with his history lesson by noon. With results as
follows — from a Calcutta school examination :

" Q. Who was Cardinal Wolsey?

" Cardinal Wolsey was an Editor of a paper named North Briton. No. 45
of his publication he charged the King of uttering a lie from the throne. He
was arrested* and cast into prison ; and after releasing went to France.

"3. As Bishop of York but died in disentry in a church on his way to
be blockheaded.

"8. Cardinil Wolsey was the son of Edward IV, after his father's
death he himself ascended the throne at the age of (10) ten only, but when he
surpassed or when he was fallen in his twenty years of age at that time he
wished to make a journey in his countries under him, but he was opposed by
his mother to do journey, and according to his mother's example he remained
in the home, and then became King. After many times obstacles and many
confusion he become King and afterwards his brother."

There is probably not a word of truth in that.

" Q. What is the meaning of Ich Dien?

" 10. An honor conferred on the first or eldest sons of English Sovereigns.
It is nothing more than some feathers.

"11. Ich Dien was the word which was written on the feathers of the
blind King who came to fight, being interlaced with the bridles of the horse.

" 13. Ich Dien is a title given to Henry VII by the Pope of Rome, when
he forwarded the Reformation of Cardinal Wolsy to Rome, and for this
reason he was called Commander of the faith."

A dozen or so of this kind of insane answers are quoted in

the book from that examination. Each answer is sweeping

proof, all by itself, that the person uttering it was pushed

ahead of where he belonged when he was put into history ;

proof that he had been put to the task of acquiring history

before he had had a single lesson in the art of acquiring it,

which is the equivalent of dumping a pupil into geometry

before he has learned the progressive steps which lead up to it

and make its acquirement possible. Those Calcutta novices

had no business with history. There was no excuse for exam-

ing them in it, no excuse for exposing them and their teachers.

They were totally empty ; there was nothing to " examine."

A CALCUTTA SCHOOL EXAMINATION. 605

Helen Kellar has been dumb, stone deaf, and stone blind,
ever since she was a little baby a year-and-a-half old ; and now
at sixteen years of age this miraculous creature, this wonder of
all the ages, passes the Harvard University examination in
Latin, German, French histor}^ helles lettres, and such things,
and does it brilliantly, too, not in a commonplace fashion.
She doesn't know merely things, she is splendidly familiar
with the meanings of them. When she writes an essay on a
Shakespearean character, her English is fine and strong, her
grasp of the subject is the grasp of one who knows, and her
page is electric with light. Has Miss Sullivan taught her by
the methods of India and the American public school ? Ko, oh,
no ; for then she would be deafer and dumber and blinder
than she was before. It is a pity that we can't educate all the
children in the asylums.

To continue the Calcutta exposure :

" What is the meaning of a Sheriff?"

"25. Sheriff is a post opened in the time of John. The duty of Sheriff
here in Calcutta, to look out and catch those carriages which is rashly driven
out by the coachman ; but it is a high post in England.

" 26. Sheriff was the English bill of common prayer.

" 27. The man with whom the accusative persons are placed is called
Sheriff.

"28. Sheriff — Latin term for 'shrub,' we called broom, worn by the
first earl of Enjue, as an emblem of humility when they went to the pilgrim-
age, and from this their hairs took their crest and sur name.

" 29. Sheriff is a kind of titlous sect of people, as Barons, Nobles, etc.

"30. Sheriff, a tittle given on those persons who were respective and
pious in England.-"

The students were examined in the following bulky mat-
ters : Geometry, the Solar Spectrum, the Habeas Corpus Act,
the British Parliament, and in Metaphysics they were asked to
trace the progress of skepticism from Descartes to Hume. It
is within bounds to say that some of the results were astonish-
ing. Without doubt, there were students present who justi-
fied their teacher's wisdom in introducing them to these stud-
ies ; but the fact is also evident that others had been pushed

606 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

into these studies to waste their time over them when they
could have been profitably employed in hunting smaller game.
Under the head of Geometry, one of the answers is this :

" 49. The whole BD = the whole CA, and so-so-so-so-so-so — so.

To me this is cloudy, but I was never well up in geometry.
That was the only effort made among the five students who
appeared for examination in geometry ; the other four wailed
and surrendered without a fight. They are piteous wails, too,
wails of despair ; and one of them is an eloquent reproach ; it
comes from a poor fellow who has been laden beyond his
strength by a stupid teacher, and is eloquent in spite of the
poverty of its English. The poor chap finds himself required
to explain riddles which even Sir Isaac Newton was not able
to understand :

" 50. Oh my dear father examiner you my father and you kindly give a
number of pass you my great father.

"51. I am a poor boy and have no means to support my mother and two
brothers who are suffering much for want of food. I get four rupees monthly
from charity fund of this place, from which I send two rupees for their sup-
port, and keep two for my own support. Father, if I relate the unlucky cir-
cumstance under which we are placed, then, I think, you will not be able to
suppress the tender tear.

"53. Sir which Sir Isaac Newton and other experienced mathematicians
cannot understand I being third of Entrance Class can understand these
which is too impossible to imagine. And my examiner also has put very
tiresome and very heavy propositions to prove."

We must remember that these pupils had to do their think-
ing in one language, and express themselves in another and
alien one. It was a heavy handicap. I have by me " English
as She is Taught " — a collection of American examinations
made in the public schools of Brooklyn by one of the teachers.
Miss Caroline B. Le Row. An extract or two from its pages
will show that when the American pupil is using but one lan-
guage, and that one his own, his performance is no whit bettei-
than his Indian brother's :

' On History.

*' Christopher Columbus was called the father of his Country. Queen

AN AMERICAN PUPIL'S ANSWERS. 607

Isabella of Spain sold her watch and chain and other millinery so that Colum-
bus could discover America.

" The Indian wars were very desecrating to the country.

"The Indians pursued their warfare by hiding in the bushes and tlien
scalping them.

" Captain John Smith has been styled the father of his country. His life
was saved by his daughter Pochahantas.

" The Puritans found an insane asylum in the wilds of America.

" The Stamp Act was to make everybody stamp all materials so they
should be null and void.

' ' Washington died in Spain almost broken-hearted. His remains were taken
to the cathedral in Havana.

" Gorilla warfare was where men rode on gorillas."

In Brooklyn, as in India, they examine a pupil, and when
they find out he doesn't know anything, they put him into
literature, or geometry, or astronomy, or government, or some-
thing like that, so that he can properly display the assification
of the whole system :

" On Literature.
" 'Braceb ridge Hall' was written by Henry Irving.
" Edgar A. Poe was a very curdling writer.
" Beowulf wrote the Scriptures.
" Ben Johnson survived Shakespeare in some respects.
" In the ' Canterbury Tale ' it gives account of King Alfred on his way to
the shrine of Thomas Bucket.

" Chaucer was the father of English pottery.

" Chaucer was succeeded by H. Wads. Longfellow."

We will finish with a couple of samples of " literature," —
one from America, the other from India. The first is a
Brooklyn public-school boy's attempt to turn a few verses of
the " Lady of the Lake " into prose. You will have to con-
cede that he did it :

" The man who rode on the horse performed the whip and an instrument
made of steel alone with strong ardor not diminishing, for, being lired from
the time passed with hard labor overworked with anger and ignorant with
weariness, while every breath for labor he drew with cries full of sorrow, the
young deer made imperfect who worked hard filtered in sight."

The following paragraph is from a little book which is

famous in India — the biography of a distinguished Hindoo

judge, Onoocool Chunder Mookerjee; it was written by his

608 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

nephew, and is unintentionally funny — in fact, exceedingly
so. I offer here the closing scene. If you would like to
sample the rest of the book, it can be had by applying to the
publishers, Messrs. Thacker, Spink & Co., Calcutta :

" And having said these words he hermetically sealed his lips not to open
them again. All the well-known doctors of Calcutta that could be procured
for a man of his position and wealth were brought, — Doctors Payne, Fayrer,
and Nilmadhub Mookerjee and others ; they did what they could do, with
their puissance and knack of medical knowledge, but it proved after all as if
to milk the ram ! His wife and children had not the mournful consolation to
hear his last words ; he remained sotto voce for a few hours, and then was taken
from us at Q.\% p.m. according to the caprice of God which passeth under-
standing."

CHAPTER LXIL

There are no people who are quite so vulgar as the over-refined ones.

— Pudd^nhead Wilson^ s New Calendar.

VE sailed from Calcutta toward the end of March ;
stopped a day at Madras; two or three days in
Ceylon ; then sailed westward on a long flight for
Mauritius. From my diary :

April 7. We are far abroad upon the smooth waters of
the Indian Ocean, now ; it is shady and pleasant and peaceful
under the vast spread of the awnings, and life is perfect again
— ideal.

The difference between a river and the sea is, that the river
looks fluid, the sea solid — usually looks as if you could step
out and walk on it.

The captain has this peculiarity — he cannot tell the truth
in a plausible way. In this he is the very opposite of the
austere Scot who sits midway of the table ; he cannot tell a lie
in an i^^^plausible way. When the captain finishes a statement
the passengers glance at each other privately, as who should
say, " Do you believe that ? " When the Scot finishes one, the
look says, " How strange and interesting." The whole secret
is in the manner and method of the two men. The captain is
a little shy and diffident, and he states the simplest fact as if he
were a little afraid of it, while the Scot delivers himself of the
most abandoned lie with such an air of stern veracity that one
is forced to believe it although one knows it isn't so. For in-
stance, the Scot told about a pet flying-fish he once owned, tbat
lived in a little fountain in his conservatory, and supported
39 ( 609 )

610

FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

itself by catching birds and frogs and rats in the neighboring
fields. It was plain that no one at the table doubted this
statement.

By and by, in the course of some talk about custom-house
annoyances, the captain brought out the following simple every-
day incident, but through his infirmity of style managed to
tell it in such a way that it got no credence. He said :

" I went ashore at Naples one voyage when I
was in that trade, and stood around helping my
passengers, for I could speak a little Italian. Two
or three times, at intervals, the officer asked me if I
had anything dutiable about me, and seemed more
and more put out and disappointed every time I
told him no. Finally a passenger whom I had
helped through asked me to come out and take
something. I thanked him, but excused myself,
saying I had taken a whisky just before I came
ashore.

" It was a fatal admission. The oflBcer at once
made me pay sixpence import-duty on the whisky —
just from ship to shore, you see; and he lined me
£5 for not declaring the goods, another £5 for falsely
denying that I had anything dutiable about me,
also £5 for concealing the goods, and £50 for smug-
gling, which is the maximum penalty for unlawfully
bringing in goods under the value of sevenpence
ha'penny. Altogether, sixty-five pounds sixpence
for a little thing like that."

The Scot is always believed, yet he
never tells anything but lies ; whereas the
captain is never believed, although he never
tells a lie, so far as I can judge. If he should say his uncle
was a male person, he would probably say it in such a way
that nobody would believe it ; at the same time the Scot could
claim that he had a female uncle and not stir a doubt in any-
body's mind. My own luck has been curious all my literary
life ; I never could tell a lie that anybody would doubt, nor a
truth that anybody would believe.

Lots of pets on board — birds and things. In these far

A FEMALE UNCLE.

SEA SIGHTS AND STORIES.

611

countries the white people do seem to run remarkably to
pets. Our host in Cawnpore had a fine collection of birds —
the finest we saw in a private house in India. And in Colombo,
Dr. Murray's great compound and commodious bungalow were
well populated with domesti-
cated company from the
woods : frisky little squirrels ;
a Ceylon mina walking socia-
bly about the house ; a small
green parrot that whistled a
single urgent note of call with-
out motion of its beak; also
chuckled ; a monkey in a cage
on the back veranda, and some
more out in the trees ; also a
number of beautiful macaw^s
in the trees; and various and
sundry birds and animals of
breeds not known to me. But
no cat. Yet a cat would have
liked that place.

April 9. Tea-planting is
the great business in Ceylon,
now. A passenger says it
often pays 40 per cent. ,on
the investment. Says there is
a boom.

April 10. The sea is a Mediterranean blue ; and I believe
that that is about the divinest color known to nature.

It is strange and fine — I^ature's lavish generosities to her
creatures. At least to all of them except man. For those
that fly she has provided a home that is nobly spacious — a
home which is forty miles deep and envelops the whole globe.

A CAT WOULD LIKE THAT PLACE,

G12 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

and has not an obstruction in it. For those that swim she has
provided a more than imperial domain — a domain which is
miles deep and covers four-fifths of the globe. But as for
man, she has cut him off with the mere odds and ends of the
creation. She has given him the thin skin, the meagre skin
which is stretched over the remaining one-fifth — the naked
bones stick up through it in most places. On the one-half of
this domain he can raise snow, ice, sand, rocks, and nothing
else. So the valuable part of his inheritance really consists of
but a single fifth of the family estate ; and out of it he has to
grub hard to get enough to keep him alive and provide kings
and soldiers and powder to extend the blessings of civilization
with. Yet man, in his simplicity and complacency and in-
ability to cipher, thinks N^ature regards him as the important
member of the family — in fact, her favorite. Surely, it must
occur to even his dull head, sometimes, that she has a curious
way of showing it.

Afternoon. The captain has been telling how, in one of
his Arctic voyages, it was so cold that the mate's shadow froze
fast to the deck and had to be ripped loose by main strength.
And even then he got only about two-thirds of it back. No-
body said anything, and the captain went away, I think he is
becoming disheartened. . . . Also, to be fair, there is
another word of praise due to this ship's library : it contains
no copy of the Yicar of Wakefield, that strange menagerie of
complacent hypocrites and idiots, of theatrical cheap-john
heroes and heroines, who are alwa3's showing off, of bad peo-
ple who are not interesting, and good people who are fatiguing.
A singular book. Not a sincere line in it, and not a character
that invites respect ; a book which is one long waste-pipe dis-
charge of goody-goody puerilities and dreary moralities; a
book which is full of pathos which revolts, and humor which
grieves the heart. There are few things in literature that are

** Tire Matre's stiaidLo^v^ jTr-oas-e
•5 T :rast to tine cleek.'

CUSTOMS IN TROPIC SEAS.

615

more piteous, more pathetic, than the celebrated " humorous"
incident of Moses and the spectacles.

Jane Austen's books, too, are absent from this library. Just
that one omission alone would make a fairly good library out
of a library that hadn't a book in it.

' THE BARBER

FLAYS US ON THE BREEZY DECK."

Customs in tropic seas. At 5 in the morning they pipe to
wash down the decks, and at once the ladies who are sleeping
there turn out and they and their beds go below. Then one
after another the men come up from the bath in their pyjamas,
and walk the decks an hour or two with bare legs and bare

616 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

feet. Coffee and fruit served. The ship cat and her kitten
now appear and get about their toilets ; next the barber comes
and flays us on the breezy deck. Breakfast at 9.30, and the
day begins. I do not know how a day could be more repose-
ful : no motion ; a level blue sea ; nothing in sight from hori-
zon to horizon ; the speed of the ship furnishes a cooling breeze ;
there is no mail to read and answer ; no newspapers to excite
you ; no telegrams to fret you or fright you — the world is
far, far away ; it has ceased to exist for you — seemed a fading
dream, along in the first days ; has dissolved to an unreality
now ; it is gone from your mind with all its businesses and
ambitions, its prosperities and disasters, its exultations and
despairs, its joys and griefs and cares and worries. They are
no concern of yours any more ; they have gone out of your
life ; they are a storm which has passed and left a deep calm
behind. The people group themselves about the decks in their
snowy white linen, and read, smoke, sew, play cards, talk, nap,
and so on. In other ships the passengers are always ciphering
about when they are going to arrive ; out in these seas it is
rare, very rare, to hear that subject broached. In other ships
there is always an eager rush to the bulletin board at noon to
find out what the " run " has been ; in these seas the bulletin
seems to attract no interest ; I have seen no one visit it ; in
thirteen days I have visited it only once. Then I happened to
notice the figures of the day's run. On that day there hap-
pened to be talk, at dinner, about the speed of modern ships.
I was the only passenger present who knew this ship's gait.
Necessarily, the Atlantic custom of betting on the ship's run is
not a custom here — nobody ever mentions it.

I myself am wholly indifferent as to when we are going to
" get in " ; if any one else feels interested in the matter he has
not indicated it in my hearing. If I had my way we should
never get in at all. This sort of sea life is charged Avith an inde-

MAURITIUS. 61Y

structible charm. There is no weariness, no fatigue, no worry,
no responsibility, no work, no depression of spirits. There is
nothing like this serenity, this comfort, this peace, this deep
contentment, to be found anywhere on land. If I had my way
I would sail on for ever and never go to live on the solid
ground again.

One of Kipling's ballads has delivered the aspect and senti-
ment of this bewitching sea correctly :

" The Injian Ocean sets an' smiles SilllS

So sof , so bright, so bloomin' blue ; . .

