The Story of the Philippines Part 39

When Spain gave up the ghosts of her American colonies, and the war situation was unfolded to signify that the fate of the Philippines was referred to a conference, and Aguinaldo announced the removal of his seat of government to Molones, one hour and a half from Manila, the scene of greatest interest was certainly not in the city and immediate surroundings. Then it was plain the American army must remain for some time, and would have only guard duty to perform. The Spaniards had succ.u.mbed and were submissive, having laid down their arms and surrendered all places and phases of authority. The insurgents'

removal of their headquarters declared that they had abandoned all claim to sharing in the occupation of the conquered city, and their opposition to the United States, if continued in theory, was not to be that in a practical way. Between the American, Spanish and Philippine forces there was no probability of disputed facts or forms that could be productive of contention of a serious nature. There was but one question left in this quarter of the world that concerned the people of the United States, and that whether they would hold their grip, s.n.a.t.c.hed by Dewey with his fleet, and confirmed by his government in sending an army, making our country possessors of the physical force to sustain our policy, whatever it might be, on the land as well as on the sea. Whether we should stay or go was not even to be argued in Manila, except in general and fruitless conversation. Then came the intelligence that General Merritt had been called to Paris and General Greene to Was.h.i.+ngton, and there was a deepened impression that the war was over. It was true that the army was in an att.i.tude and having experiences that were such as travelers appreciate as enjoyable, and that no other body of soldiers had surroundings so curious and fascinating. The most agreeable time of the year was coming on, and the sanitary conditions of the city, under the American administration, would surely improve constantly, and so would! the fare of the men, for the machinery in all departments was working smoothly. The boys were feeling pretty well, because they found their half dollars dollars--the Mexican fifty-cent piece, bigger and with more silver in it than the American standard dollar, was a bird. A dollar goes further if it is gold in Manila than in an American city, and if our soldiers are not paid in actual gold they get its equivalent, and the only money question unsettled is whether the Mexican silver dollar is worth in American money fifty cents or less. One of the sources of anxieties and disappointment and depression of the American soldiers in Manila has been the irregularity and infrequency with which they get letters. If one got a letter or newspaper from home of a date not more than six weeks old he had reason to be congratulated. The transports trusted with the mails were slow, and communications through the old lines between Hongkong and San Francisco, Yokohama and Vancouver, were not reliably organized. There were painful cases of ma.s.ses of mail on matter precious beyond all valuation waiting at Hongkong for a boat, and an issue whether the shorter road home was not by way of Europe. This is all in course of rapid reformation. There will be no more mystery as to routes or failures to connect. The soldiers, some of whom are ten thousand miles from home, should have s.h.i.+ploads of letters and papers. They need reading matter almost as much as they do tobacco, and the charming enthusiasm of the ladies who entertained the soldier boys when they were going away with feasting and flattery, praise and glorification, should take up the good work of sending them letters, papers, magazines and books. There is no reason why soldiers should be more subject to homesickness than sailors, except that they are not so well or ill accustomed to absence. The fact that the soldiers are fond of their homes and long for them can have ways of expression other than going home. A few days after the news of peace reached Manila, the transports were inspected for closing up the contracts with them under which they were detained, and soon they began to move. When the China was ordered to San Francisco, I improved the opportunity to return to the great republic. There was no chance to explore the many islands of the group of which Manila is the Spanish Capital. General Merritt changed the course of this fine s.h.i.+p and added to the variety of the voyage by taking her to Hongkong to sail thence by way of the China Sea, the Indian Ocean, the Arabian Gulf, the Red Sea, the Suez Ca.n.a.l and the Mediterranean, to Paris. Our route to San Francisco, by way of Hongkong, Nagasaki, Sunanaski, Kobe and the Yokohama light, was 6,905 knots, about seven thousand seven hundred statute miles, and gave us glimpses of the Asia sh.o.r.e, the west coast of Formosa and the great ports of Hongkong and Nagasaki. The first thing on the Sea of China, in the month of September, is whether we shall find ourselves in the wild embrace of a typhoon. It was the season for those terrible tempests and when we left Manila the information that one was about due was not spared us. We heard later on that the transport ahead of us four days, the Zealandia, was twenty-eight hours in a cyclone and much damaged--wrung and hammered and shocked until she had to put into Nagasaki for extensive repairs. The rainfall was so heavy during the storm that one could not see a hundred yards from the s.h.i.+p, and she was wrung in so furious a style in a giddy waltz, that the Captain was for a time in grave doubt whether she would not founder. The rule is when one is in the grasp of the oriental whirl to run through it, judging from the way of the wind, the shortest way out. There is a comparatively quiet spot in the center, and if the beset navigator can find the correct line of flight, no matter which way as relates to the line of his journey, he does well to take it. Often in this sea, as in this case, there were uncertainties as to directions. The rain narrowed observation like a dense fog, and there was danger of running upon some of the islands and snags of rocks. The battered vessel pulled through a cripple, with her boats shattered, her deck cracked across by a roller, and her crew were happy to find a quiet place to be put in order. "To be or not to be" an American instead of a Spanish or Asiatic city was the parting thought as the China left Manila Bay, and the dark rocks of Corrigedor faded behind us, and the rugged rocks that confront the stormy sea loomed on our right, and the violet peaks of volcanic mountains bounded our eastern horizon. The last view we had of the historic bay, a big German wars.h.i.+p was close to the sentinel rock, that the Spaniards thought they had fortified, until Dewey came and saw and conquered, swifter than Caesar, and the Germans, venturing some target practice, by permission of Dewey, who relaxes no vigilance of authority. Hongkong is 628 miles from Manila, and the waters so often stirred in monstrous wrath, welcomed us with a spread of dazzling silk. The clumsy junks that appeared to have come down from the days of Confucius, were languid on the gentle ripples. The outstanding Asian islands, small and grim, are singularly desolate, barren as if splintered by fire, gaunt and forbidding. Hongkong is an island that prospers under the paws of the British lion, and it is a city displayed on a mountain side, that by day is not much more imposing than the town of Gibraltar, which it resembles, but at night the lights glitter in a sweeping circle, the steep ascent of the streets revealed by many lamps, and here and there the illumination climbs to the tops of the mountains that are revealed with magical efforts of color and form. The harbor is entered by an ample, but crooked channel, and is land-locked, fenced with gigantic b.u.mps that sketch the horizon, and with their heads and shoulders are familiar with the sky. Here General Merritt, with his personal staff, left us, and between those bound from this port east and west, we circ.u.mnavigated the earth.

