The Pacific Triangle Part 12

Then the miracle occurred. From the west, hidden from me by the s.h.i.+p, the sun reached to the eastern clouds, das.h.i.+ng them with pink and bronze and blue. I could not tell where the horizon went to, and was roused to curiosity as to what kind of sunset could effect such lovely tints. It wasn't a sunset, but a sunfall, a revelation. Where suggestion through imitation glistened on the eastern side, daring prodigality of color swept away emotion on the western side. It was neither saddening nor joyous. It was a vision of a consciousness in nature as full of character, as definitely meaningful and emotional as a human face. There was something almost terrifying in the expression of that sunset face.

One could read into it what one felt in one's own soul. And a little later a crescent moon peeped over the horizon.

At about midnight of the seventeenth day after leaving Sydney we crawled over the equator, and no home-coming ever meant more to me than seeing the dipper again and the Northern stars. During all those days nothing wildly exciting had happened at sea; but just after we left the equator we pa.s.sed a series of water-spouts--six in all--which formed a semi-circle east, south, and west. The spout to the east seemed to me to be at least two or three hundred feet high, and tremendous in circ.u.mference. It drew a solid column of water from the sea far into a heavy black cloud. On the sea beneath it rose a flutter of water fully fifty feet high, black as the smoke produced by a magician's wand. Weird and illusive, the giants beggared description as they stalked away to the southeast, like animated sky-sc.r.a.pers.

Then we reached Zamboanga, the little town on the island of Mindanao of the Philippines. From there, for twelve hours, we crept long the coast till we entered Manila Harbor.

There remained but two days' voyage before I would reach Asia, the object of my interest for years, and of all my efforts for two. But it was not so easy as all that, for two days upon the China Sea are worth a year upon the Atlantic. Riding a cyclone would be riding a hobby-horse or a camel compared with the Yellow Sea, and though I was the only pa.s.senger who missed only one meal during the whole period, I was beaten by the seventy-three-year-old English captain,--who managed all but half a meal. The sea would roll skyward as though it were striving to stand on end and for a moment the s.h.i.+p would lurch downward as though on a loop-the-loop. Sometimes it seemed as though the world were turning completely over. Yet I was told this was only normal, and that typhoons visit it with stated regularity. The China Sea is "the very metropolis of typhoons."

A month had well-nigh gone before we reached Hong-Kong, the British portal to Cathay, a month of dreamy weather. Only one thing more,--a thing more like a scene in the Arabian Nights. Toward the end of the journey I discovered where the five hundred Chinese whose noses had been counted when we left Sydney had gone. Going forward, I looked over into an open hatchway, down into the hold, and there was a sight I shall never forget. These hundreds of deck pa.s.sengers were all in a muddle amid cargo, parcels, hundreds of birds in cages, parrots, a kangaroo,--yet oblivious of everything. For the entire voyage nothing that I tell of could possibly have come within their ken, as during those days their minds were bent on one thing and one alone,--on playing fan-tan. There in the bottom of the hold hundreds of gold sovereigns pa.s.sed from hand to hand in a game of chance. And at last they were to be released, to spread, a handful of sand thrown back upon the beach.

As for myself, with my arrival at Hong-Kong and a visit to Shanghai ended the longest continuous voyage I had made upon the Pacific, and the second side of that great Pacific Triangle was drawn. But meanwhile let me review in detail the outposts of the white man in the far Pacific--the lands I had pa.s.sed on the white man's side of the triangle, ending in Hong-Kong, where white man and Oriental meet.

CHAPTER VIII

THE AUSTRALIAN OUTLANDS

1

In the normal course of human variation, there should have been virtually no change of experience for me in going from New Zealand to Australia, notwithstanding the twelve hundred miles of sea that separate them. And though the sea is hardly responsible, there was a difference between these two offshoots of the "same" race for which distance offers little explanation. To me it seemed that regardless of the pride of race which encourages people to vaunt their h.o.m.ogeneity, the way these two counterparts of Britain have developed proves that h.o.m.ogeneity exists in wish more than in fact. It seems to me that the New Zealander has developed as though he were more closely related to the insular Anglo-Saxon, and the Australian as though he were the continental strain in the Englishman cropping out in a new and vast continent. However, this is sheer conjecture. All I can do is to offer in the form of my own observations reasons for the faith that is in me.