There aren't a wave for miles an' miles '

Excep' the jiggle from the screw." ofiC)

April 14^. It turns out that the astronomical apprentice
Vorked off a section of the Milky Way on me for the Magellan
Olouds. A man of more experience in the business showed
one of them to me last night. It was small and faint and
delicate, and looked like the ghost of a bunch of white smoke
left floating in the sky by an exploded bombshell.

Wednesday, April IS. Mauritius. Arrived and anchored
off Port Louis 2 a. m. Rugged clusters of crags and peaks, green
to their summits ; from their bases to the sea a green plain with
just tilt enough to it to make the water drain off. I believe it
is in 56° E. and 22° S. — a hot tropical country. The green
plain has an inviting look; has scattering dwellings nestling*
among the greenery. Scene of the sentimental adventure of
Paul and Yirginia.

Island under French control — which means a community
which depends upon quarantines, not sanitation, for its health.

Thursday., April 16. Went ashore in "the forenoon at Port
Louis, a little town, but with the largest variety of nation-
alities and complexions we have encountered yet. French,
English, Chinese, Arabs, Africans with wool, blacks with
straight hair, East Indians, half -whites, quadroons — and great
varieties in costumes and colors.

618 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

Took the train for Curepipe at 1.30 — two hours' run,
gradually uphill. "What a contrast, this frantic luxuriance of
vegetation, with the arid plains of India ; these architecturally
picturesque crags and knobs and miniature mountains, with
the monotony of the Indian dead-levels.

A native pointed out a handsome swarthy man of grave
and dignified bearing, and said in an awed tone, " That is so-
and-so ; has held office of one sort or another under this gov-
ernment for 37 years — he is known all over this whole island —
and in the other countries of the world perhaps — who knows?
One thing is certain ; you can speak his name anywhere in this
whole island, and you will find not one grown person that has
not heard it. It is a wonderful thing to be so celebrated ; yet
look at him ; it makes no change in him ; he does not even
seem to know it."

Curepipe (means Pincushion or Pegtown, probably). Six-
teen miles (two hours) by rail from Port Louis. At each end
of every roof and on the apex of every dormer window a
wooden peg two feet high stands up ; in some cases its top is
blunt, in others the peg is sharp and looks like a toothpick.
The passion for this humble ornament is universal.

Apparently, there has been only one prominent event in the
history of Mauritius, and that one didn't happen. I refer to
the romantic sojourn of Paul and Virginia here. It was that
story that made Mauritius known to the world, made the name
familiar to everybody, the geographical position of it to
nobody.

A clergyman was asked to guess what was in a box on a
table. It was a vellum fan painted with the shipwreck, and
was " one of Virginia's wedding gifts^

April 18. This is the only country in the world where the
stranger is not asked " How do you like this place ? " This is
indeed a large distinction. Here the citizen does the talking

A TROPICAL PARADISE.

619

about the country himself ; the stranger is not asked to help.
You get all sorts of information. From one citizen you gather
the idea that Mauritius was made first, and then heaven ; and
that heaven was copied after Mauritius. Another one tells you
that this is an exaggeration ; that the two chief villages, Port
Louis and Curepipe, fall short of heavenly perfection ; that no-
body lives in Port Louis
except upon compulsion,
and that Curepipe is the
wettest an.d rainiest place
in the world. An English
citizen said :

"In the early part of this
century Mauritius was used by
tiie French as a basis from which
to operate against England's
Indian merchantmen ; so Eng-
land captured the island and
also the neighbor, Bourbon, to
stop that annoyance. England
gave Bourbon back; the govern-
ment in London did not want any
more possessions 'in the West
Indies.' If the government had
had a better quality of geogra-
phy in stock it would not have
wasted Bourbon in that foolish
way. A big war will tempo-
rarily shut up the Suez Canal
some day and the English ships
will have to go to India around
the Cape of Good Hope again;
then England will have to have
Bourbon and will take it.

"Mauritius was a crown
colony until 20 years ago, with
a governor appointed by the
Crown and assisted by a Coun-
cil appointed by himself ; but Pope Hennessey came out as Governor then,
and he worked hard to get a part of the council made elective, and suc-
ceeded. So now the whole council is French, and in all ordinary matters of
legislation they vote together and in the French interest, not the English.

THE WETTEST PLACE ON EARTH.

620 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

The English population is very slender ; it has not votes enough to elect a
legislator. Half a dozen rich French families elect the legislature. Pope
Hennessey was an Irishman, a Catholic, a Home Ruler, M.P., a hater of Eng-
land and the English, a very troublesome person and a serious incumbrance
at Westminster; so it was decided to send him out to govern unhealthy coun-
tries, in hope that something would happen to him. But nothing did. The
first experiment was not merely a failure, it was more than a failure. He
proved to be more of a disease himself than any he was sent to encounter.
The next experiment was here. The dark scheme failed again. It was an
off-season and there was nothing but measles here at the time. Pope Hen-
nessey's health was not affected. He worked with the French and for the
French and against the English, and he made the English very tired and the
French very happy, and lived to have the joy of seeing the flag he served
publicly hissed. His memory is held in worshipful reverence and affection
by the French.

"It is a land of extraordinary quarantines. They quarantine a ship for
anything or for notliing ; quarantine her for 20 and even 30 days. They once
quarantined a ship because her captain had had the smallpox when he was a
boy. That and because he was English.

"The population is very small ; small to insignificance. The majority is
East Indian ; then mongrels ; then negroes (descendants of the slaves of the
French times) ; then French ; then English. There was an American, but
he is dead or mislaid. The mongrels are the result of all kinds of mixtures ;
black and white, mulatto and white, quadroon and white, octoroon and white.
And so there is every shade of complexion ; ebony, old mahogany, horse-
chestnut, sorrel, molasses-candy, clouded amber, clear amber, old-ivory white,
new-ivory white, fish-belly white — this latter the leprous complexion frequent
■<Fith the Anglo-Saxon long resident in tropical climates.

"You wouldn't expect a person to be proud of being a Mauritian, now
would you ? But it is so. The most of them have never been out of the
island, and haven't read much or studied much, and they think the world
consists of three principal countries — Judaea, France, and Mauritius ; so they
are very proud of belonging to one of the three grand divisions of the globe.
They think that Russia and Germany are in England, and that England does
not amount to much. They have heard vaguely about the United States and
the equator, but they think both of them are monarchies. They think Mount
Peter Botte is the highest mountain in the world, and if you show one of
them a picture of Milan Cathedral he will swell up with satisfaction and say
that the idea of that jungle of spires was stolen from the forest of peg-tops
and toothpicks that make.- the roofs of Curepipe look so fine and prickly.

" There is not much trade in books. The newspapers educate and enter-
tain the people. Mainly the latter. They have two pages of large-print
reading-matter — one of them English, the other French. The English page
is a translation of the French one. The typography is super-extra primitive :
in this quality it has not its equal anywhere. There is no proof-reader now ;
he is dead.

" Where do they get matter to fill up a page in this little island lost in the

A FLOURISHING COUNTRY.

621

wastes of the Indian Ocean ? Oh, Madagascar. They discuss Madagascar
and France. That is the bulk. Then they chock up the rest with advice to
the Government. Also, slurs upon _^_^_«— -— i— — — ^— —

the English administration. The ~ "^

papers are all owned and edited
by Creoles — French.

" The language of the country
is French. Everybody speaks it

— has to. You have to know
French — particularly mongrel
French, the patois spoken by
Tom. Dick, and Harry of the
multiform complexions — or you
can't get along.

"This was a flourishing coun-
try in former days, for it made
then and still makes the best
sugar in the world ; but first the
Suez Canal sevei'ed it from the
world and left it out in the cold,
and next the beetroot sugar,
helped by bounties, captured the
European markets. Sugar is the
life of Mauritius, and it is losing
its grip. Its downward course
was checked by the depreciation
of the rupee — for the planter
pays wages in rupees but sells his
crop for gold — and the insurrec-
tion in Cuba and paralyzation of
the sugar industry there have
given our prices here a life-saving
lift ; but the outlook has noth-
ing permanently favorable about it. It takes a year to mature the canes

— on the high ground three and six months longer — and there is always a
chance that the annual cyclone will rif) the profit out of the crop. In recent
times a cyclone took the whole crop, as you may say ; and the island never
saw a finer one. Some of the noblest sugar estates in the island are in deep
difficulties. A dozen of them are investments of English capital ; and the
companies that own them are at work now, trying to settle up and get out
with a saving of half the money they put in. You know, in these daj'S,
when a country begins to introduce the tea culture, it means that its own
specialty has gone back on it. Look at Bengal ; look at Ceylon. Well,
they've begun to introduce the tea culture, here.

" Many copies of Paul and Virginia are sold every year in Mauritius. No
other book is so popular here except the Bible. By many it is supposed to be
a part of the Bible. All the missionaries work \ip their French on it when
they come here to pervert the Catholic mongrel. It is the greatest story that
was ever written about Mauritius, and the only one."

ires^
Us

verse
-lartu
aatre
Qua
S, est

•s her-
li, s'en-

gSnent

t lears

■Don-

®^c fiaainwaial Cagdtc

Port- Louis, M rdi 14 Avril \i

I.ES AFF.ailE3 CUBAlNBd

NoUVELLK KEFAITB DET INS0RG£s— LbS
MANIFESTATIONS ES EsPAQNB

Madrid, 8 m%ta--Par stryice t^iclal-^
Uue=d^poch9 de la Hi»Mie annonce que
le CO oatl Vienna tt batta nne baaded m-
sugea comcDaodes par Mioeo, Laaia«nr*i
g^a ont eo 72 moris et cm ebandonr;^ de
nombreux blesses Eur le champ de bae
taille ; les EBp»gno)s ont eu 28 b!eBs6s.
11" out iispirse I'enuemi et iai oirt pris
210 chfVuux et iles Brmes.

La tranquillity et rerablie a Valenee,

Utie nouveili? tnanifeilHtion a en lira 4
Barceluiie lii la gjndiirmeiie 4 cheval a
dft rhsrgi^r pour di^perser la fonle.

-Au cou'S des demon«irotioD8 qui ao Crut
P'olQJtes. aojoaid'Jiui, 4 Sjiagosse, Bac/>
je'one et V*enc?, la foule s'est portlje
levant lus consulats de Fiancs et a viveU
Qtnt reclame les coueula.

*<»il de tet', conrbiJnre,. fetat fierreax
-""is. mal do gcg'^', 'telssonttp^ •'
"un cetnm -^r

ANCIENT NEWS AT PORT LOUIS.

CHAPTER LXIII.

The principal difference between a cat and a lie is that the cat has only nine
lives. — Pudcfrihead Wilson'' s New Calendar.

APEIL 20, — The cyclone of 1892 killed and crippled
hundreds of people ; it was accompanied by a deluge
of rain, , which drowned Port Louis and produced a
water famine. Quite true ; for it burst the reservoir and the

water-pipes ; and for a time after
the flood had disappeared there was
much distress from want of water.
This is the only place in the
world where no breed of matches
can stand the damp. Only one
match in 16 will light.

The roads are hard and
smooth ; some of the compounds
are spacious, some of the bunga-
lows commodious, and the road-
ways are walled by tall bamboo
hedges, trim and green and beau-
tiful ; and there are azalea hedges,
too, both the white and the red ;
I never saw that before.

As to healthiness : I translate
from to-day's (April 20) Merchants*
and Planters' Gazette, from the
article of a regular contributor,
" Carminge," concerning the death of the nephew of a promi-
nent citizen ;

(622)

ONLY ONE IN SIXTEEN.

ROBBING POLITICAL CLOTHES-LINES. 623

" Sad and lugubrious existence, this which we lead in Mauritius ; I believe
there is no other country in the world where one dies more easily than among
us. The least indisposition becomes a mortal malady ; a simple headache de-
velops into meningitis ; a cold into pneumonia, and presently, when we are
least expecting it, death is a guest in our home."

This daily paper has a meteorological report which tells
you what the weather was day before yesterday.

One is never pestered by a beggar or a peddler in this
town, so far as I can see. This is pleasantly different from
India.

April '2'2. To such as believe that the quaint product called
French civilization would be an improvement upon the civiliza-
tion of New Guinea and the like, the snatching of Madagascar
and the laying on of French civilization there will be fully
justified. But why did the English allow the French to have
Madagascar ? Did she respect a theft of a couple of centuries
ago ? Dear me, robbery by European nations of each other's
territories has never been a sin,. is not a sin to-day. To the sev-
eral cabinets the several political establishments of the world
are clothes-lines ; and a large part of the official duty of these
cabinets is to keep an eye on each other's wash and grab what
they can of it as opportunity offers. All the territorial pos-
sessions of all the political establishments in the earth —
including America, of course — consist of pilferings from
other people's wash. No tribe, howsoever insignificant, and no
nation, howsoever mighty, OQcupies a foot of land that was
not stolen. When the English, the French, and the Spaniards
reached America, the Indian tribes had been raiding each
other's territorial clothes-lines for ages, and every acre of
ground in the continent had been stolen and re-stolen 500
times. The English, the French, and the Spaniards went to
work and stole it all over again ; and when that was satisfac-
torily accomplished they went diligently to work and stole it
from each other. In Europe and Asia and Africa every acre

624 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

of ground has been stolen several millions of times. A crime
persevered in a thousand centuries ceases to be a crime, and
becomes a virtue. This is the law of custom, and custom super-
sedes all other forms of law. Christian governments are as
frank to-day, as open and above-board, in discussing projects
for raiding each other's clothes-lines as ever they were before
the Golden Rule came smiling into this inhospitable world and
couldn't get a night's lodging anywhere. In 150 years England
has beneficently retired garment after garment from the Indian
lines, until there is hardly a rag of the original wash left
dangling anywhere. In 800 years an obscure tribe of Musco-
vite savages has risen to the dazzling position of Land-Robber-
in-Chief ; she found a quarter of the world hanging out to dry
on a hundred parallels of latitude, and she scooped in the whole
wash. She keeps a sharp eye on a multitude of little lines that
stretch along the northern boundaries of India, and every now
and then she snatches a hip-rag or a pair of pyjamas. It is
England's prospective property, and Russia knows it ; but
Russia cares nothing for that. In fact, in our day land-rob-
bery, claim-jumping, is become a European governmental
frenzy. Some have been hard at it in the borders of China, in
Burma, in Siam, and the islands of the sea ; and all have been
at it in Africa. Africa has been as coolly divided up and por-
tioned out among the gang as if they had bought it and paid
for it. And now straightway they are beginning the old game
again — to steal each other's grabbings. Germany found a vast
slice of Central Africa with the English flag and the English
missionary and the English trader scattered all over it, but
with certain formalities neglected — no signs up, " Keep off the
grass," " Trespassers forbidden," etc. — and she stepped in with
a cold calm smile and put up the signs herself, and swept those
English pioneers promptly out of the country.

There is a tremendous point there. It can be put into the

FORMALITIES AND MORALITIES.

625

form of a maxim : Get your formalities right — never mind
about the moralities.

It was an impudent thing; but England had to put up with
it. Kow, in the case of Madagascar, the formalities had origin-
ally been observed, but by neglect they had fallen into desuetude
ages ago. England should have snatched Madagascar from
the French clothes-line. Without an effort she could have
saved those harmless natives from the calamity of French
civilization, and she did not do it. Now it is too late.

The signs of the
times show plainly
enough what is go-
ing to happen. All
the savage lands in
the world are going
to be brought under
subjection to the
Christian govern-
ments of Europe. I
am not sorry, but
glad. This coming
fate might have been
a calamity to those
savage peoples two
hundred years ago;
but now it will in
some cases be a bene-
faction. The sooner
the seizure is con-
summated, the bet-
ter for the savages.
The dreary and dragging ages of bloodshed and disorder and
40

— ■■«*!&,•,

THE THIRD YEAR THEY DO NOT GATHER

SHELLS."

FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

oppression will give place to peace and order and the reign of
law. "When one considers what India was under her Hindoo
and Mohammedan rulers, and what she is now ; when he re-
members the miseries of her millions then and the protections
and humanities which they enjoy now, he must concede that
the most fortunate thing that has ever befallen that empire
was the establishment of British supremacy there. The savage
lands of the world are to pass to alien possession, their peoples
to the mercies of alien rulers. Let us hope and believe that
they will all benefit by the change.

April 23. " The first year they gather shells ; the second
year they gather shells and drink ; the third year they do not
gather shells." (Said of immigrants to Mauritius.)
Population 375,000. 120 sugar factories.
Population 1851, 185,000. The increase is due mainly to

the introduction of Indian coolies.
They now apparently form the
great majority of the population.
They are admirable breeders ; their
homes are always hazy with chil-
dren. Great savers of money. A
British officer told me that in India
he paid his servant 10 rupees a
month, and he had 11 cousins,
uncles, parents, etc., dependent
upon him, and he supported them
on his wages. These thrifty coolies
are said to be acquiring land a trifle
at a time, and cultivating it ; and
may own the island by and by.
The Indian women do very
hard labor for wages running from 40^^ of a rupee for twelve
hours' work, to 50^^^. They carry mats of sugar on their heads

A 8TEVED0KE.