Mr. Poultney Bigelow, of Harper's Weekly, who dropped in by the way just to make a few calls at Manila, and has a commission to explore the rivers and lagoons of China with his canoe, left us, in that surprising craft, plying his paddle in the fas.h.i.+on of the Esquimaux, pulling right and left, hand over hand, balancing to a nicety on the waves and going ash.o.r.e dry and unruffled, with his fieldgla.s.s and portfolio, his haversack and typewriter machine that he folds in a small box as if it was a pocket comb, and his kodak, with which he is an expert. He has not only ransacked with his canoe the rivers of America, but has descended the Danube and the Volga. He puts out in his canoe and crosses arms of the sea, as a pastime, makes a tent of his boat if it rains, fighting the desperadoes of all climes with the superst.i.tion, for which he is indebted to their imagination for his safety in running phenomenal hazards, that he is a magician. Marco Polo was not so great a traveler or so rare an adventurer as Bigelow, and, having left Florida under a thunder cloud of the scowl of an angry army for untimely criticisms, he has invaded the celestial empire in his quaint canoe, and he can beat the Chinese boatmen on their own rivers, and sleep like a sea bird on the swells of green water, floating like a feather, and safe in his slumbers as a solon goose with his head under his wing. However, he has not a winged boat, a bird afloat sailing round the purple peaks remote, as Buchanan Reed put it in his "Drifting" picture of the Vesuvian bay, for Bigelow uses a paddle. There has been a good deal of curiosity as well as indignation about his papers on the handling of our Cuban expedition before it sailed, and it is possible he was guilty of the common fault of firing into the wrong people. He was in Was.h.i.+ngton in June, and he and I meeting on the Bridge of Spain over the Pesang in Manila in August, we had, between us, put a girdle about the earth. Some say such experiences are good to show how small the earth is, but I am more than ever persuaded that it is big enough to find mankind in occupation and subsistence until time shall be no more. In the dock at Hongkong was Admiral Dewey's flags.h.i.+p Olympia, and while she had the gra.s.s scratched from her bottom, the gallant crew were having a holiday with the zest that rewards those who for four months were steadily on s.h.i.+pboard with arduous cares and labors. H.B.M.S. Powerful, of 12,000 tons displacement, with four huge flues and two immense military masts, presided at Hongkong under orders to visit Manila. The mingling of the English and Chinese in Hongkong is a lively object lesson, showing the extent of the British capacity to utilize Asiatic labor, and get the profit of European capital and discipline, an acc.u.mulation that requires an established sense of safety--a justified confidence in permanency.

The contrast between the city of Hongkong and that of Manila is one that Americans should study now, to be instructed in the respective colonial systems of England and Spain. Hongkong is clean and solid, with business blocks of the best style of construction, the pavements excellent in material and keeping, shops full of goods, all the appliances of modern times--a city up to date. There are English enough to manage and Chinese enough to toil. There are two British regiments, one of them from India, the rank and file recruited from the fighting tribes of northern mountaineers. There are dark, tall men, with turbans, embodiment of mystery, and Pa.r.s.ees who have a strange spirituality of their own, and in material matters maintain a lofty code of honor, while their pastime is that of striving while they march to push their heads into the clouds. There are no horses in Hongkong, the coolies carrying chairs on bamboo poles, or trotting with two-wheelers, an untiring subst.i.tute for quadrupeds, and locomotion on the streets or in the boats is swift and sure. I had an address to find in the city, on a tip at Manila of the presence, of a literary treasure, and my chairmen carried me, in a few minutes, to a tall house on a tall terrace, and the works of a martyr to liberty in the Philippines were located. The penalty for the possession of these books in Manila was that of the author executed by shooting in the back in the presence of a crowd of spectators. The cost of the carriers was thirty cents in silver--fifteen cents in United States money--and the men were as keen-eyed as they were sure-footed, and the strength of their tawny limbs called for admiration. They were not burdened with clothes, and the play of the muscles of their legs was like a mechanism of steel, oiled, precise, easy and ample in force. The China took on a few hundred tons of coal, which was delivered aboard from heavy boats by the basketful, the men forming a line, and so expert were they at each delivery, the baskets were pa.s.sed, each containing about half a bushel--perhaps there were sixty baskets to the ton--at the rate of thirty-five baskets in a minute. Make due allowances and one gang would deliver twenty tons of coal an hour. The China was anch.o.r.ed three-quarters of a mile from the landing, and a boat ride was ten cents, or fifteen if you were a tipster. The boats are, as a rule, managed by a man and his wife; and, as it is their own, they keep the children at home. The average families on the boats--and I made several counts--were nine, the seven children varying from one to twelve years of age. The vitality of the Chinese is not exhausted, or even impaired.

CHAPTER XXIII

Kodak Snapped at j.a.pan.

Glimpses of China and j.a.pan on the Way Home from the Philippines--Hongkong a Greater Gibraltar--Coaling the China--Gangs of Women Coaling the China--How the j.a.panese Make Gardens of the Mountains--Transition from the Tropics to the Northern Seas--A Breeze from Siberia--A Thousand Miles Nothing on the Pacific--Talk of Swimming Ash.o.r.e.