From the moment that I set foot in Australia I felt once again on a continent. Melbourne is low, flat, and gave me the impression of roominess which New Zealand cities never gave. They, with the exception of Christchurch on the Canterbury plains, always clambered up bare brown hills and hardly kept from slipping down into the sea. But in Australia I felt certain that if I set out in any direction except east I could walk until my hair grew gray without ever coming across a mountain. It was a great satisfaction to me that first day, for it was intensely hot and I had a heavy coat on my arm and two cameras and no helmet. Added to my difficulties was the cordiality of an Australian fellow-pa.s.senger who was determined that I should share with him his delight at home-coming.

He was a short, stout, olive-skinned young man of about twenty-three who had a slightly German swing in his gait and accentuated his every statement with a diagonal cut outward of his right hand, palm down.

He lured me from one end of Melbourne to the other, made me lunch with him at a vegetarian restaurant,--which is a very popular resort in Melbourne,--introduced me to Cole's Book Arcade, to the Blue-bird Tea Rooms, where fine orchestral music flavors one's refreshments, to the latest bank building and even to the station of the railway, which "carries the largest suburban pa.s.senger traffic of any in the world."

"Meet me under the clock," is the Melbournian motto. How they can all do so is beyond me, for the half-dozen stone steps that lead to the narrow doors at the corner of the station could not, I am sure, afford a rendezvous for more than thirty people at one time; yet the old clock ticks away in patience,--the most popular and most persistent thing in Melbourne.

[Ill.u.s.tration: ONE OF THE OLDEST AUSTRALIAN RESIDENCES IS NOW A PUBLIC DOMAIN]

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE INTERIOR OF A WEALTHY SHEEP STATION OWNER'S HOME IN MELBOURNE]

[Ill.u.s.tration: AUSTRALIAN BLACKS IN THEIR NATIVE ELEMENT A. A. White, Brisbane]

[Ill.u.s.tration: AN AUSTRALIAN BLACK IN MELBOURNE Out of his element but happy none the less]

I had so much trouble keeping pace with this Australian, who seemed to grow more energetic the hotter it became, that I was grateful when he said he would have to leave me, and I was alone again. Then I realized for the first time that I could really like Melbourne; that it had long, broad, s.p.a.cious streets with clean, fresh-looking office and department-store buildings, that even the narrower side streets were clean and inviting, and that the street cars were propelled by cables and not by trolley wires. So easy were these cars and so low that no one ever waited for them to stop, but hopped aboard anywhere along the street. Melbourne was to me a perfect bath in cleanliness and orderliness,--just what a city ought to be. Even in the very heart of the city the homes had a suburban gentility about them, and there were no unnecessary noises, no smoke, and no end of pretty girls. The people were a joy to look at. Something of the tropical looseness in both dress and flesh, as though their skins were always being fully ventilated, made them attractive. The New Zealanders made me feel as though I were in a bushel of apples; the Australians, carefully packed yellow plums. I have never enjoyed just being on the street more than I did in Melbourne.

On Bourke Street, in the very midst of the pus.h.i.+ng crowd, a soft-voiced lad approached me for some information and strutted off, tall in his self-confidence. Victorian belles, tall, graceful, russet-skinned, plump but not flabby, moved with a fine air of self-reliance. On closer acquaintance, I found that these girls were not silent and opinionless as were most of the New Zealand girls. Whatever the issue before the public, they had their defined opinions concerning it, and they were not sneered at by the men. Then, too, there was a companions.h.i.+p between the boys and girls, without reserve, that was balm to my soul after the year in New Zealand.

Melbourne was the home of Madame Melba, and in consequence the city is the most musical of any I lived in in the Antipodes. Even the babies sing operatically on the streets, and the voices one hears from open windows are not the head-voices of prayer-meetings, but those of people who seem to know the value of the human larynx.