SAVORY DISHES. 627

(70 pounds) all day lading ships, for half a rupee, and work at
gardening all day for less.

The caraaron is a fresh water creature like a cray-fish. It
is regarded here as the world's chief est delicacy — and cer-
tainly it is good. Guards patrol the streams to prevent poach-
ing it. A fine of Ks. 200 or 300 (they say) for poaching. Bait
is thrown in the water ; the caraaron goes for it ; the fisher
drops his loop in and works it around and about the caraaron
he has selected, till he gets it over its tail ; then there's a jerk
or soraething to certify the caraaron that it is his turn now ; he
suddenly backs away, which moves the loop still further up his
person and draws it taut, and his days are ended.

Another dish, called palmiste, is like raw turnip-shavings
and tastes like green almonds ; is very delicate and good.
Costs the life of a palra tree 12 to 20 years old — for it is the
pith.

Another dish — looks like greens or a tangle of fine sea-
weed— is a preparation of the deadly nightshade. Good
enough.

The raonkeys live in the dense forests on the flanks of the
toy mountains, and they flock down nights and raid the sugar-
fields. Also on other estates they come down and destroy a
sort of bean-crop — just for fun, apparently — tear off the pods
and throw them dowi

The cyclone of 1892 tore down two great blocks of stone
buildings in the center of Port Louis — the chief architectural
feature — and left the uncomely and apparently frail blocks
standing. Everywhere in its track it annihilated houses, tore
off roofs, destroyed trees and crops. The men were in the
towns, the women and children at home in the country getting
crippled, killed, frightened to insanity ; and the rain deluging
them, the wind howling, the thunder crashing, the lightning
glaring. This for an hour or so. Then a lull and sunshine ;

628

FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

many ventured out of safe shelter ; then suddenly here it came
again from the opposite point and renewed and completed the
devastation. It is said the Chinese fed the sufferers for days
on free rice.

Whole streets in Port Louis were laid flat — wrecked.
During a minute and a half the wind blew 123 miles an hour ;
no official record made after that, when it may have reached
150. It cut down an obelisk. It carried an American ship

A CYCLONE.

into the woods after breaking the chains of two anchors. They
now use four — two forward, two astern. Common report
says it killed 1,200 in Port Louis alone, in half an hour. Then
came the lull of the central calm — people did not know the
barometer was still going down — then suddenly all perdition
broke loose again while people were rushing around seeking
friends and rescuing the wounded. The noise was comparable
to nothing ; there is nothing resembling it but thunder and can-
non, and these are feeble in comparison.

ISLAND OF MAURITIUS. 629

What there is of Mauritius is beautiful. You have undulat-
ing wide expanses of sugar-cane — a fine, fresh green and very
pleasant to the eye ; and everywhere else you have a ragged
luxuriance of tropic vegetation of vivid greens of varying
shades, a wild tangle of underbrush, with graceful tall palms
lifting their crippled plumes high above it; and you have
stretches of shady dense forest with limpid streams frolicking
through them, continually glimpsed and lost and glimpsed
again in the pleasantest hide-and-seek fashion ; and you have
some tiny mountains, some quaint and picturesque groups of
toy peaks, and a dainty little vest-pocket Matterhorn ; and here
and there and now and then a strip of sea with a white ruffle
of surf breaks into the view.

That is Mauritius ; and pretty enough. The details are few,
the massed result is charming, but not imposing ; not riotous,
not exciting ; it is a Sunday landscape. Perspective, and the
enchantments wrought by distance, are wanting. There are
no distances ; there is no perspective, so to speak. Fifteen
miles as the crow flies is the usual limit of vision. Mauritius is
a garden and a park combined. It affects one's emotions as
parks and gardens affect them. The surfaces of one's spiritual
deeps are pleasantly played upon, the deeps themselves are not
reached, not stirred. Spaciousness, remote altitudes, the sense
of mystery which haunts apparently inaccessible mountain domes
and summits reposing in the sky — these are the things which
exalt the spirit and move it to see visions and dream dreams.

The Sandwich Islands remain my ideal of the perfect thing
in the matter of tropical islands. I would add another story
to Mauna Loa's 16,000 feet if I could, and make it particularly
bold and steep and craggy and forbidding and snowy; and I
would make the volcano spout its lava-floods out of its summit
instead of its sides ; but aside from these non-essentials I have
no corrections to suggest. I hope these will be attended to ; I
do not wish to have to speak of it again.

CHAPTER LXiy.

When your watch gets out of order you have choice of two things to do : throw it
in the fire or take it to the watch-tinlier. The former is the quickest.

— Pudd^nhead Wilson^ a New Calendar,

rHE Arundel Castle is the finest boat I have seen in
these seas. She is thoroughly modern, and that state-
ment covers a great deal of ground. She has the
usual defect, the common defect, the universal defect, the
defect that has never been missing from any ship that ever
sailed — she has imperfect beds. Many ships have good beds,
but no ship has very good ones. In the matter of beds all
ships have been badly edited, ignorantly edited, from the
beginning. The selection of the beds is given to some hearty,
strong-backed, self-made man, when it ought to be given to a
frail woman accustomed from girlhood to backaches and
insomnia. Nothing is so rare, on either side of the ocean, as a
perfect bed ; nothing is so difficult to make. Some of the
hotels on both sides provide it, but no ship ever does or ever
did. In Noah's Ark the beds were simply scandalous. Noah
set the fashion, and it will endure in one degree of modifica-
tion or another till the next flood.

8 A.M. Passing Isle de Bourbon. Broken-up sky-line of
volcanic mountains in the middle. Surely it would not cost
much to repair them, and it seems inexcusable neglect to leave
them as they are.

It seems stupid to send tired men to Europe to rest. It is
no proper rest for the mind to clatter from town to town in
the dust and cinders, and examine galleries and architecture,

(630)

A HEALING SEA VOYAGE.

631

and be always meeting people and lunching and teaing and
dining, and receiving worrying cables and letters. And a sea
voyage on the Atlantic is of no use — voyage too short, sea
too rough. The peaceful Indian and Pacific Oceans and the
long stretches of time are the healing thing.

STUPIDITY IN EUKOPE.

May 2, A.M. A fair, great ship in sight, almost the first
we have seen in these weeks of lonely voyaging. We are now
in the Mozambique Channel, between Madagascar and South
Africa, sailing straight west for Delagoa Bay.

632 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

Last night, the burly chief engineer, middle-aged, was
standing telling a spirited seafaring tale, and had reached the
most exciting place, where a man overboard was washing
swiftly astern on the great seas, and uplifting despairing cries,
everybody racing aft in a frenzy of excitement and fading
hope, when the band, which had been silent a moment, began
impressively its closing piece, the English national anthem.
As simply as if he was unconscious of what he was doing, he
stopped his story, uncovered, laid his laced cap against his
breast, and slightly bent his grizzled head. The few bars fin-
ished, he put on his cap and took up his tale again as naturally
as if that interjection of music had been a part of it. There
was something touching and fine about it, and it was moving
to reflect that he was one of a myriad, scattered over every
part of the globe, who by turn was doing as he was doing
every hour of the twentj'^-four — those awake doing it while
the others slept — those impressive bars forever floating up
out of the various climes, never silent and never lacking rever-
ent listeners.

All that I remember about Madagascar is that Thackeray's

little Billie went up to the top of the mast and there knelt

him upon his knee, saying, " I see

" Jerusalem and Madagascar,
And North and South Amerikee."

May 3. Sunday. Fifteen or twenty Africanders who will
end their voyage to-day and strike for their several homes
from Delagoa Bay to-morrow, sat up singing on the after-
deck in the moonlight till 3 a.m. Good fun and wholesome.
And the songs were clean songs, and some of them were hal-
lowed by tender associations. Finally, in a pause, a man
asked, " Have you heard about the fellow that kept a diary
crossing the Atlantic?" It was a discord, a wet blanket.
The men were not in the mood for humorous dirt. The songs

NOT RESPONSIBLE. 635

had carried them to their homes, and in spirit they sat by
those far hearthstones, and saw faces and heard voices other
than those that were about them. And so this disposition to
drag in an old indecent anecdote got no welcome ; nobody
answered. The poor man hadn't wit enough to see that he
had blundered, but asked his question again. Again there
was no response. It was embarrassing for him. In his con-
fusion he chose the wrong course, did the wrong thing —
began the anecdote. Began it in a deep and hostile stillness,
where had been such life and stir and warm comradeship
before. He delivered himself of the brief details of the diary's
first day, and did it with some confidence and a fair degree of
eagerness. It fell flat. There was an awkward pause. The
two rows of men sat like statues. There was no movement,
no sound. He had to go on ; there was no other way, at least
none that an animal of his calibre could think of. At the
close of each day's diary the same dismal silence followed.
When at last he finished his tale and sprung the indelicate
surprise which is wont to fetch a crash of laughter, not a
ripple of sound resulted. It was as if the tale had been told
to dead men. After what seemed a long, long time, somebody
sighed, somebody else stirred in his seat ; presently, the men
dropped into a low murmur of confidential talk, each with his
neighbor, and the incident was closed. There were indica-
tions that that man was fond pf his anecdote ; that it was his
pet, his standby, his shot that never missed, his reputation-
maker. But he will never tell it again. No doubt he will
think of it sometimes, for that cannot well be helped ; and
then he will see a picture, and always the same picture — the
double rank of dead men ; the vacant deck stretching away in
dimming perspective beyond them, the wide desert of smooth
sea all abroad ; the rim of the moon spying from behind a rag
of black cloud ; the remote top of the mizzenmast shearing a

636

FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

zigzag path througli the fields of stars in the deeps of space ;
and this soft picture will remind him of the time that he sat in
the midst of it and told his poor little tale and felt so lonesome
when he got through. -

Fifty Indians and Chinamen asleep in a big tent in the waist
of the ship forward ; they lie side by side with no space be-
tween ; the former wrapped up, head and all, as in the Indian

INDIANS AND CHINAMEN.

streets, the Chinamen uncovered; the lamp and things for
opium smoking in the center.

A passenger said it was ten 2-ton truck loads of dynamite
that lately exploded at Johannesburg. Hundreds killed ; he
doesn't know how many ; limbs picked up for miles around.
Glass shattered, and roofs swept away or coUapsed 200 yards
off; fragment of iron flung three and a half miles.

DELAGOA BAY. 637

It occurred at 3 p. m. ; at 6. £65,000 had been subscribed.
When this passenger left, £35,000 had been voted by city and
state governments and £100,000 by citizens and business cor-
porations. When news of the disaster was telephoned to the
Exchange £35,000 were subscribed in the first five minutes.
Subscribing was still going on when he left ; the papers had
ceased the names, only the amounts — too many names ; not
enough room, £100,000 subscribed by companies and citizens ;
if this is true, it must be what they call in Australia " a record "
— the biggest instance of a spontaneous outpour for charity in
history, considering the size of the population it was drawn
from, $8 or $10 for each white resident, babies at the breast
included.

Monday^ May If.. Steaming slowly in the stupendous Del-
agoa Bay, its dim arms stretching far away and disappearing
on both sides. It could furnish plenty of room for all the
ships in the world, but it is shoal. The lead has given us 3i
fathoms several times and we are drawing that, lacking 6
inches.

A bold headland — precipitous wall, 150 feet high, very
strong, red color, stretching a mile or so. A man said it was
Portuo:uese blood — battle foug'ht here with the natives last
year. I think this doubtful. Pretty cluster of houses on the
tableland above the red — and rolling stretches of grass and
groups of trees, like England. ,

The Portuguese have the railroad (one passenger train a
day) to the border — YO miles — then the Netherlands Com-
pany have it. Thousands of tons of freight on the shore — no
cover. This is Portuguese all over — indolence, piousness, pov-
erty, impotence.

Crews of small boats and tugs, all jet black woolly heads
and very muscular.

Winter. The South African winter is just beginning now,

638

FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR

but nobody but an expert can tell it from summer. However,
I am tired of summer ; we have had it unbroken for eleven
months. We spent the afternoon on shore. Delagoa Bay. A
small town — no sights. No carriages. Three 'rickshas, but
we couldn't get them — apparently private. These Portuguese
are a rich brown, like some of the Indians. Some
of the blacks have the long horse heads and very
long chins of the negroes of the picture
books; but most of them are exactly like
the negroes of our Southern States —
round faces, flat noses, good-natured,
and easy laughers.

Flocks of black
women passed along,
outrageously heavy
freight on
quiver of
foot was
strain exhib-
showed
strength the
stevedores,
dore's work,
when un-
ing weights
just like the

LIKE OUR SOUTHERN NEGROES. glVCS I

carrying
bags o f

their heads — the
their leg as the
planted and the
ited by their bodies
what a tax upon their
load was. They were
and doing full steve-
They were very erect
laden — from carry-
on their heads —
Indian women. It
proud, fine carriage.

Sometimes one saw a woman carrying on her head a laden
and top-heavy basket the shape of an inverted pyramid — its
top the size of a soup-plate, its base the diameter of a teacup.
It required nice balancing — and got it.

No bright colors ; yet there were a good many Hindoos.

"I'LL BUY THE MONUMENT." 639

The Second Class Passenger came over as usual at " lights
out" (11) and we lounged along the spacious vague solitudes
of the deck and smoked the peaceful pipe and talked. He told
me an incident in Mr. Barnum's life which was evidently char-
acteristic of that great showman in several ways :

This was Barnum's purchase of Shakespeare's birthplace, a
quarter of a century ago. The Second Class Passenger was in
Jamrach's employ at the time and knew Barnum well. He
said the thing began in this way. One morning Barnum and
Jam.rach were in Jamrach's little private snuggery back of the
wilderness of caged monkeys and snakes and other common-
places of Jamrach's stock in trade, refreshing themselves after
an arduous stroke of business, Jamrach with something ortho-
dox, Barnum with something heterodox — for Barnum was a
teetotaler. The stroke of business was in the elephant line.
Jamrach had contracted to deliver to Barnum in New York 18
elephants for $360,000 in time for the next season's opening.
Then it occurred to Mr. Barnum that he needed a " card." He
suggested Jumbo. Jamrach said he would have to think of
something else — Jumbo couldn't be had ; the Zoo wouldn't
part with that elephant. Barnum said he was willing to pay
a fortune for Jumbo if he could get him. Jamrach said it was
no use to think about it ; that Jumbo was as popular as the
Prince of "Wales and the Zoo wouldn't dare to sell him ; all
England would be outraged at the idea ; Jumbo was an English
institution ; he was part of the national glory ; one might as
well think of buying the IS'elson monument. Barnum spoke
up with vivacity and said —

" It's a first-rate idea. Fll luy the Monument.''^

Jamrach was speechless for a second. Then he said, like
one ashamed —

" You caught me. I was napping. For a moment I
thought you were in earnest."

640

FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

Barnum said pleasantly —

" I was in earnest. I know they won't sell it, but no mat-
ter, I will not throw away a good idea for all that. All I
want is a big advertisement. I will keep the thing in mind,
and if nothing better turns up I will offer to buy it. That will
answer every purpose. It will furnish me a couple of columns
of gratis advertising in every English and American paper for

BAKNUM 8 CHANCE

a couple of months, and give my show the biggest boom a

show ever had in this world."

Jamrach started to deliver a burst of admiration, but was

interrupted by Barnum, who said —

" Here is a state of things ! England ought to blush."
His eye had fallen upon something in the newspaper. He

read it through to himself, then read it aloud. It said that

the house that Shakespeare was born in at Stratford-on-Avon

BARNUM BUYS JUMBO. 641

was falling gradually to ruin through neglect ; that the room
where the poet first saw the light was now serving as a
butcher's shop; that all appeals to England to contribute
money (the requisite sum stated) to buy and repair the house
and place it in the care of salaried and trustworthy keepers
had fallen resultless. Then Barnum said —

" There's ray chance. Let Jumbo and the Monument alone
for the present — they'll keep. I'll buy Shakespeare's house.
I'll set it up in my ^Museum in New York and put a glass case
around it and make a sacred thing of it ; and you'll see all
America flock there to worship ; yes, and pilgrims from the
whole earth ; and I'll make them take their hats off, too. In
America we know how to value anything that Shakespeare's
touch has made holy. You'll see."

In conclusion the S. C. P. said :

" That is the way the thing came about. Barnum did buy
Shakespeare's house. He paid the price asked, and received
the properly attested documents of sale. Then there was an
explosion, I can tell you. England rose ! What, the birth-
place of the master-genius of all the ages and all the climes —
that priceless possession of Britain — to be carted out of the
country like so much old lumber and set up for sixpenny dese-
cration in a Yankee show-shop — the idea was not to be toler-
ated for a moment. England rose in her indignation, and
Barnum was glad to relinquish his prize and offer apologies.
However, he stood out for a compromise ; he claimed a con-
cession — England must let him have Jumbo. And England
consented, but not cheerfully."

It shows how, by help of time, a story can grow — even

after Barnum has had the first innings in the telling of it.