Formosa was so far away eastward--a crinkled line drawn faintly with a fine blue pencil, showing as an artistic scrawl on the canva.s.s of the low clouds--we could hardly claim when the sketch of the distant land faded from view, that we had seen j.a.pan. When Hongkong, of sparkling memory, was lost to sight, the guardian walls that secluded her harbor, closing their gates as we turned away, and the headlands of the celestial empire grew dim, a rosy sunset promised that the next day should be pleasant, our thoughts turned with the prow of the China to j.a.pan. We were bound for Nagasaki, to get a full supply of coal to drive us across the Pacific, having but twelve hundred tons aboard, and half of that wanted for ballast. It was at the mouth of the harbor of Nagasaki that there was a settlement of Dutch Christians for some hundreds of years. An indiscreet letter captured on the way to Holland by a Portuguese adventurer and maliciously sent to j.a.pan, caused the tragic destruction of the Christian colony. The enmity of Christian nations anxious to add to their properties in the islands in remote seas was so strong that any one preferred that rather than his neighbors might aggrandize the heathen should prevail. The first as well as the last rocks of j.a.pan to rise from and sink into the prodigous waters, through which we pursued our homeward way, bathing our eyes in the delicious glowing floods of eastern air, were scraggy with sharp pinnacles, and sheer precipices, grim survivals of the chaos that it was, before there was light. I have had but glimpses of the extreme east of Asia, yet the conceit will abide with me that this is in geology as in history the older world, as we cla.s.sify our continents, that a thousand centuries look upon us from the terrible towers, lonesome save for the flutter of white wings, that witness the rising of the constellations from the greater ocean of the globe. But there are green hills as we approach Nagasaki, and on a hillside to the left are the white walls of a Christian church with a square tower, stained with traditions of triumphs and suffering and martyrdom long ago. Nagasaki is like Hongkong in its land-locked harbor, in clinging to a mountain side, in the circle of illumination at night and the unceasing paddling of boats from s.h.i.+p to s.h.i.+p and between the s.h.i.+ps and landings. One is not long in discovering that here are a people more alert, ingenious, self-confident and progressive than the Chinese. As we approached the harbor there came to head us off, an official steam launch, with men in uniform, who hailed and commanded us to stop. Two officers with an intense expression of authority came aboard, and we had to give a full and particular account of ourselves. Why were we there? Coaling. Where were we from? Manila and Hongkong. Where were we going? San Francisco. Had we any sickness on board? No. We must produce the s.h.i.+p doctor, the list of pa.s.sengers, and manifest of cargo. We had no cargo. There were a dozen pa.s.sengers. It was difficult to find fault with us. No one was ill. We wanted coal. What was the matter? We had no trouble at Hongkong. We could buy all the coal we wanted there, but preferred this station. We had proposed to have our wars.h.i.+ps cleaned up at Nagasaki, but there were objections raised. So the job went to the docks at Hongkong, and good gold with it. Why was this? Oh yes; j.a.pan wanted, in the war between the United States and Spain, to be not merely formally, but actually neutral! The fact is that the j.a.panese Empire is not pleased with us. They had, in imperial circles, a pa.s.sion for Honolulu, and intimated their grief. Now they are annoyed because that little indemnity for refusing the right to land j.a.panse labor was paid by the Hawaiian Government before the absorption into the United States. As the Hawaiian diplomatic correspondence about this was conducted with more asperity than tact, if peace were the purpose, it was a good sore place for the j.a.panese statesmen to rub, and they resent in the newspapers the facile and cheap pacification resulting from the influence of the United States. In addition the j.a.panese inhabitants, though they have a larger meal than they can speedily digest in Formosa, are not touched with unqualified pleasurable feeling because we have the Philippines in our grasp. If j.a.pan is to be the great power of the Pacific, it is inconvenient to her for us to hold the Hawaiian, the Aleutian and the Philippine groups of islands. The Philippines have more natural resources than all the islands of j.a.pan, and our Aleutian Islands that are waiting for development would probably be found, if thoroughly investigated, one of our great and good bargains. The average American finds himself bothered to have to treat the j.a.panese seriously, but we must, for they take themselves so, and are rus.h.i.+ng the work on new s.h.i.+ps of war so that they will come out equal with ourselves in sea power. They have ready for war one humdred thousand men. If we did not hold any part of the Pacific Coast, this might be a matter of indifference, but we have three Pacific States, and there is no purpose to cede them to the j.a.panese. It would not be statesmans.h.i.+p to give up the archipelagoes we possess, even if we consider them as lands to hold for the hereafter. It is not deniable that the j.a.panese have good reason to stand off for strict examination the s.h.i.+ps of other nations that call at their ports. The British and Chinese have had an experience of the bubonic plague at Hongkong, and the j.a.panese are using all the power of arms and the artifice of science they possess to keep aloof from the disastrous disease, which is most contagious. The China had called at Hongkong, and hence the sharp attentions at a coaling station where there are about seventy-five thousand inhabitants of the j.a.panese quarters, which are an exhibit of Old j.a.pan, and most interesting. Nagasaki has, indeed, the true j.a.panese flavor. If there had been a sick man on our s.h.i.+p we should have been quarantined. Further on we were halted in the night off the city of Kobe, to the sound of the firing of a cannon, for we had dropped there a pa.s.senger, Mr. Tilden, the Hongkong agent of the Pacific Mail line, and if our s.h.i.+p had been infected with plague he might have pa.s.sed it on to j.a.pan! I had gone to bed, and was called up to confront the representative of the Imperial Government of the j.a.panese, and make clear to his eyes that I had not returned on account of the plague. Authorities of j.a.pan treat people who are quarantined in a way that removes the stress of disagreeableness. All are taken ash.o.r.e and to a hospital. There is furnished a robe of the country, clean and tidy in all respects. The common clothing is removed and fumigated. It is necessary for each quarantined person to submit to this and also to a bath, which is a real luxury, and after it comes a cup of tea and a light lunch. There was an actual case of plague on an American s.h.i.+p at this city of Kobe not long ago, at least, it was so reported with pretty strong corroborative evidence. The symptom in the case on the s.h.i.+p was that of a fever, probably pneumonia. The man was landed and examined. The plague fever resembles pneumonia at an early stage. The j.a.panese physicians found signs of plague and the end came soon. The sick man, taken ash.o.r.e in the afternoon, at nine o'clock was dead, transferred at once to the crematory, in two hours reduced to ashes, and the officers of the s.h.i.+p informed that if they wanted to carry the "remains" to America they would be sealed in a jar and certified. The s.h.i.+p's officers did not want ashes, and the j.a.ps hold the jar. They are so "advanced" that cremation is becoming a fad with them. It would not be surprising to find that the impending danger of the j.a.panese is excessive imitative progress, which is not certain to be exactly the right thing for them. They have reached a point where it is worth while to examine the claim of new things with much care before adopting them. We have very high authority to examine all things for goodness sake, before committing ourselves to hold them fast. We had to take aboard eighteen hundred tons of coal at Nagasaki. A fleet of arks with thirty tons of j.a.panese coal approached and gathered around the s.h.i.+p, which has sixteen places to throw coal into the bunkers. So the coal business was carried on by from twelve to fifteen gangs, each of about ten men and twenty women! The latter were st.u.r.dy creatures, modestly attired in rough jackets and skirts. There were not far from thirty bamboo baskets to the gang. One man stood at the porthole, and each second emptied a coal basket, using both hands, and throwing it back into the barge with one hand, the same swing of the arm used to catch the next basket hurled to him with a quick, quiet fling. There were three men of a gang next the s.h.i.+p, the third one standing in the barge, served with baskets by two strings of women. At the end of the string furthest from the s.h.i.+p the coal was shoveled into the baskets by four men, and there were two who lifted and whirled them to the women. The numbers and order of the laborers varied a little at times from this relation, yet very little, but frequently a lump of coal was pa.s.sed without using a basket. The work of coaling was carried on all night, and about thirty-six hours of labor put in for a day. There was a great deal of talking among the laborers during the few moments of taking places, and some of it in tones of high excitement, but once the human machine started there was silence, and then the scratching of the shovels in the coal, and the crash of the coal thrown far into the s.h.i.+p were heard. It is, from the American contemplation, shocking for women to do such work, but they did their share with unflinching a.s.siduity, and without visible distress. When the night work was going on they were evidently fatigued, and at each change that allowed a brief spell of waiting, they were stretched out on the planks of the boats, the greater number still, but some of the younger ones talking and laughing. There did not seem to be much flirtation, nothing like as much as when both s.e.xes of Europeans are engaged in the same wheat or barley field harvesting. There were, it is needful to remark, neither lights nor shadows to invite the blanishments of courting. The coal handling women were from fifteen to fifty years of age, and all so busy the inevitable babies must have been left at home. I have never seen many American or European babies "good"