During the two weeks that I was in Melbourne, I was, whenever I chose, a guest of the Master of the Mint, Mr. Bagg, who was the uncle of a New Zealand girl of my acquaintance; lunched, dined and afternoon tea-ed with his family whenever I felt like it; was rushed to the theater to see an old pioneer play; and went to attend public meetings at which the mayor and the prime minister spoke; visited the beaches, and knew the joy of the most refres.h.i.+ng companions.h.i.+p it was my good-fortune to meet with in all my wanderings,--though there were others. And it was so with whomever I met in Melbourne, from the clerk in the haberdashery, who acquainted me with the jealousy that exists between Sydney and Melbourne, to the woman in whose home I roomed on Fitzroy Park, or the young couple with the toddling baby and the glorious sheep-dog, who engaged me in conversation on the lawn near the beach at St. Kilda.

And so I still see Melbourne in memory as a place I should enjoy living in. I was often alone, but never lonely in it. And I see it from its Botanic Gardens, with the broad Yarra Yarra River slowly cleaving it in two, its soft, semi-tropical mists hanging over it, its temperate climate, its cleanliness and its low, rolling hills where it hides its suburbs.

I didn't go to see Adelaide, in South Australia, because I was destined to live in Sydney, in New South Wales.

2

It is more than mere accident that Victoria has broader-gaged railways than New South Wales, and that travelers from one state to the other must get off at Albury and change, or between New South Wales and Queensland to the north of it. It is not mere accident, I am sure, for there is a like difference in the width of streets between Melbourne and Sydney.

Sydney is hilly, exposed, bricky, and crowded, and though it is the premier city of Australia, it grows without changing. There is a conservatism about it which, in view of the activity of Australians, is inexplicable. Sydney is almost an old city. Its streets wind as though the settlers had been uncertain of the prevailing winds; and the hills tend to give it an appearance of huddling. The red roofs of the cottage-like houses, and their architectural style give it a European tone, slightly like an English city. It has none of the fresh, "hand-me-down" regularity of the American, nor the sober coziness of the English, village. Every street leads one to the center of the city, and wind as it will there is hardly any relief from commonplaceness. The thoroughfares are crowded with street cars which cross and circ.u.mambulate, some of the main streets are too narrow for more than single-track lines. Yet instead of seeing the earlier error and trying to correct it by prohibiting the erection of buildings on the present curb lines, the authorities have permitted one of the finest office buildings in the city--the Commonwealth Bank Building, to be placed on the same line as the rest of the old structures. It is hardly to be expected that such methods will ever broaden the streets.

There are no tenements in Sydney, in the New York sense of the term, but the average home as I saw it on my usual rounds in search of quarters, was ordinary. The rooms were small, and there were few conveniences.

But this is Sydney proper. Newer Sydney, with its suburbs and homes along the numerous peninsulas projecting into the waters of Port Jackson, is modern, clean, and airy, and really convenient. Man is a lazy animal and p.r.o.ne to dote on nature's beauties, neglecting his responsibilities to nature. Sydney, proud of its harbor, builds there and forgets its city-self. There are no fine structures to speak of, no monuments, no art, and even the library has to borrow a roof for itself in a building essentially excellent but neglected as a munic.i.p.al white elephant. But there is a munic.i.p.al organ in the Town Hall, and that makes up for much that is wanting in Sydney.

I took up my quarters across the water from Sydney, and from there I could see the city through the glory-lens, its harbor. Little peninsulas, crossed in but a few minutes, project into the waters of the harbor, making it look like an oak-leaf and affording sites for the splendid homes that have been built there. Crowding is impossible; views of the water may be had from all angles. And here, in a borrowed nest, I sat for hours perched above the water, noting and gloating over its moods and character. What charm it works, when in the blood-red streaks of sunset the tidal floods cool the peaceful turquoise; when the busy little ferries of day become fairy transports with streaks of s.h.i.+mmering light as escort, moving across the still waters; when on Sunday morning Sydney across the way relaxes, amazing with revelations.

With street and sky-line clear, quiet hangs in the air; or on more windy days, myriad whitecaps royne at the numerous s.h.i.+ps which cross and recross one another's paths. In one direction, industry is idealized; in others, nature and beauty lie naked, above idealization.