Mr. Barnum told me the story himself, years ago. He said

that the permission to buy Jumbo w^as not a concession ; the

642 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

purchase was made and the animal delivered before the public
knew anything about it. Also, that the securing of Jumbo
was all the advertisement he needed. It produced many
columns of newspaper talk, free of cost, and he was satisfied.
He said that if he had failed to get Jumbo he would have
caused his notion of buying the Nelson Monument to be treach-
erously smuggled into print by some trusty friend, and after
he had gotten a few hundred pages of gratuitous advertising
out of it, he would have come out with a blundering, obtuse,
but warm-hearted letter of apology, and in a postscript to it
would have naively proposed to let the Monument go, and
take Stonehenge in place of it at the same price.

It was his opinion that such a letter, written with well-
simulated asinine innocence and gush would have gotten his
ignorance and stupidity an amount of newspaper abuse worth
six fortunes to him, and not purchasable for twice the money.

I knew Mr. Barnum well, and I placed every confidence in
the account which he gave me of the Shakespeare birthplace
episode. He said he found the house neglected and going to
decay, and he inquired into the matter and was told that many
times earnest efforts had been made to raise money for its
proper repair and preservation, but without success. He then
proposed to buy it. The proposition was entertained, and a
price named — $50,000, I think ; but whatever it was, Barnum
paid the money down, without remark, and the papers were
drawn up and executed. He said that it had been his purpose
to set up the house in his Museum, keep it in repair, protect it
from name-scribblers and other desecrators, and leave it by
bequest to the safe and perpetual guardianship of the Smith-
sonian Institute at Washington.

But as soon as it was found that Shakespeare's house had
passed into foreign hands and was going to be carried across
the ocean, England was stirred as no appeal from the custo-

BARNUM'S CLAIM. 643

dians of the relic had ever stirred England before, and protests
came flowing in — and money, too, to stop the outrage. Offers
of re-purchase were made — offers of double the money that
Mr. Barnum had paid for the house. He handed the house
back, but took only the sum which it had cost him — but on the
condition that an endowment sufficient for the future safe-
guarding and maintenance of the sacred relic should be raised.
This condition was fulfilled.

That was Barnum's account of the episode ; and to the end
of his days he claimed with pride and satisfaction that not
England, but America — represented by him — saved the birth-
place of Shakespeare from destruction.

At 3 p. M., May 6th, the ship slowed down, off the land, and
thoughtfully and cautiously picked her way into the snug
harbor of Durban, South Africa.

CHAPTER LXY.

In statesmanship get the formalities right, never miud about the moralities.

— Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.

rROM Diary:
Royal . Hotel. Comfortable, good table, good service
of natives and Madrasis. Curious jumble of modern
and ancient city and village, primitiveness and the other thing.
Electric bells, but they don't ring. Asked why they didn't,
the watchman in the office said he thought they must be out
of order ; he thought so because some of them rang, but most
of them didn't. Wouldn't it be a good idea to put them in
order? He hesitated — like one who isn't quite sure — then
conceded the point.

May 7. A bang on the door at 6. Did I want my boots
cleaned ? Fifteen minutes later another bang. Did we want
coffee ? Fifteen later, bang again, my wife's bath ready ; 15
later, my bath ready. Two other bangs ; I forget what they
were about. Then lots of shouting back and forth, among the
servants just as in an Indian hotel.

Evening. At 4 p. m. it was unpleasantly warm. Half -hour
after sunset one needed a spring overcoat ; by 8 a winter one.

Durban is a neat and clean town. One notices that with-
out having his attention called to it.

Rickshaws drawn by splendidly built black Zulus, so over-
flowing with strength, seemingly, that it is a pleasure, not a
pain, to see them snatch a rickshaw along. They smile and
laugh and show their teeth — a good-natured lot. Not allowed
to drink; 2' per hour for one person; 3* for two; Z^ for a

course — one person.

(644)

THE PIOUS CHAMELEON.

645

The chameleon in the hotel court. He is fat and indolent
and contemplative; but is business-like and capable when a
fly comes about — reaches out a tongue like a teaspoon and
takes him in. He gums his tongue first. He is always pious,
in his looks. And pious and thankful both, when Providence
or one of us sends him a fly. He has a froggy head, and a
back like a new grave — for shape; and hands like a bird's
toes that have been frost-
bitten. But his eyes are his
exhibition feature. A couple
of skinny cones project from
the sides of his head, with a
wee shiny bead of an eye set
in the apex of each ; and
these cones turn bodily like
pivot-guns and point every-
which-way, and they are in-
dependent of each other;
each has its own exclusive
machinery. "When I am be-
hind him and C. in front of
him, he whirls one eye rear-
wards and the other forwards
— Avhich gives him a most
Congressional expression (one^ye on the constituency and one
on the swag) ; and then if something happens above and below
him he shoots out one eye upward like a telescope and the
other downward — and this changes his expression, but does
not improve it.

Natives must not be out after the curfew bell without a
pass. In Natal there are ten blacks to one white.

Sturdy plump creatures are the wom.en. They comb their
wool up to a peak and keep it in position by stiffening it with

A CONGRESSIONAL EXPRESSION.

646

FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

brown-red clay — half of this tower colored, denotes engage-
ment ; the whole of it colored denotes marriage.

None but heathen Zulus on the police ; Christian ones not
allowed.

May 9. A drive yesterday with friends over the Berea.
Yery fine roads and lofty, overlooking the whole town, the
harbor, and the sea — beautiful views. Kesidences all along,

set in the midst of green lawns
with shrubs and generally one
or two intensely red out-
bursts of poinsettia — the
flaming splotch of blinding
red a stunning contrast with
the world of surrounding
green. The cactus tree —
candelabrum - like ; and one
twisted like gray writhing
serpents. The " flat-crown "
(should be flat-roof) — half a
dozen naked branches full of
elbows, slant upward like arti-
ficial supports, and fling a roof
of delicate foliage out in a
horizontal platform as flat as a floor ; and you look up through
this thin floor as through a green cobweb or veil. The branches
are japanesich. All about you is a bewildering variety of un-
familiar and beautiful trees ; one sort wonderfully dense foliage
and very dark green — so dark that you notice it at once, not-
withstanding there are so many orange trees. The " flamboy-
ant " — not in flower, now, but when in flower lives up to its
name, we are told. Another tree with a lovely upright tassel
scattered among its rich greenery, red and glowing as a fire-
coal. Here and there a gum-tree ; half a dozen lofty Norfolk"

A FASHION IN HAIR.

fHE GARDEN OF SOUTH AFRICA. 647

Island pines lifting their fronded arms skyward. Groups of
tall bamboo.

Saw one bird. Not many birds here, and they have no
music — and the flowers not much smell, they grow so fast.

Everything neat and trim and clean like the town. The
loveliest trees and the greatest variety I have ever seen any-
where, except approaching Darjeeling. Have not heard any-
one call Natal the garden of South Africa, but that is what it
probably is.

It was Avhen Bishop of Natal that Colenso raised such a
storm in the religious world. The concerns of religion are a
vital matter here yet. A vigilant eye is kept upon Sunday.
Museums and other dangerous resorts are not allowed to be
open. You may sail on the Bay, but it is wicked to play
cricket. For a while a Sunday concert was tolerated, upon
condition that it must be admission free and the money taken
by collection. But the collection was alarmingly large and
that stopped the matter. They are particular about babies.
A clergyman would not bury a child according to the sacred
rites because it had not been baptized. The Hindoo is more
liberal. He burns no child under three, holding that it does
not need purifying.

The King of the Zulus, a fine fellow of 30, was banished six
years ago for a term of seven years. He is occupying Napo-
leon's old stand — St. Helena.' The people are a little nervous
about having him come back, and they may well be, for Zulu
kings have been terrible people sometimes — ^like Tchaka,
Dingaan, and Cetewayo.

There is a large Trappist monastery two hours from Dur-
ban, over the country roads, and in company with Mr. Milligan
and Mr. Hunter, general manager of the Natal government
railways, who knew the heads of it, we went out to see it.

There it all was, just as one reads about it in books and

648 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

cannot believe that it is so — I mean the rough, hard work,
the impossible hours, the scanty food, the coarse raiment, the
Maryborough beds, the tabu of human speech, of social inter-
course, of relaxation, of amusement, of entertainment, of the
presence of woman in the men's establishment. There it all
was. It was not a dream, it was not a lie. And yet with the
fact before one's face it was still incredible. It is such a
sweeping suppression of human instincts, such an extinction of
the man as an individual.

La Trappe must have known the human race well. The
scheme which he invented hunts out everything that a man
wants and values — and withholds it from him. Apparently
there is no detail that can help make life worth living that
has not been carefully ascertained and placed out of the Trap-
pist's reach. La Trappe must have known that there were
men who would enjoy this kind of misery, but how did he
find it out?

If he had consulted you or me he would have been told
that his scheme lacked too many attractions ; that it was im-
possible ; that it could never be floated. But there in the
monastery was proof that he knew the human race better
than it knew itself. He set his foot upon every desire that
a man has — yet he floated his project, and it has prospered
for two hundred years, and will go on prospering forever, no
doubt.

Man likes personal distinction — there in the monastery it
is obliterated. He likes delicious food — there he gets beans
and bread and tea, and not enough of it. He likes to lie
softly — there he lies on a sand mattress, and has a pillow and
a blanket, but no sheet. When he is dining, in a great com-
pany of friends, he likes to laugh and chat — there a monk
reads a holy book aloud during meals, and nobody speaks or
laughs. "When a man has a hundred friends about him, even-

THE SUPPRESSION OF HUMAN INSTINCTS.

LIFE IN A MONASTERY. 651

ings, he likes to have a good time and run late — there he and
the rest go silently to bed at 8 ; and in the dark, too ; there is
but a loose brown robe to discard, there are no night-clothes to
put on, a light is not needed. Man likes to lie abed late —
there he gets up once or twice in the night to perform some
religious office, and gets up finally for the day at two in the
morning. Man likes light work or none at all — there he
labors all day in the field, or in the blacksmith shop or the
other shops devoted to the mechanical trades, such as shoe-
making, saddlery, carpentry, and so on . Man likes the society of
girls and women — there he never has it. He likes to have
his children about him, and pet them and play with them —
there he has none. He likes billiards — there is no table there.
He likes outdoor sports and indoor dramatic and musical and
social entertainments — there are none there. He likes to bet
on things — I was told that betting is forbidden there. When
a man's temper is up he likes to pour it out upon somebody —
there this is not allowed. A man likes animals — pets; there
are none there. He likes to smoke — there he cannot do it.
He likes to read the news — no papers or magazines come
there. A man likes to know how his parents and brothers and
sisters are getting along when he is away, and if they miss him
— there he cannot know. A man likes a pretty house, and
pretty furniture, and pretty things, and pretty colors — there
he has nothing but naked aridity and sombre colors. A man
likes — name it yourself : whatever it is, it is absent from that
place.

From what I could learn, all that a man gets for this is
merely the saving of his soul.

It all seems strange, incredible, impossible. But La Trappe
knew the race. He knew the powerful attraction of unattract-
iveness ; he knew that no life could be imagined, howsoever
comfortless and forbidding, but somebody would want to try it.

652 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

This parent establishment of Germans began its work fif-
teen years ago, strangers, poor, and unencouraged ; it owns
15,000 acres of land now, and raises grain and fruit, and makes
wines, and manufactures all manner of things, and has native
apprentices in its shops, and sends them forth able to read and
write, and also well equipped to earn their living by their
trades. And this young establishment has set up eleven
branches in South Africa, and in them they are christianizing
and educating . and teaching wage-yielding mechanical trades
to 1,200 boys and girls. Protestant Missionary work is coldly
regarded by the commercial white colonist all over the heathen
world, as a rule, and its product is nicknamed " rice-Christians"
(occupationless incapables who join the church for revenue
only), but I think it would be difficult to pick a flaw in the
work of these Catholic monks, and I believe that the disposi-
tion to attempt it has not shown itself.

Tuesday^ May 12. Transvaal politics in a confused condi-
tion. First the sentencing of the Johannesburg Reformers
startled England by its severity ; on the top of this came
Kruger's exposure of the cipher correspondence, which showed
that the invasion of the Transvaal, with the design of seizing
that country and adding it to the British Empire, was planned
by Cecil Rhodes and Beit — which made a revulsion in Eng-
lish feeling, and brought out a storm against Rhodes and the
Chartered Company for degrading British honor. For a good
while I couldn't seem to get at a clear comprehension of it, it
was so tangled. But at last by patient study I have managed
it, I believe. As I understand it, the Uitlanders and other
Dutchmen were dissatisfied because .the English would not
allow them to take any part in the government except to pay
taxes. Next, as I understand it. Dr. Kruger and Dr. Jameson,
not having been able to make the medical business pay, made
a raid into Matabeleland with the intention of capturing the

TO BULL THE STOCK MARKET.

653

capital, Johannesburg, and holding the women and children to
ransom until the Uitlanders and the other Boers should grant
to them and the Chartered Company the political rights which
had been withheld from them. They would have succeeded in
this great scheme, as I understand it, but for the interference
of Cecil Rhodes and Mr. Beit, and other Chiefs of the Mata-
bele, who persuaded their countrymen to revolt and throw off
their allegiance to Germany. This, in turn, as I understand
it, provoked the King of Abyssinia to destroy the Italian army
and fall back upon Johannesburg ; this at the instigation of
Rhodes, to bull the stock market.

CHAPTER LXYI.

Every one is a moon, and has a dark side which he never shows to anybody. —
Pudd''nhead Wilsoii^s New Valeiidar.

WHEN I scribbled in ray note-book a year ago the para-
graph which ends the preceding chapter, it was
meant to indicate, ill an extravagant form, two
things : the conflicting nature of the information conveyed by
the citizen to the stranger concerning South African politics,
and the resulting confusion created in the stranger's mind
thereby.

But it does not seem so very extravagant now. Nothing
could in that disturbed and excited time make South African
politics clear or quite rational to the citizen of the country be-
cause his personal interest and his political prejudices were in
his way ; and nothing could make those politics clear or
rational to the stranger, the sources of his information being
such as they were.

I was in South Africa some little time. "When I arrived
there the political pot was boiling fiercely. Four months pre-
viously, Jameson had plunged over the Transvaal border with
about 600 armed horsemen at his back, to go to the " relief of
the women and children " of Johannesburg ; on the fourth day
of his march the Boers had defeated him in battle, and carried
him and his men to Pretoria, the capital, as prisoners ; the Boer
government had turned Jameson and his officers over to the
British government for trial, and shipped them to England ;
next, it had arrested 64 important citizens of Johannesburg as
raid-conspirators, condemned their four leaders to death, then

(654)

THE POLITICAL POT.

ONE SIDE OF THE QUARREL. 657

commuted the sentences, and now the 64 were waiting, in jail,
for further results. Before midsummer they were all out ex-
cepting two, who refused to sign the petitions for release ; 58
had been fined $10,000 each and enlarged, and the four leaders
had gotten off with fines of $125,000 each — with permanent
exile added, in one case.

Those were wonderfully interesting days for a stranger,
and I was glad to be in the thick of the excitement. Every-
body was talking, and I expected to understand the whole of
one side of it in a very little while.

I was disappointed. There were singularities, perplexities,
unaccountabilities about it which I was not able to master. I
had no personal access to Boers — their side was a secret to me,
aside from what I was able to gather of it from published
statements. My sympathies were soon with the Eeformers in
the Pretoria jail, with their friends, and with their cause. By
diligent inquiry in Johannesburg I found out — apparently —
all the details of their side of the quarrel except one — what
they expected to accomplish hy an armed rising,

Nobody seemed to know.

The reason why the Reformers were discontented and
wanted some changes made, seemed quite clear. In Johannes-
burg it was claimed that the Uitlanders (strangers, foreigners)
paid thirteen-fifteenths of the Transvaal taxes, yet got little or
nothing for it. Their city had, no charter; it had no municipal
government ; it could levy no taxes for drainage, water-supply,
paving, cleaning, sanitation, policing. There was a police
force, but it was composed of Boers, it was furnished by the
State Government, and the city had no control over it. Min-
ing was very costly ; the government enormously increased the
cost by putting burdensome taxes upon the mines, the output,
the machinery, the buildings; by burdensome imposts
42

658 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

upon incoming materials; by burdensome railway-freight-
charges. Hardest of all to bear, the government reserved to
itself a monopoly in that essential thing, dynamite, and
burdened it with an extravagant price. The detested Hol-
lander from over the water held all the public offices. The
government was rank with corruption. The Uitlander had no
vote, and must live in the State ten or twelve years before he
could get one. He was not represented in the Kaad (legis-
lature) that oppressed him and fleeced him. Religion was not
free. There were no schools where the teaching was in Eng-
lish, yet the great majority of the white population of the
State knew no tongue but that. The State would not pass a
liquor law ; but allowed a great trade in cheap vile brandy
among the blacks, with the result that 25 per cent, of the
50,000 blacks employed in the mines were usually drunk. and
incapable of working.