as weary mothers use the word, as the commonest j.a.panese kids. They do not know how to cry, and a girl of ten years will relieve a mother of personal care by carrying a baby, tied up in a scarf, just its head sticking out (I wish they could be induced to use more soap and water on the coppery heads, from which pairs of intent eyes stare out with sharp inquiry, as wild animals on guard). The girl baby bearer, having tied the child so that it appears to be a bag, slings it over her shoulder, and it interferes but slightly with the movements of the nurse; does not discernibly embarra.s.s her movements. The men colliers, it must be admitted, are a shade reckless in the scarcity of their drapery when they are handling baskets in the presence of ladies. They do usually wear s.h.i.+rts with short tails behind, and very economical breechcloths, but their s.h.i.+rts are sleeveless, and the b.u.t.tons are missing on collar and bosom. The only clothing beneath the knees consists of straw sandals. The precipitation of perspiration takes care of itself. There are no pocket handkerchiefs.

Nagasaki has good hotels, a pleasant, airy European quarter, and shops stored with the goods of the country, including magnificent vases and other pottery that should meet the appreciation of housekeepers. There is no city in j.a.pan more typically j.a.panese, few in which the line is so finely and firmly drawn between the old and the new, and that to the advantage of both.

It is hardly possible for those who do not visit j.a.pan to realize what a bitter struggle the people have had with their native land, or how brilliant the victory they have won. The pa.s.sage of the China through the inner sea and far along the coast gave opportunity to see, as birds might, a great deal of the country. The inner sea is a wonderfully attractive sheet of water, twice as long as Long Island Sound, and studded with islands, a panorama of the picturesque mountains everywhere, deep nooks, glittering shoals, fis.h.i.+ng villages by the sea, boats rigged like Americans, flocks of white sails by day, and lights at night, that suggest strings of street lamps. The waters teem with life. Evidently the sea very largely affords industry and sustenance to the people, for there is no botlom or prairie land, as we call the level or slightly rolling fields in America. There was not a spot from first to last visible in j.a.pan, as seen from the water, or in an excursion on the land, where there is room to turn around a horse and plow. The ground is necessarily turned up with spades and mellowed with hoes and cakes, all, of course, by human hands. This is easy compared with the labor in constructing terraces. The mountains have been conquered to a considerable extent in this way, and it is sensational to see how thousands of steep places have been cut and walled into gigantic stairways, covering slopes that could hardly answer for goat pasture, until the shelves with soil placed on them for cultivation have been wrought, and the terraces are like wonderful ladders bearing against the skies. So rugged is the ground, however, that many mountains are unconquerable, and there are few traces of the terraces, though here and there, viewed from a distance, the evidences that land is cultivated as stairways leaning against otherwise inaccessible declivities. I have never seen elsewhere anything that spoke so unequivocably of the endless toil of men, women and children to find footings upon which to sow the grain and fruit that sustain life. It is not to be questioned that the report, one-twelfth, only of the surface of j.a.pan is under tillage, is accurate. The country is more mountainous than the Alleghenies, and some of it barren as the wildest of the Rockies on the borders of the bad lands, and it is volcanic, remarkably so, even more subject to earthquakes than the Philippines. The whole of j.a.pan occupies about as much s.p.a.ce as the two Dakotas or the Philippines, and the population is forty-two millions. With work as careful and extensive as that of the agricultural mountaineers of j.a.pan, the Dakotas would support one hundred million persons. But they would have to present the was.h.i.+ng away of the soil and the waste through improvident ignorance or careless profligacy of any fertilizer, or of any trickle of water needed for irrigation. One of the features of the terraces is that the rains are saved by the walls that sustain the soil, and the gutters that guide the water conserve it, because paved with pebbles and carried down by easy stages, irrigating one shelf after another of rice or vegetables, whatever is grown, until the whole slope not irreclaimable is made to blossom and the mountain torrents saved in their descent, not tearing away the made ground, out of which the means of living grows, but percolating through scores of narrow beds, gardens suspended like extended ribbons of verdure on volcanic steeps, refres.h.i.+ng the crops to be at last ripened by the suns.h.i.+ne. This is a lesson for the American farmer--to be studied more closely than imitated--to grow gra.s.s, especially clover, to stop devastation by creeks, with shrubbery gifted with long roots to save the banks of considerable streams, and, where there is stone, use it to save the land now going by every freshwater rivulet and rivers to the seas, to the irreparable loss of mankind. It is the duty of man who inherits the earth that it does not escape from him, that his inheritance is not swept away by freshets. We are growing rapidly, in America, in the understanding of this subject, beginning to comprehend the necessity of giving the land that bears crops the equivalent of that which is taken from it, that the vital capital of future generations may not be dissipated and the people grow ever poor and at last perish.