For two weeks I lived out at Manly Beach, nine miles by ferry from Sydney, and went in and out every day. The Heads lie to the right, and as we made our way across, the swells from the sea beyond rolled the little ferry teasingly. At times, when the swells were heavier and the crowds excessive, a sort of panic would spread over them, but some of the inevitable minstrels that swarm the streets and by-ways of Sydney, would counteract contagion with music and song.

The beaches are always crowded. Annette Kellerman is Australian, and somehow, whether as cause or effect, Sydney people are the most amphibious folk in the world. They seem to live in the water. Every spare hour is spent on the wide stretches of sand that lie warm and white in the blazing sun. But nothing takes precedence over the harbor in the adoration of Sydneyites.

Sydney is known for its gaiety, yet I was lonely in Sydney,--bitterly so. Perhaps people are too gay to think of others, perhaps their gaiety made me exaggerate my loneliness. "Nothing like the Australian larrikin when he gets going," you will be told. But what struck me was the latent distemper that lurked beneath much of the hilarity that I saw in Sydney.

Australia is not very different from any of us,--a little more imitative, a little more outspoken, a little more gruff, a little more youthful. But wildness is not specially Australian; nor is bluntness; nor yet youthfulness. The Australian is perhaps a little more reckless, individually or _en ma.s.se_, than the people of other lands, but he puts up with the same social inconveniences; he reasons falsely at times and gets fooled; he gloats over the spectacular, becomes intensely excited over nothing,--and suddenly relapses. In a crowd he sometimes becomes belligerent, yet is easily led and easily relinquishes. But, above all else, he is gregarious. And it is because of this that he takes you in in Sydney,--and drops you out before you have known what has happened to you. Hence he is an inveterate sportsman, a heavy drinker, a perpetual gambler at the races,--faithful to his whimsicalities.

Intellectually he is a fanatic, but tolerates all sorts of fanaticisms.

A Sunday morning on the beautiful grounds of the Public Domain is enough to convince you that Sydney would welcome the most freakish freak in the world, imprison him for the fun of it, then sympathize with him if he dies in prison, as did the famous naked man, Chidley. I have seen Sydney men who seemed to me men without hearts, as soft and gentle as women in the face of another man's hurt. Yet when a well-known army officer stole funds that belonged to wounded soldiers and their needy families, I heard respectable Sydney men say they were glad he got away with it. I have seen girls at carnivals, who at ten o'clock went about tickling strange men under the chin, snarl at them at eleven and order them to "Trot along, now." I have heard Australians say harsh things of themselves in criticism, but true loyalty is widely prevalent among Australians. An Australian always wants a mate, "some one who would stick like lead" if he were up against it. The self-criticism comes rather from the more thoughtful Australians, who, looking out upon the future, want to see their country hold on to the prize it has won, and grow and become a leader in the affairs of the Pacific.

But though Sydney and Melbourne are the leading cities of the commonwealth, he who has to judge of the nation by them wonders where that leaders.h.i.+p is to come from. The love of pleasure is a sign of health in any people; and Australia is in that sense most healthful.

Material progress is the next best indication of the state of a nation; and Australia is universally prosperous. But it is in the outlook on life that a country justifies its existence and insures itself against decay. Until the war, all reports of Australia on that score were negative. Provincialism, of the most ingrowing kind, obtained. Every state thought chiefly of itself; every city of itself only; every district of none other than itself. But with the war Australia took a tremendous leap forward. For the first time in her history, her men had a chance to leave the land which intellectually was little more than a sublimated prison to them. Half a million men left Australia for Europe and other sections of the globe. And if Australia knew what she was about she would now send the rest of her men and women abroad with the same end in view,--the education of the people for the place they occupy in the world.

Much criticism is flung at Australia because her young men and women are inclined to enjoy life rather than burden themselves with a succeeding generation. If the beginning and end of life is reproduction, then that is a just criticism. But the welfare of the living is as important as the welfare of civilization. The greatest criticism is not that people will not bear children in the face of trying economic conditions, but that, having exceptionally favorable circ.u.mstances, they show no special inclination to become parents, and that nothing is being done to create conditions under which the bearing of young would be no handicap. But that requires an intellectual outlook which is at present wanting in the cities of Melbourne and Sydney. There is an over-emphasis of pleasure _per se_, a lack of seriousness in the concerns of life.