There — it was plain enough that the reasons for wanting
some changes made were abundant and reasonable, if this state-
ment of the existing grievances was correct.

What the Uitlanders wanted was reform — under the exist-
ing Republic.

What they proposed to do was to secure these reforms by
prayer, petition, and persuasion.

They did petition. Also, they issued a Manifesto, whose
very first note is a bugle-blast of loyalty: "We want the
establishment of this Republic as a true Republic."

Could anything be clearer than the Uitlander's statement
of the grievances and oppressions under which they were
sujffering ? Could anything be more legal and citizenlike and
law-respecting than their attitude as expressed by their Mani-
festo ? No. Those things were perfectly clear, perfectly com-
prehensible.

But at this point the puzzles and riddles and confusions

THE REFORMER'S MOTIF. 659

begin to flock in. You have arrived at a place which you can-
not quite understand.

For you find that as a preparation for this loyal, lawful,
and in every way unexceptionable attempt to persuade the gov-
ernment to right their grievances, the Uitlanders had smug-
gled a Maxim gun or two and 1,500 muskets into the town,
concealed in oil tanks and coal cars, and had begun to form
and drill military companies composed of clerks, merchants,
and citizens generally.

What was their idea ? Did they suppose that the Boers
would attack them for petitioning for redress f That could
not be.

Did they suppose that the Boers would attack them even
for issuing a Manifesto demanding relief under the existing
government 1

Yes, they apparently believed so, because the air was full of
talk of forcing the government to grant redress if it were not
granted peacefully.

The Reformers were men of high intelligence. If they
were in earnest, they were taking extraordinary risks. They
had enormously valuable properties to defend ; their town was
full of women and children ; their mines and compounds were
packed with thousands upon thousands of sturdy blacks. If
the Boers attacked, the mines would close, the blacks would
swarm out and get drunk ; riot and conflagration and the Boers
together might lose the Reformers more in a day, in money,
blood, and suffering, than the desired political relief could com-
pensate in ten years if they won the fight and secured the
reforms.

It is May, 1897, now ; a year has gone by, and the confu
sions of that day have been to a considerable degree cleared
away. Mr. Cecil Rhodes, Dr. Jameson, and others responsible
for the Raid, have testified before the Parliamentary Committee

660 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

of Inquiry in London, and so have Mr. Lionel PJiillips and
other Johannesburg Reformers, monthly -nurses of the Revolu-
tion which was born dead. These testimonies have thrown
light. Three books have been added much to this light :
" South Africa As It Is," by Mr. Statham, an able writer
partial to the Boers ; "The Story of an African Crisis,"
by Mr. Garrett, a brilliant writer partial to Rhodes ; and " A
Woman's Part in a Revolution," by Mrs. John Hays Ham-
mond, a vigorous and vivid diarist, partial to the Reformers.
By liquifying the evidence of the prejudiced books and of
the prejudiced parliamentary witnesses and stirring the whole
together and pouring it into my own (prejudiced) moulds, I
have got at the truth of that puzzling South African situation,
which is this :

1. The capitalists and other chief men of Johannesburg
were fretting under various political and financial burdens im-
posed by the State (the South African Republic, sometimes
called " the Transvaal") and desired to procure by peaceful
means a modification of the laws.

2. Mr. Cecil Rhodes, Premier of the British Cape Colony,
millionaire, creator and managing director of the territorially-
immense and financially unproductive South Africa Company ;
projector of vast schemes for the unification and consolidation of
all the South African States into one imposing commonwealth
or empire under the shadow and general protection of the
British flag, thought he saw an opportunity to make profitable
use of the Uitlander discontent above mentioned — make the
Johannesburg oat help pull out one of his consolidation chest-
nuts for him. "With this view he set himself the task of warm-
ing the lawful and legitimate petitions and supplications of the
Uitlanders into seditious talk, and their frettings into threat-
enings — the final outcome to be revolt and armed rebellion.
If he could bring about a bloody collision between those people

THAT FAMOUS LETTER. 661

and the Boer government, Great Britain would have to inter-
fere ; her interference would be resisted by the Boers ; she
would chastise them and add the Transvaal to her South Afri-
can possessions. It was not a foolish idea, but a rational and
practical one.

After a couple of years of judicious plotting, Mr. Rhodes
had his reward ; the revolutionary kettle was briskly boiling in
Johannesburg, and the Uitlander leaders were backing their
appeals to the government — now hardened into demands —
by threats of force and bloodshed. By the middle of De-
cember, 1895, the explosion seemed imminent. Mr. Rhodes was
diligently helping, from his distant post in Cape Town. He
was helping to procure arms for Johannesburg ; he was also
arrano^ino: to have Jameson break over the border and come to
Johannesburg with 600 mounted men at his back. Jameson —
as per instructions from Rhodes, perhaps — wanted a letter
from the Reformers requesting him to come to their aid. It
was a good idea. It would throw a considerable share of the
responsibility of his invasion upon the Reformers. He got the
letter — that famous one urging him to fly to the rescue of the
women and children. He got it two months before he flew.
The Reformers seem to have thought it over and concluded
that they had not done wisely ; for the next day after giving
Jameson the implicating document they wanted to withdraw
it and leave the women and -children in danger ; but they Avere
told that it was too late. The original had gone to Mr. Rhodes
at the Cape. Jameson had kept a copy, though.

From that time until the 29th of December, a good deal of
the Reformers' time was taken up with energetic efforts to
keep Jameson from coming to their assistance. Jameson's in-
vasion had been set for the 26th. The Reformers were not
ready. The toAvn was not united. Some wanted a fight,
some wanted peace ; some wanted a new government, some

Gf)2 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

wanted the existing one reformed ; apparently very few wanted
the revolution to take place in the interest and under the ulti-
mate shelter of the Imperial flag — British ; yet a report began
to spread that Mr. Rhodes's embarrassing assistance had for its
end this latter object.

Jameson was away up on the frontier tugging at his leash,
fretting to burst over the border. By hard work the Reform-
ers got his starting-date postponed a little, and wanted to get
it postponed eleven days. Apparently, Rhodes's agents were
seconding their efforts — in fact wearing out the telegraph
wires trying to hold him back. Rhodes was himself the only
man who could have effectively postponed Jameson, but that
would have been a disadvantage to his scheme ; indeed, it could
spoil his whole two years' work.

Jameson endured postponement three days, then resolved
to wait no longer. Without any orders — excepting Mr.
Rhodes's significant silence — he cut the telegraph wires on the
29th, and made his plunge that night, to go to the rescue of the
women and children, by urgent request of a letter now nine
days old — as per date, — a couple of months old, in fact. He
read the letter to his men, and it affected them. It did not af-
fect all of them alike. Some saw in it a piece of piracy of
doubtful wisdom, and were sorry to find that they had been
assembled to violate friendly territory instead of to raid native
kraals, as they had supposed.

Jameson would have to ride 150 miles. He knew that there
were suspicions abroad in the Transvaal concerning him, but he
expected to get through to Johannesburg before they should
become general and obstructive. But a telegraph wire had
been overlooked and not cut. It spread the news of his inva-
sion far and wide, and a few hours after his start the Boer
farmers were riding hard from every direction to intercept
him.

^OER^ AS^EMBU/NS -PRETORIA.

BOER WAK SCENES.

THE CLIMAX. 665

As soon as it was known in Johannesburg that he was on
his way to rescue the women and children, the grateful people
put the women and children in a train and rushed them for
Australia. In fact, the approach of Johannesburg's saviour cre-
ated panic and consternation there, and a multitude of males
of peaceable disposition swept to the trains like a sand-storm.
The early ones fared best; they secured seats — by sitting in
them — eight hours before the first train was timed to leave.

Mr. Rhodes lost no time. He cabled the renowned Johan-
nesburg letter of invitation to the London press — ^the gray-
headedest piece of ancient history that ever went over a cable.

The new poet laureate lost no time. He came out with a
rousing poem lauding Jameson's prompt and splendid heroism
in flying to the rescue of the women and children ; for the poet
could not know that he did not fly until two months after the
invitation. He was deceived by the false date of the letter,
which was December 20th.

Jameson was intercepted by the Boers on New Year's Day,
and on the next day he surrendered. He had carried his copy
of the letter along, and if his instructions required him — in
case of emergency — to see that it fell into the hands of the
Boers, he loyally carried them out. Mrs. Hammond gives him
a sharp rap for his supposed carelessness, and emphasizes her
feeling about it with burning italics : " It was picked up on the
battle-field in a leathern pouch, supposed to be Dr. Jameson's
saddle-bag. TF7«y, in the name of all that is discreet and hon-
oi'able, didn't he eat it ! "

She requires too much. He was not in the service of the
Reformers — excepting ostensibly; he was in the service of Mr.
Rhodes. It was the only plain English document, undarkened
by ciphers and mysteries, and responsibly signed and authenti-
cated, which squarely implicated the Reformers in the raid, and
it was not to Mr, Rhodes's interest that it should be eaten. Be-

666 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

sides, that letter was not the original, it was onl}'^ a copy. Mr.
Khodes had the original — and didn't eat it. He cabled it to
the London press. It had already been read in England and
America and all over Europe before Jameson dropped it on the
battlefield. If the subordinate's knuckles deserved a rap, the
principal's deserved as many as a couple of them.

That letter is a juicily dramatic incident and is entitled to
all its celebrity, because of the odd and variegated effects which
it produced. All within the space of a single week it had made
Jameson an illustrious hero in England, a pirate in Pretoria,
and an ass without discretion or honor in Johannesburg ; also
it had produced a poet-laureatic explosion of colored fireworks
which filled the world's sky with giddy splendors, and the
knowledge that Jameson was coming with it to rescue the
women and children emptied Johannesburg of that detail of
the population. For an old letter, this was much. For a let-
ter two months old, it did marvels ; if it had been a year old it
would have done miracles.

CHAPTER LXYII.

First catch your Boer, then kick him. — Pudd''nhead WUsori's New Calendar,

rHOSE latter days were days of bitter worry and
trouble for the harassed Reformers.
From Mrs, Hammond we learn that on the 31st (the
day after Johannesburg heard of the invasion), " the Reform
Committee repudiates Dr. Jameson's inroad."

It also publishes its intention to adhere to the Manifesto.

It also earnestly desires that the inhabitants shall refrain
from overt acts against the Boer government.

It also "distributes arms" at the Court House, and fur-
nishes horses " to the newly -enrolled volunteers."

It also brings a Transvaal flag into the committee-room,
and the entire body swear allegiance to it " with uncovered
heads and upraised arms."

Also "one thousand Lee-Metford rifles have been given
out" — to rebels.

Also, in a speech. Reformer Lionel Phillips informs the
public that the Reform Committee Delegation has " been re-
ceived with courtesy by the Government Commission," and
" been assured that their proposals shall be earnestly consid-
ered." That " while the Reform Committee regretted Jame-
son's precipitate action, they would stand by him."

Also the populace are in a state of " wild enthusiasm," and
" can scarcely be restrained ; they want to go out to meet
Jameson and bring him in with triumphal outcry."

Also the British High Commissioner has issued a damnify-
ing proclamation against Jameson and all British abettors of

his game. It arrives January 1st.

(667)

668 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

It is a difficult position for the Reformers, and full of hin-
drances and perplexities. Their duty is hard, but plain :

1. They have to repudiate the inroad, and stand by the
inroader.

2. They have to swear allegiance to the Boer government,
and distribute cavalry horses to the rebels.

3. They have to forbid overt acts against the Boer gov-
ernment, and distribute arms to its enemies.

4. They have to avoid collision with the British govern-
ment, but still stand by Jameson and their new oath of allegi-
ance to the Boer government, taken, uncovered, in presence of
its flag.

They did such of these things as they could ; they tried to
do them all ; in fact, did do them all, but only in turn, not
simultaneously. In the nature of things they could not be
made to simultane.

In preparing for armed revolution and in talking revolu-
tion, were the Reformers " bluffing," or were they in earnest ?
If they were in earnest, they were taking great risks — as has
been already pointed out. A gentleman of high position told
me in Johannesburg that he had in his possession a printed
document proclaiming a 7iew government and naming its presi-
dent— one of the Reform leaders. He said that this proclama-
tion had been ready for issue, but was suppressed when the
raid collapsed. Perhaps I misunderstood him. Indeed, I must
have misunderstood him, for I have not seen mention of this
large incident in print anywhere.

Besides, I hope I am mistaken ; for, if I am, then there is
argument that the Reformers were privately not serious, but
were only trying to scare the Boer government into granting
the desired reforms.

The Boer government was scared, and it had a right to be.
For if Mr. Rhodes's plan was to provoke a collision that would

WHAT I SHOULD HAVE DONE. 669

compel the interference of England, that was a serious matter.
If it could be shown that that was also the Eeformers' plan
and purpose, it would prove that they had marked out a
feasible project, at any rate, although it was one which could
hardly fail to cost them ruinously before England should
arrive. But it seems clear that they had no such plan nor
desire. If, when the worst should come to the worst, they
meant to overthrow the government, they also meant to inherit
the assets themselves, no doubt.

This scheme could hardly have succeeded. With an army
of Boers at their gates and 50,000 riotous blacks in their midst,
the odds against success would have been too heavy — even if
the whole town had been armed. With only 2,500 rifles in
the place, they stood really no chance.

To me, the military problems of the situation are of more
interest than the political ones, because by disposition I have
always been especially fond of war. No, I mean fond of dis-
cussing war ; and fond of giving military advice. If I had
been with Jameson the morning after he started, I should have
advised him to turn back. That was Monday ; it was then that
he received his first warning from a Boer source not to violate
the friendly soil of the Transvaal. It showed that his invasion
was known. If I had been with him on Tuesday morning and
afternoon, when he received further warnings, I should have
repeated my advice. If I had" been with him the next morn-
ing — New Year's — when he received notice that " a few
hundred " Boers were waiting for him a few miles ahead, I
should not have advised, but commanded him to go back.
And if I had been with him two or three hours later — a thing
not conceivable to me — I should have retired him by force ;
for at that time he learned that the few hundred had now
grown to 800 ; and that meant that the growing would go on
growing.

670 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

For, by authority of Mr. Garrett, one knows that Jame-
son's 600 were only 530 at most, when you count out his native
drivers, etc. ; and that the 530 consisted largely of " green "
youths, " raw young fellows," not trained and war-worn Brit-
ish soldiers ; and I would have told Jameson that those lads
would not be able to shoot effectively from horseback in the
scamper and racket of battle, and that there would not be any-
thing for them to shoot at, anyway, but rocks ; for the Boers

BOEBS RECEIVING ARMS AND EQUIPMENTS.

would hfi behind the rocks, not out in the open. I would have
told him that 300 Boer sharpshooters behind rocks would be
an overmatch for his 500 raw young fellows on horseback.

If pluck were the only thing essential to battle-winning, the
English would lose no battles. But discretion, as well as pluck,
is required when one fights Boers and Red Indians. In South
Africa the Briton has always insisted upon standing bravely
up. Unsheltered, before the hidden Boer, and taking the results.
Jameson's men would foUow the custom. Jameson would not

THE BOERS AND THE ENGLISH. 671

have listened to me — he would have been intent upon repeat-
ing history, according to precedent. Americans are not ac-
quainted with the British-Boer war of 1881 ; but its history is
interesting, and could have been instructive to Jameson if he
had been receptive. I will cull some details of it from trust-
worthy sources — mainly from " Russell's Natal." Mr. Russell
is not a Boer, but a Briton. He is inspector of schools, and his
history is a text-book whose purpose is the instruction of the
Natal English youth.

After the seizure of the Transvaal and the suppression of
the Boer government by England in 1877, the Boers fretted for
three years, and made several appeals to England for a restora-
tion of their liberties, but without result. Then they gathered
themselves together in a great mass-meeting at Krugersdorp,
talked their troubles over, and resolved to fight for their deliv-
erance from the British yoke. (Krugersdorp — the place where
the Boers interrupted the Jameson raid.) The little handful of
farmers rose against the strongest empire in the world. They
proclaimed martial law and the re-establishment of their Re-
public. They organized their forces and sent them forward to
intercept the British battalions. This, although Sir Garnet
Wolseley had but lately made proclamation that " so long as
the sun shone in the heavens," the Transvaal would be and
remain English territory. And also in spite of the fact that
the commander of the 94th regiment — already on the march
to suppress this rebellion — had been heard to say that " the
Boers would turn tail at the first beat of the big drum."*

Four days after the flag-raising, the Boer force which had
been sent forward to forbid the invasion of the English troops
met them at Bronkhorst Spruit — 246 men of the 94th regi-
ment, in command of a colonel, the big drum beating, the band

*" South Africa As It Is," by F. Reginald Statham, page 82. London : T. Fisher
Unwin, 1897.

672 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

playing — and the first battle was fought. It lasted ten min-
utes. Result :

British loss, rnore than 160 officers and men, out of the 2Ji6.
Surrender of the remnant.