A ride in a jinrikisha, a two-wheeler, with a buggy top and poles for the biped horse to trot between, from Nagasaki to a fis.h.i.+ng village over the mountains, five miles away, pa.s.sing at the start through the j.a.panese quarter, long streets of shops, populous and busy, many diligent in light manufacturing work, and all scant in clothing--the journey continuing in sharp climbs alongside steep places and beside deep ravines, the slopes elaborately terraced, and again skirting the swift curves of a rapid brook from the mountains, that presently gathered and spread over pretty beds of gravel, providing abundant fresh water bathing, in which a school of boys, leaving a small guard for a light supply of clothing ash.o.r.e--the ride ending in a village of fishermen that, by the count of the inhabitants, should be a town--permitted close observation of the j.a.panese in a city and a village, on their sky-sc.r.a.ping gardens and in the road, going to and coming from market, as well as in places of roadside entertainment; and at last a seaside resort, in whose shade a party of globetrotters were lunching, some of them, I hear, trying to eat raw fish. There could hardly have been contrived a more instructive exhibit of j.a.pan and the j.a.panese. The road was obstructed in several places by cows bearing bales of goods from the city to the country, and produce from the hanging gardens to the streets, an occasional horse mustered in, and also a few oxen. The beast of burden most frequently overtaken or encountered was the cow, and a majority of the laborers were women. There were even in teams of twos and fours, carrying heavy luggage, men and women, old, middle-aged and young, barefooted or shod with straw, not overloaded, as a rule, and some walking as if they had performed their tasks and were going home. On the road it was patent there was extraordinary freedom from care as to clothing, and no feeling of prejudice or dismay if portions of it esteemed absolutely essential in North America and Europe had been left behind or was awaiting return to the possessor. This applies to both s.e.xes. The day was warm, even hot, and the sun shone fiercely on the turnpike--for that is what we would call it--making walking, with or without loads, a heating exercise. Even the bearing of baskets, and the majority of the women carried them, was justification under the customs of the country for baring the throat and chest to give ample scope for breathing, and there is no restriction in the maintenance of the drooping lines of demarkation, according to the most liberal fas.h.i.+onable allowances, in dispensing with all the misty suggestions of laces to the utmost extent artists could ask, for the study of figures. Beauty had the advantage of the fine curves of full inhalations of the air that circulated along the dusty paths between the sea and the mountains. It is a puzzle that the artists of j.a.pan have not better improved the unparalleled privilege of field and wall sketching, that they enjoy to a degree not equalled within the permission of the conventional construction of that which is becoming in the absence of the daylight habilaments of any great and polite people. The art schools of j.a.pan, out of doors, on the highway, even, cannot fail to produce atmospheric influences of which the world will have visions hereafter, and the Latin quarter of Paris will lose its reputation that attracts and adjusts nature to inspiration.

When we had succeeded, at Kobe, in convincing the authorities that none of the pa.s.sengers on the China had picked up the plague at Hongkong, we put out into the big sea, and shaped our course for the fairer land so far away, not exactly a straight line, for the convexity of the earth that includes the water, for the ocean--particularly the Pacific--is rounded so that the straightest line over its surface is a curved line, if astronomically mentioned. We struck out on the great Northern circle, purposing to run as high as the forty-eighth parallel, almost to our Alutian Islands, and pursued our course in full view, the bald cliffs of j.a.pan changing their color with the going down of the sun. When morning came the purple bulk of the bestirring little empire still reminded us of the lights and shadows of Asia and the missionary labors of Sir Edwin Arnold, which have a flavor of the cla.s.sics and a remembrance of the Scriptures. "Yonder," said the Captain, "is the famous mountain of j.a.pan, Fugeyana. It is not very clearly seen, for it is distant. Oh, you are looking too low down and see only the foot-hills--that is it, away up in the sky!" It was there, a peak so lofty that it is solitary. We were to have seen it better later, but as the hours pa.s.sed there was a dimness that the light of declining day did not disperse, and the mountain stayed with us in a ghostly way, and held its own in high communion.

As we were leaving Asian waters there came a demand for typhoons that the Captain satisfied completely, saying he was not hunting for them, but the worst one he ever caught was five hundred miles east of Yokohama. The tourists were rather troubled. The young man who had been in the wild waltz of the Zealandia did not care for a typhoon. We had been blessed with weather so balmy and healing, winds so soft and waves so low, that the s.h.i.+p had settled down steady as a river steamboat. We pushed on, but the best the China could do was fourteen knots and a half an hour, near 350 knots a day, with a consumption of 135 tons of coal in twenty-four hours. So much for not having been cleaned up so as to give the go of the fine lines. The China had been in the habit of making sixty miles a day more than of this trip, burning less than 100 tons of coal. As we climbed in the ladder of the parallels of lat.i.tude, we began to notice a crispness in the air, and it was lovely to the lungs. It was a pleasure, and a stimulant surpa.s.sing wine, to breathe the north temperate ozone again, and after a while to catch a frosty savor on the breeze. We had forgotten, for a few days, that we were not in a reeking state of perspiration. Ah! we were more than a thousand miles north of Manila, and that is as far as the coast of Maine to Cuba. The wind followed us, and at last gained a speed greater than our own; then it s.h.i.+fted and came down from the northwest. It was the wind that swept from Siberia, and Kamschatka's grim peninsula pointed us out. The smoke from our funnels blew black and dense away southeast, and did not change more than a point or two for a week. The Pacific began to look like the North Atlantic. There came a "chill out of a cloud" as in the poetic case of Annabel Lee. There had been, during our tropical experience, some outcries for the favor of a few chills, but now they were like the typhoons. When it was found that they might be had we did not want them. After all, warm weather was not so bad, and the chills that were in the wind that whistled from Siberia were rather objectionable. It was singular to call for one, two, three blankets, and then hunt up overcoats. White trousers disappeared two or three days after the white coats. Straw hats were called for by the wind. One white cap on an officer's head responded alone to the swarm of white caps on the water. The roll of the waves impeded our great northern circle. We could have made it, but we should have had to roll with the waves. We got no higher than 45 degrees. We had our two Thursdays, and thought of the fact that on the mystical meridian 180, where three days get mixed up in one! The Pacific Ocean, from pole to pole, so free on the line where the dispute as to the day it is, goes on forever, that only one small island is subject to the witchery of mathematics, and the proof in commonplace transactions unmixed with the skies that whatever may be the matter with the sun--the earth do move, is round, do roll over, and does not spill off the sea in doing so. At last came shrill head winds, and as we added fifteen miles an hour to this speed, the harp strings in the rigging were touched with weird music, and we filled our lungs consciously and conscientiously with American air, experiencing one of the old sensations, better than anything new.