Sydney lures men and women from the back-blocks and makes them feel human again, makes them forget the plains are sear, and that manliness is next to cleanliness. It affords dull station-owners a chance to mix with folk where sweetness and refinement, and not crudeness, is the order of the day and of life. It takes men and women who have been told that to increase and multiply is the only contribution they can make to the welfare of the community and shows them that there is something in life besides that. So when I think of what Sydney means to the world that lies behind it I cannot refrain from offering my contribution of praise. But then I ask myself and Sydney what it has done to make the back-blocks better, what it is doing to build up the country, and the fact becomes evident that it is only draining it. Fully 51 per cent of the inhabitants of Australia live in cities. It is for these cities to lay railroads and highways and to open the vast continent; and that can be done only by putting prejudices aside, by adding to recreation real creation and a soberness in the affairs of life which alone will win for Australia its place in the affairs of the Pacific.

What, socially and individually, then, is the contribution of Australia to the civilization of the Pacific? Is her position to be one of eminent leaders.h.i.+p commensurate with the welfare of the individual members of the Commonwealth, or is their joyousness going to make her citizens forget ambition and their ruling destiny? This much must not be forgotten,--that born as a convict colony, Australia has more than justified itself; that the term "convict colony" is now no more applicable to Australia than it is to Virginia. That handicap notwithstanding, Australia to-day is as far advanced as any nation in the world. The people do not generally take to higher mathematics, to philosophical thinking, or to science, but illiteracy is rare in Australia. Given a continent wherein nothing of civilization was to be found, Australia has made of it, in a little more than a century, a land productive, healthful, and promising. Much praise is due j.a.pan for what she has accomplished along material lines in seventy years; how much more praise is due Australia for what she has done in about the same time!

3

As one journeys north along the Australian coast, life begins to thin out. Fate must have been in a comic mood when it apportioned me my experiences as I was leaving that island continent, for in Brisbane it allotted me an august funeral, and in Thursday Island it sent a missionary out to "attack me." Thereby hang two tales.

I had walked what seemed to me fully two miles from the pier in the Brisbane River to the heart of town and was rather overheated. My septuagenarian Englishman trudged along by my side. When we arrived in the central thoroughfare I took note of the fact that things looked fresh and clean, that there was a tendency toward pink paint, but that otherwise I might have saved myself the journey. Alas, it was Sat.u.r.day afternoon, and a half-holiday! Leaving my venerable comrade behind, I strode along at my own pace in search of adventure, my camera across my shoulder. I had taken to a hilly side street, and must have looked like a professional tourist. Absorbed in seeking, I was startled by an appealing voice behind me. Turning, I found the owner of that voice gazing intently at my camera.

"That's a camera you have there, sir."

I admitted my guilt, wondering what crime lurked in the possession of a camera.

"I've been trotting all over town trying to find a photographer, sir, but their shops are all closed. Would you mind coming along with me, sir, and taking a picture of a funeral as the mourners come out of church. Lady ---- is so anxious to have a picture of them just leaving church. The deceased, sir, her husband, was a very much beloved gentleman, a prominent official, and devoted to the church in which now lie his remains, and she would be so pleased if you would come and taik a fouto for her." In his excitement, he slipped into the use of c.o.c.kney, so prevalent in Australia. I threw out my chest and thought to myself: "See here, old man, do you think I've lived in New York and London and Paris, and Sydney, and ---- to be sold a gold brick in Brisbane? But I'll show you I'm game." And I followed him up the street. But sure enough, there at the top of the hill, from an imposing church, emerged a funeral, posing to be taken. It did not matter to this man that I told him my s.h.i.+p was in port only for the day and that before I could possibly make a print I should be either in China or j.a.pan. But just then Fate thought she was carrying the joke too far and sent along a native son with a camera, and I was released. I set out for the s.h.i.+p.

In the little gullies that lie along the way were shacks or cottages, raised on piles, with inverted pans between them and the floor beams.

White ants were eating to pulp these supports. We were in the tropics again.