Boer loss — if any — not stated.

They are fine marksmen, the Boers. From the cradle up,
they live on horseback and hunt wild animals with the rifle.
They have a passion for liberty and the Bible, and care for
nothing else.

" General Sir George Colley, Lieutenant-Governor and
Commander-in-Chief in Natal, felt it his duty to proceed at
once to the relief of the loyalists and soldiers beleaguered in
the different towns of the Transvaal." He moved out with
1,000 men and some artillery. He found the Boers encamped
in a strong and sheltered position on high ground at Laing's
Nek — every Boer behind a rock. Early in the morning of
the 28th January, 1881, he moved to the attack " with the
68th regiment, commanded by Colonel Deane, a mounted
squadron of 70 men, the 60th Rifles, the Naval Brigade with
three rocket tubes, and the Artillery with six guns." He
shelled the Boers for twenty minutes, then the assault was de-
livered, the 58th marching up the slope in solid column. The
battle was soon finished, with this result, according to Russell :

British loss in killed and wounded^ 17 J/..

Boer loss, " trijlingr

Colonel Deane was killed, and apparently every officer above
the grade of lieutenant was killed or wounded, for the 58th
retreated to its camp in command of a lieutenant. ("Africa as
It Is.")

That ended the second battle.

On the 7th of February General Colley discovered that the
Boers were flanking his position. The next morning he left
his camp at Mount Pleasant and marched out and crossed the

THE BOERS WIN. 673

Ingogo river with 270 men, started up the Ingogo heights, and
there fought a battle which lasted from noon till nightfall. He
then retreated, leaving his wounded with his military chap-
lain, and in recrossing the now swollen river lost some of his
men by drowning. That was the third Boer victory. Kesult,
according to Mr. Russell :

British loss 150 out of 270 engaged.

Boer loss, 8 killed, 9 loounded — 17.

There was a season of quiet, now, but at the end of about
three weeks Sir George Colley conceived the idea of climbing,
with an infantry and artillery force, the steep and rugged
mountain of Amajuba in the night — a bitter hard task, but he
accomplished it. On the way he left about 200 men to guard
a strategic point, and took about 400 up the mountain with
him. When the sun rose in the morning, there was an un-
pleasant surprise for the Boers ; yonder were the English
troops visible on top of the mountain two or three miles away,
and now their own position was at the mercy of the English
artillery. The Boer chief resolved to retreat — up that moun-
tain. He asked for volunteers, and got them.

The storming party crossed the swale and began to creep
up the steeps, " and from behind rocks and bushes they shot at
the soldiers on the sky-line as if they were stalking deer," says
Mr, Russell. There was "continuous musketry fire, steady
and fatal on the one side, wild and ineffectual on the other."
The Boers reached the top, and began to put in their ruinous
work. Presently the British " broke and fled for their lives
down the rugged steep." The Boers had won the battle.
Result in killed and wounded, including among the killed the
British General :

British loss, 226, out of JfOO engaged.

Boer loss, 1 killed, 5 wounded.
43

674 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

That ended the war. England listened to reason, and
recognized the Boer Republic — a government which has
never been in any really awful danger since, until Jameson
started after it with his 500 "raw young fellows." To reca-
pitulate :

The Boer farmers and British soldiers fought 4 battles, and
the Boers won them all. Eesult of the 4, in killed and wounded :

British loss, 700 men.

Boer loss, so far as known, S3 men.

It is interesting, nowj to note how loyally Jameson and his
several trained British military officers tried to make their bat-
tles conform to precedent. Mr. Garrett's account of the Raid
is much the best one I have met with, and my impressions of
the Raid are drawn from that.

When Jameson learned that near Krugersdorp he would
find 800 Boers waiting to dispute his passage, he was not in the
least disturbed. He was feeling as he had felt two or three
days before, when he had opened his campaign with a historic
remark to the same purport as the one with which the com-
mander of the 94th had opened the Boer-British war of fourteen
years before. That Commander's remark was, that the Boers
" would turn tail at the first beat of the big drum." Jameson's
was, that with his "raw young fellows" he could kick the
(persons) of the Boers " all round the Transvaal." He was
keeping close to historic precedent.

Jameson arrived in the presence of the Boers. They —
according to precedent — were not visible. It was a country
of ridges, depressions, rocks, ditches, moraines of mining-tail-
ings — not even as favorable for cavalry work as Laing's Nek
had been in the former disastrous days. Jameson shot at the
ridges and rocks with his artillery, just as General Colley had
done at the Nek ; and did them no damage and persuaded no
Boer to show himself. Then about a hundred of his men

AFTER THE FIGHTING.

JAMESON'S GRIT. 677

formed up to charge the ridge — according to the 58th's pre-
cedent at the Nek ; but as they dashed forward they opened
out in a long line, which was a considerable improvement on
the 58th's tactics ; when they had gotten to within 200 yards
of the ridge the concealed Boers opened out on them and
emptied 20 saddles. The unwounded dismounted and fired at
the rocks over the backs of their horses ; but the return-fire
was too hot, and they mounted again, " and galloped back or
crawled away into a clump of reeds for cover, where they were
shortly afterward taken prisoners as they lay among the reeds.
Some thirty prisoners were so taken, and during the night
which followed the Boers carried away another thirty
killed and wounded — the wounded to Krugersdorp hospital."
Sixty per cent, of the assaulted force disposed of — according
to Mr. Garrett's estimate.

It was according to Amajuba precedent, where the British
loss was 226 out of about 400 engaged.

Also, in Jameson's camp, that night, " there lay about 30
wounded or otherwise disabled" men. Also during the night
"some 30 or 40 young fellows got separated from the com-
mand and straggled through into Johannesburg." Altogether
a possible 150 men gone, out of his 530. His lads had fought
valorously, but had not been able to get near enough to a Boer
to kick him around the Transvaal.

At dawn the next morning the column of something short
of 400 whites resumed its march. Jameson's grit was stub-
bornly good ; indeed, it was always that. He still had hopes.
There was a long and tedious zigzagging march through
broken ground, with constant harassment from the Boers;
and at last the column " walked into a sort of trap," and the
Boers " closed in upon it." " Men and horses dropped on all
sides. In the column the feeling grew that unless it could
burst through the Boer lines at this point it was done for.

678

FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

The Maxims were fired until they grew too hot, and, water
failing for the cool jacket, five of them jammed and went out
of action. The 7-pounder was fired until only half an hour's
ammunition was left to fire with. One last rush was made,
and failed, and then the Staats Artillery came up on the left
flank, and the game was up."

Jameson hoisted a white flag and surrendered.

There is a story, which may not be true, about an ignorant
Boer farmer there who thought that this white flag was the
national flag of England. He had been at Bronkhorst, and
Laing's Nek, and Ingogo and Amajuba, and supposed that the
English did not run up their flag excepting at the end of a fight.

PRISONERS AT ROLL CALL.

The following is (as I understand it) Mr. Garrett's estimate
of Jameson's total loss in killed and Avounded for the two days :

" "When they gave in they were minus some 20 per cent, of
combatants. There were 76 casualties. There were 30 men
hurt or sick in the wagons. There were 27 killed on the spot
or mortally wounded."

A GOOD AUTHORITY. 6Y9

Total, 133, out of the original 530. It is just 25 per cent.*
This is a large improvement upon the precedents established at
Bronkhorst, Laing's Nek, Ingogo, and Amajuba, and seems to
indicate that Boer marksmanship is not so good now as it was
in those days. But there is one detail in which the Raid-
episode exactly repeats history. By surrender at Bronkhorst,
the whole British force disappeared from the theater of war ;
this was the case with Jameson's force.

In the Boer loss, also, historical precedent is followed with
sufficient fidelity. In the 4 battles named above, the Boer
loss, so far as known, was an average of 6 men per battle, to
the British average loss of 175. In Jameson's battles, as pei
Boer official report, the Boer loss in killed was 4. Two of
these were killed by the Boers themselves, by accident, the
other by Jameson's army — one of them intentionally, the
other by a pathetic mischance. "A young Boer named Jacobz
was moving forward to give a drink to one of the wounded
troopers (Jameson's) after the first charge, when another
wounded man, mistaking his intention, shot him." There
were three or four wounded Boers in the Krugersdorp hospital,
and apparently no others have been reported. Mr. Garrett,
" on a balance of probabilities, fully g^ccepts the official version,
and thanks Heaven the killed was not larger."

As a military man, I wish to point out what seems to me
to be military errors in the conduct of the campaign which we
have just been considering. I have seen active service in the
field, and it was in the actualities of war that I acquired my
training and my right to speak. I served two weeks in the
beginning of our Civil War, and during all that time com-

* However, I judge that the total was really 150} for the number of wounded
carried to Krugersdorp hospital was 53 ; not 30, as Mr. Garrett reports It. The lady
whose guest I was in Krugerdorp gave me the figures. She was head nurse from the
beginning of hostilities (Jan. 1) until the professional nurses arrived, Jan. 8th. Of
the 53, " Three or four were Boers " ; I quote her words.

680 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

manded a battery of infantry composed of twelve men.
General Grant knew the history of my campaign, for I told it
him. I also told him the principle upon which I had con-
ducted it ; which was, to tire the enemy. I tired out and dis-
qualified many battalions, yet never had a casualty myself nor
lost a man. General Grant was not given to paying compli-
ments, yet he said frankly that if I had conducted the whole
war much bloodshed would have been spared, and that what
the army might have lost through the inspiriting results of
collision in the field would have been amply made up by the
]iberalizing influences of travel. Further endorsement does
not seem to me to be necessary.

Let us now examine history, and see what it teaches. In
the 4 battles fought in 1881 and the two fought by Jameson,
the British loss in killed, wounded, and prisoners, was substan-
tially 1,300 men ; the Boer loss, as far as is ascertainable, was
about 30 men. These figures show that there was a defect
somewhere. It was not in the absence of courage. I think it
lay in the absence of discretion. The Briton should have done
one thing or the other : discarded British methods and fought
the Boer with Boer methods, or augmented his own force until
— using British methods — it should be large enough to equal-
ize results with the Boer.

To retain the British method requires certain things, deter-
minable by arithmetic. If, for argument's sake, we allow that
the aggregate of 1,716 British soldiers engaged in the 4 early
battles was opposed by the same aggregate of Boers, we have
this result: the British loss of 700 and the Boer loss of 23
argues that in order to equalize results in future battles you
must make the British force thirty times as strong as the Boer
force. Mr. Garrett shows that the Boer force immediately op-
posed to Jameson was 2,000, and that there were 6,000 more
on hand by the evening of the second day. Arithmetic shows

TIRING THE ENEMY.

THOSE FUTILE MAXIMS. 683

that in order to make himself the equal of the 8,000 Boers,
Jameson should have had 240,000 men, whereas he merely had
530 boys. From a military point of view, backed by the facts
of history, I conceive that Jameson's military judgment was at >.
fault.

Another thing. Jameson was encumbered by artillery,
ammunition, and rifles. The facts of the battle show that he
should have had none of those things along. They were heavy,
they were in his way, they impeded his march. There was
nothing to shoot at but rocks — he knew quite well that there
would be nothing to shoot at but rocks — and he knew that
artillery and rifles have no effect upon rocks. He was badly
overloaded with unessentials. He had 8 Maxims — a Maxim
is a kind of Gatling, I believe, and shoots about 500 bullets
per minute ; he had one 12i-pounder cannon and two Y-pound-
ers ; also, 145,000 rounds of ammunition. He worked the
Maxims so hard upon the rocks that five of them became dis-
abled — five of the Maxims, not the rocks. It is believed that
upwards of 100,000 rounds of ammunition of the various kinds
were fired during the 21 hours that the battles lasted. One
man killed. He must have been much mutilated. It was a
pity to bring those futile Maxims along. Jameson should have
furnished himself with a battery of Pudd'nhead "Wilson max-
ims instead- They are much more deadly than those others,
and they are easily carried, because they have no weight.

Mr. Garrett — not very carefully concealing a smile — ex-
cuses the presence of the Maxims by saying that they were of
very substantial use because their sputtering disordered the
aim of the Boers, and in that way saved lives.

Three cannon, eight Maxims, and five hundred rifles yielded
a result which emphasized a fact which had already been estab-
lished — that the British system of standing out in the open to
fight Boers who are behind rocks is not wise, not excusable,

684

FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR

and ought to be abandoned for something more efficacious.
For the purpose of war is to kill, not merely to waste ammuni-
tion. ^

THE DOCUMENT IN EVIDENCE.

If I could get the management of one of those campaigns,
I would know what to do, for I have studied the Boer. He
values the Bible above every other thing. The most delicious
edible in South Africa is " biltong." You will have seen it
mentioned in Olive Schreiner's books. It is what our plains-

COLONEL RHODES' NOTE. 685

men. call " jerked beef." It is the Boer's main standby. Ho
has a passion for it, and he is right.

If I had the command of the campaign I would go with
rifles only, no cumbersome Maxims and cannon to spoil good
rocks with. I would move surreptitiously by night to a point
about a quarter of a mile from the Boer camp, and there I
would build up a pyramid of biltong and Bibles fifty feet high,
and then conceal my men all about. In the morning the
Boers would send out spies, and then the rest would come with
a rush. I would surround them, and they would have to fight
my men on equal terms, in the open. There wouldn't be any
Amajuba results.*

* Just as I am liuishinjj; this book an unfortunate dispute has sprung up between
Dr. Jameson and his officers, on the one hand, and Colonel Rhodes on the other,
concerning the wording of a note which Colonel Rhodes sent from Johannesburg by
a cyclist to Jameson just before hostilities began on the memorable New Year's Day.
Some of the fragments of this note were found on the battlefield after the fight, and
these have been pieced together; the dispute is as to what words the lacking frag-
ments contained. Jameson says the note promised him a reinforcement of 300 men
from Johannesburg. Colonel Rhodes denies this, and says he merely promised to
send out " some " men " to meet you."

It seems a pity that these friends should fall out over so little a thing. If the
300 had been sent, what good would it have done ? In 21 hours of industrious fight-
ing, Jameson's 530 men, with 8 Maxims, 3 cannon, and 145,000 rounds of ammunition,
killed an aggregate of 1 Boer. These statistics show that a reinforcement of 300
Johannesburgers, armed merely with muskets, would have killed, at the outside,
onlj' a little over a half of another Boer. This would not have saved the day. It
would not even have seriously affected the general result. The figures show clearly,
and with mathematical violence, that the only way to save Jameson, or even give
him a fair and equal chance with the enemy, was for Johannesburg to send him 240
Maxims, 90 cannon, 600 carloads of ammunition, and 240,000 men. Johannesburg
was not in a position to do this. Johannesburg has been called very hard names for
not reinforcing Jameson. But in every instance this has been done by two classes of
persons — people who do not read history, and people, like Jameson, who do not
understand what it means, after they have read it.

CHAPTER LXYIII.

None of us can have as many virtues as the fountain-pen, or half its cussedness ;
but we can try. — PudtTnliead WUson^s New Calendar.

THE Duke of Fife has borne testimony that Mr. Rhodes
deceived him. That is also what Mr. Rhodes did with
the Reformers. He got them into trouble, and then
stayed out himself. A judicious man. He has always been
that. As to this there was a moment of doubt, once. It was
when he was out on his last pirating expedition in the Mata-
bele country. The cable shouted out that he had gone un-
armed, to visit a party of hostile chiefs. It was true, too ; and
this dare-devil thing came near fetching another indiscretion
out of the poet laureate. It would have been too bad, for when
the facts w^ere all in, it turned out that there was a lady along,
too, and she also was unarmed.

In the opinion of many people Mr. Rhodes is South Africa ;
others think he is only a large part of it. These latter consider
that South Africa consists of Table Mountain, the diamond
mines, the Johannesburg gold fields, and Cecil Rhodes. The
gold fields are wonderful in every way. In seven or eight
years they built up, in a desert, a city of a hundred thousand
inhabitants, counting white and black together ; and not the
ordinary mining city of wooden shanties, but a city made out
of lasting material. Nowhere in the world is there such a con-
centration of rich mines as at Johannesburg. Mr. Bonamici,
my manager there, gave me a small gold brick with some sta-
tistics engraved upon it which record the output of gold from
the early days to July, 1895, and exhibit the strides which have

(686)

THE GOLD FIELDS. 687

been made in the development of the industry ; in 1888 the
output was $4,162,440 ; the output of the next five and a half
years was (total) $17,585,894 ; for the single year ending with
June, 1895, it was $45,553,700.

The capital which has developed the mines came from Eng-
land, the mining engineers from America. This is the case
with the diamond mines also. South Africa seems to be the
heaven of the American scientific mining engineer. He gets
the choicest places, and keeps them. His salary is not based
upon what he would get in America, but apparently upon what
a whole family of him Would get there.