It was figured out that we were within a thousand miles of the continent, and were getting home. When one has been to the Philippines, what's a thousand miles or two! "h.e.l.lo, Captain Seabury! It is only about a thousand miles right ahead to the land. You know what land it is, don't you? Well, now, you may break the shaft or burst the boilers, fling the s.h.i.+p to the sperm whales, like the one that was the only living thing we saw since j.a.pan entered into the American clouds of the West. We are only a thousand miles away from the solid, sugary sweet, redolent, ripe American soil, and if there is anything the matter we do not mind, why we will just take a boat and pull ash.o.r.e." But we would have had a hard time if the Captain had taken us up in the flush of the hilarity that laughed at a thousand miles, when the breeze brought us the faint first hints that we were almost home, after a voyage of five thousand leagues. The wind s.h.i.+fted to the south and increased until it roared, and the waves were as iron tipped with blue and silver, hurling their salty crests over our towering s.h.i.+p; and we were in the grasp--

On the Pacific of the terrific Storm King of the Equinox.

Mr. Longfellow mentioned the storm wind gigantic, that shook the Atlantic at the time of the equinox--the one that urges the boiling surges bearing seaweed from the rocks; and all those disappointed because they had not bounded on the billows of the briny enough for healthy exercises, were satisfied in the reception by the tremendous Pacific when nigh the sh.o.r.e, which was once the western boundary, but is so no more, of that blessed America, of which her sons grow fonder the farther they roam. G.o.d's country, as the boys and girls call it reverently, when they are sailing the seas, was veiled from us in a fog that blanketed the deep. For five thousand miles our s.h.i.+p had been in a remorseless solitude. No voice had come to us; no spark of intelligence from the universe touched us, save from the stars and the sun, but at the hour of the night, and the point of the compa.s.s, our navigator had foretold, we should hear the deep-throated horn on Reyes point--it came to us out of the gloomy abyss--and science had not failed. Across the trackless waste we had been guided aright, and there was music the angels might have envied in the hoa.r.s.e notes of the fog-horn that welcomed the wanderers home.

CHAPTER XXIV

Our Picture Gallery.

Annotations and Ill.u.s.trations--Portraits of Heroes of the War in the Army and Navy, and of the Highest Public Responsibilities--Admirals and Generals, the President and Cabinet--Photographs of Scenes and Incidents--The Characteristics of the Filipinos--Their Homes, Dresses and Peculiarities in Sun Pictures--The Picturesque People of Our New Possessions.

The portrait of President McKinley is from the photograph that seems to his friends upon the whole the most striking of his likenesses. That of the Secretary of State, the Honorable John Hay, is certainly from the latest and best of his photos. The Postmaster General, the Honorable Charles Emory Smith, and Secretary Bliss, are presented in excellent form and the whole Cabinet with unusual faithfulness. Our naval and military heroes in the war that has introduced the American nation to the nations of the earth as a belligerent of the first cla.s.s, cannot become too familiar to the people, for they are of the stuff that brightens with friction, and the more it is worn gives higher proof that it is of both the precious metals in war, gold and steel.

Admiral Dewey, as we have set forth in this volume, is not thus far fairly dealt with in the pictures that have been taken. He is a surprise to those who meet him face to face--so far has photography failed to adequately present him, but the portrait we give is the best that has been made of him.

Major-General Merritt retains the keen, clear cut face, and the figure and bearing of an ideal soldier that has characterized him since, as a youth just from West Point, he entered the army and won his way by his courage and courtesy, his brilliant conduct and excellent intelligence, his das.h.i.+ng charges and superb leaders.h.i.+p, to a distinguished position and the affectionate regard of the army and the people. In the Indian wars, after the b.l.o.o.d.y struggle of the States was over, he outrode the Indians on the prairies and was at once their conqueror and pacificator. He ranks in chivalry with the knights, and his work at Manila was the perfection of campaigning that produced conclusive results with a comparatively small shedding of blood.

The likeness of the Archbishop of Manila was presented me by His Grace at the close of a personal interview, and represents him as he is. The chapter devoted to him is meant to do him simple justice as a man and priest. The fact that he bestowed upon me in the inscription with which he greatly increased the value of his portrait a military dignity to which I have no t.i.tle is an expression only of his friendliness. He frankly stated his pleasure in meeting an American who would convey to the President of the United States the message he gave me about the American army, to which he was indebted for security and peace of mind.

General Aguinaldo gave me his photograph, and the flag of the Filipinos with him in the effort to establish an independent government, republican in form. One is not always sure of that which happens in the Philippines, even when one reads about it. I am prepared to believe that there is much truth in the dispatch saying a majority of the Congress of the insurgents at Molores favor annexation to the United States. The whole truth probably is that they would gladly have this country their Protector at large, supreme in the affairs international, they to legislate in respect to local affairs. They need to know, however, that their Congress must become a territorial legislature, and that the higher law for them is to be the laws of Congress. The Philippine flag is oriental in cut and color, having red and blue bars--a white obtuse angle--the base to the staff, and a yellow moon with fantastic decorations occupying the field. This flag is one that Admiral Dewey salutes with respect. General Aguinaldo is giving much of his strength to the production of proclamations, and his literary labors should be encouraged.

On a September morning two years ago, Dr. Jose Rizal was shot by a file of soldiers on the Manila Luneta, the favorite outing park, bordering on the bay. The scene was photographed at the moment the Doctor stood erect before the firing squad, and the signal from the officer in command awaited for the discharge of the volley killing the most intellectual man of his race. Dr. Rizal is known as the Tagalo Martytr. The Tagalos are of the dominant tribe of Malays. General Aguinaldo is of this blood, as are the great majority of the insurgents. The Doctor is more than the martyr of a tribe. He is the most talented and accomplished man his people and country has produced. A history of Luzon from his pen is a hulky volume full of facts. I was not able to procure all of his books. Anyone in Manila found in possession of one of them during Spanish rule, would have been taken to the ground selected for human butchery in the appointed place of festivity, and shot as he was, making a holiday for the rulers of the islands. He wrote two novels, "Touch Us Not" and "The Filibusters," the latter a sequel of the former. These are books using the weapons put into the hand of genius to smite oppressors in command of the force of arms. The novels are said to be interesting as novels,--rather sensational in their disregard of the personal reputation of his foes, the friars, but all along between the lines there was argument, appeals for the freedom of the Filipinos, for freedom of speech, conscience and country. There are pamphlets printed the size of an average playing card, from thirty to forty pages each, one "Don Rodriguez," and another "The Telephone." These I obtained in Hongkong from the hands of the niece--daughter of the sister of the Doctor,--and she presented me also his poem written when in the shadow of death, of which this volume gives a prose translation. The poem is the farewell of the author to his friends, his country and the world. It is given in prose because in that style the spirit of the poet, indeed the poetry itself, can be rendered with better results, than by striving to sustain the poetic form. The poem would be regarded as happy and affecting in the thought that is in it, the images in which the ideas gleam, the pathos of resignation, the ascendency of hope, if there were nothing in the attendant circ.u.mstances that marked it with the blood of historic tragedy. This poetry that it would have been high treason to own in Manila, for it would not have been safe in any drawer however secret, was treasured by the relatives of the martyr at Hongkong. The niece spoke excellent English, and there was at once surprise and gratification in the family that an American should be interested in the Doctor who sacrificed himself to the freedom of his pen, so much as to ascend the steep places of the city to seek his writings for the sake of the people for whose redemption he died. On the page showing the face of the Doctor and the scene of his execution, there are two men in black, the victim standing firm as a rock to be shot down, and the priest retiring after holding the crucifix to the lips of the dying; and the portrait of the beautiful woman to whom the poet was married a few hours before he was killed. It is said that Rizal wanted to go to Cuba, but Captain-General Weyler answered a request from him that he might live there, that he would be shot on sight if he set foot on Cuban soil. Rizal, hunted hard, attempted to escape in disguise on a Spanish troop s.h.i.+p carrying discharged soldiers to Spain, but was detected while on the Red Sea, returned to Manila and shot to death. I stood on the curbstone that borders the Luneta along the princ.i.p.al pleasure drive, between the whispering trees and the murmuring surf of the bay, just where the martyred poet and patriot waited and looked over the waters his eyes beheld, the last moment before the crash of the rifles that destroyed him, and in the distance there was streaming in the suns.h.i.+ne the flag of our country--the star spangled banner, and long, long may it wave, over a land of the free and home of the brave!

The picture of the cathedral shows a tower that was shattered from the foundation to the cross by the earthquake of 1863. Ambitious architecture must conform to the conditions imposed by such disasters, and the great edifice is greatly changed.

In our gallery we treat Admirals Sampson and Schley as the President set the example. As there was glory for all at Santiago, there was advancement for both. We present them together. The wholesome, manly face of General Lee is in the gallery. His country knows him and thinks of him well.

The bombarded church of Cavite shows that sh.e.l.ls spare nothing sacred in their flights and concussions. The Bridge of Spain is the one most crossed in pa.s.sing between the old walled city and the newer town that was not walled, but was formidably intrenched where rice swamps were close to the bay. The public buildings are commodious and would be higher, but the earth is uncertain, and sky-sc.r.a.pers are forbidden by common prudence. Our picture of the princ.i.p.al gate of the walled city is taken truly, but does not give the appearance of extreme antiquity, of the reality. The wall looks old as one that has stood in Europe a thousand years.

Naturally the gallery has many works of art representative of Manila. The s.h.i.+pping in the harbor is an advertis.e.m.e.nt of a commerce once extensive. Each picture that shows a woman, a man, or tree; a wood-cutter, a fisherman, or a house, opens for the spectator a vista that may be interpreted by the intelligent. A veritable picture is a window that reveals a landscape. That which is most valuable in a gallery like this is the perfect truth not everywhere found, for the eyes that see a picture that is really representative, setting forth the colors, the light, and the substance of things find that which does not fade when the story is told.

There is one most hideous thing in our gallery--that of the head of a Spaniard, bleeding, just severed from the body--the weapon used, a naked dagger in a clenched hand--around the ghastly symbol a deep black border. This is one of the ways of the Katapuna society--the League of Blood--have of saying what they would have us understand are their awful purposes. There are terrible stories about this Blood League--that they bleed themselves in the course of their proceedings, and each member signs his name with his own blood--that they establish brotherhood by mingling their blood and tasting it. They are the sworn enemies of the Spaniards, and particularly of the priests. I inquired of Senor Agoncillo, the Philippine commissioner to Paris, whether those b.l.o.o.d.y stories were true. He scoffed at the notion that they might be so, and laughed and shouted "No, no!" as if he was having much fun. But Agoncillo is a lawyer and a diplomat, and I had heard so much, of this horrid society I did not feel positive it was certain that its alleged blood rites were fict.i.tious. Of one thing I am sure--that the dreadful picture is no joke, and was not meant for a burlesque, though it might possibly be expected to perform the office of a scarecrow. It cannot be doubted that there are oath-bound secret societies that are regarded by the Spaniards as fanatical, superst.i.tious, murderous and deserving death.