The successful mines pay great dividends, yet the rock is
not rich, from a Californian point of view. Rock which yields
ten or twelve dollars a ton is considered plenty rich enough.
It is troubled with base metals to such a degree that twenty
years ago it would have been only about half as valuable as
it is now ; for at that time there was no paying way of getting
anything out of such rock but the coarser-grained "free" gold ;
but the new cyanide process has changed all that, and the gold
fields of the world now deliver up fifty million dollars' worth
of gold per year which would have gone into the tailing-pile
under the former conditions.

The cyanide process was new to me, and full of interest ;
and among the costly and elaborate mining machinery there
were fine things which were -new to me, but I was already fa-
miliar with the rest of the details of the gold-mining industry.
I had been a gold miner myself, in my day, and knew substan-
tially everything that those people knew about it, except how
to make money at it. But I learned a good deal about the
Boers there, and that was a fresh subject. What I heard there
was afterwards repeated to me in other parts of South Africa,
Summed up — according to the information thus gained — this
is the Boer :

688 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

He is deeply religious, profoundly ignorant, dull, obstinate,
bigoted, uncleanly in his habits, hospitable, honest in his deal-
ings with the whites, a hard master to his black servant, lazy,
a good shot, good horseman, addicted to the chase, a lover of
political independence, a good husband and father, not fond of
herding together in towns, but liking the seclusion and remote-
ness and solitude and empty vastness and silence of the veldt ;
a man of a mighty appetite, and not delicate about what he
appeases it with — well-satisfied with pork and Indian corn
and biltong, requiring only that the quantity shall not be
stinted ; willing to ride a long journey to take a hand in a
rude all-night dance interspersed with vigorous feeding and
boisterous jollity, but ready to ride twice as far for a prayer-
meeting; proud of his Dutch and Huguenot origin and its
religious and military history ; proud of his race's achieve-
ments in South Africa, its bold plunges into hostile and un-
charted deserts in search of free solitudes unvexed by the
pestering and detested English, also its victories over the
natives and the British ; proudest of all, of the direct and effu-
sive personal interest which the Deity has always taken in its
affairs. He cannot read, he cannot write; he has one or two
newspapers, but he is, apparently, not aware of it ; until lat-
terly he had no schools, and taught his children nothing ; news
is a term which has no meaning to him, and the thing itself he
cares nothing about. He hates to be taxed and resents it.
He has stood stock still in South Africa for two centuries and
a half, and would like to stand still till the end of time, for he
has no sympathy with Uitlander notions of progress. He is
hungry to be rich, for he is human ; but his preference has
been for riches in cattle, not in fine clothes and fine houses
and gold and diamonds. The gold and the diamonds have
brought the godless stranger within his gates, also contamina-

THE FATE OF MR. RHODES. 689

tion and broken repose, and he wishes that they had never
been discovered.

I think that the bulk of those details can be found in
Olive Schreiner's books, and she would not be accused of
sketching the Boer's portrait with an unfair hand.

Now what would you expect from that unpromising mate-
rial ? What ought you to expect from it ? Laws inimical to
religious liberty ? Yes. Laws denying representation and
suffrage to the intruder? Yes. Laws unfriendly to educa-
tional institutions ? Yes. Laws obstructive of gold production ?
Yes. Discouragement of railway expansion? Yes. Laws
heavily taxing the intruder and overlooking the Boer ? Yes.

The Uitlander seems to have expected something very
different from all that. I do not know why. I^othing differ-
ent from it was rationally to be expected. A round man
cannot be expected to fit a square hole right away. He must
have time to modify his shape. The modification had begun
in a detail or two, before the Raid, and was making some
progress. It has made further progress since. There are
wise men in the Boer government, and that accounts for the
modification ; the modification of the Boer mass has probably
not begun yet. If the heads of the Boer government had not
been wise men they would have hanged Jameson, and thus
turned a very commonplace pirate into a holy martyr. But
even their wisdom has its limits, and they will hang Mr.
Rhodes if they ever catch him. That will round him and '
complete him and make him a saint. He has already been
called by all other titles that symbolize human grandeur, and '
he ought to rise to this one, the grandest of all. It will be a
dizzy jump from where he is now, but that is nothing, it killi
land him in good company and be a pleasant change fori him! »

Some of the things demanded by the Johannesburgbrs't
44 ; ^d

690 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

Manifesto have been conceded since the days of the Raid, and
the others will follow in time, no doubt. It was most fortunate
for the miners of Johannesburg that the taxes which distressed
them so much were levied by the Boer government, instead of
by their friend Rhodes and his Chartered Company of high-
\v9,ymen, for these latter take half of whatever their mining
victims find, they do not stop at a mere percentage. If the
Johannesburg miners were under their jurisdiction they would
be in the poorhbuse in twelve months.

I have been under the impression all along that I had an
unpleasant paragraph about the Boers somewhere in my note-
book, and also a pleasant one. I have found them now. The
unpleasant one is dated at an interior village, and says :

"Mr. Z. called. He is an English Afrikander ; is an old resident, and has
a Boer wife. He speaks the language, and his professional business is with
the Boers exclusively. He told me that the ancient Boer families in the great
region of which this village is the commercial center are falling victims to
their inherited indolence and dullness in the materialistic latter-day race and
struggle, and are dropping one by one into the grip of the usurer — getting
hopelessly in debt — and are losing their high place and retiring to second and
lower. The Boer's farm does not go to another Boer when he loses it, but to
a foreigner. Some have fallen so low that they sell their daughters to the
blacks."

Under date of another South African town I find the note

which is creditable to the Boers :

" Dr. X. told me that in the Kafir war 1,500 Kafirs took refuge in a great
cave in the mountains about 90 miles north of Johannesburg, and the Boers
blpcked up the entrance and smoked them to death. Dr. X. has been in there
and seen the great array of bleached skeletons — one a woman with the skele-
ton of a child hugged to her breast."

The great bulk of the savages must go. The white man

wants their lands, and all must go excepting such percentage

of them as he will need to do his work for him upon terms to

be determined by himself. Since history has removed the

element of guesswork from this matter and made it certainty,

the humanest way of diminishing the black population should

be adopted, not the old cruel ways of the past. Mr. Rhodes

RHODESIA. 691

and his gang have been following the old ways. They are
chartered to rob and slay, and they lawfully do it, but not in a
compassionate and Christian spirit. They rob the Mashonas
and the Matabeles of a portion of their territories in the
hallowed old style of " purchase " for a song, and then they
force a quarrel and take the rest by the strong hand. They
rob the natives of their cattle under the pretext that all the
cattle in the country belonged to the king whom they have
tricked and assassinated. They issue "regulations" requiring
the incensed and harassed natives to work for the white set-
tlers, and neglect their own affairs to do it. This is slavery,
and is several times worse than was the American slavery
which used to pain England so much ; for when this Ehodesian
slave is sick, superannuated, or otherwise disabled, he must
support himself or starve — his master is under no obligation
to support him.

The reduction of the population by Rhodesian methods to
the desired limit is a return to the old-time slow-misery and
lingering-death system of a discredited time and a crude " civ-
ilization." We humanely reduce an overplus of dogs by swift
chloroform ; the Boer humanely reduced an overplus of blacks
by swift suffocation ; the nameless but right-hearted Australian
pioneer humanely reduced his overplus of aboriginal neighbors
by a sweetened swift death concealed in a poisoned pudding.
All these are admirable, and worthy of praise; you and I
would rather suffer either of these deaths thirty times over in
thirty successive days than linger out one of the Ehodesian
twenty-year deaths, with its daily burden of insult, humilia-
tion, and forced labor for a man whose entire race the victim
hates. Rhodesia is a happy name for that land of piracy and
pillage, and puts the right stain upon it.

Several long journeys gave us experience of the Cape
Colony railways ; easy -riding, fine cars ; all the conveniences ;

692 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

thorough cleanliness ; comfortable beds furnished for the night
trains. It was in the first days of June, and winter ; tlie day-
time was pleasant, the nighttime nice and cold. Spinning
along all day in the cars it was ecstasy to breathe the bracing
air and gaze out over the vast brown solitudes of the velvet
plains, soft and lovely near by, still softer and lovelier further
away, softest and loveliest of all in the remote distances,
where dim island-hills seemed afloat, as in a sea — a sea made
of dream-stuff and flushed with colors faint and rich ; and
dear me, the depth of the sky, and the beauty of the strange
new cloud-forms, and the glory of the sunshine, the lavishness,
the wastefulness of it ! The vigor and freshness and inspira-
tion of the air and the sun — well, it was all just as Olive
Schreiner had made it in her books.

To me the veldt, in its sober winter garb, was surpassingly
beautiful. There were unlevel stretches where it was rolling
and swelling, and rising and subsiding, and sweeping superbly
on and on, and still on and on like an ocean, toward the far-
away horizon, its pale brown deepening by delicately gradu-
ated shades to rich orange, and finally to purple and crimson
where it washed against the wooded hills and naked red crags
at the base of the sky.

Everywhere, from Cape Town to Kimberley, and from
Kimberley to Port Elizabeth and East London, the towns were
well populated with tamed blacks ; tamed and Christianized too,
I suppose, for the}'' wore the dowdy clothes of our Christian
civilization. But for that, many of them would have been re-
markably handsome. These fiendish clothes, together with
the proper lounging gait, good-natured face, happy air, and
easy laugh, made them precise counterparts of our American
blacks ; often where all the other aspects were strikingly and
harmoniously and thrillingly African, a flock of these natives
would intrude, looking wholly out of place, and spoil it all,

AMONG OLD FRIENDS.

693

making the thing a grating discord, half African and half
American.

One Sunday in King William's Town a score of colored
women came mincing across the great barren square dressed

— oh, in the last perfection of fashion, and newness, and ex-
pensiveness, and showy mixture of unrelated colors, — all just
as I had seen it so
often at home ; and
in their faces and
their gait was that
languishing, aristo-
cratic, divine delight
in their finery which
was so familiar to me,
and had always been
such a satisfaction to
my eye and my heart.
I seemed among old,
old friends ; friends
of fifty years, and I
stopped and cordially
greeted them. They
broke into a good-fel-
lowship laugh, flash-
ing their white teeth
upon me, and all
answered at once. I
did not understand a word they said. I was astonished ; I
was not dreaming that they would answer in anything
but American.

The voices, too, of the African women, were familiar to me

— sweet and musical, just like those of the slave women of my
early days. I followed a couple of them all over the Orange

OLD ACQUAINTANCES.

694

FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

Free State — no, over its capital — Bloemfontein, to hear their
liquid voices and the happy ripple of their laughter. Their
language was a large improvement upon American. Also upon
the Zulu. It had no Zulu clicks in it ; and it seemed to have
no angles or corners, no roughness, no vile s^s or other hissing
sounds, but was very, very mellow and rounded and flowing.
In moving about the country in the trains, I had opportu-
nity to see a good many Boers of the veldt. One day at a village
station a hundred of them got out of the third-class cars to feed.

Their clothes were
very interesting. For
ugliness of shapes, and
for miracles of ugly
colors inharmoniously
associated, they were
a record.

The efi'ect was
nearly as exciting
and interesting as that
produced by the bril-
liant and beautiful
clothes and perfect
taste always on view
at the Indian railway
stations. One man
had corduroy trousers
of a faded chewing-
gum tint. And they
were new — showing
that this tint did not come by calamity, but was intentional;
the very ugliest color I have ever seen. A gaunt, shackly
country lout six feet high, in battered gray slouched hat with
wide brim, and old resin-colored breeches, had on a hideous

HF, RATT> "no" RTTDET.Y.

HE FELT STUFFY,

THE BOER'S HOSPITALITY. 697

brand-new woolen coat which was imitation tiger skin —
wavy broad stripes of dazzling yellow and deep brown. I
thought he ought to be hanged, and asked the station-
master if it could be arranged. He said no ; and not only
that, but said it rudely ; said it with a quite unnecessary
show of feeling. Then he muttered something about my being
a jackass, and walked away and pointed me out to people, and
did everything he could to turn public sentiment against me.
It is what one gets for trying to do good.

In the train that day a passenger told me some more about
Boer life out in the lonely veidt. He said the Boer gets up
early and sets his " niggers " at their tasks (pasturing the cattle,
and watching them) ; eats, smokes, drowses, sleeps ; toward
evening superintends the milking, etc. ; eats, smokes, drowses ;
goes to bed at early candlelight in the fragrant clothes he
(and she) have worn all day and every week-day for years. I
remember that last detail, in Olive Schreiner's " Story of an
African Farm." And the passenger told me that the Boers
were justly noted for their hospitality. He told me a story
about it. He said that his grace the Bishop of a certain See
was once making a business-progress through the tavernless
veldt, and one night he stopped with a Boer ; after supper was
shown to bed ; he undressed, weary and worn out, and was
soon sound asleep ; in the night he woke up feeling crowded
and suffocated, and found the old Boer and his fat wife in bed
with him, one on each side, with all their clothes on, and snor-
ing. He had to stay there and stand it — awake and suffering
— until toward dawn, when sleep again fell upon him for an
hour. Then he woke again. The Boer was gone, but the wife
was still at his side.

Those Keformers detested that Boer prison ; they were not
used to cramped quarters and tedious hours, and weary idle-
ness, and early to bed, and limited movement, and arbitrary

698 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

and irritating rules, and the absence of the luxuries which
■wealth comforts the day and the night with. The confine-
ment told upon their bodies and their spirits ; still, they were
superior men, and they made the best that was to be made
of the circumstances. Their wives smuggled delicacies to them,
which helped to smooth the way down for the prison fare.

In the train Mr. B. told me that the Boer jail-guards
treated the black prisoners — even political ones — mercilessly.
An African chief and his following had been kept there nine
months without trial, and during all that time they had been
without shelter from rain and sun. He said that one day the
guards put a big black in the stocks for dashing his soup on
the ground ; they stretched his legs painfully wide apart, and
set him with his back doAvn hill ; he could not endure it, and
put back his hands upon the slope for a support. The guard
ordered him to withdraw the support — and kicked him in the
back. "Then," said Mr. B., "the powerful black wrenched
the stocks asunder and went for the guard ; a Reform prisoner
pulled him oflf, and thrashed the guard himself."

CHAPTEK LXIX.

The very ink with which all history is written is merely fluid prejudice.

— PtidcCnhead Wilaon^s New Calendar.
There isn't a Parallel of Latitude but thinks it would have been the Equator if
it had had its rights. — Pudd^nfiead Wilsoii^s New Calendar.

NEXT to Mr. Ehodes, to me the most interesting convul-
sion of nature in South Africa was the diamond-
crater. The Rand gold fields are a stupendous
marvel, and they make all other gold fields small, but I was
not a stranger to gold-mining ; the veldt was a noble thing to
see, but it was only another and lovelier variety of our Great
Plains ; the natives were very far from being uninteresting,
but they were not new ; and as for the towns, I could find my
way without a guide through the most of them because I had
learned the streets, under other names, in towns just like them
in other lands ; but the diamond mine was a wholly fresh
thing, a splendid and absorbing novelty. Very few people in
the world have seen the diamond in its home. It has but
three or four homes in the world, whereas gold has a million.
It is worth while to journey around the globe to see anything
which can truthfully be called a novelty, and the diamond
mine is the greatest and' most select and restricted novelty
which the globe has in stock.

The Kimberley diamond deposits were discovered about
1869, I think. When everything is taken into consideration,
the wonder is that they were not discovered five thousand
years ago and made familiar to the African world for the rest
of time. For this reason the first diamonds were found on the
surface of the ground. They were smooth and limpid, and in

(699)

700

FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

the sunlight they vomited fire. They were the very things
which an African savage of any era would value above every
other thing in the world excepting a glass bead. For two or
three centuries we have been buying his lands, his cattle, his
neighbor, and any other thing he had for sale, for glass beads :
and so it is strange that he was indifferent to the diamonds
— for he must have picked them up many and many a time.
It would not occur to him to try to sell them to whites, of
course, since the whites already had plenty of glass beads, and
more fashionably shaped, too, than these ; but one would think
that the poorer sort of black, who could not afford real glass,
would have been humbly content to decorate himself with the
imitation, and that presently the white trader would notice the
things, and dimly suspect, and carry some of them home, and
find out what they were, and at once empty a multitude of
fortune-hunters into Africa. There are many strange things in
human history ; one of the strangest is that the sparkling dia-
monds laid there so long without exciting any one's interest.

The revelation came at last by accident. In a Boer's hut
out in the wide solitude of the plains, a traveling stranger
noticed a child playing with a bright object, and was told it
was a piece of glass which had been found in the veldt. The
stranger bought it for a trifle and carried it away ; and being
without honor, made another stranger believe it was a diamond,
and so got $125 out of him for it, and was as pleased with him-
self as if he had done a righteous thing. In Paris the wronged
stranger sold it to a pawnshop for $10,000, who sold it to a
countess for $90,000, who sold it to a brewer for $800,000, who
traded it to a king for a dukedom and a pedigree, and the king
" put it up the spout." f I know these particulars to be correct.

THE kimbp:rley crater. 701

The news flew around, and the South African diamond-
boom began. The original traveler — the dishonest one — now
remembered that he had once seen a Boer teamster chocking
his wagon-wheel on a steep grade with a diamond as large as
a football, and he laid aside his occupations and started out to
hunt for it, but not with the intention of cheating anybody out
of $125 with it, for he had reformed.

We now come to matters more didactic. Diamonds are
not imbedded in rock ledges fifty miles long, like the Johannes-
burg gold, but are distributed through the rubbish of a filled-
up well, so to speak. The well is rich, its walls are sharply
defined ; outside of the walls are no diamonds. The well is a
crater, and a large one. Before it had been, meddled with, its
surface was even with the level plain, and there was no sign to
suggest that it was there. The pasturage covering the surface
of the Kimberley crater was suificient for the support of a cow,
and the pasturage underneath was sufficient for the support of
a kingdom ; but the cow did not know it, and lost her chance.

The Kimberley crater is roomy enough to admit the Roman
Coliseum ; the bottom of the crater has not been reached, and
no one can tell how far down in the bowels of the earth it
goes. Originally, it was a perpendicular hole packed solidly
full of blue rock or cement, and scattered through that blue
mass, like raisins in a pudding, were the diamonds. As deep
down in the earth as the blue stuff extends, so deep will the
diamonds be found.

There are three or four other celebrated craters near by -
a circle three miles in diameter would enclose them all. They
are owned by the De Beers Company, a consolidation of dia-
mond properties arranged by Mr. Rhodes twelve or fourteen
years ago. The De Beers owns other craters ; they are under
the grass, but the De Beers knows where they are, and will
open them some day, if the market should require it.

702

FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

Originally," the diamond deposits were the property of the
Orange Free State; but a judicious "rectification" of the
boundary line shifted them over into the British territory of
Cape Colony. A high official of the Free State told me that
the ^um of $400,000 was handed to his commonwealth as a
compromise, oi* indemnity, or something of the sort, and that
he thought his commonwealth did wisely to take the money
and keep out of a dispute, since the power was all on the one
side and the weakness all on the other. The De Beers Com-
pany dig out $400,000 worth of diamonds per week, now. The
Cape got the territory, but no profit ; for Mr, Rhodes and the
Rothschilds and the other De Beers people own the mines, and
they pay no taxes.

In our day the mines are worked upon scientific principles, un-
der the guidance of the ablest
mining - engineering talent
procurable in America. There
are elaborate works for re-
ducing the blue rock and
passing it through one pro-
cess after another until every
diamond it contains has been
hunted down and secured. I
watched the " concentrators "
at work — big tanks contain-
ing mud and water and in-
visible diamonds — and was
t old that each could stir and
churn and properly treat 300
car-loads of mud per day —
1,600 pounds to the car-load
— and reduce it to 3 car-loads of slush. I saw the 3 car-
loads of slush taken to the " pulsators " and there reduced to a

8EABCHING FOR GEMS.

FISHING FOR DIAMONDS. 703

quarter of a load of nice clean dark-colored sand. Then I fol-
lowed it to the sorting tables and saw the men deftly and swiftly-
spread it out and brush it about and seize the diamonds as they
showed up. I assisted, and once I found a diamond half as large
as an almond. It is an exciting kind of fishing, and you feel a
fine thrill of pleasure every time you detect the glow of one of
those limpid pebbles through the veil of dark sand. I would
like to spend my Saturday holidays in that charming sport
every now and then. Of course there are disappointments.
Sometimes you find a diamond whidi is not a diamond; it is
only a quartz crystal or some such worthless thing. The ex-
pert can generally distinguish it from the precious stone which
it is counterfeiting ; but if he is in doubt he lays it on a flatiron
and hits it with a sledge-hammer. If it is a diamond it holds
its own ; if it is anything else, it is rMuced to powder. I liked
that experiment very much, and did not tire of repetitions of
it. It was full of enjoyable apprehensions, unmarred by any
personal sense of risk. The De Beers concern treats 8,000 car-
loads — about 6,000 tons — of blue rock per day, and the result
is three pounds of diamonds. Value, uncut, $50,000 to $Y0,000.
After cutting, they will weigh considerably less than a pound,
but will be worth four or five times as much as they were before.
All the plain around that region is spread over, a foot deep,
with blue rock, placed there by the Company, and looks like
a plowed field. Exposure for a length of time make the rock
easier to work than it is when it comes out of the mine. If
mining should cease now, the supply of rock spread over those
fields. would furnish the usual 8,000 car-loads per day to the
separating works during three years. The fields are fenced
and watched ; and at night they are under the constant inspec-
tion of lofty electric searchlight. They contain fifty or sixty
million dollars' worth of diamonds, and there is an abundance
of enterprising thieves around.

704

FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

In the dirt of the Kimberley streets there is much hidden
wealth. Some time ago the people were granted the privilege
of a free wash-up. There was a general rush, the work was
done with thoroughness, and a good harvest of diamonds was
gathered.

The deep mining is done by natives. There are many hun-
dreds of them. They live in quarters built around the inside
of a great compound. They are a jolly and good-natured lot,

INSIDE OF COMPOUND WITH NET COVERING TO PREVENT THOWING GEMS
OUT OF THE CRATER.

and accommodating. They performed a war-dance for us,
which was the wildest exhibition I have ever seen. They are
not allowed outside of the compound during their term of ser-
vice — three months, I think it is, as a rule. They go down
the shaft, stand their watch, come up again, are searched, and
go to bed or to their amusements in the compound ; and this
routine they repeat, day in and day out.

It is thought that they do not now steal many diamonds —
successfully. They used to swallow them, and find other ways
of concealing them, but the white man found ways of beating

■THE GREAT DIAMOND.

705

their various games. One man cut his leg and shoved a dia-
mond into the wound, but even that project did not succeed.
When they find a fine large diamond they are more likely to
report it than to steal it, for in the former case they get a re-
ward, and in the latter they are quite apt to merely get into
trouble. Some years ago, in a mine not owned by the De
Beers, a black found what has been claimed to be the largest
diamond known to the world's history ; and as a reward he
Avas released from service and given a blanket, a horse, and
five hundred dollars.
It made him a Yan-
derbilt. He could
buy four wives, and
have money left.
Four wives are an
ample support for a
native. AVith four
wives he is wholly
independent, and
need never do a
stroke of work again.
That great dia-
mond weighs 971
carats. Some say it
is as big as a piece of
alum, others say it
is as large as a bite
of rock candy, but
the best authorities
agree that it is almost
exactly the size of a chunk of ice. But those details are not
important ; and in my opinion not trustworthy. It has a flaw
45

706 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

in it, otherwise it would be of incredible value. As it is, it is
held to be worth $2,000,000. After cutting it ought to be
worth from |5,000,000 to $8,000,000, therefore persons desiring
to save money should buy it now. It is owned by a syndicate,
and apparently there is no satisfactory market for it. It is
earning nothing ; it is eating its head off. Up to this time it
has made nobody rich but the native who found it.

He found it in a mine which was being worked by contract.
That is to say, a company had bought the privilege of taking
from the mine 5,000,000 carloads of blue-rock, for a sum down
and a royalty. Their speculation had not paid ; but on the
very day that their privilege ran out that native found the
$2,000,000-diamond and handed it over to them. Even the
diamond culture is not without its romantic episodes.

The Koh-i-Noor is a large diamond, and valuable; but it
cannot compete in these matters with three which — according
to legend — are among the crown trinkets of Portugal and
Russia. One of these is held to be worth $20,000,000 ; another,
$25,000,000, and the third something over $28,000,000.

Those are truly wonderful diamonds, whether they exist or
not ; and yet they are of but little importance by comparison
with the one wherewith the Boer wagoner chocked his wheel
on that steep grade as heretofore referred to. In Kimberley I
had somi conversation with the man who saw the Boer do
that — an incident which had occurred twenty-seven or twenty-
eight years before I had my talk with him. He assured me
that that diamond's value could have been over a billion
dollars, but not under it. I believed him, because he had de-
voted twenty-seven years to hunting for it, and was in a
position to know.

A fitting and interesting finish to an examination of the
tedious and laborious and costly processes whereby the diamonds
are gotten out of the deeps of the earth and freed from the

TWELVE MILLIONS PROFIT.

707

base stuffs which imprison them is the visit to the De Beers
oflBces in the town of Kimberley, where the result of each
day's mining is brought every day, and weighed, assorted,
valued, and deposited in safes against shipping-day. An un-
known and unaccredited person cannot get into that place ;
and it seemed apparent from the generous supply of warning
and protective and prohibitory signs that were posted all about
that not even the known and
accredited can steal diamonds
there without inconvenience.

We saw the day's output
— shining little nests of dia-
monds, distributed a foot
apart, along a counter, each
nest reposing upon a sheet of
white paper. That day's
catch was about $70,000
worth. In the course of a
year half a ton of diamonds
pass under the scales there
and sleep on that counter;
the resulting money is $18,-
000,000 or $20,000,000. Profit, about $12,000,000.

Young girls were doing the sorting — a nice, clean, dainty,
and probably distressing employment. Every day ducal in-
comes sift and sparkle through the fingers of those young
girls ; yet they go to bed at night as poor as they were when
they got up in the morning. The same thing next day, and all
the days.

They are beautiful things, those diamonds, in their native
state. They are of various shapes ; they have flat surfaces,
rounded borders, and never a sharp edge. They are of all
colors and shades of color, from dewdrop white to actual black ;

NATIVE MINERS GAMBLING.

708 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

and their smooth and rounded surfaces and contours, variety
of color, and transparent limpidity make them look like piles
of assorted candies. A very light straw color is their com-
monest tint. It seemed to me that these uncut gems must be
more beautiful than any cut ones could be ; but Avhen a collec-
tion of cut ones was brought out, I saw ray mistake. ]Js"othing
is so beautiful as a rose diamond with the light playing
through it, except that uncostly thing which is just like it —
wavy sea- water with the sunlight playing through it and strik-
ing a white-sand' bottom.

Before the middle of July we reached Cape Town, and the
end of our African journeyings. And well satisfied ; for, tow-
ering above us was Table Mountain — a reminder that we had
now seen each and all of the great features of South Africa
except Mr. Cecil Rhodes. I realize that that is a large excep-
tion. I know quite well that whether Mr. Rhodes is the lofty
and worshipful patriot and statesman that multitudes believe
him to be, or Satan come again, as the rest of the world account
him, he is still the most imposing figure in the British empire
outside of England. When he stands on the Ca])e of Good
Hope, his shadow falls to the Zambesi. He is the only colonial
in the British dominions whose goings and comings are chron-
icled and discussed under all the globe's meridians, and whose
speeches, undipped, are cabled from the ends of the earth;
and he is the only unroyal outsider whose arrival in London
can compete for attention with an eclipse.

That he is an extraordinary man, and not an accident of
fortune, not even his dearest South African enemies were
willing to deny, so far as I heard them testify. The whole
South African world seemed to stand in a kind of shuddering
awe of him, friend and enemy alike. It was as if he were
deputy-God on the one side, deputy-Satan on the other, pro-
prietor of the people, able to make them or ruin them by his

CECIL RHODES' SUPREMACY. Y09

breath, worshiped by many, hated, by many, but blasphemed
by none among the judicious, and even by the indiscreet in
guarded whispers only.

"What is the secret of his formidable supremacy? One says
it is his prodigious wealth — a wealth whose drippings in sala-
ries and in other ways support multitudes and make them
his interested and loyal vassals ; another says it is his personal
magnetism and his persuasive tongue, and that these hypnotize
and make happy slaves of all that drift within the circle of
their influence ; another says it is his majestic ideas, his vast
schemes for the territorial aggrandizement of England, his
patriotic and unselfish ambition to spread her beneficent pro-
tection and her just rule over the pagan wastes of Africa and
make luminous the African darkness with the glory of her
name ; and another says he wants the earth and wants it for
his own, and that the belief that he ^vill get it and let his
friends in on the ground floor is the secret that rivets so many
eyes upon him and keeps him in the zenith where the view is
unobstructed.

One may take his choice. They are all the same price.
One fact is sure : he keeps his prominence and a vast following,
no matter what he does. He " deceives " the Duke of Fife —
it is the Duke's word — but that does not destroy the Duke's
loyalty to him. He tricks the Reformers into immense trouble
with his Raid, but the most of them believe he meant well.
He weeps over the harshly-taxed Johannesburgers and makes
them his friends ; at the same time he taxes his Charter-settlers
50 per cent,, and so wins their affection and their confidence
that they are squelched with despair at every rumor that the
Charter is to be annulled. He raids and robs and slays and
enslaves the Matabele and gets .worlds of Charter-Christian
applause for it. He has beguiled England into buying Charter
waste paper for Bank of England notes, ton for ton, and the

710 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

ravished still burn incense to him as the Eventual God of
Plenty. He has done everything he could think of to pull
himself down to the ground ; he has done more than enough
to pull sixteen common-run great men down ; yet there he
stands, to this day, upon his dizzy summit under the dome of
the sky, an apparent permanency, the marvel of the time, the
mystery of the age, an Archangel \vith wings to half the world,
Satan with a tail to the other half.

I admire him, I frankly confess it ; and when his time
comes I shall buy a piece of the rope for a keepsake.

CONCLUSION.

I have traveled more than an5'one else, and I have noticed that even the angels
speak English with an accent. — Piidd''nhead Wilson^ s New Calendar.

I SAW Table Eock, anyway — a majestic pile. It is 3,000
feet high. It is also 17,000 feet high. These figures may
be relied upon. I got them in Cape Town from the tAvo best-
informed citizens, men who had made Table Rock the study of
their lives. And I saw Table Bay, so named for its levelness.
I saw the Castle — built by the Dutch East India Company
three hundred years ago — where the Commanding General
lives ; I saw St. Simon's Bay, where the Admiral lives. I
saw the Government, also the Parliament, where they quar-
reled in two languages when I was there, and agreed in none.
I saw the club. I saw and explored the beautiful sea-girt
drives that wind about the mountains and through the para-

A ROMANTIC HISTORY. 711

dise where the villas are. Also I saw some of the fine old
Dutch mansions, pleasant homes of the early times, pleasant
homes to-day, and enjoyed the privilege of their hospitalities.

And just before I sailed I saw in one of them a quaint old
picture which was a link in a curious romance — a picture of a
pale, intellectual young man in a pink coat with a high black
collar. It was a portrait of Dr. James Barry, a military sur-
geon who came out to the Cape fifty years ago with his regi-
ment. He was a wild young fellow, and was guilty of various
kinds of misbehavior. He was several times reported to head-
quarters in England, and it was in each case expected that
orders would come out to deal with him promptly and severely,
but for some mysterious reason no orders of any kind ever
came back — nothing came but just an impressive silence.
This made him an imposing and uncanny wonder to the town.

Next, he was promoted — away up. He was made Medical
Superintendent General, and transferred to India. Presently
he was back at the Cape again and at his escapades once more.
There were plenty of pretty girls, but none of them caught
him, none of them could get hold of his heart ; evidently he
was not a marrying man. And that was another marvel,
another puzzle, and made no end of perplexed talk. Once he
was called in the night, an obstetric service, to do what he
could for a woman who was believed to be dying. He was
prompt and scientific, and saved both mother and child. There
are other instances of record which testify to his mastership of
his profession ; and many which testify to his love of it and
his devotion to it. Among other adventures of his was a duel
of a desperate sort, fought with swords, at the Castle. He
killed his man.

The child heretofore mentioned as having been saved by
Dr. Barry so long ago, was named for him, and still lives in
Cape Town. He had Dr. Barry's portrait painted, and gave it

712 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.

to the gentleman in whose old Dutch house I saw it — the
quaint figure in pink coat and high black collar.

The story seems to be arriving nowhere. But that is be-
cause I have not finished. Dr. Barry died in Cape Town 30
years ago. It was then discovered that he was a woman.

The legend goes that enquiries — soon silenced — developed
the fact that she was a daughter of a great English house, and
that that was why her Cape wildnesses brought no punishment
and got no notice when reported to the government at home.
Her name was an alias. She had disgraced herself with her
people ; so she chose to change her name and her sex and take
a new start in the world.

"We sailed on the 15th of July in the Norman., a beautiful
ship, perfectly appointed. The voyage to England occupied a
short fortnight, without a stop except at Madeira. A good
and restful voyage for tired people, and there Avere several of
us. I seemed to have been lecturing a thousand years, though
it was only a twelvemonth, and a considerable number of the
others were Reformers who were fagged out with their five
months of seclusion in the Pretoria prison.

Our trip around the earth ended at the Southampton pier,
where we embarked thirteen months before. It seemed a fine
and large thing to have accomplished — the circumnavigation
of this great globe in that little time, and I was privately proud
of it. For a moment. Then came one of those vanity-snubbing
astronomical reports from the Observatory-people, whereby it
appeared that another great body of light had lately flamed
up in the remotenesses of space which was traveling at a gait
which would enable it to do all that I had done in a minute
amd a half. Human pride is not worth while ; there is always
something lying in Avait to take the wind out of it.

M :■!';'*

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