There is a good deal of feeble-minded credulity among the Filipinos, that is exhibited in the stories told by Aguinaldo. He has many followers who believe that he has a mighty magic, a charm, that deflects bullets and is an antidote for poison. Intelligent people believe this imbecility is one of the great elements of his power--that his leaders.h.i.+p would be lost if the supernaturalism attached to him should go the way of all phantoms. Aguinaldo is said not to have faith in the charm, for he takes very good care of himself.

We give several views of executions at Manila. As a rule, these pictures are not fine productions of art. They are taken under such conditions of light and background that they are somewhat shadowy. This sinister addition to our gallery seems to be the first time the photographs of executions have been reproduced. The photos were not furtively taken. There is no secrecy about the process, no attempts to hide it from the Spaniards. Executions in the Philippines were in the nature of dramatic entertainments. There were often many persons present, and ladies as conspicuous as at bull fights. There is no more objections offered to photographing an execution than a c.o.c.k fight, which is the sport about which the Filipinos are crazily absorbed. It is the festal character to the Spaniard of the rebel shooting that permits the actualities to be reproduced, and hence these strange contributions to our gallery.

Many of our pictures are self-explanatory. They were selected to show things characteristic, and hence instructive, peasants'

customs--women riding buffaloes through palm groves--native houses, quaint costumes. "The insurgent outlook" reveals a native house--a structure of gra.s.ses. This is a perfect picture. The southern islanders, and the group of Moors, the dressing of the girls, work in the fields, the wealth of vegetation, the dining room of the Governor-General prepared for company, General Merritt's palatial headquarters before he had taken the public property into his care and suited it to his convenience; the Spanish dude officer, showing a young man contented in his uniform, and a pony pretty in his harness.

We reproduce the war department map of the Philippine islands. It will be closely studied for each island has become a subject of American interest. The imprint of the war department is an a.s.surance of the closest attainable accuracy. The map of the Hawaiian islands clearly gives them in their relative positions and proportions as they are scattered broadcast in the Pacific. The Philippine and Hawaiian groups as they thus appear will be found more extensive than the general fancy has painted them. The Philippine Archipelago has been held to resemble a fan, with Luzon for the handle. The shape is something fantastic. It is worth while to note that the distance between the north coast of Luzon and the Sulu Archipelago is equal to that from England to Southern Italy.

There are pictures in our gallery that could only be found at the end of a journey of ten thousand miles, and they go far to show the life of the people of a country that is in such relations with ourselves the whole world is interested. There is truthtelling that should be prized in photography, and our picture gallery is one of the most remarkable that has been a.s.sembled.

CHAPTER XXV

Cuba and Porto Rico.

Conditions In and Around Havana--Fortifications and Water Supply of the Capital City--Other Sections of the Pearl of the Antilles--Porto Rico, Our New Possession, Described--Size and Population--Natural Resources and Products--Climatic Conditions--Towns and Cities--Railroads and Other Improvements--Future Possibilities.

There was the fortune of good judgment in attacking the Spaniards in Cuba at Santiago and Porto Rico, the points of Spanish possession in the West Indies farthest south and east, instead of striking at the west, landing at Pinar del Rio, the western province, and moving upon the fortifications of Havana, where the difficulties and dangers that proved so formidable at Santiago would have been quadrupled, and our losses in the field and hospital excessive. The unpreparedness of this country for war has not even up to this time been appreciated except by military experts and the most intelligent and intent students of current history. The military notes prepared in the War Department of the United States at the beginning of the war with Spain, contain the following of Santiago de Cuba:

This city was founded in 1514, and the famous Hernando was its first mayor. It is the most southern place of any note on the island, being on the twentieth degree of lat.i.tude, while Havana, the most northern point of note, is 23 degrees 9 minutes 26 seconds north lat.i.tude. The surrounding country is very mountainous, and the city is built upon a steep slope; the public square, or Campo de Marte, is 140 to 160 feet above the sea, and some of the houses are located 200 feet high. The character of the soil is reported to be more volcanic than calcareous; it has suffered repeatedly from earthquakes. It is the second city in the island with regard to population, slightly exceeding that of Matanzas and Puerto Principe. So far as American commerce is concerned, it ranks only ninth among the fifteen Cuban ports of entry. It is located on the extreme northern bank of the harbor of Santiago de Cuba, a harbor of the first cla.s.s and one of the smallest; hence, as is believed, the great liability of its s.h.i.+pping to infection. According to the chart of the Madrid hydrographic bureau, 1863, this harbor is, from its sea entrance to its extreme northern limit, 5 miles long, the city being located 4 miles from its entrance, on the northeastern side of the harbor. The entrance is for some little distance very narrow--not more than 220 yards wide--and may be considered about 2 miles long, with a width varying from one-eighth to five-eighths of a mile. For the remaining 3 miles the harbor gradually widens, until at its northern extremity it is about 2 miles wide. The city is so situated in a cove of the harbor that the opposite sh.o.r.e is only about one-half mile distant. At the wharves from 10 to 15 feet of water is found, and within 300 to 500 yards of the sh.o.r.e from 20 to 30 feet. This, therefore, is probably the anchorage ground. Three or more so-called rivers, besides other streams, empty into this harbor, and one of these, the Caney River, empties into the harbor at the northern limit of the city, so that its water flows from one island extremity through the whole harbor into the sea. The difference here, as elsewhere in Cuba, between low and high tide is about 2 feet. Population in 1877 was 40,835, and 5,100 houses. This city is one of the most noted yellow-fever districts in the island. The population in 1896 was 42,000.

The following has been reported:

Preparations for mounting new and heavy ordnance is now going on at the entrance of the bay (March 5, 1898).

New and heavier guns are also ordered for Punta Blanca, on the right of the bay near Santiago City.

Plans have been made for constructing two batteries in the city of Santiago, one about 25 yards in front of the American consulate and the other about two blocks in rear.

Cayo Rolones, or Rat Island, located near the middle of the bay, is the Government depository for powder, dynamite, and other explosives.

The elevation on the right of the entrance, where stands Castle Morro, is 40 yards above the sea level, while the hill on the left is 20 yards.